Inigo the Brave 

Dear diary,

Today’s mood: reflective. Watching the sun set over the witch’s house this evening brings back to memory somethings that have not come to mind in quite some time:

Back before I came into the Witch’s service I remember making potions and poisons at Belfort’s Bobbles and Brew’s for a small wage and the chance to improve my craft. After some months had come to pass Bartholomew (Belfort) had discovered a secret I’d been keeping…. an unstable ingredient I had snatched from a hawk’s nest in the nearby wilderness - “Rorikanewt.” He had insisted that we use it at once while it was fresh and potent! Despite my outcries of caution, he insisted, and me being the learner, I had behest to the will of the more experienced craftsman. In my heart of hearts I recall mixing with regret even in the moment it took place.

Something must have gone awry with a batch that Bartholomew Belfort and I concocted. For many of our customers had complained, many others grew sick. Bartholomew pinned the blame on me; as I was an outsider to this town, new to the craft, and had sourced the ingredient. Every good story; especially the false ones, do have a bit of truth to them after all. This was enough for the town to find their scapegoat and I knew that to stay would mean certain death for Inigo the Brave! But fear not for me, for I am cunning still! And had a plan for escape!… well, at least part of one.

I quickly packed my belongings, some food, and a couple of our regularly batched potions for good measure, quickly and quietly made my way towards the outskirts where I had originally sourced the very ingredient that ultimately led to my reputation’s descent. I slept in a tree burrowed near the cliffside. However, a good night’s sleep was not my fate, for I was awoken by the sound of rabble nearly encircling my position. Twas then I was betwixed by an omen: A hawk with 4 eyes perched on my tree, her nest now on the branch just below. Stranger still, she seemingly was beckoning me to follow her away from what had so suddenly become home to us both. Without retort, I had let her become my guide and she led me through a cave opening, covered by brush high into the cliffside.

The twists and turns bore ever darker the deeper I followed the hawk through, and the sound of a raging mob became that of echoing water droplets, slowly pinning the stillness below. Until finally, at one turn when I thought i had lost pace of my guide the turn of the tunnel opened to a most beautiful sight: the hawk perched near a campfire accompanied by a satyr carving imagery into a stone he held in his hand. I came to know this Satyr as Sigurd, (who I grew to call Ziggy), and our kinship grew with each adventure. He taught me how to weave runes and spells alike, as we chased off goblins, stewarded treants in the forests, out-pranked the gnomes of greenhill, and passed the time playing shenanigans with centaurs in moonshire! It was quite a time! In all the talk he had of this seelie and unseelie courts, all of which were and still are foreign to me, he had always poised himself between it all, fighting for the small victories, for the good people caught in between the will of the courts. 

But there came time where eventually after years had passed where the games we played had caused the consequence of heat to catch on our tails.. ehem, well, hooves for Ziggy. It was also by this time that the hawk had grown black feathered, and resembled more the likes of a crow. She seemed to follow us or lead us wherever we went. Ziggy had this mean game he would play, where he said he couldn’t see her, even though she was always there. He was good at this game, he had kept it up since the first day we met! But alas, some games come to end. This day was sad indeed. Ziggy said he couldn’t keep us safe anymore, not from the eyes that watch and wade to do us harm, he said I would have to leave this place. He pointed down a tunnel I’d not seen in all my time there. For the first time I saw fear I his eyes as he sent me off. I asked if we would ever meet again, and he assured me that we would, though I’m not so sure how sure he was of the words he had surely spoke. Begrudgingly, I turned to walk down the tunnel, Hawke, already leading the way…

The tunnel felt like a week’s long journey, but with no light of the sun, it was hard to be sure how much time had actually passed. In fact, it is to this day hard to know how much time was spent in total in the cave adventuring with Ziggy. Thinking on this the tunnel cornered and a light shone so bright I was blinded momentarily while my eyes adjusted. 

Then out the otherside I came into the witches domain, to a world that seemed so much larger than the one’s I’d known before. Hawke’s black feathers glistening against heavy rainfall beaded towards a shelter enshrouded in trees. I can remember the smell of the stove now just as if I were still standing on the front door, too nervous to knock. But Hawke had taken the initiative, and pecked rhythmically, and repeatedly at the door, as if to be speaking in code. And then I saw her, looking Hawke right in the eye, “well where have you been all this time deary?!” As if to scold a forlorned friend. Then Hawke, for the first time, perched down to my shoulder and let out a crow so loud i swear I still hear ringing in my left ear! She turned staring down at me, clicking her tongue, “well this won’t do, let’s get you out of the rain, wet fur stinks up the whole wilds.”

Although I cant quite recall the day Hawke flew into my life all those years ago, eye and feather piercing my soul the way the sun is now painting the clouds in the sky in hues of iridescent purple against hubris orange, I find myself realizing it has only been a single winter here under the Witch’s tutelage. I think less the days of going back to Belfort’s to set the record straight, and more of how Ziggy is doing, if he is doing, and when/if I can ever visit him and his world again. I was a lot taller there after all. But I suppose for now, being a small fish in a big pond isn’t so bad. Besides there are matters of evil and mystery here that remain unsolved.

So a Witch must do what a Witch must do.

Yours Truly,

Inigo <3