This is now the 27th chapter of “Of Wind and Wings”.  See the table of contents here.

A breeze whipped through the trees and stung Ed’s face.  He looked up at the sun shining through the clouds and then back down at the ground in front of him.  He was sitting on a rock by the side of a small stream out in the middle of the moors.

“You be missing The Grubb, then?”

Ed jumped up and turned at the sound of the strange voice that seemed to arrive on the wind.

The man from the day before was standing there, smiling.

“Yes, actually, I was.”

The man nodded and pointed to the rocks.  Ed sat down again and the man sat next to him.  They just sat there for a few minutes in silence, but the questions just kept piling up in Ed’s mind, so he had to let them out before he burst.

“Was he dead, then?  When you found him, that is?”

The man frowned.  “Dead?  No, not particularly.  I have the art of healing but I’m not the deity and don’t work miracles, you know? No, badly broken and just hanging on with smallest spark imaginable, but he was alive.  Don’t you worry.  He’ll be fine.”

The man smiled, reach over and patted Ed’s arm, as if he were small child.

“What about me?  How bad was I when you found me after my fall?”

“I didn’t find you.”

“Well, one of your kind did, didn’t they?”

Continue reading at Trent’s World