The comfort I felt as I traveled alongside Raven was immeasurable. I knew why he had been in the skyboxes; I had figured that one out soon enough. But there were other sides of his appearance here that didn't add up. I decided to worry about the future, which was what really mattered, instead of the past. "Raven," I began. "I thought Basil would be dead by now."
"She's not that old."
"You're sure? You know what's happened." Raven's sarcasm didn't sit well with me. Something about him seemed off. He was never sarcastic before...
"The elders were spared," Raven said, surprisingly nonchalant.
"Basil is the only elder..." I realized the true weight of the past. I used to live in a small village, far away from the castles and kingdoms of the empire. The village was completely secluded. It was a month's worth of travel away to the nearest city, and even that city was fairly far away from anything with a high population. The empire's population is pretty spread out. A small percentage of its citizens live in tiny villages like mine and the rest live in huge megacities that surround the capitals.
Our village did for ourselves. The farmers gave food to everyone in the village and the housewives provided clothes. There was no concept of trade; everyone helped each other out. Everyone mostly fell into an archetype, though. The fisherman fish, the fortune tellers told, and everyone got along. Raven was different. I couldn't describe it, although he felt different. He was never one of us. He wanted to go away from our meager village and live in a sparkling castle of the capital.
I was never very close to Raven, but one day he all of a sudden became close to me. He wanted us to leave the village and take the trek to a better place. It was fun to dream of grandeur, but I never would have actually left. But Raven did. One day I woke up and he wasn't there. Nobody knew where he went, except for me. He must have left for the cities.
Time progressed very slowly after that. Days became normal when you didn't have dreams to dream, and I soon realized something was amiss. The townspeople were getting antsy. One day when I was still young, my mother gave me a month's worth of travel supplies and told me to go to the nearest city. I was scared at the time, but did what I was told. The city was much larger than my village. While my village was just houses and farmland, the city had so much more.
I found a house that allowed me to stay the night, but only if I cleaned for them. I did, and it was okay for a while. Eventually, I got what was called a "job." Doing this, I earned money and bought a small room to stay in. I must have stayed in that city, alone, for years. I know I grew a lot. One day, I decided to return. Whatever trouble the village had must have fixed itself, right? I gathered supplies and made the tiring journey back.
Nobody was there to greet me. Nothing was left but ash. Everything was gone but one house situated at the far end of what was once our village. I entered it and I saw Basil. Basil was the town fortune teller and was very elderly by the time of my original departure from the village. She sat calmly in her chair, sipping tea, when I entered. I don't remember our conversation exactly, but she was very sympathetic when she explained what had happened.
I was told that the empire is on a campaign to thin the population to where it only lies in the sprawling megacities. This campaign would begin with every small village and move onto every average city. A group of men on horseback would enter the village carrying a bunch of supplies unfamiliar to us in the village. They would give out a proclamation: If you didn't leave the village within one week's time, you would be burned down with it. The village was given a couple of years's notice. The population thinned out a bit and I was sent away during that time.
The village's people were very protective of it, and so, most of them stayed put. They wanted to put up a fight for their little village. The entire remainder of the village and surrounding farmland was burned down, save for Basil. They didn't see her as a threat. So after that point, Basil began to live in solitude. It has been years since that date, but now I'm going back to my lost village. Or so I thought. I began to realize that we weren't going towards the village. Raven told me Basil had taken up residence at a different address...
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