However, we live in a strange world and things stranger than that have a tendency to put people on edge.
It all started with death. Three deaths, actually. The bastards forced me to me watch my wife and my daughter breathe their last breath right in front of me. Then they took the knife to me.
I was not the last one to die that day.
What those bastards didn’t know was that I’d still come after them.
A small farm, living off of the land. Honest sweat and honest labor. There is something gratifying about being able to take care of a family with my own two hands. June and Emilia, the sun and moon in my life. I’d met June in my youth back when Ma’ and Pa’ would take the trip to the small settlement nearby for the occasional supply. Daughter of the owner of the General Store, standing behind the counter in a simple dress, a lone dandelion stuck over her ear, trying to help her dad mind the store.
The girl didn’t know the difference between a sickle and a shovel, but even back then I was a lost man when I saw that smile of hers. (Ok, I use the word ‘man’ loosely… my voice did not even start dropping and cracking until a few summers later.) This same lost man put a ring on that finger and married her in front of her father’s store some years later.
I couldn’t resist but to put a dandelion in her hair before we shared our vows in front of our families and friends who joined us.
Just a little over a year after that, my moon, Emilia was born to the two of us. I had set us up with a small stead about a day or so’s ride from town. Our own little piece of wilderness carved out just for us. Now, admittedly, we didn’t have much to start – a few farm tools, a cow gifted to us on our wedding, some seed to plant, and tons of love shared – so I would be comfortable saying that we had enough.
The next dozen or so years proved that thought completely right.
It didn’t matter that we were on the edge of the wilderness. The whole world was wilderness now. There are stories, or at least what pieces some of the old folk remember being told to them as stories in their youth, of a great war that changed the world. Times of wonderous magic, Gods, and epic battles.
To be honest, it’s all just bedtime stories for the kids. Or at least, that is what I thought back then.
Except the magic part. I kept that card close to the vest. I knew June had figured it out some time over the years, but she never said a single word to me about it. You see, living out in the middle of nowhere off of your own hands has its own set of difficulties. You get careless and break a leg during planting season and do not get the crops down in time – your family goes hungry over the winter. You twist an ankle out in the wilds walking or hunting, no one is going to ride up and check on you to make sure you’re OK.
Or your little girl falls out of a tree, being a kid she and wanting to climb, but hurts her back in a way that some people just won’t ever be able to get back up from.
I’d stumbled and tripped, had my aches and pains. Emilia had fallen out of her share of trees, too. Some of those stumbles, trips, and falls were pretty darn serious too.
I’ve just always had, shall we say, “a knack” to mending those wounds.
However, we live in a strange world and things stranger than that have a tendency to put people on edge. So, as I said, I kept the magic part close to the vest. It goes a little further than that though, since I am being honest here. Back in my youth, on Ma’ and Pa’s farm, I was a little dumb kid sometimes. Once, I came up on the horse and spooked it by accident. The horse kicked. That shorn hoof hit me right in the head. Ma’ said she nearly died of fright at the sight, thought I was dead for sure. Said I wasn’t breathing, no pulse. Yet, I got back up to my feet a minute later, right as rain, with the wound already healed up and a nice bit of a scar already formed at my temple.
As I had said: Strange things in a stranger world. Or stranger things in a… ne’ermind.
I could regale you with some tale of how I tracked down the bandits who killed my family and heroically fought them to the last man, who would still fall before my blade of vengeance. However, that would be a lie. As I said, I have been but a farmer most of my life. I came to in my own pool of blood, hearing one bandit say to the other something along the lines that the ‘women were still warm’.
There may be no gods, but I prayed to Death as I reached blindly for anything nearby which I could use to enact my judgment, my revenge, upon these two. I do not know if it was irony or providence which led my hand to the scythe, having been knocked from the wall during the earlier fight.
Some people never quite know how to appreciate the skill and strength it takes to swing the scythe effectively, to cut down the wheat just so, ensuring you are getting both the most out of your swing and not making more work for yourself when it comes time to sheaf what has been felled. Also, some people do not realize that a farmer’s scythe is nowhere near those war scythes which might get brought upon a battlefield. Your typical farmer’s scythe is sharp only on the part of the blade facing you. However, that length of forged metal comes to an unbelievably sharp point.
Did I mention the ‘knowing exactly where to swing’ part regarding the skill with the tool? If not, tis’ no nevermind. The first swing swung just as true as its intent – impaling the first bandit through the back as he was bending over to drag my wife’s corpse off somewhere. His associate heard the blow and the death cry, and turned in shock to see me having to kick the body off of my blade.
He didn’t even draw his blade. He just babbled over and over “But you… but we… but you…”
“Killed me? Nope. Wasn’t my time. But it is yours, son.”
Some may look at me and try to say that those were just sloppy bandits – that they just did a poor job of killin’, even if they did get what they deserve. Let’s just say, sometime after my Sun and Moon were taken from me, I hit a low. One of those lows that a man just cannot get out of, when moving on from this world is preferable to the one we’re in right now. This was one of those deep dark lows that a man is gonna take his time to do things ‘right’.
I woke up on that goddamn floor with nothing but bloodstained clothes and a nice bit of scar to show for all the effort I put into things. I think it was the next day that I took Emilia’s locket and my scythe and started out on the road. If I couldn’t leave this world, I sure could make sure that some others did. A little change, a little judgment, was long due for this world.
