The night was still. Not even crickets could be heard over the silence. How many nights like this had the shadowy figured watched over? Ha had long last count. This is Malik, a night watchman over the small quiet forest village of Dugar. Atop his precarious post, a small stage barely the size of a child’s bed, he knelt silently and still watching and listening for any signs of possible attack. Despite the fact that Dugar was in essence a simple insignificant town, barely a community, they kept a constant watch, especially in these dangerous and troubled times. With the hood of his cloak covering his head and the bottom fanning our around him not even the most perceptive of creatures could have detected him kneeling there in his mist gray cloak. This was the way Malik enjoyed it, him alone against the wilderness keeping his senses on the edge between alertness and instinctual reaction.
A slight creak in the platform behind him told that his relief had arrived. A large burly man, clearly head and shoulders of the five and a half feet of Malik and out weighing him easily by fifty pounds, placed his hand on Malik’s right shoulder, the signal of relief for the silent watchmen. malik smiled as he stood and turned to face as good of a friends as he had ever known, although nearly a stranger, Baniff. With a simple nod Malik descended the single corded and frayed rope that was used to ascend the tower. The light haze of the on coming sun was beginning to tough the void night sky as Malik walked with measured steps towards his house, and his warm bed. Despite the gear that he wore as he walked, and his great strides nearly as long as he was tall, he made no noise that even a dog’s keen ears would be able to discern. Along the dusty paths and rooted passage between the many mounds and buildings the watchman silently strolled. He wished to make it to bed before the town had fully awoken. He could already hear people bustling about within their homes and could smell the sweet scent of freshly baked bread. he often cursed himself for talking such a long way home in the mornings, but he so loved that fresh scent that he couldn’t force himself to take a more direct path.
Malik stopped by a single crevice, which had formed from the base of a tree, that had several milky flowers growing along it’s side. He reached down with one hand and felt for the hairy bristled roots of the tree until he found a small piece barely an inch in girth and broke off a hand sized length, with a slight snap it came free. Malik continued to walk along his way cleaning the soil from the root with his cloak. This had been his final meal before he rested every morning since he had become one of the night watchmen over Dugar. The others claimed the root to have a soothing effect on the body and soul allowing whomever to eat it to sleep easily despite the time or circumstance, and as far as Malik could discern the tales were true for he had never had trouble sleeping for six or more hours after eating a small bit from the root. But it also seemed to relieve strained muscles and encourage the scrapes and cuts that he had received during the night upon his perch to heal by the time he woke.
After nearly half an hour Malik finally reached his home, a small subterranean room hollowed out of a grassy knoll with a small wooden door covered with soil and grass and attached a stone used as the only grip. Malik slipped in as quietly as he walked.
Bending low through the door and slipping his dusty heavy cloak over the back of his sole chair he made his way to the corner table where his gear waited for him each day as he slept. he removed the mithril chain vest, a wonderfully crafted vest of a metal as strong as steel yet light as leather his only true piece of armor, and laid it carefully upon the table. Beside the vest he laid his belt holding the mystical pouch that a once powerful wizard, whose name has long been forgotten, had give him when he was just a child. The small hand axe, customary weapon of all watchmen in Dugar, he rested on the truly marvelous vest along with his new hickory short bow and quiver. Above the table, in the wall, sat two hooks covered in cloth; here Malik kept his most prized possession. A weapon of truly powerful origins, a mystical long sword, so light and perfectly balanced it seemed to Malik that he had often thought it to have been purposefully forged for his hand. The handle made of pure ivory and carved intricately into the shape of a tiger’s head as the pummel and claw at the hilt joined to a perfectly smooth undamaged blade, which shone with a light purple haze, despite the many battles he had fought with this very blade in his hand. Malik reverently placed his enchanted sword is the hooks and took a moment to bask in it’s soothing glow.
Word Count – 891
