The land of Farsis is a beautiful land, full of trees, mountains, deserts and many, many different inhabitants. These inhabitants are almost all magical. Some aren't, but they still get along just fine with the ones that are. There are the wizards--master magicians,the tulendors, the tree walkers, and the warlocks. There are the Bufflebams--the Horned, the Wicked and the FavorAbles. There are the sprites, fairies, and walkins. The dragons, the rasbacks, rocs and tenacins (Wolfcats). And of course there are the non-magical creatures like the humans and the cats and dogs. (Well, not all dogs. I did meet a talking dog during my sojourn in Farsis; he was quite nice, even if he did eat my ice cream cone.) This is just a small list of the creatures in Farsis, but you can see, with so many different types of creatures and so many possible interactions, many wonderful and amazing things can happen.
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It was a sleepless night in CrownTop, the main city of the kingdom called The King's Crown. The people here were quite restless, and had been for many years, because they had no King. Now tell me what kind of kingdom has no king? Especially one called The King's Crown. The people knew that without a king to rule them they couldn't be happy. The storms would be more wet, the pains would be more painful, and there wouldn't be anyone to protect them and encourage them during their hard times.
The King's Crown's king had always been a human, always. Period. And he had always been born in one of the villages surrounding CrownTop. The child was always born in the wee hours of the morning, to a generous and caring woman. Most particular was the sign of the walkins and the tenacins. The walkins would come out of the woodwork wherever the child was and would always care for him. The most amazing thing was that not one, but two tenacins would follow the king's mother around, starting the day before the king was to be born. They would, from that time on, assign themselves as the king's personal bodyguards. No matter where the mother went when she was with child or where the king went after he was born, the two tenacins would be right there. This was the strangest part of the whole event, because tenacins are not very friendly. Okay, that's putting it lightly. They are bitter against humans--so much so that the tenacins would attack and kill any human that they caught wandering into their land. So, to have two of them just decide to become docile and happy to protect a human with their lives is, shall we say, quite interesting.
So back to the restless night. It was the eighth anniversary of the passing of the last king. All the other new kings had been identified within a fortnight of the passing away of the previous king. But now, it had been eight years since the last king was alive. Over the years, the people had been able to live peaceably enough, without any major quarrels or wars or such, but there had been no real joy. Nobody had stopped doing the job that they were assigned by the last king, just because they didn't know what else to do. In the past eight years, there had been a few who had tried to take the crown, but the people would not have them as their king, and so they were thrown down into the dungeons.
Unbeknownst to the people, however, there was a king. And his name was Talan. But even he didn't know that he was king. He had never ever seen a walik or a tenacin, for that matter, so he never would have guessed it. He was, of course, a few days short of his eighth birthday on this sleepless night. Sadly enough, he didn't know that either.
He didn't know much about himself or his heritage. He knew that he was an adopted child of the blacksmith that lived in a town not but a couple of miles from CrownTop. He was given the basics--food, shelter--and he was also allowed to apprentice in the blacksmith shop. This helped him pass his time, even though he really couldn't do all that much in the shop, being as scrawny as he was. But he helped out as much as he could.
This night was just as sleepless for Talan as it was for the rest of The King's Crown. He sat on his bed in the blacksmith shop. There was a slight glow in the room from the coals that had been used earlier that day by the blacksmith. Talan could not sleep, so he whittled. He loved carving animals and people out of pieces of wood. He daydreamed while he did it. And it helped him get his mind off the loss of his mother. He sometimes thought that he remembered her, a woman with a quick smile, and twinkle in her eye. Soft, and she always smelled of a scent he couldn't remember, but for some reason he would never forget. Sometimes he caught himself walking a bit too close to women in the street, trying to catch their scents, but he didn't ever find that smell. He missed being loved. The blacksmith's wife was nice, but she didn't love him, and he missed that.
Talan came to from his reverie and noticed what he had carved. It was a large, sleek, four-legged animal with hair. The piece of wood that he was carving into was all brown, except for a bright, white upside-down teardrop in the middle of the animal's chest. This creature was majestic and extremely intricate. It looked like a wolf, with tall ears and a sleek body; but it's paws were almost like human hands, with massive claws. He had done this before--carved an animal from his subconscious--but this one looked life-like and ready to pounce on its prey.
"I think you should have a name." Talan told the carving. He sat for a couple of minutes thinking of the shape and texture of the animal he created and said "How about...Dragon's Bane?" And with that Talan laid down on his bed, put the carving next to his pillow, and fell asleep.
The moment after he was asleep, a walkin, named FilaFlis stepped right out of the side of the carving Talan had put down. The walkin wore trousers, a shirt, a vest, and a wide-brimmed hat--all of his clothing an off-purple color. He looked at Talan and said "He's not very big to be a dragon's bane, but you're the boss." With that the walkin touched the carving and slowly it became alive; the etched fur became actual fur, and the claws curved into alabaster white images of death. Slowly, starting at its claw tips, the carving became a perfect miniature living tenacin. It stood four inches high from paw to ear tip, and six inches long from tail tip to the tip of its nose.
It looked around and could not believe what it was seeing. It howled a tiny sounding shrill. Pained, distant. At the noise Talan shifted in his sleep, but didn't wake up. The tenacin's sun colored eyes flared more red when it saw the walkin standing on the edge of the cot, seemingly deep in thought. In a bound, the tenacin attacked, or what he thought was an attack. The tenacin bounced off an invisible bubble that held him back from the walkin.
FilaFlis looked at the tenacin and said, "Don't look at me, he's the one that named you. I really don't like your kind anyway. I was hoping he would make a puppy or a nice little worm. I love worms, they're so--hmmm... I think I might be getting sidetracked. Heh--heh. Anyway, I don't know what got into you, I came out of you when you were wood and therefore I am a part of you. As a tenacin you can't hurt anyone of your own kind and, ipso facto, you can't hurt me. Now come over here. There is one last thing I need to do."
Before the tenacin could react one way or the other, FilaFlis' arms grew in length, a preemptive movement. Not a flimsy rubber length, more so each bone in his arms grew longer until he looked like a deformed praying mantis with its arms fully extended. FilaFlis grabbed the tenacin, while also touching Talan, and, in a flash that filled the smithy, FilaFlis became a million little glowing points, all the same color of his clothing and in the shape of his body. Each point of light slowly blurred until there was a duplication of each point. One set of points seeped into the tenacin and the other into Talan.
At this both Talan and the tenacin stiffened as the walkin magic worked on each and every element within the two of them.
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