Faithful Pebble

Part Thirty-Eight

The hero sighed. "So, what is this racket about?"

The boy hesitated looking down at the greasy olive-green hair tangled messily under his arms, the dark wet pupils that stared up at him in a way that made him squirm.

His hero frowned. "Did your mother send you?"

The boy, the kitten, the little pickpocket thief shook his head adamantly. "It was my idea!" he said.

"What idea?"

"To save the girl, you know, the welldweller." The boy, youngest member for that notorious pickpocket gang, bit his lip as a hush settled between the two of them, the kitten and his hero. The hero paused to think. The boy, who didn't like the silence, continued on exercising his unconscious desire to shatter it like glass a toy ball. "We should go get her, you know, just fall down the well and pick her up and—"

"Do you want to save her?" the hero asked suddenly, emphasizing the "you" a little too harshly, a little too strongly. He once again looked up at the boy.

The child met his gaze and then hesitated not quiet liking the look in his eye. Still, he attempted to smile… attempted and succeeded.

The man was his hero, his mother's guard who'd saved her from a bad man when she was young. As a result, at least this is what she had told him, his grandfather, the Village's Headsman, gathered all the town's people and promoted her guard. He dubbed him a Town Guardian, one of many already labeled as such in their village. He lived with them, ate with them, became one of them. Still, with his ties to their family, her guard remained loyal, helping vaguely to take care of her son when he was born sometime after. The man scared him at times, but there were other times, like on this particular night when the moon was high and the stars shone brightly, that periodically the boy could see the hero budding and growing before him. This man was not just a guardian. He was a hero. And his tale has yet to be written, the boy thought, and I'll get to see it. Better yet, I might grow one day to be a part of it.

The boy shrugged, "I want somebody to save her, like you did when you saved my mom, like you and the others do all the time when you save our village."

The man snorted, "We don't save the village."

Sorry about that! Lets post the right chapter!- Calla