Enigma

 (From Shierra's Journal)

Location: The High Ridges, Approaching Nadaran

We have finally made camp on a narrow stone shelf overlooking the northern valleys. My thighs are aching, my shoulder is stiff, and I spent the last six hours with a frantic gnome gripping my waist for dear life while his brass inkwells clattered against my lower back.

But despite the sheer exhaustion of the flight, I must admit a stubborn truth to these pages: it felt incredibly good to be back on horseback.

A Memory of Wood and Leather

As the chestnut mare navigated the steep, winding mountain trail this afternoon, my mind drifted back to a quiet sunlit clearing on the far side of our village in the Elven kingdom. I could almost smell the crushed clover and the sharp, crisp scent of my mother’s canopy-woven stables.

I was barely twelve summers old, trembling as I stood before a sleek, silver-maned palfrey. My human father had spent three days in his workshop proudly crafting a practice saddle for me. It was a classic human design - clunky, heavy, and heavily structured with thick iron rivets and reinforced padding to keep a rider safely locked into place.

My mother, Kirriana, had walked into the yard, her long elven ears twitching with immediate, unadulterated displeasure the moment she laid eyes on it.

“Elves do not need so much leather to encumber these poor beasts,” Kirriana sighed, her voice dripping with that effortless, airy elven superiority as she ran a slender finger over the thick stirrup straps.

“It is an architectural insult to the animal's spine. A true rider guides with balance and spirit, not by strapping themselves down in a leather fortress.”

My father had simply let out a hearty, booming human laugh, wiping the grease from his hands onto his apron as he stepped up to kiss her cheek.

“Well, humans are not as elegant and light-footed as elves, remember, my love. We need a bit of structure to keep from tasting the dirt.”

Kirriana had scoffed, but she had let the saddle remain.

Sitting here by the fire, watching our two new farm horses chew their evening grain beside a large black destrier, I am deeply glad I survived those agonizingly long, conflicting lessons. If my mother hadn't forced me to master the fluid weight-shifting of the elves, and if my father hadn't taught me how to handle the heavy, rigid mechanics of human tack, navigating these treacherous limestone switchbacks today would have broken my neck.

The Enigma of the Knight

But my relief is completely overshadowed by a growing, nagging curiosity.

Who is Reis, truly?

I cannot stop thinking about what happened at the farmstead. He is a ragged knight errant, wrapped in a tattered white cloak, fleeing from hired swords with nothing but his weapon and the clothes on his back. By all accounts of the frontier, a desperate man in his position should have taken those horses by force and left the farmer weeping in the mud. Instead, Reis paid for them. Legally.

And it wasn't just a handful of cheap copper. To buy two fully-saddled, healthy frontier mounts on a whim requires serious wealth. Is he a high-born noble masquerading as a rogue wanderer? Is he some disgraced scion of a wealthy merchant house who keeps a private fortune tucked away in his boot? He does wear large boots, by the way.

I am completely fascinated by him, and it infuriates my elven pride. He carries himself with the rigid honour of a man who commands armies, yet he protects a nameless half-elf commoner like me as if it were a royal decree.

Mehr/Morohtar is already asleep in the branches above, and Dashiel is snoring softly against his ledger. Across the embers, Reis is still awake, methodically polishing his gauntlets by the light of the fire. His face is an unreadable mask of stone. I am going to find out what secrets are buried beneath that iron chest piece - even if I have to kick his horse to get the answers. 

Scratch that. His horse can kick back.