The upcoming weeks moved sloppily and lazily to Eragon, and at the same time… Like a nightmare; His cousin would leave him to unknown lands, war maybe and him… alone in Carhahall.
The wheatear wasn't much better either, grey cloudy skies, intense rains wrecking houses, leaving things more miserable than they were before, reflected as well in the soldiers' mood: More taciturn and violent, kicking and killing anybody who bother them or worse.
Eragon returned to the Spine, using like Roran had told him("You have two hands Eragon, It's time you learn to use the second") his second hand taking advantage of the thick rains.
Unfortunately for him and as expected, he was clumsy and unskilled with it; unable to use the bow, relying instead on hunting knives; Killing with them small animals, and more doubtful than ever with himself leaving others he found in The Spine to die.
Making his life more miserable than before, filled with the nightmares of those he could have once saved and the little meat he could trade with the butcher to feed his and his cousin's empty stomachs.
Eragon still had the soldier's money with him, but didn't use it, unsure of what to do with it; doubting whether to buy things for himself and his cousin making their lives easier or just do like he had told him to and give it away to those that needed it more.
And then the day arrived, it was early in the morning, cloudy skies, rainy, muddy and stormy, the rain falling through the many wholes of the house wetting everything, fading the forges fire and the little light it had.
Roran was taking with him his smithing tools and even a sword as Eragon looked at him do so from the smithing room door. He felt sore and sad, but knew that he couldn't do anything to stop Roran from leaving or convince him to run away to another place. As he had told him; "It's a bad idea, if the rumours are true and the soldiers are trained to memorize others' faces we are as good as dead.".
Eragon approached Roran and helped him pack his tools inside a bag, both remaining silent as the rain continued dropping over their faces and heads. Soon they were done.
"Thanks," Roran said to Eragon, Eragon said nothing and simply nodded, tears about to go out, aware that that might be the last time he saw what was left of his family. His last family member.
"Your welcome," Eragon said with a sad smile, "Here, take this." Eragon said with a trembling voice, offering Roran the coin purse.
Roran smiled grateful at Eragon but didn't take it, "Thank you brother, but you know others need that more than I do"
"Please take it," Eragon begged him, "It can help you Roran, for once stop thinking about others and think about yourself. We have been starving the past few days, you have been starving the past few days, and now you are going to a journey of which you might not return… Please take it." Eragon insisted, offering him the coin purse once again with trembling hands, two tears falling down his cheeks.
Roran looked back at Eragon and smiled weakly, "Do you remember my father's saying? Each person is a log, each log holds a torch and an axe; a torch to lighten other's lives with warmth, joy, happiness and care and an axe to destroy them.
"Use the torch to lighten that of as many people as you can and your life will be joyful and happy, even if it is short, use the axe and nothing but a life of suffering awaits you. Take care of those more humble and poorer than you, and happiness awaits you."
"I don't care," Eragon snapped. "I don't care about a stupid saying!, I don't want you to die, no if I can do something about it. If I can stop what's left of my family from dying, from not coming back. Please… just take it."
"We have spoken about this before," Roran said sadly, "You won't, I'll return, find you and your sister, we'll see each other soon enough. But I can't take what you give me."
Eragon didn't answer back and put the coin purse behind his back(Roran had never accepted stolen money; no if others could be helped with it, and had stayed true to that since they were kids, and he had learned to do so. Living instead a humble life between fire and steel with miserable earnings; barely enough to permit themselves to buy raw vegetables and cold food. Using the fire of the furnace oven to warm it.) looking at his cousin in silence, a silence filled by the rain drops outside, like the tears of the gods, like the tears falling down his cheeks.
"Don't cry, little brother." Roran said, trying to cheer Eragon up, with a weak smile about to break, "What happened to the bold, daring Eragon?"
"He is gone," Eragon said sadly, "So many died because of me this past… week, I doubted so much."
"It's alright," Roran said with a smile, "We all doubt, I felt the same way when I began to do so myself, but you have to move past that, help others and be happy about it. Even now, no matter the situation, or you'll be eaten by it. So you must choose what you want to do, or it will get you killed."
Eragon was about to ask Roran how did he doubt, but was interrupted by knocks at the door before he could ask how did he doubt himself.
Roran opened it, Eragon behind his back, before them stood a group of soldiers, soaked by the rain, whom Roran approached with his tools, ready to go.
"You won't be needin that" One grunted, approaching Roran, cutting the bag with his sword making all the tools fall and spread in the muddy ground, followed by laughter. Roran gather them as Eragon helped him. "There are better smiths where you are goin, you are not comin to play, you are comin to suffer."
The soldier kicked Roran in the ribs, Eragon tighten his fist around one of the tools, thinking of nothing but killing the bastard, but the look Roran gave him was enough to stop him("Don't do it, I am alright.") As he whispered some mysterious words in his ear. Using the soldiers' laughter to do so;
"I left something for you in the smithing room, hidden behind the furnace."
But before Eragon could ask what it was, he was kicked as well in the ribs, blood falling down his throat and a voice, "Did you think we forgot about ya?" Followed by laughter.
"C'mone princess," The soldier said nastily to Roran, giving his back to them as they clumsily rose from the ground, Eragon holding the tools, the soldiers walking away.
"Goodbye brother," said Roran hurriedly, hugging Eragon one last time before following after the soldiers' steps, disappearing in the rain's curtain.
He stood there watching him disappear, and long after, what to him seemed like ages staring at nothing but the falling rain, he eventually came back home and closed the door before him. Falling before it, depressed, lonely as he began to cry, eaten by a void of depression, loneliness and pain.
The drunk went outside his house, stumbling with his feet, moving clumsily, disorientated and lost, without knowing what to do or where to go. Until he saw a poor family lying deep inside an alley formed by two houses as he turned a corner after hours of walking astray.
It was a family like any other in that village, dressed in rags, undernutrition, slender, merely flesh and bones, it was a small one; two kids, a boy and a girl and the parents, embracing them, trying to warm them as they trembled over the falling rain. Sodden completely in the merciless water.
The kids were six, maybe seven years old, but what called the drunk's attention the most were their eyes, which could only be described as blue within blue. For a split second, the drunk doubted whether to leave them there or do something about it. Realizing that he still had it with him, the drunk smiled.
The drunk approached the poor man and his family; who upon seeing him, the mother held her kids tighter against herself in an attempt to hide them and protect them from any abuse or danger that could come from the drunk.
"Whose coming?" The father screamed at the drunk with a weak, trembling voice, the drunk stopped for a moment before continuing, "I warn you."
The drunk ignored the warning and continued, the kids hid their heads crying scared as their father raised up to protect them and confront the drunk, as his wife told him weakly "Be careful." The man nodded before rushing to the ground, taking the drunk by the neck, storming him against the rotten house nearby. The drunk didn't defend himself.
"What do you want?!" The poor man screamed weakly, rage in his eyes, "What do you want?!" he screamed, pushing the drunk hard against the wall.
"To… help you" The drunk answered in a whisper.
"What?" The man screamed, chocking him harder, trying to protect his kids, "What do you want?!"
"To… help you," The drunk said weakly, struggling to breathe.
The drunk tried to take the coin purse from his back but only managed to grasp it, making it fall to the muddy, splitting coins everywhere lightened by the storm, stopping the man's choke; who looked at them greedily and hopefully.
The drunk spoke behind him, holding his neck as he said weakly and roughly, hands on his knees, throwing out.
"I said that… I wanted to help you."
The man looked back at the man he thought he had been chocking, suddenly lighten by a thunder strike, realizing that he was but a boy, eighteen, nineteen at most; his face full of sorrow and pain, eyes red probably from crying for hours.
"Are you alright?" The poor man asked the boy weakly.
The boy said nothing, turned around and walked away, "Take the money, help your kids and hide if you need to" the boy said as he disappeared the same way he had come. Not feeling any better, despite the sound of his cousin's words; still in his head ("Help those poorer and more humble than you, and happiness awaits.") As he went back home.
For a second, the boy thought he had heard a trembling, weak "T...t…thank y…you… m…m…mister." coming from behind him as he left, drowned by the rain as he disappeared in it.
He sat on the floor for a while, staring at nothing but the cracked wooden walls before him remembering what he had to do once the sorrow was gone, he had to go, go to the South. It wasn't going to be an easy journey, for all he knew he would probably get killed anyway. He had to try, he would do it.
Nonetheless, Eragon prepared; took his bow, quiver, hunting knives and handmade arrows, and then it came back to him, Roran's present. In another situation, in another life Eragon would have approached them happily, eagerly even, but now he did so sadly as Roran was gone.
Eragon moved the furnace of its place and found there a simple but well crafted sword with a strange red gleam in it, a belt for it and a sheath. At its side was a bow, made of iron with the same strange gleam, and a quiver of the same material.
Eragon smiled sadly before changing the old ones for the new ones, he put the sword against the furnace's dim light, that now lightened the small room he was in, admiring the work and named it how he felt; Misery.
Roran knew he couldn't use it, didn't know how to, unlike with the bow(Which now was useless to him), at first Eragon thought it Roran's mistake… But no, Roran sometimes looked ahead of time, maybe he thought he would learn how to use it later on.
Eragon put the sword back on its sheath and the new bow behind his back, he named it Sorrow.
A few hours after Eragon went to The Spine, wondering loosely without knowing where he wanted to go, just go, get out of there. He had no food whatsoever but a few raw potatoes(Probably passed out) and some meat(Rats) he had hunted inside the house.
Eragon was armed with his new bow, arrows, sword, Tip-Tap, hunting knife, new quiver, throwing knives and new belt. He was wearing a ragged brown cloak which looked almost black due to its old age and the dirt, a mask to hide his identity and the amulet of the Huntress hanging off his right arm.
The sky was dark, rain falling down heavily on him as he walked on, and then… he saw it; the clear he had paid no attention to months ago, It was like before, full of birds singing… in the rain…
The closest he got the more surprised and terrified he was, they were crows!, crows singing to something, something at the clear's centre. Eragon cleared the rain from his mask and looked closely, there was something there, something smooth shining against the falling thunder.
It looked like a giant jewel, the size of a head, no, that wasn't right, Eragon took his mask off and approached it, the closer he got, the stronger the crows cawed; Eragon stopped afraid of them, thinking that they might attack him, but the crows didn't do such a thing and Eragon continued to move to the clear's centre, at first slowly, but more confident as he moved on. Overcoming his fear.
Reaching it surrounded by the caws of hundreds of crows, and falling thunder as his eyes opened in amaze and surprise as he took it from its resting place; the moment he did so the crows spread away to the skies and the sun began to rise, clearing the storm away. Bringing with it a new day.
It was an egg, a dragon egg.