Faithful Pebble
Part Thirty-Nine
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 this measly little town." His hero casually lifted the boy off his shoulders. They had come to the stream, the small little brook that bordered the left side of the village circling the hill, the well and the forest beyond. He ran a hand through his hair. "We only guard it. Everybody knows that. No one will ever be able to actually slay that thing."
"But if that's true then Grandpa wouldn't have put out all those letters for heroes to come and defeat it, right? Why would he do that if it wasn't possible?" The boy pondered openly. His gaze was wide and his hero's narrowed slyly.
"Do you want to slay it?" Again he accented that word, the "you" pulling long and hard and jagged.
Once more, the boy hesitated fiddling with a button on his jacket, the jacket that was less dirty than the others, less tattered, less… homeless. "I want," he said. "I wish…"
The hero moved to sit down on a boulder pulling the boy, the kitten, the youngest pickpocket clumsily to him by the shirt. "Spit it out, Son."
Instantly, the boy blushed. It was another one of those words. When his hero said it, the boy always blushed, a deep blood-red color filled with sorrow, longing and stark embarrassment. He wished he knew his father. "I want… I wish for y-you to slay it, like I wish you would save her, the welldweller. I'd like to see you do it."
"See me?"
The boy nodded.
You know, for most of my stories I am able to pick out a favorite character. I really don't have one for this one... No, wait. You haven't met them yet. Sorry... Just thinking out loud. - Calla