All Chapters of Foundling: Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

Hunter rose to the blush of dawn, neck stiff, head heavy, nose clogged. He needed to get out. The closeness of the place wore on him, blunted his senses. Staggering through the door, the loam of the earth, the grass, and the splash of light greeted him like a missing friend.Tete blurred into sight with great ambling strides that quickly covered the distance between them. Hunter met him a few paces beyond the door and was engulfed in fur and muscle and love. He grabbed tufts of the soft fur, pressing himself against Tete’s chest. Tete lolled his great, shaggy head, rubbing it against his friend. Tete huffed his pleasure and Hunter had the temerity to remember how to laugh—softly, quietly.Returning from the well, Poe witnessed all, excluded from the private space where no one else existed. He continued into the way station giving them every opportunity he could, for soon enough he would have to break that bond.Poe set the bucket on the scarred table and began gathering items to break

Comforted by soft fur and the gentle rise and fall of Tete’s side, Hunter gazed into the deep azure bowl of the heavens lit by a dense swirl of speckled constellations chased by a spectral moon. Hunter still marveled at a spectacle he had never witnessed before, the newness and strangeness of it all. Within the forest, beneath its canopy which hid the sky, there was little occasion to look above because danger lay in the darkness before or behind.Hurriedly, so that he almost thought he had imagined it at first, a blaze of blue flame streaked across the sky, then another, then some of red and orange until the sky was crisscrossed by those streaks of flame. He was lost in the mystery of it all until he felt Tete stiffen, his breathing quickening.“They come,” Hunter said, sitting up from the soft pelt.“From which direction?” Poe asked in a low voice.“Where the sun rises,” Hunter replied.Poe stood up, looking in that direction. “The east. Can you sense their approach?”“Not yet. They

Bottom End began as a simple way station for the constant flow of settlers having scrimped and saved whatever they could to make the journey to the New Land. Over the succeeding years and decades, with the extension and expansion of the road to the emerging settlements and farms and ranches, had come the drovers and merchants. The station became an Inn, and the Inn became another, and another, and another, and then a blacksmith’s, an apothecary’s, a butcher’s, a cooper’s, a brewer’s, a miller’s, a tailor’s, a mason’s, a carpenter’s, a chandler’s, a tanner’s, and all the other innumerable trades and crafts and vices needed to support a town and, then, a city sprawled along the base of the mountain and ending at the river on one end and the plains on another.In a room in an Inn situated in a prosperous section of the city, Hunter awoke to the smell of woodsmoke linseed oil. Light flowed into the room from a set of windows on the far wall and an alcove behind the bed on which he lay. A

She had no children of her own, but had had a hand in the rearing of many a child to adulthood, nursing their ailments and their ills in that span, and was now having a hand in the rearing of their children, but there was something about this strange, slight youth (his slight build that could do with a few good, hearty meals) that brought out all her protective instincts. Maybe it was his large, dark puppy-dog eyes, his long, dark matted locs that she wanted to smooth.She wanted to reach out and hug him. She did not think Hunter had had many of those recently. He was starved for affection, a shoulder to cry on and let the tears flow like rain to wash away the layers of reserve built up over time to guard against further heartache.Unable to resist she reached out and caressed one of those long hanging locs draped across his shoulders. Her action startled him. “For the brief time you are here in my home, if there is anything I can help you with, or anything that you want to talk to me

Memories, long held at bay of home began to invade his thoughts. The long, flat farmlands he worked with his father and brothers that Becka and her husband, Jarrod, now managed; getting up early, just before dawn, lighting the lamps as they readied themselves for the days work. He wondered how much the farm had changed since his departure. Becka was very ambitious and she had married a man who followed her ambitions. Their only limits on their goals were the people they could get to farm the land. Carl, with no even a year separating them in age. Their fight down at the river when he had nearly drowned because of a punch from Carl that had lain him unconscious beneath the rushing current. Unresisting, the current had taken him and with only Carl there to pull him to safety and preserve his life. After that, they had never raised a hand in anger against the other. They were good memories, true memories. He hoped and liked to believe that there was not too much distance between the boy