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Fjord finds himself, one day, slipping past the rotting wooden fence of his small coastal city and into the paddocks and fields beyond. He’s never been an explorer - even in his times as a shiphand on a large vessel he found himself prone sitting rather than adventuring. The sun, the salt and sea, each his masters; there is no reason to chase them anywhere, when the ship’s deck provides them bountifully.
Even now, Fjord is not sure what he is following through the chipped ocher gates. Most travelers he sees wander past (from his small hut nearer to the beach), carry with them a basket for picking berries nearby. Many tales have been told of the sweet gardens kept not far from the town. “Less than a day’s journey,” the homebodies would enlighten as their partners return from the sea, “I can be there and back, and bake a pie for dessert before you even return with dinner.”
He finds himself, melancholy, in a field of lanky grass, yellow and straw-thin. (It’s ravenna, or so he’s told one day, much further into this story). It sinks under his body as he lies, silent, hands running along his tightly-bandaged chest. He plucks a piece of grass, twirls it beneath his fingertips, finds purchase in the solidity of the ground beneath him. His life, until recently, was spent on a ship; first the Pink Giver, larger than any other in the village and painted a disgusting shell-pink, and then another, the Tide's Breath, with a smaller crew and a much better paint job.
Most recently, he found himself tucked into a bright red rowboat, nameless, though even that no longer feels as right as it did when he made the purchase, a neat sixty gold a handful of years ago.
And so, Fjord; so often described as a seafarer, known to be at the beck and call of the ocean’s waves, hater of bugs, grass and little twigs in his hair, finds himself here. He is chasing something, for once in his life, though he could not hazard a single guess as to what it is he is looking for.
Fjord spends time there, long enough that he wonders if someone owns this field, if he’ll get told off for being there. But he’s spent enough time orphaned to know people will usually just shoo an able-bodied man off their land before resorting to anything dangerous. Still, he sits up, glances around, pulls a dastardly twig from his hair. It was nice to do whatever that was. But he still has a life to live, and he only has so much time for laying in the summer heat in a field he knows nothing about.
He returns to the village, is handed a loaf of bread by Yeza and an obscene gesture by his wife. Luc weaves between townsfolk’s legs, and he smiles the way he always does when he finds kids having fun; teeth bared, an expression half joy and half mourning for all he wished he had.
He hopes Luc doesn’t ever understand what it means.
As always, sailors litter the mudded streets. Though their village is small, they often get ships stopping for the night in their humble home. Fjord thinks about visiting Jester to help feed today's influx of travelers, but he just doesn’t have the social energy to be working at the inn this afternoon. He hasn’t had energy for much at all, lately.
He makes it home, no longer than a twenty minute walk from the field through the town and to his little shack. The weathered sideboard and rickety door welcome him, though he finds little comfort here.
Much of his time was spent at sea, meaning his home collected dust like Veth does buttons. He swipes a finger along the windowsill he’d dusted just this morning, sighs as he finds it coated once again. The passage of time is something that’s always frustrated him. Growth, life, death, and distance; these are things he can’t control, but he wants so deeply to delay inevitables. Ironically then, maybe, the only personal effects he has displayed is a picture of Vandran and the Tide's Breath. Tucked neatly on his only window sill, in the kitchenette of his tiny home, the image sits as a reminder of how quickly something can be lost.
He turns, so violently the bread slips from his hands as he chokes on his own anger. He finds himself uncaring, wishing desperately to return to the bushels of grass, for the ground to swallow him up so he can never fail anyone ever again- he flops onto the old couch in the corner of the room, tossed by a neighbour who no longer wanted it. The sun sets and bathes the room in an orange light. He groans, softly, fingers digging into the springy cushions.
Weakly, tears spill from the corners of his eyes, salty like his once beloved sea. Fjord wonders if the thing he’s chasing could decorate his home for him.