Chapter 1
(FeyGen Prompt #5, Setting, Hero, Rising Action and Major Conflict)
Once upon a time, in the clean overcrowded hamlet of Cadfelham, there lived an old man by the name of Calufray, whose name meant “Violet.” The name was given to him by his father, Wapasha, when Calufray’s mother died in childbirth. Violets, Wapasha knew, were his mate’s favorite flower, and his newborn would remind him of her every time he spoke the name.
It has been many years since then, and Calufray’s life has smelled little of flowers. Growing up on a chilly mountainside, where the rain sprinkled constantly, gave him plenty of opportunity to smell the violets, but Calufray had other things to occupy his mind.
You see, Calufray was born with a mal-formed neck, which appeared to have a knob on the back of it the size of his fist. For this reason Calufray always preferred to wear heavy coats with thick collars to avoid notice. Even from a young age he was strong and hardy, but sometimes foolish and wavering. Though his heart was good, no man’s law could touch him—he was wild as the sea.
His father, Wapasha, was a siren, one of the merfolk who came from the Siren’s Sea. He had fallen in love with a human woman and left the sea behind, pledging himself to her and none else. It was this pledge that always drove him to do his duty to his mate, and later his child. But Wapasha always looked over his shoulder at the sea, fearing he might be forgotten by his people.
This fear pulled him farther and farther and farther out into the ocean, leaving Calufray for hours, sometimes days at a time. But duty always brought him back to shore—to Calufray. “If only you could swim as I can,” Wapasha always said. “But you will never measure up, will you?”
Calufray could never satisfy his father, he knew; he could never swim as the sirens do. But it was not for lack of trying. He had to find a way to let his father rejoin his people. Come maelstrom or high seas, he would find a way, though he feared that evil might be necessary…
At length Wapasha’s prolonged separation from the sea left him weak and reduced to resting in Cadfel Cove, a shallow bay on the outskirts of Cadfelham. He could live outside of the water no longer, and his weakened state would never allow him to swim among the powerful waves on his own again. But his tale is his own, and Calufray’s continued on.
His years took him from one side of the mountain to the other, becoming a boatwright, then a sailor. He was a skilled bully, and was hired for his muscle, as he could climb the rigging faster than any other hand on deck.
In his later age Calufray became the first mate of the Trawler, a vessel that took him into the Merrow’s Sea. It was there that he first saw and fought for the affection of a young merrow lass named Chang. She was frail, and clever, but nervous whenever Calufray would speak to her, as if she had never spoken to a man before. Chang insisted that she could not leave her home, and Calufray made his peace with leaving her behind, though his heart remained with her, much as his father’s had remained with the sea.
The next time he found his way back to home port, Calufray visited the hamlet’s fairy ring, a ring of stones in Cadfel Cove where the halflings of Cadfelham would come to wish for the hearts of their desired lovers. Here, now, Calufray wished for Chang’s heart, and pleaded with the fey to bring her to him.
And as it happened, Chang had come, but she was not sent by the fey, and it was not to pledge her heart to him. Unbeknownst to Calufray, Chang had curiously followed the Trawler back to its home port. She found Calufray at the ring of stones, and overheard his vain petition for her heart.
Eavesdropping further, she heard Calufray speak as if to the resting soul of his mother, speaking of his desire to keep his father safe and happy away from the sea, no matter the cost. “I finally understand why you wanted Father to stay with you, away from his home, for so many years.” For, in Calufray’s mind, he would have a love so devoted that he would leave his home forever, and—would that he could—take his father with him back to his homeland to die among his people.
But Chang did not know this, and had heard enough. To her ears, this Calufray and his mother were nothing but cruel slavers, baiting sea-folk with feigned love and allowing them to waste away in the shoals. For this, and for the insult of pleading with the fey to override her own wishes, Chang vowed to destroy Calufray and his hamlet.
So it was that she came upon Calufray’s father, Wapasha, in his convalescence in the shallows of Cadfel Cove. A clever merrow, Chang easily manipulated him, pretending to be the reincarnation of his long lost love, come to take him back to his homeland.
It was then that Calufray found the merrow attending to his father adoringly, and—being slow to understand the context of this visit—Calufray wondered whether his wish to the fairies had come to pass before he had even finished uttering it. But it was not so, and Chang laid out her intentions clearly.
“I am not here for you,” she said slowly, with veiled intent so that she might maintain her ruse. “Your father is right where he belongs. Our home—yours, mine, and your father’s—is the sea now. I will take him there, but first you will set fire to the prison of a home that has kept him bound to the shore for all these years. When I see the flames dancing over the mountainside, I will give your father what he wants and you will be free to seek your true love. Do we understand one another?”
Calufray nodded, seeing no other recourse. And so he set fire to Cadfelham, returning to find Chang and his father gone. The cries of the suffering grew louder from Cadfelham, and presently he turned to watch the flames rise up before him, now horrified at the evil he had done. The heat pressed upon him from one side, and the cold of the sea—the cold of the merrow’s heart—from the other. Calufray fell to the sandy shore of Cafel Cove and added his salty tears to the lapping waves.
He slept there that night, heedless of the roar of the water, ignorant of the moans of Cadfelham’s dead. But one of the hamlet’s dead, a bórean man, rose up in Calufray’s dreams, a wispy shadow of his living self.
“A hex upon you, Calufray, son of Wapasha,” said the ghost of the molefolk, his movements abrupt, his voice high and filled with emotion. His academic coverings were charred in places and burned away in others. “I want to return home, but alas, the flames of your torch have removed that possibility from me. And so you, too, shall never know the rest of home again. Begone!”
And with a snap of Calufray’s head, he awoke. The night was dark, the flames subdued by the drizzle of rain over Cadfelham. The spirit’s voice had shot through his mind like a bullet, and he turned and ran to the docks, finding the first empty boat he could—one that he had made with his own hands—and set out on the sea without a thought of return.
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