"There it is, boy."
The old man kept his voice even, his tone noncommittal. Before them, in the middle of the town square, rested a large hunk of dark gray stone. Rising toward the overcast sky as if it were a silvery stalk that had grown forth from the rock's surface, a martial plant destined to one day bear blood-red fruit, was a sword. No, the sword. The only one that would ever matter.
Too bad the sun's swaddled by clouds. A voice, that of a man barely past apprentice age. Amused, mocking. A shaft of light descending from the heavens would be an appropriately poetic touch right now, don't you think?
A sigh like moving wind rustling desiccated, parchment-thin leaves. An unnecessary adornment and a waste of power besides. This second voice was rough, dry, its sound that of two tree limbs rubbing together, bark crumbling, flaking away, falling to the forest floor.
The old man ignored the voices for now, confident the youth in his charge could not hear or see their owners. Even to him, they were barely more than half-glimpsed shadows, the younger to the right of the stone, the far older to the left. But he didn't need to see them clearly to know who and what they were: in many ways, he knew them as well as--if not better than--he did himself.
The boy, still little more than a child, really, eyed the sword embedded in the stone with undisguised doubt. "I don't know. It looks..."
"What?"
"Stuck," the youth said.
The old man fought to repress a smile. The shadowy figures left their positions on either side of the stone and walked toward them. The old man noticed, but paid no mind. He shrugged, trying to keep the gesture from looking as calculated as it was.
"You have need of a sword; there's one waiting. Take it or don't. It's all the same to me."
The younger shadow let out a barking laugh. The older shook his head stiffly, the movement accompanied by the pained sound of a tree branch creaking under a heavy weight. The two shadows grew more distinct as they drew closer to the old man, their features sharpening, becoming clearer. Still, the youth took no note of them. For him, they didn't exist, which was exactly as it should be. Had to be.
)
