On The Road To Nowhere: The Beginning

[Local Hero]

He sat silently stoking the large fire which crackled and sparked in the centre of the campsite. Over the fire hung a large Boar, spitting and sizzling from the heat below. The carcass had been provided by the local villagers in gratitude of the apparently splenid performance which the troupe had provided earlier in the day. Liath chuckled to himself as he remembered the struggle the town toughs had made trying to put him down. Despite their best efforts he had emerged triumphant, wrestling his way to victory once more. Anyone hearing the sound may have mistaken it however for a burbling brook or stream, reminiscent as it was of water rushing over smooth stone. He sat wrapped as usual in his large leather cloak, although he had long since pushed the hood back off his features. He was with friends after all. He looked around, taking in the sights and sounds of the camp. Even in the shifting firelight his features looked weatherworn, and even more ruddy and claylike than usual, almost like teracotta too long in the kiln. He hadn't yet grown comfortable enough to stop applying his earthy disguise. Below his chin his stout leather cloak wrapped itself around him like a living thing, spreading out behind him on the ground. He reached out with his knife, first holding it within the flames of the fire and then pushing the hot blade into the dripping meat which hung on the spit. Drawing the knife back he looked at it closely, watching the clear fat drip off the blade.

Raising his head a little, he called out softly in his strangely echoing voice. "Anyone who's hungry better get here now, or ah'm likely tae eat this animal all mahself!" He reached over and picked several of the bronze plates from the pile stacked neatly beside him, and began carving off slabs of meat from the succulent beast.

-Liath