Inspired by LMSharp's first chapter. Thanks for waking the muse!
Foundling
It has never occurred to him to wonder about Dallben's past before – probably, he realizes shamefully, because he's always been too selfishly wondering about his own.
But now, with the astonishing claims of three baffling crones tickling his mind, he can't help casting covert glances at the countenance of the old man lit flickering by firelight across the room. Trying to find any remnant of a dimpled, rosy child somewhere within the withered features and mist of grey whiskers, some clue that the cantankerous old enchanter had once known the youth and foolishness he was so impatient to train out of him.
It's impossible, ludicrous, almost makes him laugh out loud.
He might as well try to reach up bare-handed to touch a star as span the insurmountable distance between himself and this incomprehensible man. But something in the tremor of the careworn hands, in the glitter in the half-lidded watery eyes and weary slope of frail shoulders, turns mirth suddenly aside.
He wonders if Dallben even recalls the years before a magic potion laid the weight of knowledge so heavy upon him, and if his impatience for frivolous talk exists because he cannot remember what it is to think thoughts that are not grand and deep.
Had it hurt, to be turned out of the old hags' cottage, the only home he knew, for no fault of his own? Had he wandered long, homeless and kinless, with naught but the cold comfort of that moldering old Book?
Had Dallben ever wondered who he was?
The stars, after all, seem to hang very low sometimes.