It started as a whisper in my chest.Not loud, not urgent—just a soft pull, like wind tugging at a sleeve.
The adventurers had gone, their voices fading into memory. But their stories lingered.
And now, so did a new idea:What lies beyond the edge of Greywillow?
I asked Pa the next morning.
"What's in the forest past the fields?"
He grunted. "Trees. Roots. Things that bite."
Ma glanced over her shoulder from the stove. "And things that don't. But it's not a place for wandering boys."
I didn't argue. I just nodded.
But after chores, when the sun was climbing slow and warm, I visited the blacksmith.
Master Holgar was wiping sweat from his brow when I arrived. I helped him stack some iron rods behind the forge, and when we were done, he handed me a small object wrapped in cloth.
"Remember this?" he asked.
I nodded, unwrapping it slowly. A dagger—not too big, just long enough for a boy's belt, with a plain wooden hilt. I'd seen him shaping it weeks ago, and he'd said I could have it when I'd earned it.
I guess today, I had.
"It's not for fighting," Holgar said. "It's for respecting. You hear me?"
"I do," I said, slipping it into the old leather sheath he gave me. "I'm just going to look."
The forest is only a half-hour walk from the edge of Greywillow, but stepping into it felt like crossing into another world.
Light dripped through the branches like honey. The ground was soft and mossy. My boots made little sound.
Birds called above me, flitting from branch to branch. Somewhere deeper in, water flowed—maybe a creek, maybe a spring.
I didn't go far. I wasn't foolish. I followed the path Pa sometimes used for gathering herbs. I marked trees with chalk as I passed, just like Ma taught me.
Still, it felt like adventure.
A fox darted across the path in front of me—slim, red-furred, gone in a blink.
A family of rabbits watched me from under a bush, noses twitching.
I saw flowers I'd never seen near the village—deep violet with curling petals, and a yellow kind that seemed to glow in the shade.
I stopped by a fallen log and pulled out my sketch cloth and paint.
Carefully, I began to paint the fox—not perfectly, but enough to remember its shape and color. Then the yellow flowers. Then the way the sunlight split through the branches.
I didn't feel brave. I felt awake.
By the time the shadows grew long, I turned back. The wind had picked up, and I could hear the trees sighing.
I wasn't afraid. Not quite. But I understood now why Ma and Pa were cautious. The forest was beautiful—but it didn't care about me.
It simply was.
When I got home, Pa looked at the dagger on my belt, then at the green stains on my tunic.
He didn't scold. He just said, "So. You went to look."
I nodded. "I didn't go far."
He handed me a piece of bread. "Good. Next time, take someone with you. Even the foxes have eyes bigger than yours."
That night, I added my cloth painting to the hearth wall—my little piece of the forest. The fox. The flower. The green hush.
I still didn't want to be an adventurer. Not like the ones in the tavern.
But I wanted to understand the world they came from—one step at a time.
And today, I had taken the first.