man gets new, minimum wage job (pray for him)

The gentle rainfall of an evening's storm muddied his stallion's path. The wet, droning crash of hoof into mud was the white noise that fueled his thoughts. Tiomo stared hard into the back of his trotting mount's head, letting his frustration curl his lip, protected only from the rain by a deep navy cloak. All his training- all his hard work - put him *here*. Injured in the field, sure, he'd survived that. The surgery, the failed prosthetics- he kept living. The pitying looks he'd received from his comrades as his recovery turned into restlessness turned into basically begging to be put back in the field. That was what killed him. He was a knight, and a damn good one at that. He had wanted so desperately to prove he was still worth a spot in the knightage that he found himself here. On the back of a hardy stallion, trudging through poor weather to a poorer town.

This was their way of letting him go, Tiomo grimaced. He was no longer of use to them so they were shipping him off to a quiet little town that had never seen turmoil that he could play pretend at. His knuckles twitched as he flexed his grip on the reigns he once held so loosely. He reached up to his opposite shoulder, gripping for what was no longer present. It had taken him a while to regain his sense of balance. It had been his prefered arm, once upon a time. But it was gone now. His whole arm ravaged and unsalvageable. That's what he has two for, he had groggily joked to the discomfort of his superiors after his recovery, he'll just learn to use his left hand. And while he had trained against their orders back in the barracks, they had made plans to ship him off like a dying animal to a farm. And he had followed their orders likea child desperate to impress their parents.

In the present, Tiomo sighed, letting the tension bleed out of him. Who was he kidding, he chuckled to himself, they did it because they cared. They wanted him to live. That's why he had been on the road by himself for the last two and a half days. Because they cared! He groaned, his shoulders pitching up. He had been on this back and forth for the entire trip. Convincing and losing faith, spinning like a weather vane lost in the whirlwind of his emotions.

He pushed his hood back, letting the last remnants of the weather hit his head. He should be in town quite soon if he had followed his map correctly.

He considered the town. Ravensbrook. Before this week he had scarcely heard of it. All things considered, it wasn't necessarily very far from the capital where he had been stationed, just a little off the beaten path. It was more of a farming town, so many didn't have reason to pass through, he figured. It was sparsely populated, and it's protection was a simple townsman militia if it could even be considered that. Men with pitchforks and shovels, he mused, seems more like a riot. But he supposed if he'd be able to train men like that it would keep him in a similar routine that he had been used to.

Tiomo was abruptly moved from his thoughts by the sudden shake of his horse's head, droplets of water splattering across his cloaked form. He glanced up as they slowed to an easy, leisurely pace. Their tree-lined path lead solely to a sturdy, albeit quite old, gateway spelling out "RAVENSBROOK" in faded, hand-painted capital letters. Huh, he had been in his own head for the last leg of his journey he hadn't realized how much time had passed. It wasn't until he had reached the threshold he finally saw the ragged pages being moved gently by the breeze nailed into the gate post warning of a monstrous wolf terrorizing the town. This was of course, Tiomo sighed to himself, just his luck. And with the sudden feeling that he wasn't being paid enough for this, he trotted on to his newest job.