“Understanding and caring for another allows you the insight of seeing where they’re hurting. That is what’s right. If might helps you accomplish that for everyone, good. If might prevents everyone from accomplishing that, bad. If might is used to hurt everyone at the cost of only one person having the benefit… then Elder will be very upset and will cover you in mill powder.”
The children blanched at the mention. The Elder never hurt them, but if they came home covered in anything related to the mill, their behinds would be red and bruised from the beating they were going to get. Never were they allowed near the mill. There was only one, and it was far too important a structure for the village. It was never good to even be playing around there. The punishment was severe, and being the talk of the town afterward was worse. A fury of nods quickly followed as the original topic was completely lost at the sudden thoughts of avoiding mill powder.
“Help me up.” The Elder raised his arms; the small gathering of children did what they could. For being such a frail, old man, it still took all of them to help him stand up. “Ahh, well done. Well done.”
He softly stretched his arms above his head while the sproutlings groaned about how heavy he was. The Elder dismissed this and gave the oldest boy a hug. While horribly embarrassed, the draw of an adult father figure giving him attention was too big a need to deny.
“They’re going to rely on you, my child,” the Elder whispered in his ear. “Take good care of them.”
The oldest boy nodded as the light in his eyes brightened. He got it now. It hadn’t been about a cup; it had been about him. He was the strong one, and how he used that strength was what mattered. The Elder let him go and brushed a hand over his head. “Good. Now. I’ll take questions.”
He stated it firmly, needing to turn around the somber feeling he had. Nobody expected the oldest to suddenly be vulnerable, and the footing was uncertain. Still, he felt pride. They made leaps each time they had a good chance to talk, develop, and express freely. They were clever kids, given the opportunity to be. Their minds desperately craved the information they were being so adamantly denied in the village.
Salt was a place of work, not one of inner growth. At least, it would have been, had the Elder not been there to make a royal mess of it all. A hand rose from the youngest girl.
“Yes?” The Elder quickly addressed it, attention fully turning to her.
“Why can’t we have names?”
She asked it so simply, but that was a question he had hoped wouldn’t come to pass. However, trying to play that one down while already feeling so out of place with the group was going to be dismal. A thought occurred… had she waited for this exact kind of opportunity to ask that question? A situation where it would be poor for him not to answer it? He studied her face, squinting in inspection as he leaned forward. Sure enough, her face remained as flat and emotionless as a practiced thief trying to swindle you. Clever girl.
Seeing as the Elder very much did appear reluctant, the sproutlings were all silent and attentive. They loved making him pause and being told things he wasn’t supposed to spill. The oddness faded and attention was instead spent on his answer. More than one set of eyes were curious about why they had to be called ‘sproutling’ instead of an easy name like Elder. Or why Elder Switch had two whole names. The old man, of course, caved. “Oh, very well.”
The youngest girl quietly hissed, “Yesss,” in a dramatic victory pose, and the Elder surrendered his explanation, “This is a complicated one. There are some adults who don’t fully understand this, so until you have a proper understanding… don’t spread what I’m about to tell you around. If you explain it poorly, you’re likely going to hurt people.”
The kids caught on and listened with rapt focus, trying to stay ahead of the Elder as he stuck a finger up and began walking. Pacing, rather, but they all smiled as he was clearly about to devolve into a full speech and completely fail to pay attention to where he was walking. The last time he did this, he’d walked off a rock on the split hill and dropped straight down into the salt-stream mid-sentence. They had laughed for weeks.
“I’ll start with the obvious. ‘Hibi’ is short for hibiscus. It is the main type of flower she gathers. This is part of her profession, thus why she is named as such. ‘For’ is responsible for the Forge—on the rare occasion he actually gets to use it for something, poor fellow. He’s got such a gift with copper and bronze, but they need him on the flats.”
He sighed, looked up, and realized that while the children were still hovering and the Orchard was already a good distance behind him. His hands moved even if his mouth didn’t. It was normal for him to talk with his hands, an old philosopher trait. The children often whispered behind his back on how animated he could get. He knew this and didn’t mind. “A name is an identity, and identities are dangerous and powerful. Once something has an identity, it is difficult to think of it as something else.”
“Chair.” He paused to observe their expressions. “You all thought of what you consider a chair, and for all of you, it was likely roughly the same image. When you’re given a name, that name comes with such an identity—an identity that is both liberating and confining. While it may become easy to refer to you, it has also taken away possibility.”
“Frankly, that bothers me. Most people are simply not flexible enough with their minds to see things any other way, not once they’ve been told something is ‘just the way it is’. A wall is always a wall. The possibility that it could be otherwise does not elude them so much as the thought cannot occur, or at least, that’s my view. In this village, when you receive a name, you also receive the task that you’re going to be doing.”
“Essentially, for the rest of your life.” He paused and heaved a great sigh. “It won’t change, even if you’re called to the salt flats, unless people start calling you Elder. What you get is what you’re stuck with. So, it takes until almost adulthood for names to be chosen for someone. To my great dislike, it has nothing to do with what you’re good at nor what you love to do in life. It’s a designation. A limit. A calling you can’t escape.”
Chapter Six
The Elder appeared both sad and angry at the same time, causing the children to move away and give him some distance. When he noticed the change in elbow room, he stopped pacing and forced his face back to a gentle smile. “You’re not at fault, my dears. It’s how the Fringe works. The rules here are ancient.”
The oldest girl raised her hand. “Is that why you haven’t given us names?”
The old man said with a little grumble, then he sighed and nodded. “I am an Elder. What I say is what goes, once I’ve said it. So, I must be very careful. ‘Sproutling’ is a word for something that is growing. To sprout is to come from the ground and meet the sun, the beginning of growth.”
“You’re named as such for that exact reason. When you’re given a name, your growth stops. In this village, your identity is dependent on what you do. When you have a name, you’ll become so busy that even if you want to do something else, your obligations to the village will keep you in that place.” His hands made white-knuckled fists as he kept himself in check. “I don’t like this tradition. I would give you…”
The Elder looked at the blue sky as if he were distracted by something. “Unique, beautiful names. Names that matched you not just for who you are but all the potential of what you could be. I see such promise in all of you. Such bright splendor!”
The children held their collective breath. They were dying to know what their names were in the Elder’s mind. That’s why, when the Elder turned to look at them, he felt his heart sink deep. He could not tell them. Well… only by village rules, and he wasn’t exactly one to follow them himself all of the time. Pensive sadness turned into a contemplative, sly fox beard-stroke that slowly grew as fingers groomed down the hanging length further and further. The oldest girl was almost giddy as she saw a plan forming just by watching the details move on the Elder’s face.
The
old fool was a great actor but a horrible liar. His face gave everything away. “Well, sproutlings… I believe that, while the village may assign you a set name, tomorrow is a day of rest. If we so happen to take a long stroll out of the Fringe…”
He mused cautiously, knowing full well that he would take them into a dangerous forest—a dense birch thicket that was only considered to not be part of the Fringe since a year’s cycle or so ago, when someone had made a bothersome land claim with appropriate documentation. The Elder knew it was risky, and he was fairly certain the children knew it too… but nothing was wrong with extra hope. So he laid his cards on the table, expecting the clever bunch to come to the conclusion that while they could go, they wouldn't.
“I could tell you then!” the Elder declared with pep in his voice as he took the gamble. While yes, the glares were… sour, he held firm. Eventually, his children relented. They clearly wanted to know right now, but at least now, the Elder had set a condition. The little wheels could be seen turning behind their lustrous green eyes. Little schemers, the lot of them.
“In the morning,” the oldest girl demanded, her emerald eyes speaking volumes along with the strong forward lean of her hunting posture. She was setting a time since someone was clearly trying to wiggle out of it. Her determined gaze made it clear she was going to hound him, and this time, there was no escape. The oldest girl had a good bead on the Elder’s habits, and she knew that if he got the opportunity to sleep in… then by the Celestials above, he was going to take it. If he did sleep in, they wouldn’t be able to wake him up even if they drew on his face with spare charcoal.
Then before any activity, he would clean at the stream. They knew he usually went late just to avoid the majority of the village, and it took forever. To the great, jaw-grinding impatience of the kids, he was just so slow about everything. To be fair, his popping bones sounded as if they hurt, so they felt bad about trying to rush him. They had once snuck about like clumsy cats, peeking in on him washing and found out why he tended to avoid washing with people around.
The sight that met them was… unpleasant—beyond just the fact that he was a wrinkly, old man. A carpet of scars swirled across the grandfather’s back and upper body, like he’d been slashed by a hundred tiny knives in a twisting pattern that had sheared off thin, repeated lines of his skin. It looked healed now, but at least one of them had lost their breakfast.
Since they’d been breaking the rules when they made this discovery, they had a don’t-tell pact and never brought it up. That would have given away their mischief, which absolutely opposed the Elder’s wishes to wash without witness. After he’d cleaned, they found the Elder would generally sneak off to the apiary before attending his tasks for the day. When this secret was learned, the children had been incensed. How dare he scamper off to do something else when he could be telling them stories!
They would give him endless bother for this in the cleverest fashion their group could contrive, as anything cheaply put together, he’d disassemble without any effort. They’d learned over the many years that tricks and poorly put together plans were a path that led straight to failure. Finding patterns and uncovering hidden details from the most minute scraps of information was a skill the Elder had in spades.
So far, it was an ability they could not replicate. As soon as he was aware of one part of their trap, the Elder was already halfway done puzzling out the solution to the entire thing. By the end of the next few strides, he had the entire operation well-grasped and was ready to circumvent it. If their ideas weren’t well-discussed, practiced, ironclad… then they had no hope of success. The Elder’s perception had served only to make them ever more deviously clever, which the oldest girl was convinced had all been part of that ancient philosopher’s plan.
She recalled that in the beginning, he had them talk themselves into contradictory circles where their own boasts would be turned against them. That’s where the seed of competition had been planted. They were going to get this old man, and they’d do it without breaking any of the rules!
But somehow, time and time again, he’d foiled them with the most mundane of actions. For instance, pretending to not notice something only to—by seeming accident—lean down and pick up the exact, most crucial part of their plan… and have one of their own walk right into it to expose the scheme for what it was.
Currently, a hush stifled the group as the Elder and the eldest girl stared at each other. The intense challenge continued far longer than most children could handle, a splitting silence that was becoming awkward from its duration. Even now, as the fidgeting began, the Elder said nothing about his bluff being called.
The old man heard a long, squealing growl and wondered what it was from. Then he noticed the children holding in laughter as the boisterous growl erupting from his stomach killed the delicate balance of tension. Ah. He was hungry. Yes, that made sense. The Elder gave his stomach a pat.
“Enough for today, fetch your baskets from the orchard and deliver them. Communal mealtime will be soon, and I expect that I will need to fill up in order to handle the evening talk.” The children remained quiet. They knew they’d been told to not make a ruckus during longhouse-dinner today, and they didn’t want to talk to Elder Switch either. That old bat didn’t look before she swung, and they all knew it.
Some of the sproutlings looked suspicious, and the Elder thought something was odd. He decided now would be a good time to take stock of his surroundings, and it appeared they were on a hill near the stream. That was odd. Wasn’t that the rock he’d stepped off a few moons ago the last time they went on a…? “You rascals!”
They had corralled him while he’d been distracted with teaching them about village identity! Half of them must have not been paying attention at all and had instead been purely preventing themselves from serene giggle fits as they’d led him to the same slippery location where he’d taken a tumble before.
At least this time, his lesson had stopped gently, rather than abruptly. Not to mention the part where he’d been soaking wet. The chorus of plan-foiled laughter careened away from him as they took off to do what they were told, most of them waving as he had no hope of catching up to them even if he gave chase. He couldn’t outrun them, and the snotty, little troublemakers knew it.
“Tomorrow morning!” the eldest girl called out as she sped away.
The old fool had to rub the bridge of his nose. “Oh, old man… you’ve taught them too much. Look at those lovely little minds go.”
He sighed and turned to walk home. “I’m awfully proud of them.”
Holding his hands behind his back, he raised a brow and checked to make sure none of the children were following him. It was time for a detour! The beekeeper kept a fresh pot of honey-infused stew bubbling specifically because she knew he was likely to drop by after washing but before tending to his tasks for the day. He had a great weakness for sweet things. Easy meals that circumvented the trek to the longhouse were beyond enticing, thus he did so regularly. The Elder hummed an old tune as he thought about the conversations today and the inevitable nonsense he was going to have to endure in the evening with Elder Switch.
That old toad was trying something, and he’d have to find an appropriately sized stick to stab into whatever new malarkey she might be concocting. There was gossip that she was going on and on about changing the currency of the village from salt to gold.
“Hmmm.” Shifting the currency was a terrible idea for the peace of the Fringe. After acquiring a nice big bowl of lunch to take home, he discarded that line of thinking and rubbed his thumbs together into his back once he’d set the meal down on his desk. His mind wandered, as it often did. “I wonder if I have notes on identity.”
He talked to the walls as he broke down the base components of how identity formed outside of the Fringe in both function and linguistics. Once comfortable with the rough verbal outline, he swiftly picked up a fresh vellum and flattened it over a second small desk. There was time before he really neede
d to make an appearance and enjoying spurts of enthusiastic energy like this was a rarity. So, perhaps, just a little bit of writing? Just a little.
It took him very little time to grind some fresh ink while he munched. Dipping a quill in the well, he couldn’t keep the crafter’s joy from his face as he began to scribe and mumble to himself. “What creates the identity of a thing? Does it begin with the application of intent and will? Consistent application solidifies aspects which, in turn, become recognizable. When enough aspects are recognizable, then their terminology can be shared. Shared identity creates consistency.”
“Consistency creates order. A set order allows identity to be recognized more easily. A thing is what it is, simply because we’ve all agreed that’s what it is. It’s the same value that we’ve agreed it is, not something else.” The Elder looked over the starting notes of his secretly enjoyed activity, nodded, and lost track of time as the scribbles continued. Celestials above, he loved academia.
Chapter Seven
A coordinated hive of activity and gossip. Those were the only words that could be used to describe the bustling longhouse. Actually, perhaps a chicken coop—one where a fox was running around causing havoc. The lengthy center table was prepared for a minor feast, with enough room to seat the majority of important people who were called upon to speak.
The head of the table was occupied by a sneering, old woman currently whittling a fresh tree branch. She checked the flexibility of the switch by holding it up to her eye, snapping it gently before continuing her ‘work’. The opposing end of the table sat empty. The seat had been vacant for the entire duration of the meal—which was nearing its end—and a certain old toad’s patience was wearing thin. There were matters of grave importance to be discussed and agreed upon in her favor, and she was being stood up!
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