Trici fixed Klane with the look he hated. The same flat expression that preceded every fight, and once or twice the need to dodge a flying saucer or ceramic mug. The doe-eyed, emerald-haired goddess he’d rescued a season or two before would vanish in an instant. Any minute now. Replaced by a one-woman army of hellfire and destruction.

  “Well.” The usual high timbre of her voice dropped, the first step toward the end of any discussion. Trici tossed her hair back with a flick of her wrist and smoothed out the patchwork quilt of a dress she’d finished sewing only a night before. To Klane’s relief, she cleared the small island in the kitchen of their hovel and placed a set of clean plates on a small shelf. It spanned the space between a pair of thick, gnarled roots of the tree above them, which formed the ceiling and most of the kitchen wall. She’d just finished baking a batch of rolls, their typical, perfect, golden-brown color, glazed with a thin layer of seasoned butter, which would dry into a perfect garlic seasoning.

  The calm before the storm. Klane waited for her to say something more, seated on a blue stool as he stared out through the frosted panes of a small round window, open to a view of the rest of the village clearing. At least the island was clear of ammunition.

  “I have to do it.” Klane returned his attention to the beaten journal on the counter.

  Trici regarded the book with unmasked apprehension, and a kind of disgust she normally reserved for poisonous insects or Hobblecap mushrooms. She hated those mushrooms. An acquired taste though, Klane knew.

  “I have to bring this journal to … Andrew.” How old would that kid be now anyway? Given his estimate of fifteen years since the dynasty mentioned at the start of the letter had fallen, it was easy to concede that the son mentioned in that letter could be much older now, perhaps his thirties, or forties.

  “Why?” Trici planted her hands on her hips. Lovely hips, which curved just right, which the dress hugged beautifully, and which Klane loved. Staring now would only get him in more trouble. He met her gaze.

  “I—”

  “You said you’d be around more. But if you think you need to go, you should go.”

  “What?” The change in tone took Klane completely by surprise. He studied her face for a moment, searching for a sign of a trap. He would make the mistake every man made at least once in a relationship and take her consent as a genuine agreement rather than a test.

  Niblet, a little vole Trici had found a few months earlier, scampered up the side of her dress and nestling down against her neck. The vole’s little, black eyes stared as he chittered and groomed his tawny coat, oblivious to what was happening.

  Any annoyance or defiance in Trici’s eyes faded. She glanced sideways at Niblet, shoulders drooping as angry tension drained away. Uh oh. Klane felt the mood in the winter air shift instantly, a faint drizzling arising against the window.

  Trici trudged to the window, a sorrowful gaze of solemn resolution befalling her. This wasn’t one of their usual lover’s spats.

  “I need to go home.” She frowned, fixing her eyes on something out the window, Klane had no doubt she was looking out at the stars she loved to watch so much.

  Those five words hit Klane like a hammer. His heart skipped a beat, and for a moment he felt as if the entire hovel had shaken. I need to go home. I need to go home. He knew what the words meant, but for some reason couldn’t comprehend them in the moment. He sat on the nearest stool he could find, studying the grains in the surface of the wooden island. Their rug was a bit out of place, bunched up against the base of the island. He’d have to fix that later. I need to go home. “But, you are.”

  “No, I’m not.” Trici chewed on her thumb, then pressed her lips to a fine line. She was staring at the hovel door now, no doubt longing to be on the other side. “I love you,” she eventually said.

  Klane could feel the but coming, an inevitable reversal, the surprise twist he didn’t want. “I love you, but.”

  There was the dreaded but. “But it is clear you aren’t—”

  “I am.” Klane glared. “Aren’t what?”

  Trici recoiled at the harshness of his words. She held a hand up absently, letting Niblet chew on one of her fingernails.

  “Your heart draws you to adventure,” Trici said, “not to a life settled here, with me. It wouldn’t be right for me to deny your true nature, your calling to fix things, to seek out new opportunities beyond.”

  “But—”

  “And it isn’t right for you to sit here and pretend you enjoy being cooped up,” Trici spat. “You spent the last three days traveling to who knows where and came back with this. Do you know how worried I—”

  “It was just a quick trip!”

  “And I suppose a safe one, too.” Trici indicated a cut on Klane’s cheek. “Go, return that journal to whomever. Good luck finding them.” The hellfire woman had surfaced, anger saturating each word. “I owed you a debt for saving my life. I tried to make this work. I tried to love you as much as you love your adventure.

  “You saved me, and I am grateful for that. But it isn’t our time, Klane. And this isn’t my place.”

  Klane put a hand to his chest. He wasn’t sure what hurt more, the fact that he knew she was lying, or the fact that part of him agreed and just wanted to snatch the journal and be off to Red Reef, if he may find a new lead on the family anywhere—perhaps it would be there, at the headquarters for the mining company. His heart hammered faster than it should’ve. Faster than it ever had, save for the first time he’d seen her.

  She stared at him for a moment more, then turned and disappeared down the short hallway to their room. Klane went rigid, frozen in place, wanting to follow her but unable to move. Rustling of some sort, boxes and junk being moved, filled the silence. A cabinet opening and then shutting, and the rattling of a small cage. Niblet’s cage.

  Trici appeared a moment later wrapped in a heavy coat, a bulging backpack and a pouch slung over her shoulder, and Niblet’s cage in her hand. The little vole sat in a bedding of straw, still oblivious.

  She’d been preparing to do this. “I was going to leave in the morning. Before you awoke. But, now that it’s out … I hope you find whomever that belongs to.”

  “You’re just going to walk out there in this rain? Night setting on?” Klane snarled, throwing a hand toward the door.

  “We forest gnomes know our way about a forest. Imagine that!”

  “Apparently not enough to avoid needing rescue.” Klane clenched the edge of his stool. He seethed in place. Trici brushed her hair back again, Klane noticed her neck muscles tensing.

  He watched her leave, unable to find what to say. Unable to move.

  She was gone.

  The door clicked shut, dampening the sound of the wind buffeting the hovel. Klane sat in silence, processing what had happened, as the window rattled and somewhere nearby a chime tinkled a random, unguided tune.

  “Goodbye, Trici.” His voice free of the anger which had poisoned it moments before. The last thing he might ever say to her had been a malicious insult. A numbness settled in, perhaps out of protection from an onset of emotions, or the absence of the hearth’s fire, which had died some time earlier that evening.

  So it would be. He would find the owner of the journal. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps he wasn’t ready. Only time would tell.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  He glanced at his own pack, propped against the wall next to the door, his large river-leaf rolled tight, ready to go. Pride leaned right next to it, sheath buckles hugging the pack like a dear friend.

  “Are you ready?” Klane asked Pride.

  Of course it was ready. It had never failed him before.

  Klane fetched a furled-up map from his shelf. He would find the nearest port and set off from there. The one thing he was sure of now was that he didn’t want to be here a moment longer than he had to.

  * * *

  The morning had a briskness to it, as it most often was in the Bramble Valley, a kind of chill that enlivened and energized more than it hampered. The red lilies Trici had planted weeks earlier glittered with morning dew, the wood of the planter-box soaked thoroughly to a dark, ashen tone.

  Klane snugged his backpack over his shoulders and locked the door to his hovel, jostling the knob just to be sure. A few of his hovelkin were already out and about, treading over the gentle hills that composed the few miles of glade between Bend Grove to the east, and the Amethyst River and Amber Forest to the south and southeast respectively. Some of the elder gnomes tended a communal garden or replacing the shingles from the tavern’s awning, lost in the wind and rain hours earlier.

  Others strung festive lanterns and decorations, for the Winter’s End celebrations to take place in the not-too-distant future, between the half-dozen trees in which their little village was built. Pink clouds stretched out like fleece across an azure sky as the sun ascended over the western mountains, the same ascent he would have to make to get to the nearest port.

  Hopefully the road would be clear.

  “Where’s the green-haired one?” asked Trinkkit. Perhaps the oldest of all the hovelkin, though no one could really say how old he really was, shuffled down the grassy, stone path toward the tavern. He stopped and propped a foot on the head of a giant, spotted toadstool, which had somehow managed to grow in the patch of pebbles and decorative rocks Klane had collected over the years.

  “She left me.” Klane tucked his hands in the pockets of his jacket, giving a dismissive shrug.

  Trinkkit scoffed as if it had been expected. The wrinkled, old gnome, nearly lost in the folds of clothing a few sizes too big for him, tugged the bottom of his ear absently as he thought of what to say. “Maybe that isn’t a bad thing.”

  “It is certainly a trend.”

  Trinkkit’s expression softened. “Don’t be hard on yourself. You’re not at fault for the actions of your parents. No one could ever hold you to account of that.” Trinkkit took a pull from a small, metal cup that dangled from his belt, then gave Klane a warm smile. “In my time knowing you, since you were—”

  “Since I was this big, I know Trink.” Klane sighed, holding a hand to his waist. He didn’t have time for this.

  “Don’t interrupt, it’s rude.” Trinkkit thwapped Klane with the end of his walking stick, a thick, knotted branch of wood that Klane swore the old man had been born with. That walking stick was as loyal a companion to Trinkkt as Pride was to Klane. “You’ve always been more adventurous than us. In fact, sometimes I wonder whether you’re really a hill gnome at all.” Trinkkit’s words trailed off into incoherence. “But I know you’re an adventurer. Get out from here and make a name for yourself. You can always return home some other time.”

  A clattering of a small wheelbarrow as a young gnome traipsed down the path toward the tavern grabbed their attention. Trinkkit craned his head—Klane could swear he heard the creaking of bones—and hollered for the littler one to stop. “I have to be going now.” Trinkkit shuffled to the wheelbarrow and seated himself in its empty bed. He hefted his walking stick forward, like a valiant knight leading a charge. “To ale!” His words ended with a fit of coughing. He held up a cautionary finger and glanced back at Klane. “Go.”

  Klane went, encouraged by the brief insight from the wizened Trinkkit, the eldest gnome.

  * * *

  “Goodness.” Klane bent over with his hands on his knees as he stared out onto the valley below.

  The purple waters of the Amethyst River thundered down in a mighty waterfall from a gaping hole in the side of the mountain. It cut directly under the bridge on the road, causing the ground to tremble and vibrate with the raw, natural power the waters contained. The steam rising from the frothing waters coated his face with a fine mist, enjoyably cool in the increasingly warm daylight. He stood at the peak of his ascent into the mountains, and thankfully, the start of an easy descent to the coast.

  Through the break in the mountains he could see the crystalline waters of the Bramble Coast, rainbow colors of large coral reefs visible beneath the glassy surface. It stretched to the north and south, and far west to darker waters and tumultuous clouds on the horizon. A couple of ships cut soft wakes in the sea, tan sails unfurled and filled with wind.

  Pretty soon you’ll be aboard a ship, just like that.

  Klane gazed to his left.

  The place he’d spent his life romping around sprawled out. The surrounding chains of mountains cupped the valley and its swaths of contrasting forests between rounded peaks. A flock of large birds burst from a nearby canopy, taking off in a flapping haste toward the opposing peaks.

  The Amethyst river snaked into the valley, forking off into distributaries that separated the tangerine leaves of the Amber Forest from the deep, emerald tops of Bend Grove and the other groves beyond. The ruinous tower where he’d met Trici now a near-invisible speck from here.

  What pleased him most, however, was clearly seeing his village, a cluster of trees which inexplicably grew in the rolling hills and fields of poppies surrounding it.

  “It’s a beautiful day for an adventure, wouldn’t you agree?” He clamped his hand around Pride’s hilt. By sunset he would be in Plumule, the nearest port, according to his map, and hopefully aboard a ship.

  * * *

  Klane made better time than anticipated. Plumule, a small coastal village with a single wooden pier stretching out into the ocean, appeared as a cluster of small buildings resting on stilts in the shallows of the water.

  The setting sun painted the surroundings in a muted twilight. Klane studied the white sands, fading from view beneath the increasingly dark waters churning under the pier. Colorful barnacles and patches of seaweed hugged the pier’s posts. Fish in blurs of silver, orange, and a mottled beige color, darted from beneath plants and driftwood, avoiding, for the most part, the small nets fishermen had cast over the sides.

  “Never seen a little folk outside the forests,” a portly man sitting atop a large crate grunted in Klane’s direction. He stared with one eye, the other covered with a black patch. The scruff on his face made it clear the man hadn’t shaved in a few days. Klane wondered if the man expected a response.

  “I’ve never seen one of you in the forest.” Klane shrugged.

  He continued past the man, filling his lungs with a deep breath of briny air, which left his mouth feeling a little parched. A few rowboats were tied in place as sailors unloaded provisions. Klane reached the end of the pier, tripping over a coil of rope as surrounding distractions gripped him. Luckily, he recovered before anyone seemed to notice.

  A pair of ships anchored a few dozen yards away rocked with surf. Flickering flames inside lanterns caused the outlines of the ships to radiate. The ship farthest away was a three-masted barque pointing out to sea, at an angle that left the ornate windows of a stern cabin facing inland. Klane made note of the large patches of red paint flaking at places along its side. Marks of its travels, and age. Its sails were reefed as the crew went about their business securing lines and adjusting the spars, battening down for the night.

  A few yards nearer lay a similar but slightly sleeker scow. The Reliant. Klane read the name scrawled across the bow of the ship. The Reliant was a newer ship, its hull relatively free of any weathering or blemish, adorned with chains of ivy and flowers which wrapped the railing of the ship’s bridge like an olive-colored serpent speckled with bursts of red. He’d heard the Bramble Coast had some flamboyant, garish sailors. Descriptions of their uniforms sounded outlandishly flashy. Klane knew that ship was one of theirs.

  “Beautiful ship, hm?” A tall, broad-shouldered man appeared at Klane’s side. Klane turned his attention to the man, eye-level with a gilded belt buckle, a hint of an accent Klane couldn’t pin, played at the question.

  The young gnome hadn’t thought it possible to make the Bramble Coast sailor’s uniform any gaudier, but with a wide-brimmed cavalier, adorned with a rainbow assortment of poisonous urchin spines, the man had managed to do it.

  Despite the overtly flamboyant dress, the uniform nevertheless managed to command a certain level of respect and admiration from Klane. He supposed it might have been the maroon braids and frills along the shoulders that brought it all together. The amalgamation of various tools hanging around the man’s neck—a collapsing telescope, a gold-rimmed compass—all hinted at a daring life of adventure Klane envied.

  “I suppose it is.” Klane nodded in agreement. Of the two options out there, The Reliant seemed the nicer one. “Do you know where I can—”

  “Jakob Aldheim. I’m her captain.”

  “I should’ve guessed.”

  The captain lived up to everything Klane had pictured him being, brandishing a flamboyant machismo as if it were a weapon in and of itself. He was the ideal of a prideful seaman, a duty-bound merchant.

  “Any room aboard for someone hoping to tag along?” Klane asked.

  “You need passage? Where? We set off for Red Reef in the hour.”

  “I’ll take it, Jakob.” Klane stuck out a hand, offering a shake.

  “Please, Captain Aldheim!” The captain grinned, returning a hearty handshake that caused Klane to wince. “Most men ask about a cost first.” He chuckled.

  “Right.” Klane faltered. “How much?” He had a small sack of golden nuggets.

  “A furnished cabin on the second voyage of this ship? Thirty shills up front, twenty upon arrival. Fair?” Captain Aldheim cocked his head back slightly.

  “I don’t have shills,” Klane began. The captain’s face soured slightly. “But!” He held a hand up. “I have this.” Klane opened his belt pouch, which contained the golden nuggets. Try this, shall we? He pulled out a nugget about the size of his thumb. Sixteen ounces or so, if he had to guess. “I have this,” Klane repeated, presenting the gold.

  The captain’s eyes flashed with pleasant delight. “That’ll do.” He took the gold and motioned for one of the rowboats. “Bring this one aboard when he’s ready,” he ordered one of the other sailors.

  “Aye, sir,” a harelipped man replied.

  “If you have any more shills, would it be possible to trade you for a bit more gold?” Klane ventured. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a sack of the coins for his own use.

  “However much you need.” The captain clapped him on the shoulder. “Welcome aboard.”