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As it was told to the children of the following generations, the Battle of the Two Towns was a fable of mishap and misunderstanding, a cautionary tale of what could go wrong when mankind no longer loved his neighbor. It was the kind of story that was told differently in every household, according to their memoirs. It was a story that outsiders rarely understood but knew never to mention, and followed by an unspoken rule of non-interference.
But to the villagers who lived through it, who were there the day the final flood swept away the crops and the animals alike, whose parents, children and friends were buried in the mines when the earth shook, there was nothing more ghastly, nothing more harrowing, and nothing that could ever bring the towns back together again.
Modern rumors say everything was started with an argument about cuisine, but it was more about trust than anything. The crux of it was truly the nuances in the cooking- some people living in bamboo-rich Konohana had been for generations, lactose intolerant, while on the Bluebell side there was the occasional outbreak of salmonella from uncooked fish. As the two villages had once gracefully shared feasts and festivals, their limited resources, differences in tastes and culture proved to truly be the rice stalk that crashed the pony cart.
The true rift formed as the villages gathered at the end of a certain season for a traditional moon viewing, when a young child nearly died of food poisoning from sushi made from a not so fresh fish. Perhaps unfairly, Konohana was blamed. Although the dish had been prepared by a young Bluebeller who had in fact learned to make sashimi from someone on the greener side, the kind intent of the trainer was lost in error of bad preparation. Several from the Bluebell side claimed that Konohana had no awareness of the danger of their way of cooking and furthermore implied that they were unfit to even teach it to other people. Things escalated further in the next joint holiday, when an embittered old Bluebell native developed milk curry, which over half of the Konohana villagers were unable to eat. For Konohana, who had practically invented curry, the development of milk curry was a slap-in-the-face styled assault with dairy products.
The next few joint town events were either scarcely attended (which was embarrassing for the organizing mayors), or came to blows (which did a great deal in solidifying the dispute, but were said to have been very satisfying for those who were victims of the various food poisonings that were now becoming commonplace). It wasn't until events unique to each town were desecrated by vandals or interrupted by insurgents from across the mountain that things became truly violent- Nobody wanted their newly-ribboned prize cow to be pelted with turnips, or their crop fields to be invaded by trampling sheep and gnawing cows, but it happened anyways.
Eventually blows became armed militias policing events and villagers traveling at their own risk to the other side. The tunnel mine became a primary battleground as it was the fastest way across and left the town who didn't control its entrances the most vulnerable to attack and raid. Mayors fueled the rivalry by fighting over the only pass that lead into the mountains and to both towns, where they would kidnap visitors and force them to their village to fight.
Where was the Harvest Goddess in all this? She had taken up travel that year (word has it she went Dun DUN DUNNN 500,000 steps or so) and came back to a forlorn, forgotten church (her clergy having been run off for trying to stop the fighting) and a mountain of destruction, where the paths were strewn with stolen crops and stranded chickens and the occasional corpse could be seen stuck in the thick tree roots at the bottom of the river. The lake at the summit was nearly forgotten as sacred ground in those days and she found herself forgotten and even… lonely.
She grieved at the negligence of the villagers and bemoaned the tattered state of her vast forest and weakened farmlands. She walked the mountain at all hours of the night, howling in pain at the blood that had been shed while she journeyed. It is said that her cries so scared the creatures of the mountain that even the wolves ran in fear, never to be seen from again.
Upon her dissent from the mountain the Harvest Goddess tied up her long flowing peridot locks into two wide buns, to remind herself to never forget that there were two very torn apart towns that she had to stand between and bring together. She buried their feud in the tunnel and washed the dead away in a flash flood, forbidding the mayors from making offerings at her spring.
It was not until several generations later that the origin of the hatred began to fade into a distant memory, dusty records kept in neat shelves behind the welcome counter of a brightly-lit town hall, wardened by a Mayor who had never stepped foot beyond the summit or met the Harvest Goddess, a mayor whose hatred of the other side was habitual, and though real, wasn't founded.
Into this world rode twins Lillian and Phillip, arriving with just a tiny cart and a dream. The wind was at their backs and the smell of fresh dew in the air around them, they truly believed they had found a paradise.
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Author's Note: Comments are appreciated and helpful- I take all feedback into consideration!
This is Phillip and Lillian's story,. but if you have a favorite character that you'd like to know more about, I'm spending a lot of time trying to figure out everyone's individual motivations and I can work them in a bit more.
Aside from that- it's nice to meet you all!
-The Frog