Heavy Thoughts

The thought of war had been troubling Henry for days.

After he parted ways with Alix and Maximus, there was no other word about war and he felt he couldn't relax until someone gave him further details.

For Henry's entire life, he had only heard stories about war due to territorial disputes between countries or to conquer an existing kingdom and take their riches. A war against monsters sounded like something out of a fairytale.

As far as he had known before, monsters were no more aware than animals. For them to be organized enough to start a war shattered Henry's understanding of the world around him. It made him wonder further if peasants were told that monsters were close to animals so they could live outside of the walls without as much fear as those who knew better.

As worry struck him, he realized it was about time for him to take a day and visit his mother. He had visited her a couple of weeks prior and found out she had used the money given to her so far for writing supplies rather than winterizing the house as he asked her to.

He hoped that this time the house would be in a better state, or his work was going to be cut out for him.

+

Scraping of quill against paper was the only noise heard in the shabby house.

Celia wore a shawl over her body to stay warm since the temperature had dropped drastically in the last week. Autumn had set in and the days were starting to become shorter. The change of season made her realize just how long it had been since she had seen her son last.

Surprisingly, or perhaps surprisingly not, the words on the page in front of her were darker than her usual content.

She wrote of great hardship, death, and permanent injuries that change the course of someone's life. A topic new to her was war and she wondered just how dark she had to make it for it to be a believable account of the battle.

The last time she spoke with her sister, Sylvia was trying to dissuade her from writing about such dark things, but Henry's visit had stayed in her mind for a long time. He told her of the hard work he was doing and how there was hardly a break.

Not all knights were pretty and there were often injuries amongst the knights who had faced monsters or had gone on various expeditions.

She channeled his words directly into her writing and she felt like she was on a roll, unable to stop the quill moving across the paper at such high speeds.

Celia glanced over her shoulder at the pile of wood, nails, and plaster.

Her writing was the reason she hadn't been able to patch up the house and make it warmer for winter. If it got too bad, she figured she could simply stay with her sister until it was spring again.

She let go of a sigh and continued writing.

It seemed that heaven was looking down on her, and sending messages to her son because she heard a neighbor yell.

"Henry, you're back!"

Immediately she pushed the paper and ink to the side and went to the front of the house so it wouldn't look like she had been only writing since her son had left.

There was bread from the evening before that she could offer him.

Soon the tall visage of her son came walking through the door.

Each time he came back to her, he looked more like a man than the time before and it made her heart hurt.

The way he still walked in a way that lacked confidence told her he didn't have any idea how his shoulders seemed to have broadened or how his chest barely fit into his old tattered shirt anymore. If she had more money, she would try to dress him more properly.

He was starting to look like the hero from one of her books.

"My son," she said and ran forward to him and embraced him. "You came back earlier than last time. Is everything okay?"

Other than comments about how he had physically changed and the talk about war, he had nothing else to complain about. He didn't want to worry her the way he had been worrying so he only shrugged.

"Everything is the same as before," he said. "I'm working hard."

With his mother in his arms, he looked around the room and noticed the pile of building supplies that had been haphazardly stacked on the side of the main room.

"Mother, have you been putting off fixing the house?" he asked.

"How am I supposed to reach the high places?" she asked. "I don't have the correct tools!"

He stepped towards the supplies and ran a hand through his hair that was growing out again. There was a feeling before he arrived here that his mother wouldn't do what she said she would. Fixing the house was never her forte - it was his father's.

Henry went back to the front door and opened it.

"I'll be back in a bit with tools," he said.

There was one person he knew would have the tools for this sort of thing: Leo. The old man had told him to come to him if he ever needed anything after all.

As Henry walked the dirt path he was so familiar with and made it to the cobblestone road, he overheard a conversation coming from a man sweeping the stoop of his shop.

"My son went to the mountains to hunt and said there were more monsters than normal," he said. "It's not looking good out there. My wife's worried there haven't been many knights in our village recently."

Henry's pace slowed down and he began an internal debate with himself.

That old man was known for having a big mouth and exaggerating the truth, but after the talk about war, it felt like the possibilities were endless.

He knew it would take all day to fix up the house so he had to keep moving forward.

Once he made it to the stable, he saw Otto carrying a small bale of hay.

"Good morning, Otto," Henry waved. "Have you seen Leo anywhere?"

"Inside, sir," Otto said. "He hurt his back recently."

Henry understood it well. Leo tended to overexert himself despite his age. This wouldn't be the first time something had thrown out the old man's back.

He continued next to the stable and to the small building around the back where Leo lived. He would probably be sitting in a chair denying he had hurt anything at all.

Henry knocked on the front door.

"It's Henry!" he shouted.

"Come in," Leo said, his voice as moody as always. "What are you doing back in the village?"

Just as expected, Leo sat in a chair by the only window in the house with an angry look on his face as he looked outside into the trees along the back of the property.

"Could I borrow your tools, sir?" Henry asked. "My mother hasn't done anything to prepare the house for winter in a long time."

Leo nodded, not in the mood to talk much and he pointed toward the door.

"You know where the tools are," he said.

"Thank you, sir," Henry said. "I'll bring a salve from my aunt when I return the tools."

He had used it before and claimed that it worked, but Henry figured it was some kind of placebo considering his aunt wasn't some kind of sorceress.

It took no time to get the tools and head back to the old house.

Henry then had to retrieve water from the well and hay from one of the fields to mix with the plaster powder. It would insulate the walls of the house and he hoped it would harden quickly. People usually fixed their homes in winter because it could take a long time for the plaster mixture to dry during wet seasons, but he was determined to do his best.

As expected, he was there until late in the evening and already felt tired for the next day.

"Hopefully this dries well, mother," Henry said. "I'll fix whatever doesn't next time I visit."

But he didn't know when the next time he could visit would be.

As he finally made it back to the knights' area inside of the wall, he noticed there were more knights around than usual wearing insignias and armor in styles he had never seen before.

In front of them stood Commander Lothian who had a grim look on his face and his arms crossed over his broad chest.

"I have no other choice but to allow you to stay," the commander finally said. "You'll have to take the quarters of apprentices and double up in available rooms. We're not prepared for a large number of men."