[OOC Note: This adventure was for a version of Fenley, Fenley Brittleleaf, created for an RP situation that never came to pass. I am rebooting the character for a new RP opportunity. Thus, the following writing does not apply to the current Fenley Plumwood. It is preserved for historical purposes only. After all, there could be two people with the name Fenley in Bree-land!]
That moment when taking a deep breath is equal parts of satisfaction, the refreshing filling of the lungs with cool, and discomfort, as merely breathing is a strain that almost aches those lungs. When the steepness of the climb up the hills towards Nen Harn is the best part of a sun-lit hike through bare-trunk forests, because the effort warms you, and every pause is an invigorating blast of cool to take the edge off the sweat and steam-breath of the hike. The untiring enthusiasm of the wolfhound, Jake, running in looping circles around and around the path and barking at anything that moves, or that could, potentially, move; the dog untroubled by the cold but also exhilarated by it. These were the moments that made the rest worth it. Everything else could wait.
There had never been a time he could remember when Fenley didn't love those moments. Even before he was sent to the big city to apprentice in carpentry to Gib Heathstraw, he went for hikes and climbs as often as he could. It was better when his father Nate led him. Or more often followed. Perhaps chased; Fenley tended to be off like an arrow springing from a bow at the sight of anything new, or merely forgotten. Nate leaned towards being too protective, perhaps common in a father raising a child without the mother who perished in giving him that son. For Nate, each hike was less about the joy of cresting the next hill and more about making sure no ankles were twisted. Bree, Nate hoped, would offer fewer chances to go on hikes he imagined to be dangerous, and more focus on learning a trade.
Long days practicing the most basic tools and techniques of wood-crafting, tiring, dull, and only occasionally providing a chance to feel the satisfaction of a job completed, a technique mastered, an accomplishment praised. More often, hour after hour of work mostly meant to pay for the learning: a master gives an apprentice a livelihood, a future, and incidentally room and board, but is paid in incessant labor, and even the best masters treated their apprentices as servants as well as students. Or wanted to; Gib spent so much time chasing Fenley down and putting him back to work that he was never sure if he was coming out ahead.
It wasn't a dislike of the work; Fenley just always had something else he'd also like to be doing. It made his apprenticeship long, and poor Gib might even have sent Fenley back to his father, had he not also had poor luck with Wincer, his other apprentice around the same time. And the boy had the knack: strong enough for the heavy labor, wiry enough to have a deft hand for detail-work, sharp enough to understand even the more complicated techniques, the ones that required him to think in multiple directions and envision forces and motions from many parts of a construction at once. All he lacked was discipline.
When Fenley got a bit older, rather than finding more focus, he simply found other things to draw his time away. There was song, for one. And not long after, but all the more distracting, there were girls. He had an easy charm, a roguish smile, and he probably broke more hearts than he would ever guess. But even at that age when boys find it hard to think of much else, even then, Fenley's first distraction was always the most basic, the most primal: a walk in the woods. Every season had its charms: the clarity in the air in spring that let him see mountains so far away he wasn't even sure he wasn't imagining them, the blossoms in the fields in summer like a riotous dance of joy given a form one could feel between one's toes, the sea of golden fire atop the Chetwood by autumn like the trees themselves singing in color, and that quality about winter's air that made every sensation seem sharp as the edge of broken ice-shards. If Nate had hoped the big city's narrow alleys and closed walls would discourage hikes, he gave Fenley too little credit: the city was built into the side of a hill well suited to climb, and surrounded by fields, forests, farms, streams, ruins, pastures, even marshes, a cornucopia of possible destinations within a day's brisk walk.
Wandering away from his work to crest a hill, or kiss a girl, or sing a song, or better yet all three in the same afternoon, delayed but did not prevent the completion of his apprenticeship. Perhaps that smidge of natural talent carried him. Maybe Gib just figured he'd be better off starting fresh with someone else, someone more diligent and with a bit less personality, and passed Fenley off to become someone else's problem. The someone else turned out to be Carver Greenleaf, which worked out well for Fenley. As a journeyman, he was no longer provided with room and board, since he was now paid in coin, but he needed to be saving up that coin to one day buy a master's license from the guild. The grand (some said mad) ambitions of Robb Thornley to turn his spacious farmland into a vast complex of barns and workhouses was providing a lot of opportunities in the guilded trades, and none more so than in carpentry, which let Fenley find his first journeyman work right next to the stables his father still tended, which in turn meant free room and board back home in his father's small cottage.
And better, a chance to see his dad, who he hadn't even realize he'd missed. Bree wasn't too far away to come visit, and he did -- sometimes with permission from his master, and sometimes as part of one of his hikes, when they ventured along the stream by the Greenway. But a visit every month or two isn't the same as being with the only family you've ever known. Now a man, but with no more solemnity or sense of purpose than any boy, Fenley didn't even know why he was glad to be back home. And in any case, there were more obvious reasons than mere familiarity. Like ready access to better hiking: the hills, the farmlands, the pasturage, the meadows and high woods of Bree-land's northern reaches, stretching on the lakes and mountains in the north.
And most of all, Jake. Nate had been more and more worried about the wolves proliferating in nearby hollows, who in turn fed themselves on the surplus of wild boar that had sprung up after the fair weather of the last few years. The horses of Thornley Farm, mostly draft horses, were too timid to brave even the baying of wolves, so Nate had set off to market in the home of Wincer's sister Ellie, and come back with a young wolfhound named Jake who was meant to guard the horses and keep the wolves at bay. Was it just luck that the dog Nate bought had the same wild, fun-loving demeanor as his son, or did perhaps something Nate didn't realize he sensed draw him to the pup that seemed most like the boy he also missed? However it happened, he ended up with a wolfhound that would rather run and chase and bark and frolic than actually menace wolves or protect horses. So it was inevitable that, on returning home, Fenley would find a fast friend in Jake, fur-clad kindred spirit. Which means every time Fenley shrugged off his work and went for a hike, Jake went too, leaving the horses unguarded. Poor Nate was forced to hire mercenary passersby to try to thin the wolf-packs.
There would be time later to get those joists framed and hauled into position. Carver didn't need to worry, it would all get done, and on schedule. Well, not exactly on schedule, but close enough, really. This was a day too crisp and clear to be wasted on carving dowels and fitting tenons. There was a hilltop not yet crested, the scent of a rabbit not yet barked at, a song not yet sung. The important things. In fact, the joists could wait for tomorrow.
