Words might describe the horrors you now leave behind, but you choose not to speak them. Images that others could never understand flash in your mind with every mud-soaked step you take.  It isn’t that you are tormented by the nightmares of war on the battlefield; the stories that might haunt a lesser soldier, the moments of battle when you stood side by side with your brothers, and sisters, or charging into the ranks of your enemy. Those were worthy of retelling. Those were the stories of triumph, for even though many of your fellows would not make it, you had. And their moments of glory still lived in you.

It wasn’t the moments of bloody gore and glory that kept your mouth silent in the pubs and inns you wandered into and out of the elements. Like magical oases, each as surprised as you are to find one another in the wilds. No, there, when a warm meal is put in front of you, you do not ruin an invitation to eat well with stories of another sort.

The stories you keep locked inside you are the other moments. The ones no goodly soldier would brag about. The ones no goodly soldier would want to relive.

You are now on your way to a town known as Three Bales. Light willing, you may indeed have survived the toughest part of your journey home, wherever that is.  Nevertheless, it is one of the remotest areas that are known to the realm, that one can still call the realm, and so you can expect Celn food, music and entertainment, and with a bit of luck, Celn ale.

You aren’t asking for gratitude. You aren’t asking for safety even. Just a chance to spend a few coins, and if you’re lucky, eat a warm meal in silence.