Day 10 - Pushing Toward the Moors

...Baeddan. Baeddan was a large man by Welsh standards. He towered over most of the village and had since he was almost 10. Now a man, he was regarded as a giant. And while outside of his home village it was assumed he carried the presence of an ogre (the name "Baeddan" translates to "boar" in English, a birth day "gift" from his drunken oaf of a father), the villages knew him as kind and generous. On a typical day, he could be found helping merchants heft heavy bags onto and off of carts, or moving bales of bedding and feed on local farms. He was of average intelligence, but given his size and the hands that came with it, he was not given to handiwork, and so apprenticeships eluded him. However, the people around him were kind and took care of his needs by keeping him constantly employed with various jobs that required mere strength. Renaldo was anxious to catch up with Baeddan and reconnect their old friendship. It was Baeddan who had shown him the various methods with which to use one's own body to catch the better of an opponent in hand-to-hand combat. Those were youthful pursuits, but none the less important skills to master when one spent as much time on the road as Renaldo did. Mind you, Renaldo did not use his weight against Brother Frederic. By the saints, Renaldo was not even in the room at the time! But if one were to compare the shifts of tonnage and leverage of body to body with the seemingly abstract placement of abbey furniture at the time of… "Hail!" called Renaldo as he spotted a shepherd boy. "How near are we to Llanfair?" The boy looked up at him in surprise and shook his head. He hadn't understand the question. He tried again in Welsh, "Ble mae'r Llanfair?" His grasp of this western language was sparse, but he was confident it would serve him in wayfinding, at the very least. The boy raised an eyebrow, but allowed the question. He pointed his staff to the east and the nearly setting sun. "Ar ôl machlud haul." After sunset. He drew his staff back to his body and turned toward the rocky outcrop nearby. Renaldo could see the remnants of a meal scattered on the stone surfaces. The boy caught him looking toward the foodstuffs and paused, briefly before quickening his pace. He reached his makeshift dinner table in a few strides, swept the remains into a sack, and hurried off between the many boulders that grew into a veritable forest of stone that continued as far as the eye allowed. ***** Renaldo was alone again. He was about to continue on his way at a quickened pace when a movement in his peripheral vision caught his eye. A flash of black fur. A spector? An Welsh Pony! It had to be! With their regal bodies, the well-tempered ponies were beloved riding horses of the Welsh in this region. They afforded a tall mount and were hardy for the wet weather. They were good companions in this cold region, when you were fortunate enough to have and break one. Renaldo had not seen these moorish ponies since his childhood, and a rush of memories filled his mind without warning. The moors. An inn in the village. Barmaids. Strangers. Brawls. And more, too. His mother. His brothers. His baby sister. His baby sister's burial. And the undersized pony that bore her tiny casket to the church yard. He had to pause now, as if this flood of memories had pulled him like a fierce swell from the Irish Sea. He pushed back against the thoughts and began breathing--without realizing it, he had been holding his breath and now he filled his lungs with steady air. Welsh air.