Campfire Story

The hill people were not always Melders. After strife on the coast forced the people to disperse inland, some chose the hills. Preferring the seclusion that warrens and mines offered (They weren't very social back then). They only met together once a year, in the spring.

One year at the Meeting On the Commons, everyone was surprised when the Melpine family didn't show up. The Melpines were more nosy and outgoing then most of the clans, and weren't known to miss the trade fair and festivities. Fearing a plague had taken them (and perhaps hoping to claim their mines) a group of neighbors ventured up the hill to investigate.

No one answered when the neighbors called into the eery mine. Venturing cautiously, afraid that the air would betray them to disease, the search party kept going. The damp walls revealed nothing, but as the neighbors ventured deeper into the family warren, a frantic whimpering whispered softly down the tunnels.

They rounded the corner, one by one stopping in shock.

Gathered round the hearth were a collection of golden people! Glued together in a desperate struggle for freedom, were the remains of the Melpines. Six family members, all with a hand on another and conflicting looks of wonder and horror on their faces. The search party was so shocked that at first they didn't see the seventh; three year old Mite Melpine sat beside his mother, struggling to free himself from her stiff, metal grasp. The desperate child had rubbed his skin raw, and by the grime and state of him, it was difficult to say how long he'd been stuck there. Snapped from his shock by Mite's wail, Carnen High-hill hurried to calm the child, and the neighbors quickly freed him and took him away from the traumatic place.

Those first few months, the mystery of what happened to the Melpines buzzed all over the hill country. What had happened to those poor people? and even more bewildering... How had Mite escaped his family's fate?

[A short story from Tales and Lore of the Old Kingdom]