The #Broken_Dagger Forum

This month has been unusual even by Myrkentown standards: the fields had been rife with talk of Baie and Janeiro, of blood-drained corpses and massacred livestock, and even the long-departed Pritchites. Perhaps it should surprise no-one that Myrkentown's response to such tension was revolt. Remarkably, it seems to have accomplished some good.

In the wake of the Governor's deposition, gossip has quieted at least a little.

The Baie is gone from here, they say; the threat is passed. Our children are safe, they say; or at least that the danger is not quite so immediate. There's work to be had, they say, and this is simply a matter of fact: life does go on.

The true time for Beltane passed, without so much as a pie baked, over one week ago. Word on the street is, the teahouse Madame is recruiting a set of Myrkentown's finest merchants to present a bonfire to credit the changing seasons.

Soon, there will be a call for writers and thinkers to share their sorcery. Cooks will be lured from their comfortable kitchens in order to supply the mass of partygoers. The town event could serve as a new beginning for many.

One of the first, apparently, that the Madame had met with was that ball of rolled up controversy, the tax collector and toymaker Aloisius H. Treadwell. She'd caught him alone in his toy shop, his new partner Bartholomew Drivel having been out taking care of his more scholarly pursuits. An agreement had been reached; Treadwell would do what he could to help with the public affair. Why not have something that could give the people of Myrken Wood a chance to have a little fun?

And then she'd asked him for a special request, some items for the daughter of Molly, of the Broken Dagger fame. He'd filled the request from his own private collection after a trip to his cottage on the lake. He thought it would have been simple: go in the door, go to the room his two baby twins had shared, get the jewelry box with the comb, mirror, and brush, and go back out.

The first steps into the house had been trembling ones. Dust filled the place, unused and uncleaned since Raylan's departure, and a sneezing fit had Treadwell nearly on his knees with watery eyes. Seeing the emptiness of the house and feeling the definite chill within did nothing to help the situation, either. It took him two hours just to get through the parlor as he sunk into a chair and gave in to tears and memories.

Life had, undoubtedly, been happier, then, two years ago and some, now. A wife had loved him; he had fathered two babes, a boy and a girl, and he was looking forward to raising them into his old age as long as he was able. Then that blasted fairy king had taken Treadwell as a sleeping prisoner for fifteen months in punishment for the fat bigling's eating a fairy official at supper. Everything fell apart after that.

Treadwell has been back in Myrken Wood for a number of months, largely alone. He has worked to rebuild what he had once--a toy shop, a family, wealth, security. He has all of that, again, and yet. . . even he, through his usual gluttony and greed, feels a need to stand high enough to do *something* with himself here in Myrken Wood.

Perhaps, as this celebration nears, Aloisius Treadwell could be eased into a new beginning of his own?