2018-04-05: A Guiding Light I've Yet to See
- Cutscene: A Guiding Light I've Yet to See
- Cast: Talise Gianfair
- Where: Outside Meribia
- Date: April 5, 2018
- Summary: Talise goes looking for her old mentor and uncle, Piet Wilk.
Not all reunions could be so pleasant and tearful as that of Sephilia Lampbright and her parents. For the one Talise was looking for, she left her friends back at the inn, citing an errand she had to take care of alone.
She left her armour behind and wrapped Rastaban's hilt to hide the characteristic metalwork and inlays. The last thing she wanted was to be identified by Althena's Guard and visit misfortune upon her host.
If only she could find him.
From beneath the brim of her hat, Talise frowned, scanning the Meribian waterfront for the umpteenth time. No small number of her acquaintances had spent their time here before her trip to Filgaia. A year later, however, finding a single one of them was like finding a speck of dust in a spotless room. The harbour had been cleaned up noticeably in her absence, much of the common riff-raff seemingly gone and many of the seamier establishments torn down or replaced with legitimate businesses. Perhaps the members of the Guard patrolling the streets had something to do with it.
Talise curled her lips bitterly but ultimately set it aside. Theological beliefs aside, it was hard to begrudge them enforcing the law.
She returned to her survey of the port - and her heart briefly leapt as a familiar figure clicked in her mind. She pushed the feeling aside and did her best to stay casual as she slipped across the way, over to the pier, where a large man with a port-wine birthmark splattered across the left side of his face was bawling orders to a few crewmen in the process of loading up a freighter.
"What's your cargo, Chuck?"
The huge quartermaster grunted. "What's it to ya," he began, before turning to look at her.
His eyes immediately went wide. "Dragons' sake, it's you, Tal. Where'd you come from? Thought you'd been arrested."
Mindful of the Guard patrolling the port, Talise smiled warmly at the older man - a face well-recognized from his time on the Lunabelle, staying behing roughly when she did. "Nah... just went on a long trip, I guess." She glanced to the side, tempted to sink into pleasantries.
Now wasn't the time. Not with another patrol beginning to head that way - and not with Talise having just broken into a Guard compound a couple of days earlier, absconding with weapons. "Real quick," she whispered to the big quartermaster. "I've been trying to find Piet but I can't find a ship to Dalton."
Chuck's eyes darkened a little. "'s out of season. But Piet came here looking for you--" He let out a short sigh, but with the patrol close by, the time for words was slipping away. "Oak Hill, outside the west gate. By the crooked tree."
Frowning, Talise nodded. "Thanks, Chuck," she offered up before turning with a sweep of her cloak and submerging back into the crowd, a step ahead of the patrol.
The sun slid below the horizon. Among the trees, only a few late-rising birds still chirped. The greenness of the Meribian countryside was in a way welcome after the aridity of Filgaia, but Talise thought about it only in passing.
More firm in her mind was the hope of finding Uncle Piet again. The man had been the closest thing she had to a father following her parents' disappearance along with the Lunabelle - a wise old rogue who had adventured with her, fought alongside her, given her her lute and taught her more than a few of his old songs. When last she'd seen him, it was in Dalton.
Why would he have come to Meribia? Talise pondered as she approached the lonely hill, broad but fairly shallow and with a couple of oak trees waving lazily in the evening breee. One of them stood at a pronounced angle, its thick branches casting a deep shadow over the grassy hillside below it, mainly on the far side of the hill.
The crooked tree Chuck was talking about, Talise realized.
She paused at the foot of the hill. Unbidden, a deep frown reached her face as something occurred to her.
There was no house. Not even a shack or a cave. Why would Uncle Piet be here?
A lead weight of uncertainty began to congeal in the pit of Talise's stomach as she trudged up the hill. Quiet warning voices in the back of her mind whispered an ugly possibility to her: That this was a trap, and Chuck had gone legit and knuckled under to someone in the Guard, or worse yet, to the Trial Knight. Perhaps she'd crest the hill and find the damn Pyre Witch waiting on her to finish the job they would've easily finished in Krosse if not for Sorey.
But as she reached the peak of the hill, she found no horrific witch and no white knight awaiting her - neither the leonine nor the malevolent sort. Instead, there was only the much shallower downslope of the hill, grassy and pleasant, shaded by that huge, crooked oak tree.
And interrupted by a series of stones tablets. There were about a dozen of them, some of them set at a crooked angle.
Talise stared for a moment as that leaden weight shed its uncertainty and sunk into a mire of dreadful understanding. Her mouth hung open a little as she wandered from stone plinth to stone plinth. Finally she stopped near the roots of the tree.
With a heavy thump, she dropped to her knees at the foot of the stone. She could feel the tears beginning to come but she couldn't find it within herself to fight them back as she reached out to brush a shaky hand along the edge of the roughly-polished chunk of rock, just to one side of the inscription etched upon its face.
Piet WILK 3979 - 4066
Then it was months ago, Talise realized as she stared at the tombstone. He came here looking for me, just like Sephilia's parents. And then he died.
She couldn't find the words - not for several minutes. The breeze playfully flirted with her hair and garments, but she couldn't find it within herself to flirt back. She could only find the old memories. The smiling, bearded, wrinkled old man, leathered by too many years under the ocean sun but with a light in his eyes and a song on his lips, handing her the precious lute that she allowed the Trial Knight's minions to destroy, the magic knives she allowed Reapers to consume, the good advice she failed to follow time and time again until it nearly cost her her humanity deep in the bowels of Castle Krosse. The man who taught her virtually every song and story she cared to remember.
Slowly, she closed her eyes and folded her hands together, bowing her head forward until her forehead touched the surface of the tombstone. Falling tears caught the waning sunlight on their path from her eyes to the soft grass growing in front of the stone, lost unto the earth much like the man who'd treated her like a daughter, despite not sharing a drop of her blood.
Almost without understanding why, Talise finally closed her eyes, and, unable to keep the ache out of her voice, let the first notes of a song slip free into the night. Quiet, pure, simple - one of the ones Uncle Piet had taught her, a lifetime ago.
The sun slipped towards the horizon, uncaring. But if the spirits of Lunar sang as Tethelle said they did, they were joined by one more quiet voice tonight, for an audience of one more among their number.