Pale_Stranger

The feeling of being out of place was never strange for young Anton. Growing up street-adjacent in the city of Presa de Madera, Anton Marian Louvelle never really knew the Elves he traced his lineage back to. But he did know Uncle Barnaby, who told him countless stories of Anton’s ‘people’, and who sparked a longing in the boy from a very young age. The old man, Barnaby Louvelle, was a treasure, having taken the young Anton into his home and his heart after the death of his mother so long ago, Uncle Barnaby was about the only thing Anton had growing up. But nothing was ever as simple as “Young boy lives happily with his uncle until they both die, one after the other, peacefully in their sleep.”, no, that wouldn’t be nearly as fun. See, I said “street-adjacent” for a reason. Uncle Barnaby was servant par excellence, but the field only rarely brings enough coin to support one’s self and another. So something had to be done. Anton tried, he really did. He took a job as the apprentice to an Apothecary, he even tried his hand as a stable boy, but he never seemed to be really good at any of it. He was fine, sure, but he wasn't great. With no job, no money, and the crushing fear of destitution ever encroaching on him and his only family, Anton took to taking. It was never much, just what they needed. An apple or two here, some money there, nothing too major, but hot damn was it thrilling! It wasn’t the act of doing it that was most addicting, it was the act of getting away with it. Being able to do something so wrong and get away scott free? Who wouldn’t love that? 

It didn’t end there, why should it? Again, this can’t be the kind of story that ends with “He lived happily ever after!”.  No, no that would be ridiculous. Things stayed steady for a while, but as Anton became more comfortable with his new profession, so did he become more comfortable with more intense facets of it. Once upon a time, a very long time ago, Anton decided to take up a bit of burglary. And that was the last mistake he would ever be fixing to make. It didn’t have to go poorly, in fact, it didn’t! Everything went fine! It was some nobody from down the way. No one saw him enter, no one saw him leave, he though. But it was very apparent that he was wrong when two armed guards came knocking on Uncle’s door. Anton was immediately taken, shackled, and thrown into a nice little cell with a beautiful view of the cell adjacent to his. All in all; four stars. He wasn’t in there long, considering, but it gave him a lot of time to think. He thought about Uncle, about the late nights he spent up listening to the old man’s stories about his mother. About the steps that brought him into this small room, and how he only regretted being caught. Wait, what? Only being caught? Really, bud? Yes, indeed. As he sat in that small cell, the Snow Elf’s only regret was that he was caught, and was now sitting here with his aging Uncle having no one to help provide income. He knew it was wrong to think that, or at least he assumed it was supposed to be wrong. But he had to do it, right? He couldn’t hold anything other job down. He was some schmuck, some good for nothing street urchin with a chip on his shoulder that he couldn’t really place where it had come from. Yeah, yeah he had to, no question. 

After he got out, Anton made his way back to the small hovel that he had called home these many years. The house, however, was eerily silent, with only the soft wheezing of labored breaths to break the quiet. Anton was well aware of the longevity of Humans. It was one of the things that had tipped the boy off to Uncle Barnaby’s sketchy familial relation when he was a child. He just never wanted to imagine that that, no,  this day would come. It didn’t happen right then, that would be far too melodramatic, don’t you think? It lasted a few days but eventually, at the ripe age of 65, Uncle Barnaby Louvelle died peacefully in his sleep. Under a cheaply made, wooden headstone, Anton buried the old man and with him the only person he’d ever really come to love. Hope, however faintly it glowed, was still on the horizon. The boy remembered the tales from his Uncle, about the Elves who he shared more than a little blood with. Would they take him? Surely not, Anton assumed. He hadn’t even an Elven name, shirked at a young age for something more acclimating. But it’s what Uncle Barnaby would have wanted, he guessed. And so Anton Marian Louvelle, nephew of his Uncle Barnaby, set off on his first and only trip outside of the city of Presa de Madera to find out what all the excitement was about. But he still keeps a few tricks up his sleeves. For totally legitimate and over-the-table purposes, of course. I promise.