Daewood

The veneer of respectability is thin at best. When the wind shifts, we find our skirts blown above our heads. Daewood was a respectable community at the edge of wilderness. The good townsfolk pulled tight their walls when the sun's light extinguished each night. Moon and starlight were vulgar sorts of pleasures which no one could bear the humiliation to indulge. Not even lovers dare breach the vacuum of night time. For you see, when night fell in esteemed Daewood, the shadow of wilderness ensconced the town. Forest beasts, prairie beasts, those from underground and those from the heavens descended into the streets and all of the outside was part of the wilderness territory. It was far too dangerous to venture out. It was even more dangerous to welcome someone into from the nighttime darkness. The old kindly miller many years ago once opened his door past dusk fall to a strange sick woman and her child. When light came back into the world and the townsmen reclaimed their town streets, everyone was astounded to find where the mill once stood a giant oak grew and there was no sign of the miller from that day on. Or so the story goes. Now I know you are a cleaver reader and are on the brink of asking me, "But if no one saw the miller let the sick woman and child into his mill in the darkness, how does anyone know that is what happened? How do we know the miller didn't take a vacation or some other journey?" My answer is simple. When you live in a town at the boundary between respectability and wilderness, the stories of such secrets are carried in the wind. For the poor miller, it is the only testament to his great heart for nothing else of him remains. But, sometimes, a townsman will enter into the wilderness and survive to tell his story. And that is where the story of Tims begins. I will tell you now, he survives to tell his story with lips and teeth and tongue. He does not have to depend on the wind to spread his deeds. I will also tell you that Tims before the wilderness and Tims after the wilderness are like the day and night, two sides of the same coin. But anymore? I can not say; this is Tims's story.