Location: Arbola Forest
Timeline: Sixth Age, 53rd Year, Spring
Time, for an immortal, is a river—constant, flowing, and ultimately indifferent to the stones it passes. But for a mortal, time is a fire; it consumes as it warms. Alyssa, in her infinite and terrifying love, thought she could simply command Alfranco’s soul to return to the light. She forgot that the human mind is a garden that must be tended, and for all her beauty, Alyssa was never much of a gardener. When her magic failed to breach the gates of Alfranco’s guilt, she turned to the only creature in Arbola who understood the weight of years without the vanity of godhood. Dallegheri was assigned to task to get through to Alfranco. For his part, the ancient elf did not try to ‘heal’ Alfranco. He did not offer him the nectar of the gods or the promises of a new dawn. Instead, he offered him the one thing a ghost needs to become a man again: the mundane friction of a life lived in the present.
Alfranco Finds a Friend
The journey from the Hidden Springs to the main village of Arbola was made in a covered litter, shielded from the sun by drapes of woven spider-silk. Alfranco sat within, his hands resting limply in his lap, his eyes fixed on the rhythmic swaying of the curtains. He was brought to the Archival District, a part of the village where the trees were so ancient their bark looked like folded parchment. Here, the house of Dallegheri was nestled into the massive, gnarled roots of a Weir-tree. The litter-bearers placed him in the high-backed cedar chair on Dallegheri’s terrace, and there he remained for the first three days, a statue wrapped in wool.
Most days Alfranco just sat; occasionally he ate in silence the meals that Dallegheri brought him. He did not look at the stream that bubbled beneath the Weir-tree, nor did he acknowledge the ancient elf who sat across from him, scratching a quill against parchment with rhythmic, irritating persistence. Dallegheri, for his part, was a master of the “unobtrusive presence.” He didn’t ask Alfranco how he felt. He didn’t talk about healing or offer aid. Instead, he focused on the sensory triggers of the mortal world. Often Dallegheri just sat quietly and…existed.
On the fourth day, the elf stopped feeding Alfranco the refined, airy broths of the Arbolan kitchens. Instead, he brought out a cutting board of heavy oak, a wheel of sharp, aged goat’s cheese, and a loaf of dense, black bread—the kind that required effort to chew. He set them on the stone table between them, the pungent aroma of the cheese cutting through the sweet, floral air of the forest like a knife.
“The weevils got into the summer wheat again,” Dallegheri casually remarked. He didn’t look up as he sawed through the bread. “Ruined the texture. It’s heavy, Alfranco. Almost like the brick-bread they used to bake in the South Pennal? Do you remember that?”
Alfranco’s hand, resting on the arm of the chair, twitched. It was the first sign of life. His gaze, usually fixed on the horizon, drifted slowly toward the bread.
“Brick-bread” Alfranco rasped. His voice sounded like two stones grinding together. “Had no yeast. Used… used sour ale to make it rise.”
Dallegheri’s quill paused for a fraction of a second, but he didn’t miss a beat. “Is that so? I always wondered why it tasted like a tavern floor. Here.” He slid a thick wedge of the cheese and a hunk of the bread toward the old man.
Alfranco picked up the bread. He didn’t eat it at first; he just felt the weight of it. He smelled the sour, fermented tang of the bread. It was a “peasant” smell—a smell of the Brandonale, of hard mornings and honest labor. When he finally took a bite, his eyes closed. The sharpness of the cheese stung his tongue, forcing his brain to acknowledge the now.
High above, perched on a branch of the Weir-tree, a blue jay tilted its head. Its gold-flecked eyes watched as Alfranco swallowed. Alyssa, in her bird-form, felt a pang of jealousy. She had offered him the nectar of immortality, and he had spat it out; but he would wake for a piece of moldy cheese – oh, the irony of it all.
By the second week, Alfranco’s mental isolation was beginning to crack, replaced by a much more human irritability. He had started to notice the vagaries of Dallegheri’s Archive. The terrace was a labyrinth of half-rolled maps, botanical sketches of mosses that hadn’t existed for three centuries, and piles of correspondence from elven outposts that Dallegheri seemed to use primarily as coasters for his tea.
“How in the name of the High Council do you find anything in this heap?” Alfranco grumbled one afternoon. He was sitting more upright now, his back supported by a cushion Dallegheri’s granddaughter Nathily had brought him. His voice had lost its papery thinness, regaining a hint of the gravelly baritone that had once filled the Brandonale.
Dallegheri looked up from a map of the Pennal foothills. “I don’t find things, Alfranco. I wait for them to reveal themselves. It’s an elven philosophy. Very efficient for the soul, if not for the schedule.”
“It’s a pig-sty,” Alfranco countered. He reached out and tapped the map Dallegheri was studying. “And you’ve got the Black-Water Pass marked three miles too far to the East. If a merchant followed this, he’d end up at the bottom of a ravine with his mules on top of him.”
Dallegheri squinted at the map. “Are you sure? I copied this from a survey done by the Amorosi Protectorate during the Fifth Age.”
“I don’t care if it was drawn by the Goddess herself,” Alfranco snapped, his eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp clarity. “I’ve walked that pass a hundred times hauling wool. The river bends at the Lightning-Struck Oak, not Rock Run. Give me that quill.”
Dallegheri handed over the quill with a hidden, triumphant smile. For the next three hours, Alfranco didn’t think about the fire. He didn’t think about his dead wife or his missing grandchildren. He was a man with a task. He was correcting a “foolish elf” who didn’t know his left from his right.
The Jay flitted down to a lower branch, its feathers ruffling. Alyssa could feel Alfranco’s mind organizing itself. He was building a bridge back to the world of the living.
The Memory Bridge
As the moon reached its peak, the forest of Arbola seemed to hold its breath. The silver light turned the mist of the stream into a veil of diamonds. On the terrace, the air was cool, smelling of the “Night-Cereus” flowers that only opened under the full moon’s gaze.
Alfranco wasn’t correcting maps tonight. He was staring at the ceramic pot of tea, the steam curling around his face.
“Dallegheri,” he said softly.
“Yes, my friend?”
“I heard tell that, in all your long life, you’ve never fought in battle. Yet you’ve lived through countless times of war on TerrVerde. How did you avoid conflict when the world was breaking all around you?”
Dallegheri set down his tea. He looked at his hands—long, slender, and unscarred. “Because someone has to remember why we fight, Alfranco. If we all take up the sword, there is no one left to tell the stories of the peace we are trying to win. I chose the archive because stories are the only thing that survive the fires. Swords rust. Armor pits. But a story… a story can wait in the dark for a thousand years for someone to find it.”
Alfranco went silent. The word “fire” hung in the air like a physical weight.
“I’m starting to remember,” Alfranco whispered.
The Blue Jay on the eaves froze – what would Alfranco say next? Would he blame her for all that he lost?
“I never got a chance to help,” Alfranco began, his eyes fixed on the ceramic pot, his lip trembling. “I knew the weather was foul, but I… didn’t know about the mists…or the monster. I drank that green wine. I took the dreams it offered. And while in a fantasy with…the goddess…I lost everything, failed everyone. I…I….”
He couldn’t finish the sentence. The guilt surged up, a black tide.
Dallegheri leaned across the table. He didn’t offer a hug; he offered a perspective. “You think your dream killed them, Alfranco? That is the vanity of a mortal heart. You are not that powerful. The fire was brought by a King and a Monster. You were simply a man who was tired. If you had been awake, you would be a charred bone in that pub right now. By sleeping, you survived to tell me about all the good memories you still have of your family and your people. And because you told me, they are here, on this terrace, right now.”
Alfranco looked at the ancient elf. For the first time, he didn’t see a “fancy scroll keeper.” He saw a witness.
“My Pallina, Dallegheri,” Alfranco sobbed, the tears finally breaking through the catatonic dam. “She was beautiful in her time and to the end. She was the best of me. I didn’t deserve a woman like her. Or the family she gave me.”
“Then live for her, for them,” Dallegheri said, his voice firm. “Don’t let the fire have the last word.”
In the days that followed, as the moon began its slow retreat into a silver sliver, the fog in Alfranco’s mind didn’t just lift; it evaporated into a cloud of characteristic bravado. The “Ghost” had officially vacated the premises, replaced by a man who remembered what living in the forest offered. He began to spend his mornings pacing the lower roots of the Archive tree, leaning on his staff of weir-wood more out of a sense of dramatic flair than actual necessity. His “Gaffer” personality, bolstered by the subtle, divine strength Alyssa had woven back into his muscles, was returning with the force of a spring flood.
“You know, Dallegheri,” Alfranco remarked one afternoon, leaning precariously over the elf’s shoulder as he worked on a delicate botanical sketch. “I’ve seen more life in a bowl of week-old pottage than I see in this drawing. You’ve given this thistle the personality of a damp rag. Where’s the spite of the plant? A Pennal thistle doesn’t just grow; it waits for a reason to prick you. You’ve made it look like it’s sad.”
Dallegheri didn’t look up, though the corner of his mouth twitched. “It is a scientific rendering, Alfranco. Science does not require ‘spite’.”
“Everything in Pennal requires spite,” Alfranco countered, snatching a piece of dried pear from the elf’s snack tray. “It’s what keeps us warm in the winter. And another thing—this tea. Its like warm puddle water. When are we going to get some real spirits in this dusty tomb?”
Meanwhile, as Alfranco continued to recover, Nathily visited more regularly. Often she would sit on the low stone wall, watching with a mixture of wonder and amusement as the man who had been a silent shell a few weeks prior now dominated the terrace with his presence.
“I’m worried about Emcorae, grandfather,” Nathily confessed to Alfranco during a quiet moment. “Emcorae… always sharping his katana on the whetstone. Shhh-shhh-shhh. It’s like he’s trying to sharpen his own soul away.”
Alfranco’s face softened, but only for a second before the “Gaffer” mask slid back into place. He gave her a playful nudge with his staff. “Don’t you worry about that boy, lass. He’s an Azop. We’re like bad copper—hard to polish and impossible to get rid of. He’s just in a mood. Probably thinks brooding makes him look more like an Azora, eh?” He looked at her with a mischievous glint in his eye. “I suppose even an Azora has to eat – perhaps your mother’s cooking is the problem? If so, I don’t blame him for staying in the cellar.”
Nathily laughed and Alfranco winked at her. The gaffer was back.
The blue jay was by now a permanent fixture on the terrace eaves, its presence growing more stifling as the new moon approached. Alyssa’s patience was at its end. She wanted her Al-Corragio, not this talkative, cheese-obsessed human who dared to make fun of her forest. One day, the bird fluttered down, landing on a pile of scrolls right in front of Alfranco. It let out a sharp, commanding squawk.
Alfranco didn’t flinch. He picked up a small crumb of bread and held it out to the bird with a mocking grin. “Still at it, are you? You’re a persistent little thing, I’ll give you that. But you’re wasting your time. I’m not going to relive the old days just because you’ve got a fondness for them.”
The Jay’s eyes flared with a gold light.
“I remember the white horse, Alyssa,” Alfranco said, his voice lowering but losing none of its sharp edge. “And I remember the wine. Very clever. But you see, I’m a tavern-keep at heart. I know when someone’s trying to overcharge me for a dream. You want the man who saved Aslan? You want your lover? He’s in there somewhere, sure. But he’s currently under the thumb of a man who needs to see his grandson. So, unless you’re planning on turning into something that can actually pour a decent drink, you might as well head back to your springs.”
The Jay took flight with a frustrated shriek, its wings a blur of sapphire.
Dallegheri let out a long breath. “You have a death wish, Alfranco. Truly. Mocking a goddess while you’re standing in her front yard?”
“Pah!” Alfranco waved a hand dismissively. “She loves me. And she knows I’m right. Besides, what’s she going to do? Turn me into a tree? I’ve already got enough wood in this staff to last me a lifetime.”
At last, on the final morning of the moon cycle, Alfranco stood at the edge of the terrace, looking down at the main village. He was dressed in a clean, if slightly oversized, elven tunic, his raven-and-silver hair tied back with a bit of leather. He looked like a man who had successfully robbed a grave and was quite pleased with the loot.
“I’m off, Dallegheri,” he announced, thumping his staff on the stone. “I’ve stayed in this ‘archive’ long enough. I’m starting to smell like old paper, and it’s a bad look for a man of my standing.”
Dallegheri stood, offering a formal elven bow that Alfranco returned with a clumsy, exaggerated flourish. “The maps will be corrected, Al-Corragio. And I shall keep a wheel of that ‘spiteful’ cheese in reserve.”
“See that you do,” Alfranco grunted. He paused, his humor fading just enough to show the steel beneath. “And Dallegheri? Thanks for the stories. They’re better than the dreaming.”
As Alfranco made his way toward The Regent’s house, he heard the sounds that Nathily warned him about…
Shhh-shhh-shhh.
Alfranco straightened his tunic, plastered a cocky, self-deprecating grin on his face, and kicked the cellar door open with his boot.
“Alright, Emcorae! Enough with the cutlery! You’re making enough noise to wake the dead!
As Alfranco went down the stairs he saw that the tiny cellar was a tomb of silver and shadow. The only light came from a single, stuttering tallow candle that cast Emcorae’s silhouette against the damp stone walls like a jagged mountain range. The cramped air smelled of stone grit, sweat, and of a heart that had forgotten how to beat.
Shhh-shhh-shhh.
“By the Great Oak’s gnarled roots, Emcorae!” The gaffer tried again. “I’ve heard more cheerful sounds coming from a plague-pit!”
Emcorae didn’t look up. He was seated on a low wooden crate, his Azora Katana resting across his knees. The blade was so sharp now it seemed to draw the light out of the room. “Go back upstairs, Grandpop. Arbola has enough old men wandering the halls. You shouldn’t be down here.”
“‘Shouldn’t be down here’?” Alfranco scoffed, kicking a stray pile of leather scraps out of his way. He plopped himself down on the edge of Emcorae’s cot with a groan of exaggerated agony. “I’ve spent a moon being poked by birds and lectured by an elf who thinks a ‘thrilling afternoon’ is watching moss grow. I’ve earned the right to sit in a damp hole if I want to.” He leaned forward, poking the tip of his staff toward the katana. “And put that toothpick away. You’ve sharpened it so much there’ll be nothing left but a needle soon. You planning on sewing Diked to death, or are we actually going to talk?”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” Emcorae hissed, his knuckles white as he gripped the hilt. “Diked took everything. He the town. He took our family. He took… her. There is only the debt to pay now.”
Alfranco reached out and, with surprising strength, pushed Emcorae’s blade aside so he could look his grandson in the eye. “Listen to me, you brooding sprout,” Alfranco grumbled, his voice dropping into that gravelly, tavern-hushed tone that had once commanded the Brandonale. “I know what it’s like to sleep through the end of the world. I spent a moon wishing the fire had taken me, too. But do you know what I realized up there on Dallegheri’s fancy terrace?”
Emcorae remained silent, but his shoulders slumped a fraction of an inch.
“I realized that being a human in this evil world ain’t easy,” Alfranco said, poking Emcorae’s chest with a gnarled finger. “Any fool can break a window or burn a house. It takes no talent to be a shadow. But you? You’re an Azop. We don’t just endure; we make the world endure us. You think you’re honoring our family or Lynsy by throwing yourself away? I’m guessing your lass wold hate it. She’d probably hit you with a rolling pin for being so boring.”
Emcorae’s head snapped up, his eyes flashing with a sudden, violent grief. “Don’t talk about her like she’s a joke! You weren’t there! You didn’t see what I saw – her house was burned. She d-d-died a horrible death. Just like our gram, mama, Dad, and Teree did! You didn’t see the sky!”
“I saw the ash, Em! I woke up in the middle of it!” Alfranco roared back, his self-deprecating mask finally slipping to reveal the raw, human pain beneath. “I dreamed of goddesses while my wife turned to smoke! You think you’ve got a monopoly on the dark? I owned it long before you, boy!”
The silence that followed was deafening. Emcorae looked at his grandfather and saw the tremor in the old man’s hands. The “Gaffer” wasn’t just teasing; he was fighting his way through his own graveyard to reach his grandson.
The katana slipped from Emcorae’s lap, clattering onto the stone floor. A choked, jagged sound escaped his throat—a sob he had been holding back since the ridge overlooking the Finch Estate.
“It hurts, Grandfather,” Emcorae whispered, tears welling up. “It hurts so much I can’t breathe.”
“I know, lad. I know,” Alfranco sighed, reaching out and pulling Emcorae into a fierce embrace. “Let it out. Cry for the girl, cry for our family, cry for the whole damn valley if you have to. But don’t you dare pretend you’re a ghost. Not while I’m still standing.”
As the Azop’s continued to heal together, Nathily stood in the shadows at the top of the stairs. Her hand was pressed against her mouth, her eyes bright with tears. She had come down to bring fresh water, but she had stopped the moment she heard Alfranco’s voice.
She felt a wave of profound gratitude for the old man. She had tried for a moon to reach Emcorae with her light, but it had taken Alfranco’s grit to finally crack through. She heard Emcorae’s muffled sobs from below—not the sound of a warrior, but the sound of a man finally beginning to heal. She stepped back quietly, retreating into the house before they could catch her listening. Her secret love for Emcorae was still a heavy burden, but for the first time in a long time, she felt a flicker of hope. The “Shadow-Emcorae” was fading, and the young man she loved was being hauled back to the surface, one insult and one hug at a time by Alfranco.
The Apocrypha of Azazel 