Ballad of the Forgotten: Chapter 6: Part 1

Chapter 6:

“Are you never going to tell me your real name?”

She was walking behind him, but he could tell she was shrugging. “I thought you knew who I was.”

“I only know that you are a storyteller by profession.” He heard her halting. Curious, he turned around to face her. There was this faint irritation on her face, and he felt like he had struck a nerve. 

“I am not just a storyteller by profession,” she told him hotly, “there is little on this earth that I cannot do. And I am the Storyteller.”

He quirked his eyebrows, “Aren’t you a bit possessive of one profession?”

“No, it is like that,” she pulled a cloth out of her side and wiped the faint sweat that had gathered over her lips and forehead.

“Then?”

“For me, being a Storyteller is the only way I can explain my existence.”

“I don’t…feel like I understand.”

She came closer to him, pinching her nose thoughtfully. “Have you ever seen magnetic dust?”

He knew a little about them. When he was a child, his father had shown him the ancient weapons, along with a queer shield of sorts. It was an ancient relic, but by his forefather's time, it was made in their kingdoms by the thousands. Whenever they went to war, the enemy would rush in and then their swords and spears, which would often be made of iron, would get pulled in, and leave them defenseless. 

Eventually, their enemies began to catch up, but by then their kingdom was too formidable to be challenged anymore. His father had told him that the reason the weapons behaved like that was that the shield was made of a special thing called a magnet. 

“I have seen a shield made of that.” He said uncertainly.

“Well, it can be made into a powder. And let me tell you how that powder behaves. When left alone, it’s just like ordinary dust, but put a piece of iron in front of it, it comes together and forms strange shapes.” 

He looked at her slightly bewildered. “I don’t believe you.”

“No, I am not lying.”

“No...”

“Well…I’ll show you someday…but the point I am trying to make here is that only when a piece of iron is kept in front of it than it does do something like that. Not copper, not stone, but iron.”

“For me, being a Storyteller is the only I feel at most about myself.”

She looked at him, with a look of hope in her eyes. He looked at her, pondering over what she just told him. Something in him, disagreed with her, because he was considering the many things that he’d seen her do in the past few months, and he didn’t really understand how she could tie her identity to one singular thing.

“I don’t believe you,” he told her flatly. 

She looked at him dubiously and the faint look of irritation returned to her features again. 

“Let’s go,” she curtly, “I am hungry.”

He watched her step slowly before him, and as he watched her back, he realised that he might not have understood what she stood for, but he definitely understood that this new side of her, irritated and vexed, was fast becoming a favorite of his.