Ren was the last to finish his dinner as usual, his father almost seemed to inhale his food and his mother wasn’t really the talkative type when there was food in front of her. So, it didn’t take long for them to begin discussing Ren’s strange bird. Asking Ren questions about it only made him take longer to finish eating and trying to describe it to them was a task that Ren struggled with.

“It was a cool looking bird mom! It was all dark with dark eyes and a dark shinny beak. I can’t wait to go to the temple to ask about it. Mr. Terang has a lot of books, maybe he has one on birds!”

His mother responded slowly, “I’m sure he does. I wonder just how many books are in there…”

“To many. I tried to count them last year, but he top shelves are too high.”

His father replied thoughtfully, “It is a rather large collection. I’m sure he has books on the bird’s native to this area at least…”

“There are a few people that travel out of the village on occasion. Maybe we should ask them about it too.” His mother offered.

“Did the bird look mean, or maybe hurt? It’s not often that birds come and hang out on windowsills when people are around. Maybe we should tell the Fletcher brothers and Lewis Blackburn about it.” His father asked.

“Captain Blackburn honey, you know he doesn’t like to be called Lewis anymore.”

His father waved it away. “I’ve known him since he was ten years old, calling him captain is still strange to me. But I’ll try to do better about in in the future.”

His mother nodded in satisfaction.

“Well, it didn’t seem mean, and it was small… like really small. Maybe it was hungry. It was staring into the kitchen.”

His father laughed, “That must have been it. It could smell my wonderful cooking! Next time maybe I’ll invite it in since it seems to have good taste.”

Last year his father had indeed done just that, but with a raccoon that had been hanging around the house, who had probably been lured in by the smell of the food.

Her mother glanced icily at her father, “To be clear, you will not bring another live animal into this house to try and feed it your cooking. It took a week to get the burn marks out of the kitchen floor.”

“Ah yes well… Ren, your mother and I have been done eating for quite some time, was it not to your liking?”

“No, it’s delicious. I just keep getting distracted by the conversation.”

“Alright well then, I think your mother and I are going to start getting ready to go to the meeting. Hurry up so you will have plenty of time to get ready.”

“Okay!” Ren said as he returned his full attention to his food. It’s not that Ren ate slowly, its just that he ate a lot compared to his parents, he ate a lot in comparison to everyone really. Because of this he didn’t really like eating with his friends since Gena seemed to eye him strangely when he did. He could eat and eat but never really seemed to gain any weight, in fact, the only reason that he would stop eating is because he ran out of food. With him around his family never had to worry having leftovers. He had never felt especially “full” in his life. All in all, it was just an annoyance that he could do without, so he kept his eating outside the house limited to just snacking.

Once he was done eating, he cleaned himself up in the washbasin and headed back inside. Entering the bedroom, he saw both his mother and father finishing getting ready. With both their backs turned to him he couldn’t help but compare them. Her mother was thin, with her skin unblemished. Which was an oddity in the village. Most people had some sort of skin blemish from the sun or working with their hands. But she did not. Her figure was angular and sleek, reminiscent of an obsidian blade, sharp enough to cut just by looking at it. The dresses that she normally wore covered up the fact that her body was toned and muscular. She normally looked like a fragile maiden when dressed, but looking at her now, she gave off a clear vibe of quiet danger.

His father on the other hand was different. He had only seen him a few times with his shirt off but what he had seen was burned into his mind. His body was covered in deep, jagged, and disfiguring scars, and at the base of his neck, centered on his back, was a large brand about the size of his father’s hand. The brand was angular, with three interlocking triangles and six short straight lines at the top. What it meant, he never asked. The scars were easy to cover up by wearing long sleeves and pants. The scars on his hands were easy to wave away by saying he was clumsy with tools growing up, but anyone could tell the old wounds on his hands were done by a far crueler instrument than a pair of shears. The brand peaked out the back of his collar no matter what he did but it wasn’t very noticeable since it was on the back of his neck. To him his father was the jokester, a comedian, someone who could take a bad situation and make you laugh. But moments like this made Ren think about the type of man he was in his past.

He had once asked him why he hid the scars since Ren thought they made him look cool. But he had responded “the scars make me look dangerous, and its best to not scare people I don’t know of, and the people I do know… well the marks make them uncomfortable.”

Noticing his presence without looking in his direction his father called out, “Make sure you wear something nice. We don’t want to make a bad first impression with the rep.”

Ren strode over to his corner of the room, pulled back the curtain and reached into the box that held his nicer clothes. Living in the village didn’t allow their family many niceties, however, the Volands made sure to keep at least one set of clothes nice and clean for these very occasions. He started putting on the outfit, a simple set of dark brown trousers and a light tan tunic with strings near the collar, both of which his mother had tailored to fit him, and a leather belt around his middle. Pushing his hair back to keep it out of his eyes was the most he could do, like his father’s, his hair never seemed to want to cooperate. The only shoes he had were his work shoes, but he did his best to clean them up.

Turning around, he saw that his parents were waiting for him to finish up. His father was wearing the same outfit as him but with long sleeves and gloves, but Ren couldn’t help but be jealous of the way his muscles filled out the tunic. The brand at his father’s neck just barely peaked out of the collar on either side of his neck, but his scars were entirely covered. His mother wore a forest green dress, with what appeared to be gold accents, that clung to her frame around her chest and hips and fell to mid-calf. Both stood together, smiles on their faces and eyebrows raised as they waited patiently for Ren to finish getting ready.

“Well now that you’re finished getting ready shall we be off?”

Ren walked over to the door, “I guess, I’m pretty excited to see the rep!”

His mother frowned, “just make sure you call him Representative in front of him. We don’t want to make him think that we don’t give him the proper respect.”

His father grabbed Ren as he passed by, putting him in a headlock and ruffling his hair. “Let’s get going. We don’t want to be late.” His father lifted Ren off the ground, still holding him in a headlock, and carried him outside releasing him as they passed the door frame.

Ren, after he stopped laughing, led the way to the town center. It didn’t take long for them to hear the grumbling and muttering of the villagers up ahead. Ren could see Luke Fletcher, the oldest of the Fletcher brothers, standing on the lip of the central well. He appeared to be counting heads among the crowd and once he saw the Voland Family approaching, he waved and called out to them.

Ren’s father waved back to Luke and gestured to the opposite end of the plaza. “Looks like we got here just in time.”

Ren looked past the crowd of villagers to see Angela Silver and her mother, Gertrude, approaching slowly. Angela always had to help her mother move around, and because of this she never tended to leave the house. This must be important for them to leave their home.

After Ren and his family joined the crowd, it began to quiet down. Looking for the reason why Ren saw Corbett move out from between the crowd and the Representatives Manor onto a hastily made stage with a podium.

“It looks like all of the families are here” he said as his eyes scanned the crowd in front of him, resting on Luke who gave him a thumbs up. “Quiet down now.” He turned and started towards the Manor. “I’ll go get the representative before he thinks we forgot about him.” He grumbled as he made his way over.

The crowd was dead quiet as they all craned their necks, looking over each other, to try and get the first look at the Representative.

Ren stared at the back of Corbett’s head as he made his way over manor. Just as he was about to open the door, he thought that maybe Corbett’s head looked a little shinier than it usually was, and a small laugh escaped his lips as he wondered if he had polished it.

Corbett knocked on the door and after a short delay it opened. Out walked a man, dressed in a dark red military style outfit with simple epaulettes and silver trimming. The outfit was simple but elegant, the outfit portrayed a sense of humility and uniformity. His dark black hair was slicked back, and he appeared to have a long silvery scar on the left side of his face. He walked casually up to the stage with Corbett smiling all the way, stopping just before it and clasping Corbett on the back before he stepped onto the stage.

Standing on the stage he looked over the crowd without saying anything at first. Ren felt like his eyes lingered longer on his section of the crowd than anywhere else, but before he could wonder why the representative began to speak.

“Good evening, everyone.” A well-practiced smile flashed, marred only slightly by his scar, which seemed to add to his attractiveness then take away from it. “My name is Lucus Morningstar, I am the representative of Viscount McBride and have been entrusted with the further development of your lovely village.”