The leatherworker didn’t know much more than that this supposed Farstrider besides that he lived out in Westfall. It was a good ride from Stormwind, and Ezran was glad he had bought a horse. He gave the leatherworker some coins for her trouble — as well as for the tunic she’d been making for him — and made ready to leave the city.
He was attacked by bandits pretty soon after leaving Stormwind. Ezran shrugged philosophically. He supposed a lone elf looked like easy pickings. He didn’t hold back in defending himself, though.
Most of the town of Goldshire was still asleep as he rode into it, and he travelled through it without stopping. The farmers were up quite a bit earlier though, and he made a detour to speak with them. He helped them out a little to get them talking, wending his way to his real topic of interest after his work was done: the topic of whether they had heard of any Farstriders living in Westfall.
The farmers were full of rumors, if none particularly about a Farstrider. It turned out two of the farming families were feuding with their neighbors, while their youngest were looking on and yearning after love with the very people their parents hated.
Ezran smiled faintly, thinking back to some of his own courtships…he helped out the young lovers. The woman asked him to help her bake a pie for the man she had her eye on, and Ezran was obliged to taste test it. “Wonderful,” he told her, even though meat pie wasn’t something he normally ate as an elf.
The young lady beamed and tucked a note into the pie, asking Ezran if he would deliver it. When he said yes, she said he was so much more helpful than the last elf who had stayed over at the farm. From her description, the unhelpful elf didn’t even sound like a Farstrider or even a high elf, so Ezran paid it no mind beyond making a note of it in the back of his head. He delivered the pie.
The grandmother of the family filled Ezran’s ears with grumbles about the two young lovers, while Ezran ate her food and relaxed at her hearth after finishing his pie errand. She seemed more much more reasonable about the whole affair than did the feuding farmers, though he had to object when she suggested the lovers might use a love potion.
“If you ask me, and I know you didn’t, then I’d say they don’t need the encouragement,” he said. “They might go rolling in the hay, and fraught family relations get ever so much harder when there’s a child in the mix. Ask me how I know.”
The grandmother didn’t, seeming put out that he would correct her. Ezran politely changed the subject; talking about children put him in a blue mood anyway.
As the sky lightened into morning, he took his leave of the farm, with his thanks for the delicious food and a promise he’d put in a good word for their baking skills at the next province fair, should he be in the area. The farmers warned him to be careful on the road: gnoll attacks were becoming frequent, and they had heard of trouble in Westfall.
Thinking of the note, Ezran replied he had heard the same, and assured them he’d be careful.
2 thoughts on “The Search for Seryth”