Something's Wrong

Estaria’s boots crunched on loose gravel as he walked away from the caravan’s morning bustle. The air carried a crisp chill, and his breath formed small clouds that dissipated quickly in the morning light. He needed these moments alone - time to process everything that had happened since joining the caravan.

Something caught his eye ahead - an unusual darkness spread across the road and into the surrounding grass. At first, he thought it might be shadow cast by the trees, but the morning sun sat too high for that. He took a few steps closer, squinting.

The dark carpet moved slightly in the breeze. Not shadow then. Something physical. His mind struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. Small, dark objects. Thousands of them.

“What in the world?” Estaria muttered, closing the distance. The morning dew had soaked through whatever littered the ground, giving everything a slight sheen.

When he finally stood at the edge of the mass, his breath caught. Bees. Dead bees stretched out before him, coating the road and surrounding area like a macabre blanket. He crouched down, careful not to touch them. Their tiny bodies looked perfectly intact - wings still attached, no signs of violence or disease that he could see. They appeared as if they had simply stopped mid-flight and dropped from the sky.

The smell hit him then - sweet and somehow wrong, like honey gone bad. He stood up quickly, taking a step back. His farming experience had taught him about the importance of bees, how crucial they were to crops. This many dead… it wasn’t natural.

“Noticed our little problem, did you?” Brenda’s voice came from behind him, making him jump slightly. He hadn’t heard her approach.

Estaria gestured at the scene before them. “What happened to them? Disease?”

“No disease we’ve ever seen.” Brenda moved to stand beside him, her weathered face grim. “Been seeing this more and more lately. Not just here - all along our usual routes. Sometimes it’s bees. Sometimes birds. Two weeks ago, we came across a field of dead rabbits.” She shook her head. “No marks on them. No obvious cause. They just… die.”

Estaria’s stomach churned. He’d seen animals die from illness, from injury, from predators. But this felt different. Wrong. “How long has this been happening?”

“Started noticing it about six months ago.” Brenda pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders. “Small things at first. Easy to dismiss. But it’s getting worse. More frequent. Larger numbers.”

The morning breeze stirred the bee corpses, making them shift and roll like black waves. Estaria took another step back. “Should we warn the nearby farms? If the bees are dying-”

“Already have. But what can they do?” Brenda’s voice carried a weight of helplessness he hadn’t heard from her before. “Can’t fight what you can’t see or understand.”

Estaria thought of the orchards back in Appledale, how they depended on bees for pollination. How many other farms would be affected? How many crops would fail? His mind spun with the implications.

“We should document this,” he said, pulling out his journal. “Location, number, date. Maybe if we track it, we can find a pattern.”

Brenda nodded approvingly. “Already doing that. Silas marks every occurrence on his maps. Haven’t found any rhyme or reason to it yet, but…” She trailed off, watching as Estaria sketched a quick map of the area and noted the details.

The sound of wagon wheels and horse hooves approached from behind them. The caravan was moving out. Estaria closed his journal and tucked it away, taking one last look at the devastating scene before him.

“We should get back,” Brenda said softly. “Nothing more we can do here.”

Estaria fell into step beside Brenda as they headed back toward the caravan. The crunch of their boots on gravel provided a steady rhythm, but he couldn’t shake the unsettling image of those dead bees from his mind.

“That’s not natural,” he said, glancing back over his shoulder. “Animals don’t just drop dead like that. Not in those numbers.”

Brenda adjusted her shawl against the morning chill. “Probably because Resh died.”

“Resh?” The name stirred something in Estaria’s memory - a half-remembered conversation, perhaps, or a story heard long ago.

“Mm.” Brenda’s weathered face softened with what looked like nostalgia. “Resh and Streacresh - they were best friends, you could say. Built all this.” She gestured at the landscape around them.

“Built what? Terrindral?” Estaria’s brow furrowed.

“The whole thing.” Brenda ducked under a low-hanging branch. “The story goes that Resh came here when there was nothing but chaos. Raw power, no shape to it. That was Streacresh - pure energy, no direction. Resh gave it form, helped create the world we live in now.”

The morning sun broke through the trees, casting dappled shadows on the path ahead. Estaria considered her words, trying to reconcile them with what he knew of the world. “But something happened?”

“About twenty years ago, Resh died.” Brenda’s voice carried a hint of sadness. “Nobody knows exactly how or why. But since then, it’s just been Streacresh, trying to hold everything together alone.”

“Hold what together?”

“Everything.” Brenda swept her arm in a wide arc. “The land, the sea, the sky - it all needs maintaining. Resh understood how to channel Streacresh’s power properly. Now?” She shook her head. “Streacresh does its best, but without Resh to guide it… well, you saw those bees.”

The distant sound of wagon wheels and horses grew louder as they approached the caravan. Estaria processed this new information, matching it against the strange occurrences he’d witnessed lately - the unseasonable snow, the dead animals, the subtle wrongness that seemed to pervade certain places.

“So all these deaths, these strange happenings - they’re because Streacresh is struggling to maintain balance?”

“That’s what some think.” Brenda paused, watching a flock of birds wheel overhead. “Others say it’s more complicated. That Resh’s death changed something fundamental about how Streacresh’s power flows through Terrindral.”

The morning sun warmed Estaria’s back as he walked beside Brenda, his mind churning with questions about Streacresh and Resh. The idea that two beings could shape an entire world both fascinated and troubled him.

“Have you ever talked to Streacresh?” The question slipped out before he could stop himself.

Brenda’s steady pace faltered for just a moment. Her shoulders tensed, and she adjusted her shawl, though the morning wasn’t particularly cold anymore. “No,” she said, her usual warm tone carrying an edge of discomfort. “No one has, not since Resh.”

The path curved ahead of them, worn smooth by wagon wheels and countless feet. Estaria watched a beetle scurry across their path as he considered her answer. “But then how do you know all this? If Streacresh doesn’t speak to anyone…”

Brenda’s weathered hands twisted in her shawl. The sound of the caravan grew louder around the bend, metal clanking against metal, voices calling out morning greetings. “We’re almost back to camp,” she said, her voice brightening with forced cheerfulness. “You should run ahead and get some breakfast before it’s all gone. Keely made those potato cakes you like.”

Estaria stopped walking. After a moment, Brenda stopped too, though she didn’t turn to face him immediately. When she did, her expression was carefully neutral, but her eyes held something - worry? Fear?

They stood there, the morning breeze rustling the leaves above them, neither speaking. The silence stretched between them like a physical thing, heavy with unspoken words and carefully guarded secrets.

A shout from the camp broke the moment. Estaria nodded once, then turned and walked toward the breakfast fires, leaving Brenda standing on the path. He could feel her eyes on his back as he walked away, but he didn’t turn around.

The smell of wood smoke and fried potatoes grew stronger as he approached the camp. Everyone moved with purpose - packing tents, loading wagons, tending to horses. Normal morning activities that suddenly felt like a carefully choreographed dance, hiding something just beneath the surface.

As he walked into camp, Estaria’s mind churned with questions. He thought about the sigil in his father’s ledger, about Leona’s secretive behavior, about all the subtle signs he’d been seeing but not truly understanding. Somehow, he felt certain that everything connected back to this story of Resh and Streacresh - he just couldn’t see how yet.

Orin waved them over to the breakfast fire, where steam rose from a pot of porridge. The familiar scents and sounds of the camp wrapped around Estaria like a comfortable blanket, but underneath it all, he couldn’t shake the image of those dead bees - silent witnesses to a world slowly falling out of balance.