The Dark Heir (SHORTLIST - Open Novella Contest 2019)

The Prophesy of Geraldo The Foreshadower

They stumbled through the woods in silence until they felt they were far enough away to be safe from anyone looking for them. Their assumption that anyone was looking for them, however, was unfounded. The few townspeople and commune members who stayed past dinnertime had little to no desire to chase after a potential witch who didn't burn. At one point Arien fell in a patch of brambles, which caught his pants so badly it took Gerald and Rose almost ten minutes to pull him out. In the end his pants ended up being left behind. Rose felt this was fair, since she didn't have any pants either. Finally, exhausted, they huddled in a dense area of pine trees and fell asleep.

The next morning they continued to make their way toward the kingdom's main road through dense pine trees. They had to hunker down for an hour where they'd slept because of a half-hearted attempt by Oren, the Baker, and a few other townspeople to "catch the witch." When Arien's cult got wind that he'd run away and there was a quarter-hearted attempt to find him, which mostly involved a lot of yelling of his name from the edge of the forest, and then giving up when news of breakfast came. This cost them another hour.

Finally, after making good headway for a while they became hungry and thirsty and stopped at a small clearing in the woods by a stream. Arien built them a small fire, Rose settled down, to warm up since autumn was continuing to roll in ahead of schedule, and Gerald, who had fallen down in an attempt to seat himself on a log, rolled back and forth like a turtle on its back until he got enough momentum to flip himself over.

"Did either of you think to bring food?" Gerald asked.

"I wasn't exactly in a position to bring any," said Rose, giving Gerald a piercing look.

"Ahem...right, right...of course not," said Gerald awkwardly.

"I'm guessing you were too busy being a hero to think about practicalities?" he asked Arien, who blushed and nodded.

Grumbling about heroes never thinking about the details of rescue missions, Gerald reached into his cloak and his whole body seemed to disappear. Somehow the cloak kept the shape of a hunched over, seated man. There was a lot of mumbling and muffled crashing as if pots and pans were being flung around, and he re-emerged with a loaf of bread, plates, a spit, and a whole chicken, fully plucked.

"What?" He said, seeing their incredulous looks. "Never seen a magical cloak before?"

They hadn't.

Though they had actually witnessed several instances of magic being performed throughout their lives, they were under the impression that magic wasn't real, and so assumed what they had seen were just strange occurrences which could be explained away by science, or religion (which, let us point out, relies heavily on magic...they just call it "miracles"). Rose's immunity to fire was the first time either of them could definitively say they had no explanation for what happened.

Gerald put the chicken on the spit and split the bread, handing them each a piece. Once he was settled again he looked at Arien, frowning.

"So, where shall we be dropping you?" He asked.

"Dropping me?" Arien looked confused.

"Yes. I assume you have a home?"

"Well, yes, but I don't think Rose can stay there, that's why we were hiding from them."

"Oh, you're who those people were calling for? Sorry, I didn't realize that was your name, I thought they were talking about the Aryan elves*," Gerald said. "Rose wouldn't be staying there, she's coming with me."

At this point, Rose felt it was necessary to say something because their assumptions were getting wildly out of hand and she needed to reign them in.