The Quiet Folk
[Time Skip: Year 3]
You think itâs just you. You hate yourself for being gullible, for being childish, in the way that you tend to trust what people say. Everyone else out there seems to be able to tell the difference. Makes it like a punch in the guts when you find out whatâs true ainât what you know. Sometimes you end up wondering if youâre the only one who believes like that.
Itâs a funny thing for a newspaper man to not know when people are lying. But what does a newspaper man care much, so long as the paper sells? Even if heâs wrong, the headline the next day can declare yesterdayâs informant lying scum, and the news continues on with a life of itâs own... the newspaper man just has to hold on, really.
I didnât mean to start a paper, honest. I just wrote down what people told me so I wouldnât forget. I wrote down what happened to me, so I wouldnât forget that, either. One of the first things people ask an orphan is âWhere didja come from?â and only the youngest ones donât have an answer. Everyone else has a story. A place they lived, the people who were there. Except me. I was one of the oldest ones at the orphanage, and hadnât been there all that long, I donât think. Where did I come from? Home. Home is where I came from. But I didnât know where that was, or who my parents were, or who had been taking care of me before I came to the orphanage, or hell, how I learned to read n write. It was just... home... somewhere, out there, somewhere not-here in the great wild wastes. My story was blank, so I started writing it all down. It wasnât until people started to ask to read my notes enough that I thought Iâd put them together in a paper.
Most people donât expect me to be to as quiet as I am when they meet me. I donât mean to be quiet. Itâs just that next to the others, my voice is softer, my words fewer. I donât mind, it means people sometimes forget Iâm there and I get a chance to watch them, hear them, without all the extra... stuff. People act different, talk different, when they donât think youâre paying attention. Itâs not that they mean to. Just people bein people, I suppose.
Imagine my surprise to find others like me. Not that forget, so much, but that are quiet and tend to believe you more often than not. If youâve got a moment, Iâll tell you how I found âem...
When Bravo went up in the acrid stormcloud of heat and death during Hiway Robâs Stampede, everyone left, cause there really wasnât much left to call a place. I left with the rest, staying with Ramguard at Castle Falken for a time. Theyâre a rambunctious, lively crew, used to protect Tent City in Bravo-That-Was. Lion-Hearted folk, but in need of doctors, crafters, and the like to make their Castle survive and thrive. I tried to go out in recruitment, hit up Doc Ezraâs Black Diamond Trading Company to beat feet along the supply lines. Weâd hit up the different settlements and Iâd grab what news here and there I could to help get people to places that needed them. I consider Doc Ezra a friend, heâs decidedly been proven the most honest and trustworthy man in Bravo-That-Was, as dangerous a title as that may be to hold. Lucky for someone like me to have met up with him when things were quieter, I think. Not many one can trust out there like that.
Anyhow. When a newspaper man gets wind of homesteads cropping up in what was a smoking, irradiated crater not a year before, he tends to want to get evidence of it with his own eyes. But by jove, even hearing of it wasnât enough to prepare me for the sight. People were already working the land, trying to coax blasted earth to bring forth bounty. And they were succeeding. How, Iâll never quite know. Sam and Jed Lovelace were the first couple I came across, their house along the outskirts of the settlement. They invited me in, let me stay a few days while I ranged the place, taking in all the changes these people had wrought. They had come from all over, converging together here. They go by the family name Lovelace, and theyâre the Quiet Folk. And they were like me. They were all like me, with the believing... and the quiet. Itâs the damnedest thing.
