Deacon: A Summertime Story
I recommend that you, the reader, play the background music that comes with every few chapters. It is meant to set the mood and hopefully it will make your read a more enjoyable one.
I: Daffodils
One quiet morn in the year of the Morningstar - when Elminster went into retirement and Bane stole the warhammer of Tyr (it promised to become an eventful year) - Deacon awoke to the singing of larks and robins and the distant call of a mother fox awakening her young. "Time for our first breakfast of the day." Deacon mumbled sleepily to himself, as he rose from his box-bed - an old contraption made from soft pinewood and filled with fresh and heavily scented mosses - and started to rub the sleep from his eyes. His eyes were odd for a humanoid. They were small and beady, more akin to those found on a rodent. But the old and deep wrinkles around his eyes and bushy brow topping it off made his expression a benign and friendly one.
Deacon's chubby toes began to search for something. They arched down and wiggled until they stumbled upon a pair of thick slippers, made from various cloths sown together and resown through the years. It could be said that the slippers were patched up. But that would be an understatement. In fact, the slippers were so patched that they resembled a busy quilt more than a repaired piece of garment.
With his feet finally comfortably resting in the slippers, Deacon jumped out of the box-bed and wobbled slowly towards the source of a stream of light. It was a calm ray, ever so slightly lighting up the room Deacon was standing in. A room that did not seem to connect to anything but the shuttered window and a big oaken door. The room itself was circular with no hard edges. A table and a chair sat on the far end, farthest away from the window. While a large armoire - crooked, nearly collapsing under its own weight and covered in clothes - rested nearest the door. Under the window one could make out a small kitchen.
Brushing the tip of his night cap from his eyes, Deacon made his way to the kitchen and the window beyond. Squinting as the ray of light touched his eyes, Deacon reached for the shutters while tip-toeing on his feet, and opened them gently.
Light washed over Deacon and began to fill the nearly unlit room. The scent of daffodils grew strong as the vase in the windowsill began to warm up and a summer breeze sent the eye of the flower to face Deacon's humble home. It left Deacon with a cheerful expression, almost squeeling at the delight of the smells and the warmth. "Today will be a good day for a hike, methinks!" Deacon spoke to himself - or was it just himself? Something stirred under the shadow of one of the kitchen cabinets.
II: Bird in the Windowsill
"Good morning, Nibbles!" Deacon exclaimed at the shadow under the wooden kitchen counter - the counter was made up of old elmwood boards with large wooden peg nails hammered down across its surface, painted a dark green and decorated with a teal and pink flowery pattern - as he began to reach for a cupboard overhead. "Had a pleasant night, Deacon hopes?"
The cupboard opened with a loud creak and the shadow under the counter began to move again, now clawing its way out from underneath the kitchenworks and showing itself in the early morning light. Now in full vision, the badger looked up at Deacon and chittered. It chittered as if it was replying to the nightcap wearing and slipper donning Deacon.
"Good, good!" Deacon replied distantly as he focussed on heating a kettle of water over an old wood-stove. A bird (a swallow) flew across the window, singing its song and its wings beating a steady drum in flight. The fire made for a pleasant crackling sound and - being of hickory - created an auroma that was easy on the senses. The small badger laid himself down infront of the stove, enjoying its heat after having spent the night under the dark kitchen counter and on the damp kitchen floor.
"Shallt thou be joining Deacon on his hike today, mister Nibbles?" Deacon asked the badger while pouring himself a cup of hot tea. "Deacon's ankles ache a bit and the swallows fly low. Which means there will be some rain today. Perhaps thunder even. That always makes the forest smell so good. So alive!"
The badger chittered again in return, then lowered its weary head down and dozed off - sleeping in after a long cold night. "Good. Deacon will enjoy thy company on the trot."
The swallow swooped down and landed carefully on the windowsill, its tiny talons grasping the frame with the flaky green paint (it was in dire need of repainting), next to the vase of daffodils. Deacon placed his lips against the edge of his cup and took a sip. As always, Deacon's large and bulbous nose got in the way, making him spill and causing a trickle of tea to run down his long white beard. He did not care ---
*Shlllrrrrrp!*
III: Distant Thunder
The rain fell gently from the sky, hitting the canopy of leafs before falling down ontop of the mushroom's dome. Thunder resounded in the distance: Its violent call dimmed by the heavy shield of trees and leafs - making it a comforting sound, a token and testament of the safety of this place. The mushroom was Deacon's home; an exceptionally tall and bulky fungal growth that had died centuries ago and had since been petrified - even before Deacon carved out his dwelling here.
It had always comforted Deacon, knowing that things that lived to grow and endure so many years could still exist and service Faerûn after they expired. It comforted him because he himself had lived for close to thirty decades. The mushroom home was now covered in living things. New shrooms, toadstools, stinkhorns and other fungi grew on its ageless carcass.
Nearly tripping over a small rabbit, Deacon opened the heavy oaken door that kept the small interior of his mushroom home secure from the outside world. The door creaked and the rusted metal hinges squeeked - The door was an old one, created from thick oaken planks decorated with runes who's meaning had been lost ages ago, their origins forgotten and perhaps only still known by Deacon himself - but finally the heavy gateway swung open: Greeting the great grove where the mushroom sat. It wasn't much of a clearing - nature's growth was too thick here to allow for a proper grove - but it still let in more light than most of the Misty Forest. For that is where it sat.
Deacon leaned over and prodded the rabbit with a short stick. "Come now, Fluff! Let thy fluffy paws scramble and remove thyself from this inconvenient location. Zip zip! Deacon wishes to let in some fresh air and greet the hills and dales. And the trees - and the beasts..."
The rabbit jumped away after letting out a high-pitched squeel. The door flung open full force and the light of the clearing began to fill Deacon's dwelling. Deacon stood there for a moment, taking in the sounds and the smells and smiled. "Ah. Goodmorrow glade. Goodmorrow En Dharasha Everae. Good morrow Fluff and Nibbles. A new morn awaits. Full of possibilities and - "
Deacon paused, seeing a pale figure sitting by the pond. Deacon, still wearing his sleeping attire and bare-footed, began to close in on the figure sitting by the pond. The sun climbed ever higher, now casting a play of light on the pond's soft eddies. A rainbow took shape overhead as sun and drizzle played their skybound game.
IV: Blueberries & Biscuits
The swallow flew up from the window and Deacon made his way to the pond. He stopped by the moss-covered stone bench - once part of a greater construct that had since been reclaimed by the forest - and carefully placed a handful of blueberries and a few biscuits next to the figure sitting there. He then used the mushroom shelves that grew on its sides as steps and mounted the bench himself. "Good morrow, Ithilwen." He spoke in Elven. "Deacon brought thee some breakfast. It isn't much but one should at least have some."
Sneaking a berry into his mouth, Deacon watched the pond in silence along Ithilwen. A large pink salmon tried to make its way from the pond and through the waterfall - it wasn't much of a waterfall, more a cascade of water coming down from a slightly elevated stream above - and then into the stream leading west through the forest, disappearing from sight in the hazy morning mists that formed underneath the damp shadows of the pines.
When the salmon finally succeeded in its quest Deacon decided to leave the quiet and pale Elf to her thoughts. Leaving her a humble breakfast - minus one berry - he quickly and quietly returned to his home, wiping his slippers on the doormat.
"Where did I leave my rucksack, Nibbles?" Deacon wondered as he entered through the door. Nibbles chittered. "What is that, Nibbles? Clothes? Oh, yes! Deacon had better get dressed first."
Absent-mindedness was no stranger at Deacon's address as he would constantly forget one thing in favour of focussing on another. Despite this handicap, Deacon had managed to survive for an exceedingly long time. He approached the armoire and took a neatly folded mossgreen and wheatyellow robe from the top. The robe was about as long as Deacon were tall - which, ironically, wasn't very tall at all. Deacon didn't appear to be any taller than a hare sitting on its hind legs. The front had a V shaped cutaway while the back had an elongated tail that trailed across the ground as Deacon put it on. "A bib for the buttocks." Deacon had often called it in jest. The robe had been patched up through the years, though nothing as drastic as the 'quilted' slippers. The fabric was a thick and thightly woven wool. It looked heavy but at the same time comfortably soft. The shoulders had pouldrons on them, made from some animal's hide and decorated with a row of silvery white feathers. After tying his robe around his waist with a bright red end of rope, Deacon reached for a drawer, wrapping his stubby fingers around the iron knob - one of the few bits of metal in his home - and pulled. As the morning light eased through the open window, it revealed several pairs of socks, a meerschaum pipe shaped like a rose, and a brown leather satchel that had been decorated with a leaf-pattern. After donning the accessories from the drawer, Deacon reached for his hat - a green pointy hat that had been hanging from one of the kitchen cupboards.
Having dressed and packed, Deacon headed for the door, against which leaned a gnarled willow staff topped off with an amber stone. Deacon's 'walking stick'. "Come Nibbles! Let us find Fluff while the day is still young!"
