The next morning, bright and early, we set off. There was no fanfare, just a modest caravan of a few vehicles, all of which were capable of offroad driving, which I took to be a sign that the conditions of the roads were somewhat rough. And they most certainly were. Although the distance from the Bravian capital is not particular great to the border with the Western Forest region, the roads are very rough, in many places no more than a clay path in the woods, frequently wet and muddy as a result of the rains that fall down on the mountainsides. To be sure, this area was likely on a short list of areas to be developed, if a path was ever established through the forest to the other side, but in its current state as the northern boundary of the country to possibly unfriendly neighbors, it made sense that the Bravian nation, including the residents of that region, did not want to speed the path of potential invaders to the most important and most prosperous regions of the nation. It was obvious to me and likely to everyone else that these were not the most prosperous regions of the country, at least not at this time.

To go into detail about the difficulty of the journey would just be to punish you as much as I felt the journey to be a punishing one for me. The trip consisted of slow drives up hills, making sure that one found a dry enough way where one could overcome the downward pull of gravity working against the soft clay paths, sliding gently down hills avoiding running into trees or buildings, driving underneath trees and examining the branches that had either fallen in storms or were cut by the various loggers who regularly worked these woods to cut down lumber for use elsewhere in Bravia, or wet crossings over small but fierce streams that appeared to be headed towards the Eastern River, despite being far closer to the Western River, albeit on the other side of a divide from it in the mountainous area where the Bravian capital was dug. The hours crept away as we slowly moved along these paths in a direction that I gathered to be mostly to the North-Northeast, though by no means in a straight direction on account of various foothills, streams, as well as patches of forest.

By nightfall, we had all made it safely to a small town that was called Hurrendale, presumably after the poor sod of a settler who had established this place as a hamlet connecting some rough roads together in such a manner as to make this area a rural crossroads. Naturally, it was also an Amphoe, meaning that the people of this miserable set of rather unimpressive houses sent someone to the Grand Parliament who voted on the most important affairs of state and was treated as a noteworthy person. Some brief conversation led to our caravan of muddy vehicles finding themselves to what would pass for a local fleabag hotel, where all of us, piled out of the vehicles to the restaurant that was attached to the place, which appeared to be a local watering hole and feeding post of local importance. It was there that a most striking thing happened that I feel I must discuss because it struck me as so alien and yet so characteristic of the strange ways of the Bravians.

I walked into the restaurant with a party that included Prince Robert Septimus, and as soon as we walked in, we were greeted by a small, skinny moppet with plaided dark hair and somewhat dark skin. Knowing the Bravians to be, in general, an exceedingly pale people, and not having seen plaited hair as their usual hairstyle, I figured she had to have another ancestry besides just Bravian, which was a correct judgment as it turned out to be. I do not know how old she was, because of her small size she could have been anywhere from five to fifteen, but I judged her to be younger than ten from the general innocence of her ways. She spoke to us in a language I did not understand, but the prince picked it up and replied to her gently in her own tongue. This led the girl to jump up and down happily and chatter to him in that language, to which he replied. I looked at the two of them somewhat confused, while the other royal courtiers with us smiled and laughed among themselves, knowing that this interaction was precisely the sort of reason why he was sent out to these parts. Meanwhile, the people of the town who were in the restaurant grew silent and stared at our party.

Before too long, the young girl had run out of words in her language, it seemed, and happily ran off to join her family, at least what I presumed to be her family, while we were seated at a large table in the middle of the restaurant, with all eyes on us, as it was obvious that we were not from around there, and also, from the fact that we were all better dressed than the people around us, for all of the discomfort of an all-day journey on miserable roads, that we must be somewhat notable people to grace a hicktown such as this one. None of us were famous enough to be known personally to the towns-people, at least those who were in the restaurant at this time, but they knew we must be some people of importance, and so all conversation in the restaurant stopped as our every move, everything we ordered, came under their observation and scrutiny.

At least we were allowed to eat in peace. The food was nothing special, nothing that rose even to the level of decent, but it was a hot meal all the same. The prince, who I assumed would be rather fussy, seemed to take it in stride. He drank his water and sweet tea and ate his indifferent overcooked broasted chicken and soggy vegetables without complaint. I didn’t complain either, at least not verbally, but I felt a deep reproach in my heart that our party had to stoop so low as to eat and sleep in such a place as this, which was by no means worthy of a royal party. Yet the prince, who others recognized before too long as being the real person of power within our party, was observed by the people with a great deal of what looked like satisfaction. He showed himself to behave graciously towards the waiting staff, showing curiosity about what was going on in the town, asking what courses they were teaching at the local grange (at least that is what it sounded like he said), and showing himself satisfied at the hospitality of a town without culture or anything to recommend itself.

After dinner a man came up to our table with the girl who had spoken to the prince before and bowed and asked to speak with the prince. The prince graciously introduced himself and asked the man who he was. He introduced himself as well as his daughter, who he said had been his daughter by a “summer wife” he had while engaged as a trader in the Western Forest region, and that the mother had died, and her relatives had sent their child to live with him very recently. He confessed that he found this to be rather awkward and embarrassing as he had a wife and a couple of sons with her and she did not find it to be acceptable to be raising another woman’s daughter as her own, not least one who was so obviously a foreigner, and whose presence would invite all kinds of unpleasant assumptions about her own character and his own as a husband and a man. He had assured his wife that he had only been with this woman before they had met and certainly before they had married, but her presence was evidence enough to the other people of the town that he had dabbled in relationships with foreigners. He loved his daughter, but she was a great burden to him, he said, and hoped that the prince would be able to raise her up and make sure that she was well-settled in a place where her origin might be a source of curiosity and interest but would not be a matter of shame or evidence of supposed guilt.

The prince listened to all of this far more politely than I would have. Whatever contempt he might have had for the man, he was able to hide it under a mask of gracious and easy politeness. He turned to the girl and asked her if she would consent to be raised in the prince’s family as an adopted daughter, taught not only the languages of the Bravians that would be necessary to live well but also taught her own native language and be placed in a position where she could speak it and learn the ways of both her mother’s and her father’s people. The girl nodded and grinned happily, having judged the prince to be a kind and gentle man who would do no harm to her and would be attentive to her and sensitive to her concerns. With that the prince took down the identity information of the father as well as the girl, and assigned one of the young ladies who was a part of his staff to watch over her and look after her, which the young lady took in good spirits, being apparently one of the people who like the Bravian prince was kindhearted even to the sort of savage children that were to be found in a place like this.

Before too long a man entered the restaurant with the sort of step that showed him to be someone important, and he came to our table to sit and talk with the prince. Though I did not recognize him personally, he was of the Hurren family that had founded this miserable excuse for a town and who, apparently, served as its representative in the House of Amphoes. He had just come out of a meeting with one of his cousins, no doubt another Hurren, who served as the mayor of the place, and while in that meeting he had been informed of the coming of a royal caravan, and he wondered to what he owed the honor of being able to host a royal on official business. The prince explained to him that he was on the way to the gateway between the Western Forest region and the province of North Bravia to relay some information and encourage some diplomatic relationships between the Eastern forest people and their brethren of the Western forest that had apparently just made contact with the prince’s older brother and were in negotiations with him. The representative asked if there was any development aid coming to this area and the prince said that this was the responsibility of the governor of North Bravia, who by custom was always the Crown Prince of Bravia or his designated regent, if he was too young to reign himself. The Crown Prince was no stripling, but was a man north of forty years of age, and so he had his own plans and his own ideas well enough and did not need any help from the prince as to how she should do his job as royal governor. That said, he was able to say that he believed that development of the infrastructure of the area depended on it being the road to somewhere rather than a dead-end road no nowhere, and that the possibility of development north of the Western Forest region as well as in the northern parts of the Over-The-Eastern-River province would allow opportunities for the development of trade as well as the construction of better roads in the area, once its backwardness was no longer of strategic benefit to Bravia as a whole. With this answer the representative was pleased.

Although it did not appear that the people of this hamlet were at all familiar with the prince before, his easygoing and gracious ways met their approval. The princes of Bravia might live in fancy cave palaces, at least in their eyes, and wear fine clothes and travel in style and luxury, but the people could see that the prince was no snob and that he had genuine concern for the well-being of his people. His being willing to travel on such awful roads in such awful conditions as we had faced that day–it was still raining lightly as we ate in the restaurant from what we could see through the windows–impressed upon the people of the area his willingness to serve the people of Bravia, and his willingness to adopt a girl who was obviously not from around there was taken as a sign of his willingness to act in ways that would preserve the social unity of a small town like this one. One of the town’s artists, or so I was led to understand, asked if she could make a drawing of the prince speaking to the young girl who descended in part from the Foresters, and the two of them obliged with a posed conversation where the girl looked up at the prince with a happy smile and the prince smiled benignly back at her, showing his willingness to take care of her. Before too long a sketch was made of the scene that we can imagine would be in the local newspaper as being a major story of interest, and perhaps the most surprising and exciting thing that had happened in the town in generations.

It was not long after that when we all went to sleep. We had been on the road all day and from what I could gather were expected to spend another day traveling along the rotten roads we were on to the point where the road in North Bravia met with the entrance into the Western Forest region, at which point the diplomatic discussion would begin, which I was welcome to witness though I must admit I did not and still do not understand completely what these Bravian ways are all about.