text: He trudged up the hill with his head down, exhausted after the hike. It was twilight, in day and his country. Smoke plumed above the town at the foot of the hill, and if he paused, he could hear their cries of terror on the wind. So similar to his own village, Arrau thought. Namor was collectively dying, violently gasping for stability in its last throes. There were rumors that in the capital, city officials prayed for death in their sleep. Arrau was intimately familiar with that specific prayer, and wondered if the bureaucrats remembered to leave offerings to the gods. As he drew nearer to the top, the underfoot thickened with blood-red and golden leaves. The two packs on his back left him sweating in the summer heat. Having to carry his master's belongings fed a burning anger on his march up the hill - an indignity he felt more keenly than anything related to seeing his homeland torn apart. Arrau was a Namorian, after all. The accumulation of leaves was greatest at the top. And, now, there was also a crackling sound coming from the sky in the distance. He saw his master in a small clearing, casually sitting on a log beside a small fire. Readying a rebuke, which would be as concise as it was intense, for his forced manual labor, Arrau paused. His anger dissipated upon seeing the view. A few miles past the hill and into the valley, a wall of leaves cascaded down, raining down as if to flood the valley in a crimson and gold seascape. He looked from side to side and could see no end to the wall’s expanse. No sky could even be seen above where the leaves fell. The world itself stopped at this great storm. In the gap between the hill and wall, some leaves swirled around in the wind casting strange, dancing shadows in the day’s dying light. By tomorrow, he would be knee deep in that chaos, if he wasn't already dead upon entry. The thought called to mind one of his father's jokes: never underestimate a Namorian man's ability to make things worse for himself. Arrau tried not look too deeply into the torrent. The nearby villages claimed you could lose your sight or even your soul by trying to see into the forest. Others vehemently claimed that was untrue, and instead said you would actually see your loved ones calling for you, and snare you forever in the leaves. There was universal agreement, however, that you would not see the one tree responsible for this everlasting fall season. Somewhere in the dense foliage stood the most magnificent and terrible of trees, towering into the sky itself. A few men had tried mapping the forest size by walking around the edge of the wall. Of those who did succeed, not one person agreed on how long it took. Most did not succeed, or even return for that matter. "Come, sit down, before you tumble down!" his master called. The man plodded over and immediately caught a rancid smell in the air, which was unsurprising. After weeks of travelling together, he knew two things to be true of Farrah. The first was that she had many friends. For an old, Bestoc woman, she travelled through Namor’s treacheries fairly easily. From the day that she asked him join her venture, their path across the various towns and villages had been no less than comfortable. Room and board were always open to Farrah where ever she went; bizarre in a country notorious for its distaste for foreigners. The second was that she had an immense fondness for smoking the most god-awful smelling tobacco. "Put my pack there. Take out the food and cooking gear, though, so we can eat. I will start while you unpack". Her glasses glinted in the fire light. Ah, yes, one last truth. She was not one for pleasantries. When she had first asked him to join her, she was still standing on his door step having barely just mentioned being one his father’s old friends, hinting not too subtly there was more to that relationship. Hinting was probably too light a term, as Arrau recalled having to divert the conversation to her stated reason: to hunt for treasure. He was not Karrah’s first pick: most of her old compatriots were dead or uninterested. Arrau’s father was last on her list, but hearing that he was in the dead category, she was initially resolved to go alone. And he knew all of this because Karrah told him. On his doorstep. In Namor, there was a specific word for her - Volkjins or plunderers of the land. It was a title his father would spend the rest of his life fending off. But, one Arrau chased after when hearing his father’s tales. Karrah reluctantly accepted his offer to join after Arrau pled incessantly, and then only on the condition of apprenticeship. And she warned him, in her direct way, that she was not a kind master. "My country burns, we sit literally on precipice of oblivion, and you would like to tell stories? Sure, I’m totally fine with you starting." He tossed the gear out, and then the food. "Arrau, I’ve explained this thrice over. I will start, and we will exchange tales into daybreak, before we begin into the forest. It is a Bestoc tradition. A tradition of our heroes before a great undertaking. We will share and bond over stories important to us and to our journey. And since our path leads us into the forest, perhaps you can learn from my first tale.” She clasped her hands sincerely, just as she did every time she explained. “We are not heroes. We are opportunistic explorers at best, and grave robbing thieves at worst...” Her hazel eyes hardened. Karrah rarely had lost her temper no matter what he said. But this time, he had struck a nerve. “You may think yourself as whatever you want, in however manner you please. But never tell me what I am, Arrau. I have fought tooth and nail to find survive, starting well before you were even born into your father’s lap of luxury. Which, I might add, I was partly responsible for providing. Your country burns, and you choose to be here. Remember that, you prideful little shit.” Her body was ridged, tersely pulling on her braided brown and grey hair. A small vein bulged in her forehead. She took a deep breath. “Now, did you know the forest's origin is told differently in Namor, Bestoc, and Asheed?” she said easing back in her regular, calmer lilt. Silence. "Did you know that what is common between all three stories is the Sorcerer, the Socerer's child, and the Knight?" Arrau sighed. "You forgot the Knight's lover." "No. The Asheed have no such person in their telling." "Then how..." "Hush. I will begin, and we continue through the night. And just so you know, I also look forward to your stories." She winked at him, knowing he hated this. “In all three stories, the Sorcerer planted a seed and poured into it a magic the world had yet not seen. Only within a few months, a fantastically giant tree stood, bearing fruit for all of Namor. In the years that followed, a Bestoc Knight came to Namor, and the Sorcerer would be killed. The Sorcerer’s only child would honor their dead parent’s last wish: to be buried in the trunk of the tree. Once the deed was done, the tree would forever more stop changing with the seasons and only weep leaves.” “But, Arrau, there is so much more richness between these three stories. Their differences are as important, even more so, than their commonalities. Listen, please, for your truth is just one of many.” She paused to give him a sly grin. “And I think, in these stories, I found the secret to find the tree...and the Sorcerer’s body”.