“Oh…oh, dear,” Ethellus muttered, growing more worried by the moment.
The muddy, tattered lump had turned out to be an unconscious young man half-buried in dead leaves, as the Old Forester discovered the moment he prodded him with his stick. He flopped over and remained still, dried blood stark against his pale face.
Ethellus checked his pulse.
“Hrmm…”
With a deep frown, he bent over, gathered the limp form in his wooden arms, and stumped back up the hill, leaving his satchel and sticks in the melting snow.
Shouldering his door open, he hustled across the chamber, laid the boy on the sick-bed, and set about refilling the kettle and thrusting it over the fire so quickly it nearly sloshed out.
“Oh, if I told myself to keep a kettle on once, I told myself a hundred fold,” he grumbled at himself as he proceeded to examine the young man.
A ragged bundle of papers was tucked under his tunic collar. Ethellus drew them out carefully, as they were creased and stuck together from having been soaked in the rain. He hardly spared them a glance—but then he gave a double-take. One of the sheafs bore a bold, ink-stamped heading at the top: WANTED.
Peeling it apart from some parchment, and something bearing a wax seal, Ethellus squinted at it. Inked renditions of Skylian criminals were rarely helpful in actually identifying anyone. But the cold gray cloak and hood, pinned with a gold, jewel-encrusted clasp, stood out as being present on the paper, and in reality, at once. Ethellus’s gleaming eyes deepened to orange.
“Hmm…”
“-Ethellus? You home?”
The Old Forester jumped at the ‘rap, rap’ on his door. He crumpled the wanted poster.
Clara opened the Old Forester’s door.
“Clara! This, this isn’t a good time, ah…wait over by the fireplace for a moment, would you?” he called, glancing over his shoulder as she entered.
He stuffed the crumpled paper under a pillow, and set about cleaning and dressing the young man’s wounds while blocking what he was doing from view. The fireplace was near the front door, on the wall opposite the bed, and a warm fire was already crackling in it, heating the kettle.
Taking a slow step into the room, shutting the door behind her, Clara cautiously tried to see what Ethellus was doing. She pretended to walk to the fireplace, and when Ethellus wasn’t looking, she leaned over and tried to see around him, curiously.
She heard what sounded like an expression of pain, and caught a glimpse of the Old Forester moving some bandages; as he did something with his other hand, there was a faint moan. Someone dressed in dark, worn clothes, a hand clutching the blanket. That was all she managed to see before the Old Forester blocked her view again, and Clara turned away and stepped up to the fireplace, puzzled. Ordinarily, Ethellus often requested her help treating a patient.

…(A short time later, without Clara present)…

…I squinted my eyes open.
An extremely old man with wood instead of flesh, a beard of tiny vines, and a pair of kind, amber eyes, was looking down at me.
I would’ve sprang up and fled from the stranger, but at the moment I was too drained to do more than twitch.
The old Arboris applied…something damp and smelling of herbs to the gash on my left arm, then started binding it with strips of linen with a highly practiced air.
My eyes drifted away from him, to a blurry, golden-brown ceiling. The walls, the roof…looked smooth and wooden…as if we were inside a hollow within a tree. My eyes drifted shut again, hovering on the edge of consciousness.
I couldn’t understand why I felt calm…perhaps because soldiers wouldn’t find me here. Adelric couldn’t get to me in a tree. No one could.

…(Later, in a different room)…

Clara stared. “You…healed him? You, saved, the Shadow.”
The Old Forester fixed his eyes on her, grim. “I did as I swore to do, nigh a hundred and seventy years ago, Clara. It is not for me to determine who deserves to be healed, but to perform the task which Moth planted me in this earth to do.”
Clara sighed and shook her head, pacing in front of the round window.
Ethellus continued. “I understand the concern. But when this boy awoke at last, it was not the time to care what he was called, ‘Shadow’ or otherwise. …For the first instant, he looked at me with terror in his eyes. Then, he attempted to spring forth and leave, but was too weak, and once I convinced him I had no intention to harm him, or alert the Skylian authorities, do you know what he did? He thanked me. Still tried to tell me not to trouble about him anymore. Him, a dangerous madman? I doubt it.”
Clara frowned. Wary as she was, Ethellus had a way with discerning what was inside a person’s heart. It was a hard thing to trick him. He was a master healer; he knew people, inside and out.
Taking a deep breath, she asked matter-of-factly, “Well then, why was that angry mob searching for him? How can you be sure he’s not what they say he is? That cloak isn’t normal—it’s the same one stolen from King Grindian years ago, I know it. How do you explain that?”
“Simply,” Ethellus replied. “You said it yourself: the Cloak of Penumbra was stolen many years ago, before your parents time. Is it not possible he has accidentally inherited this reputation?”
She widened her eyes. “Wh—I don’t know! Some said he would be older, but-”
“-He is not.” Ethellus interrupted. He shook his head. “He is too young, Clara. About your age, in fact. He certainly isn’t old enough to have committed most of those, elaborate heists people are so fond of recounting. Either he found the cloak, or it was given to him. Perhaps, as I suspect, it was passed down in the hopes of framing him.”
“Then what about burning that village? Or Fort Exalder? How is it he knew how to fight off those monsters, and why is he avoiding Lord Adelric, if he is so innocent?”
“I am sure I don’t know. I merely doubt he did all that himself. These rumors bespoke missing pieces. But I do not intend to betray his trust, and would hear what he has to say for himself.”
“Oh, fine,” Clara huffed, crossing her arms, “But at least keep his door locked, won’t you? I’d trust him more, knowing he can’t slip out and kill you in your sleep.”

This is a very old scene, or rather, old snippets from a few scenes that were never fully written, from the murky period pre-2017 when I’d decided to scrap all the material I’d written as a kid, and was starting over from scratch, trying to re-figure out what the main story would be about. Basically, LOI underwent many messy “reincarnations” over the years, and the biggest one involved this period where I wrote all my ideas down in the form of these snippets to see what came of it, and it resulted in the strangest scenes in retrospect since most of the characters behave much differently now.

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