A fire burned in the dark, on top of a small hill surrounded by mass of trees nearly invisible in the night. Next to the fire sat a familiar figure.
Narrowing his eyes, Hero stepped closer and saw the same tall villager in tattered clothing of a merchant. He was sitting wearily, his shoulders stooped with a drowsy look. Hero couldn't quite see his face, the features once again hazy as everything else around.
Was this another dream? If it was, Hero felt relieved! Last time he had seen that villager was in a precarious position at the edge of a cliff, surrounded by undead skeletons shooting arrows from their bows. How did he manage to escape that? Hero must have missed it all because he had to wake up. Still, he looked at the tired villager with gladness. He was safe again. Good!
"Hero?" A quiet voice calling his name with disbelief startled Hero. He found the villager looking at him. On Hero's tensed reaction, the villager smiled. "Don't be afraid. Don't you remember me?"
"Atta Beor?" Hero uncertainly verified. The villager nodded, appearing a little saddened by Hero's uncertain reaction. Hero still looked at the villager with disbelief. Slowly, he stepped closer to him into the circle lit by the fire.
"You can see me?" Hero asked hopefully and the villager smiled and nodded.
"You must be asleep again." He strangely concluded.
"Why?" Hero frowned a little and pinched his arm, but everything seemed normal to him as it always did in strange dreams like these. Only the images slightly blurred.
"I know because I've seen you do it before." The villager said confidently and then yawned. "Remember how appa Fir tried to teach you how to tell us stories? Well, you can dream storylike dreams, even if you cannot tell stories like some Villagers can. Your gift just works slightly differently... Unless its me who is right now dreaming." The villager murmured under his breath the last words and sighed softly.
Hero eyed him curiously, his eyes falling to the villager's large hands. They seemed so familiar. Calloused and strong from work and all the chores. Suddenly, he saw same hands placing a bowl of stew before him on a worn out wooden kitchen table. His heart panged.
"Atta Beor?" He asked again, feeling something tight in his throat.
"Yes?" The villager replied, sleepily glancing up.
Hero suddenly moved and hurried the few steps toward the villager and threw both his arms around him, clinging to him in a hug.
At first startled, the villager relaxed and gently patted Hero on his back and hair to comfort him.
"Shhh. It's going to be all right." Beor said by old habit, smiling a little at the nice dream.
Little Hero looked almost exactly as he remembered him, only a little taller and leaner. His arms and legs seemed to have lost nearly all of his toddler pudginess.
The child lifted his face and looked at Beor with tears, startling Beor once more. "Where did you go, atta Beor? Why aren't you coming home?"
The child's question stirred a raw wound in Beor's heart and he swallowed. Reaching to the child's tears, he tried to wipe them with his sleeve, but then saw how dirty and frayed it was. The child continued to look at him, desperate and insistent. Beor sighed.
"It's my fault. I walked too far and fell. I'm now lost, Hero. I am very far from home."
"You're lost?
Beor softly nodded, looking at the dream Hero sadly. "I'm not giving up of course. I will find a way back. I promise." He reassured.
The child, appearing relieved, nodded and leaned his head against Beor's shoulder, hugging him tightly again.
"You're not gone. You're alive." He said into his gown, his small voice catching. Beor chuckled.
"I am most definitely alive. Although not sure how. That moment with the skeletons certainly came close." Beor spoke lightly of his last misadventure, glad to be able to tell someone about it, even if it was only in a dream.
"Skeletons?" Hero asked curiously. "I saw that, too. How did you get away from them all, atta Beor?"
Beor huffed, slight disbelief returning to his perception. "That's the thing. I didn't. They just... left. Now they leave me alone. I can hear their bones clicking in the forest." Beor felt a small shiver run through him. The child tensely looked up and peered into the forest, but saw only blackness of shadow between the nearest trees swallow everything up.
"How is everyone back home, Hero? Is Grandpa Grake doing well? Your uncle Rangil? Margol and Tnul?
"Well." Hero smiled, remembering his Trading Day and the villagers smiling at him and his content family kindly.
"Appa gave me his special basket. We all went to Trade. I said all the right words!" He boasted and Beor appreciatively nodded.
"Oh, that's very good, kari. You're nearly grown up!"
"Yeah!" Hero beamed proudly. "That's what the elders said, too. I even live in my own little house now." Hero cheerfully added, though inside he felt a pulling feeling of loss. Still, ignoring it, he smiled, not wanting atta Beor to be concerned. Still, the tall villager frowned.
"You don't live with appa Grake and uncle Rangil anymore? Don't they take care of you?" Beor asked cautiously. Hero's smile fell a little, but he vigorously shook his head.
"No, they still take care of me. I still help with the chores and we eat dinner and lunch together. It's just that my magic..." Hero trailed off, not sure how to explain, and Beor slowly nodded.
"I remember. Fire still appears when you sleep?"
Hero nods, but then shrugs. "Sometimes. But uncle is scared of it. And of the Jaio."
Beor smiled a little sadly. "Yes. I remember that, too." He looked at the child and wondered how he was sleeping at night in his house all alone. "You are not scared?" He smiled gently and Hero immediately perked up.
"I'm not scared! I'm brave!" Hero grinned, his earlier tears appearing forgotten.
Beor smiled and nodded. "That's good, Hero. That's very good. I'm glad that you're so big and grown up now and that you are not scared at all." He patted the child gently on his tousled head and sighed as he suddenly poignantly wished that he could be home, too, in his own bed and close to his family once again.
"When will you come back home, atta?" The child asked hopefully, making Beor's heart painfully clench. "Margol and Tnul miss you very much. They think that you respawned."
Beor blinks, his heart falling within him. He was afraid of everyone starting to think that at this point.
"Atta Beor?" The child's insistent voice called his attention back to him. Beor saw white eyes once again full of glistening tears gathering on the child's eyelashes.
"They think that it's my fault. Please come back. Please."
In answer, Beor only drew the child closer to him for another hug and gently patted his back. "I will try, kari. I will try."
"Don't die. Stay safe." Hero's shaky voice tries to be stern as he tucks his face into Beor's shirt, not caring how dirty it is.
"Of course I will. Don't worry. I'm the strongest, smartest villager since Navol the Merchant and his pet Llama Dolt. You remember that story?" Beor asked the child to distract him, hiding a grin. Hero immediately looked up, his eyes sparkling.
"Yes! I remember! Appa Fir just read to us from that story yesterday!"
"Then you remember how Navol had to travel across seventy seven worlds just to get home to his family again, right? And he had great adventures. Him and his llama Dolt. He outsmarted the Pale Faced, tricked a Witch into giving him an invisibility potion, and even helped Human heroes to defeat a scary monster who was going to destroy them all."
"Are you now like he is?" The child looked at Beor eagerly and the villager good-naturedly chuckled. "Of course. I am exactly like Navol now. Only I didn't stumble into a portal. I fell off a mountain. But I spoke to the creepers, and now walked away from an army of skeletons without a scratch. Well, more or less." Beor grinned.
Hero clapped his hands, his eyes on Beor full of admiration. He suddenly sat down on the ground cross-legged, his eyes eagerly lifted up. "Tell me! Tell me!"
He asked just as he used to do when little. Only Margol and Tnul were not next to him as they usually were. Beor still smiled.
"All right. I'll tell you a little. I will tell you how I became lost. Did you know that our entire village and all the other villages nearby are actually on a giant floating island in the sky?"
Hero shook his head, his breath catching with fascination as his eyes sparkled with excitement.
"It is! It's a huge island with mountains and rivers. And it is the highest one. Below are many more smaller ones. Some are close and others float far away. And I... I fell off of it to one of the smaller islands. I am now travelling across them, but the main island is very high. So far up that I have not yet found a way up to it."
"Cannot you use a rope?" Hero helpfully suggested. Beor ruefully shook his head.
"It's... very high, Hero. Like... a thousand of tallest trees piled on top of each other. Maybe even more."
Hero blinked, trying to imagine this and could not. He still hesitantly nodded, his eyes getting worried. "Then... how are you going to climb up?"
"I don't know, yet. I will think of something, though. Or maybe... maybe I'll find the Humans and they will help me. Humans always have the most amazing devices. Some can even use them to fly."
Hero's eyes opened wider with fascination.
"And I think I just came across one of their old camps today. I found a lot of useful tools." Beor pulled out a bucket and a hoe. "I think I might wait here awhile and see if they come back."
Beor concluded and smiled at Hero encouragingly. Hero frowned for some reason though, his entire small body tensing. His eyes narrowed and a wavy haze crossed his image.
"Hero?" Beor asked in confusion, but now where the child sat a moment ago, there was only empty ground.
Beor waited for a bit longer, but the child did not come back.
Turning his sleepy gaze to the fire, Beor wearily slumped again. Pulling up his tattered travel blanket, he wrapped it around himself and settled on the ground by the log to stay warm. Thinking on the child's dream appearance, he wondered if it had truly been real or only his tired imagination.
Has Hero's power grown this much since Beor left his home? How long has it been? Months? A whole year? How did Hero manage to find him? Or was Beor simply dreaming all this out of loneliness?
Beor hoped that it was real. Encouraged and choosing to believe that everything at home was still all right, like the child said, he determined yet again not to give up and find a way to get home.
He won't give up...
With that thought in his mind and heart, Beor fell asleep by the fire of his little camp and no longer paid heed to the clicking of skeleton bones as they moved about in the woods nearby, ignoring him.