In a nondescript room, a man sits and works, compiling text after text from the scraps littered about his table in endless piles. In your memory, he is nearly always at this table. He has sixteen pages, and each scrap is transcribed to one of them seemingly at random; though, always, he seems to know what goes where and how low on each page it's meant to be. The remnants of a thousand eraser nubs and innumerable scrapped papers littering the floor are testament to his efforts.
But hark, lest any form of respect take hold! He approaches the task with the idiot stubbornness of a bull, with no attempt made to peer into the language of the scraps themselves, peering at them as a learned man might, to join them together or match them by ink, page color, thickness, thinness—the scraps were hand-written and hand-bound on old, loose papers, that such details might easily be gleaned with even the slightest scrap of patience—no! Only raw instinct and intuition might satisfy this man, and he proceeds with the myopic confidence of an infant painting the next Bayard, believing all will be resolved, no matter how many small accidents may occupy the way.
And in the margins and in-betweens, where gaping voids of knowledge speak to the loss sustained by time and tragedy? He simply fills in with what he feels might fit, confident that god is with him and will see the task through.
This man is your father.
You thought him bold and brave in those days, but times change and your father is no longer the paragon he once was to you. Still, in those times you were hesitant to disturb him while he worked—his self-imposed life's duty—fearing he bore some terrible duty to accomplish. It could be inferred from your past memories that it was not a good, or even necessary duty your father had chosen—you would have preferred he had chosen one closer to home, like "read Ren a book every night" or "clean the house", but instead your father looked to these pages, because back then he had turned his eyes to the future, and found it a fearful and wanting thing. His decision to then consult those same people that brought you to such a place was, perhaps, misguided, but even now you haven't the heart to truly disrespect his attempt.
"Ren." You recall him welcoming you in once, when he was in a good mood, and sitting you down by the side of his table as he worked, "Ren, I want you to know, that this isn't a conversation I ever really wanted to have with you—mostly because I'd really banked on your mother doing it, but I'm in the doghouse right now, and that means I get the shit jobs."
"Maybe you should drink less, then, da."
"Maybe you shouldn't've hid my fucking cigarettes, then." He replies.
It was a pretty good prank. You and Nora had hid every pack you could find, and laughed as he roared and bumbled around the house for six hours until he collapsed. Good times. Your mother came home to him weeping into the carpet and grounded you for a month, but Nora continued to sneak you out anyway.
"I hope you enjoy your childhood, because once you're an adult I can legally beat you," he grumbled, likely the same memory coming to mind, but then he cleared his throat and seemed to collect his thoughts.
"Ren," he said, finally putting his pen down. "Ren, you're growing up now, eh? Sixth birthday down. Basically all grown up."
"Not really da, I'm—"
"—well no, but for all intents and purposes—"
"No, but—"
"—no, shut up. Goddamnit, Ren, you need to stop going into the woods."
"AW N—"
"God DAMN it Ren, let me speak! Shit boy, you think we wanna peel you away from your special place?! I'm never gonna hear the end of it. I can tell. But you can't. You're too old now."
"Whyyyy?"
Your dad fidgets and adjusts the glasses he only wears at this table, before he sighs and lays his palm down flat. "Ren, do you know why we let you run free in the Grimm-woods?"
"No? Ma says they eat people, but I 'ent ever seen it."
"They do. At night, they do. But not children. Because children are too small to be worth eating, they leave them be. And that's how we know the Grimm are not animals, and are worth fearing. They're clever. They can plan, and use traps…"
On and on he goes, telling you what you'd learned a thousand times. Grimm were the focus of every lesson in every class. Mathematics involved counting the charging Ursa, physics was calculating the airspeed of a man-laden Nevermore, PE was the focused application of escape tactics from a Beowolf herd—on and on!
"But da," you interrupt, "Don't we also hate _?" You can't even voice your curiosity, but the man seems to sense it and resolve himself.
"We do." Your father has a nostalgic look in his eye. "They sure do love blood, those _, and the younger the better. They're insufferably violent bastards, but I've got some bad news on that front—they're already here, Ren," your father says softly. "They've been here for years. In this village, in our home even. Didn't spot them, didja boy? Ah, you look scared—this is good. You should be. They help us with our crops and our homes, with pests and beasts and bandits and taxmen and Grimm and storms and landowners. They build and clean and wash and pave. They do all the work the Walled Kingdoms can't this far out. We can't live without them, here in the heart of the forest."
The enormity of that entirely fails to register, and you blankly ask instead a question far more personally relevant: "Then why haven't I seen them?"
"We give them what they want, and in exchange they stay away from what we hold dear—" He stops and pinches your cheek in a way that makes you squirm, but this time you stay silent. "But a _ thinks of its own hunger first, so remember Ren, because you're finally old enough to make stupid decisions that stick: Don't ever enter the forest unarmed, and don't ever ever go out at night.
"Happy fucking Birthday Ren. Now go play with Nora. I have thirty more sheets to do, 'cause you stole my fucking cigarettes, and daddy doesn't work without his puffs. I don't have time to read you a story tonight. Ask your mom."
The memories were fading, and he probably hadn't sounded so much like the agent at social services, but the thought of his father made Ren smile. Even without the dissonant Valean twang, Li Ren had been amusing to speak to.
Lie Ren felt refreshed. His stomach faintly growled, but failed to stir him from lethargy.
Down, far below where the treetops bowed under the weight of the wind, greasy smoke crept across the forest floor. It pooled in the places between roots and darkening any view of the sky by the minute.
A breeze carried the smoke along, and with it, the scent of Beowolves roasting on the wreck of his engine block. The breeze carried the scent along, where distant night flowers lent it a hint of spice that made the reek and pop of oily hair combusting seem nearly appetizing.
Ren's stomach growled again, the scent of dinner irresistible, and he briefly stirred from his drowsiness.
Something lightly tugged on the toes of his boots, and his eyes tore open as a jolt of fear dispelled his thoughts. He scrabbled upwards through the loose soil and roots, kicking out and pushing himself away from whatever had tugged at his laces, before he quickly spun in place, empty hands outstretched.
In the dark, low-set eyes blinked. He could barely make out the furred form behind them—it was a fox. It snuffled by his toes, pausing for a minute, and slunk off when it made eye contact.
Ren waited until it vanished into the shadows with a soft rustle, before slowly getting to his feet, pressing a hand to his racing chest. Distant birds cawed in laughter.
Goddamnit.
He was in a forest. A wild, dense forest, one that stretched distantly in every direction. Thin moonlight broke through the foliage on occasion, revealing a row after row of dense tree-top for miles. The underbrush was clear for some distance, before it abruptly grew thick with bushes and saplings, revealed by a second pool of light, to his right, behind some trees. A huge, red light shone out from behind those trees, and while he couldn't see it, the shadows it cast writhed madly, dancing from floor to treetop. He had a feeling he knew what that light was.
Damned Grimm.
A quick look around revealed that he'd left quite the trail of blood before he'd collapsed. He slowly paced forwards, keeping an eye out around him. The birds were still chuckling in the treetops, and sounded closer by the minute, so Grimm were unlikely to be nearby—but consistency was rarely their strong suit. His dead parents learned that lesson well. So, slowly he went, until his prudence was rewarded by the momentary gleam of orange-green metal, which a second glance revealed to be Stormflower lying some distance away, concealed by dirt and shards of piping.
He picked at some stains that seemed to be congealing on his shirt as he walked over and kicked aside a large bit of steel, a curved lorry hood he studiously avoided thinking about, and swept up his beloved pistols. Lie Ren's last and true friends in this cold, cruel world. If he kissed them with a suspicious fondness, well, no one was around to judge him. They gleamed still with a deadly reassurance, and all was well for Lie Ren. He moved onwards with a lighter heart.
The occasional droplet struck the crown of his head as he hung a right and began moving towards the great red light. Beasts shifted in the canopy, setting the branches swaying and leaving the echo of cracking wood in their wake. He stepped over thick underbrush dominated by thorny vines and dense, short flora that caught on his pants and socks.
He cursed as he paused to observe the damage his clothes were taking. He wouldn't be able to replace them for a while. He was stuck a league or two from the nearest waystation, in Grimm-infested woods. It wasn't a huge deal—things could've been far worse, and he had no home to rush to. But he was supposed to be delivering something, and to be halted on the last leg of the trip—the long, relatively safe stretch from Westfarre Station to Vale—it rankled.
Okay, well, it did more than rankle. As far as currency went, Ren wasn't particularly liquid at the moment—which was to say, most of his assets were tied up in the smoking wreck of the lorry he'd been driving until about an hour ago. He could smell it from where he stood, and it grew stronger as he pushed through the undergrowth, spiking whenever he needed to duck lower and catch a whiff of the coolant already draining away into the wilderness. It had pooled and formed aquamarine spirals in the thin puddles underfoot, iridescent in the rare moonbeam that penetrated to the forest floor.
The thin red light grew brighter, and Ren watched the flickering grow into a steady dance as the flames engulfing his engine were revealed with his approach. The dust-engine was shattered, and the steel fuel-vials warped by damage. The flame dust within was the source of the flame, the pressurized fuel combusting on reintroduction of oxygen so violently, to the point that the engine block sat a full fifteen meters from the bonnet, where it had blown itself off the mount like a missile. Ghostly flames still licked the side, where dust residue occasionally sparked up in violet pops.
Ren slowly ran fingers through his hair. This was bad, he repeated mentally, working the corner of his bottom lip with a loose canine. This was really, really bad. The package in the back was in an uncertain state, but the FRAGILE stickers he recalled dominating the plaster-marked surface left little hope.
He picked up the pace and trudged back around the sputtering heap of metal to the cargo container in the back, hidden almost wholly by shadows and soot. It was completely trashed; claw marks decorated the sides, and it was twisted in the middle like a can, one face actually rotating nearly 20 degrees clockwise into the muck, to ensure maximum inconvenience. Sharp edges gleamed on literally every surface.
No amount of scratching his head made it any less of a twisted hulk of metal, so Ren sucked in a deep breath and began gingerly kicking at some of the feathery extensions of steel that jutted from the shredded apertures, until one widened enough for him to dip his upper body in.
He got lucky, and gently withdrew a box—the box, FRAGILE stickers warped to comedic obscurity and generally looking fairly travel-worn. Somehow, it was still in one piece.
It would have to do.