<span style="color: #00FF00"><span style="font-family: Lucida Calligraphy;"><span style="font-size: 200%; line-height: 116%;"><span style="text-decoration: underline"><div style="text-align: center;">Harold the Archivist</div></span></span></span></span><br/><br/>Harold was no fool, and he hadn't been born the day prior. He knew what his young apprentice had been up to, and he'd taught him better. He was a clever man, and he could see through lies quite easily. Especially when you've raised a boy since boyhood. Of course he wasn't angry with him, just mildly disappointed. He had always envisioned his young apprentice settling with a nice woman whom he'd be able to go home to each night and enjoy his life with, but instead he choose to sleep around with floozies that weren't worth a copper piece of his time. He knew the boy deserved better than that. Or at least he felt he did.<br/><br/>He gave a sigh and tried to straighten himself to talk to him from the stance he'd taken on the floor when they'd finished their cleaning but stopped halfway with a wince and held his back with one hand. He'd ruined it sleeping on a desk, and it was stiff and uncooperative. He paused then stood the rest of the way up. He looked on at Earl with worried eyes.<span style="color: #00FF00">"You were out with a woman again weren't you?" </span>Harold asked.<br/><br/>He'd already had this talk with him time and time again about how he was a nobler man than one who slept with any woman coming and going and that he deserved better in that respect, but it seemed that Earl would never listen to the older man. And sometimes in his own private thoughts, he feared the boy might leave him alone for some harlot who came along. He wanted to live to see him marry and settle and perhaps even have children of his own. Earl was his son, and he only wanted the best for the boy. Whatever it meant he had to do. Earl was all he had.<span style="color: #00FF00">"Son, you deserve so much better than that..." </span>He said gently laying his hand on the man's arm affectionately.<br/><br/>After giving him ample time to answer, he spoke again.<span style="color: #00FF00">"I do thank you for the thought and the food though. It smells delicious Earl."</span>He said giving the man (still a boy in his opinion) a loving hug, and then answered the last plight he'd informed him of.<span style="color: #00FF00">"Well....I fear the worst may be upon us very soon....I've had a bad feeling for a long time now son, and I worry that we might be heading into a storm. I've felt a sinister presence for awhile now, but I can't pinpoint it. And worse than that, when I was filing the latest military reports from Bren, he's got scouts missing." </span>Harold explained.