Title: Red Rosie Bear
Character(s): Owner of the Rosie teddy bear
She remembers the day that it happened, crystal clear. She remembers because it had started off the same as many days in Oakvale did, and ended in the town's destruction.
The sky was a flawless, cerulean blue. A waterless ocean in the sky with languid white clouds sailing through. The breeze was balmy and pleasant, swaying delicate blades of grass as children ran and giggled. The trader by the inn called his bargain prices while Corina Gown muttered angrily about her wayward husband.
She had been looking for her teddy bear, Rosie, as she was missing and it had been some time since her stuffing was changed. It was a desperate search, as she dreaded to know what would happen if her bully of a brother had found it, and she remembers pleading to Brom's son to help her. He was a nice boy, and had returned to her not even ten minutes later with Rosie in tow.
It was still a nice day.
She, happily humming, had skipped back to her house up the hill, clutching her bear for dear life. Up in her room the stuffing was all set out and ready, but she didn't get the chance to change it like she planned. Her mother had called her down, asking her to fetch something from the trader. She left Rosie in her mother's care then, and skipped to obey the request, jingling a brown pouch full of gold as she made her way down the slope.
The trouble started after she got the item, bread, she recalls.
It could have been any number of things that had alerted her that something was wrong. It could have been the screaming that had begun on the other side of town, sort of far away, but still very audible. It could have been the explosions that began rocking the ground and setting things on fire.
Maybe it was the sight of a body, not ten feet away, falling to the ground. It was bloody, and she might have screamed, but all she remembered of that was thinking of her family, thinking her family could protect her, and running to find them. It was a sort of daze that she was in as she sprinted back up to her home.
And some shock, as she darted to the house to find it burning.
The paint on the outside was peeling and curling, dripping off onto the ground and hitting the burning grass with angry hisses. The windows strained, cracked, and exploded in every direction in a hailstorm of gleaming glass. That part was slow moving, as though someone had cast a slow time spell on the area. She could see every shard of glass that fell, and in the pieces that were glinting amber from the fire, she could clearly see her own, terrified eyes reflected at her.
Then she noticed that the door was open, and that there was a hand visible under the table.
She remembers how her heart hammered painfully and how her stomach twisted into a knot. She didn't want to know, but something urged her to look. She took a few steps to peer inside the rapidly burning house, and what she saw was permanently imprinted in her mind.
Bully though he was, her brother didn't seem so terribly intimidating while he was laying on the floor, blood coated and not breathing. It wasn't only that even, but the item that was strewn beside him.
Rosie bear, red as roses, with her stuffing trying to escape from worn seams. The blue patch on her backside was no longer blue, and with the settling of realization in her brain, she remembers that she screamed. She remembers screaming until her throat went raw and tears poured from her eyes.
Then her father showed up, bleeding but alive and he threw her over his broad shoulders and ran. He ran like there was nothing else for them there, and really, there wasn't. She saw this as she looked over his back, watching houses come crashing to the ground with thunderous groans. It was blurry to see through her eyes, which were misted over from both the smoke and her tears.
But she could never forget that face… or lack thereof.
Red cloak, white mask, crazy eyes…
Crazy, crazy eyes as yellow as the fire that consumed homes, and families, and a whole town in mere hours.
He wasn't looking at her as her father who was carrying her disappeared into the darkness, and for that she counted herself lucky.
He was the bad man.
Years later she sat on her bed in Bowerstone, a book perched carefully on her lap. The words on the page that described old Jack of Blades reminded her of fire and brimstone… and the Oakvale burning. She had told herself then that it was a ridiculous notion, that someone as renowned as the great, immortal Jack of Blades would never…
Red cloak, white mask, crazy eyes…
"He's a bad man," she whispered, "a very bad man."
And no one knew, damn it all, they had to know. They all had to know, the world, they had to know because all of a sudden, it wasn't Oakvale that was burning in her head, it was Albion. It was Bowerstone, Knothole, The Guild, and Barrow's Field. It was the towering trees of Greatwood and the eerie recesses of Darkwood. It was the world that was burning, burning, and falling into oblivion because Jack of Blades was a bad man.
The world had to know somehow. They had to know what happened, and what could happen, or they'd be as red as Rosie. They'd be red with blood with all their stuffing pouring out onto the floors of their homes.
Subliminally she clutched and clawed at the pages of her book, thinking thoughts of fire and heat and destruction and devastation. She thought things, about things. She thought all about Oakvale that night and what happened.
And then after she had everything in place and ready to be told, she picked up a piece of charcoal and started writing.
A/N: This is without a doubt the longest Fable piece that I have done so far. Unlike all the others, it actually goes over one thousand words.
I remembered Rosie and the girl who owned it, and then I remembered that she had written a book in the game detailing her point of view during the Oakvale Massacre and claiming that Jack of Blades was responsible. Presto, it's a story.
Happy Thanksgiving!
(Edit: When through and fixed typos and mistakes. Most of them at least.)