10 Just Ask.

*RUMBLE!*

It was the afternoon in the Riverlands, though you couldn't tell.

Dark, grey clouds swelled above with electricity, and they dared not let the rain escape.

Dennis Longlean looked up to the clouds.

Despite the tall stature his namesake might suggest, he was a short and huddled old man. His family had owned this farm along the green fork for generations. A modest piece of land that was fertile enough. Green grass and the odd hill, with neighbours that never gave him any trouble.

Each generation, a Longlean pledged to cut that damned oak tree on the border of their farm, never quite getting around to it.

Each generation, they pledge to finally build that damned fence where the oak tree was blocking.

"Why not just build around it?" the Longlean wives would ask.

"No!" their husbands would bark back at them, "My father tried to fell it, and his father before him. What kind of Longlean would I be if I go around now?"

"A less stressed one!"

She to have said that was Dennis' late wife. She had passed from sickness some moons ago, and the wound in his heart had yet to heal.

Dennis poured his time into the oak tree as if chopping to forget.

"Sigh…"

Dennis dragged his old bones to the edge of his farm, a shabby axe in hand. It was a dinged and blunted thing, and even though his children insisted on buying a new one, the old coot refused.

"Don't waste any money on this old fool," he told them, "Use it for what you want. The farm will be yours soon enough."

It was like the old fool was torturing himself. Everyone knew.

But all the same, they let Dennis leave each morning with his dull axe and try his luck at the oak.

Again and again, Dennis would hack at its thick solid body. It braced his blows silently, phased not, almost mocking the old man for his futile efforts.

*CHOP!*

Dennis exerted great effort with each swing of his axe.

*CHOP!*

But his blows did nought. Not even a little splint through the wood. He may as well be hitting the tree with a club.

There was no cutting going on here. . .

Dennis hunched over, leaning on his axe and frantically catching his breath. The green fork trickled in the distance like a watery stampede.

"Huff… Huff…" Dennis swallowed with dry exhaustion.

"Are you alright, old man?"

Dennis looked to the concerned voice to find a dashing young man with curly dark hair and amber eyes sitting on top of a white and black speckled steed.

A great round shield had been fast on one side of the horse. On the other, an elegant white bow rested perfectly in its custom saddle sleeve, laced with quality.

A long spear sat on the young man's shoulders. Dennis traced its white shaft, and for a moment, he swore he saw lightning tingle in the tip of its steel.

'Must have been the clouds. . .' Dennis thought.

"Chopping trees, are we?" said Joe as he dismounted. He approached the non-answering Dennis and inspected his axe, "You could be here for a thousand years and still get nowhere with this thing. You a bit senile or something?"

Joe had an amused look on his face, smiling at Dennis with a playful twinkle in his eye. He wore his usual black leathers.

Across his torso was a grey sash, worn as if he were carrying a baby. Dennis confirmed it was not a baby, but an oval-looking rock that was white and red and blue.

Dazzling.

"No matter," Joe said, "Allow me to help."

Joe cracked his neck side to side and began limbering up his wrists.

Having caught his breath and not wanting this young whipper snapper's charity, Dennis quickly spoke, "That's quite alright, thank you. I've not the money to spare for yer' services, and this oak n' me have an old score to settle."

"Looks like it's already settled," Joe teased, running his hand against the tree trunk, "There's more than one way to skin a cat, you know."

*Jingle!*

Dennis' eyes darted toward the dangling medallion. It hung from the pummel of Joe's sword on a thin black chain.

He could make out a black Shadowcat winking on one side of the coin. Its open eye was white as cotton and peered knowingly into Dennis.

"And what's that?" the old man grunted, still watching the medallion.

"If you keep losing battles by yourself, you ask a friend for help."

Dennis scrunched his face. Had he expected some words of wisdom from this green pup? As if the answer to his problems could lie in such childish thinking. . .

"I don't have any friends," Dennis morbidly replied.

Joe raised a brow, his smirk ever-growing, "Don't you?"

He didn't care for the answer. Joe turned and faced the oak tree. "Let's find out."

"Hmm?" Dennis mused, unsure what Joe was on about.

"Ask me," said Joe.

"Ask you what?"

"For my help, silly."

Joe gave Dennis a sideward glance as if waiting for a signal.

"I'm not asking anything of you." Dennis jabbed.

"Why not?"

"I don't know you."

"That's your reason?"

Dennis started to get frustrated and began questioning why he had allowed this interaction to go on for so long.

He wanted to excuse himself, but something about Joe's carefree attitude annoyed him enough to want to stay and prove Joe wrong.

What he was proving wrong, Dennis had no idea. He just didn't want to give Joe the victory that Joe seemed like he was getting out of this.

Was Joe even getting anything out of this?

'Damn it! He's made me buy into it!'

"Fine." Dennis would relent.

Joe enjoyed how Dennis squirmed, watching as the old man tried to set aside his pride, "Fine? As in, fine weather we're having?"

"Fine, as in . . ." Dennis gritted his teeth for a moment before finally saying the words, "Would you . . . Help . . . Me?"

"There it is!" Joe exclaimed with a buttery voice, like a proud uncle that just watched his niece attempt at boyishly burping.

Then he reached for his blade.

Out came Icebreaker, a Rosey bastard sword that still glimmered strawberry pink with bastard blood.

Dennis gasped at its crystal magnificence. But what happened next made him question if he'd genuinely gone mad.

*SHING!*

For in one swing with his mighty Icebreaker, Joe had cut cleanly through the trunk of the Longlean family's arch-nemesis.

The blade acted as if bearing at the flesh of a soft baby, and the great oak came timbering down.

"Hahaha!" Joe laughed as he sheathed Icebreaker. He walked up to the speechless Dennis and patted him on the shoulder.

"Turns out you have friends after all!"

Dennis was in a daze. He watched the great oak falling and rolling and rustling with unbelieving scrutiny.

By the time he returned to his senses, the laughing of Joe was becoming distant.

"Wait!" Dennis croaked with his husky voice to the wandering white rider.

Joe halted and glanced back, "Hmm?"

"You must be tired!" Dennis said, "Come, friend. You must stay for dinner!"

The warmth on Joe's face said it all, but his answer was welcomed all the same~

"You had me at 'friend'."