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Cassy left her mother’s little cottage on the edge of the woods and skipped down the cobblestone street towards the village where the livestock pens were located. She swung the picnic basket her mother had given her from one hand. It was heavy with a large lunch and she could hear the muffled clink of three gold coins wrapped in a cloth napkin.

Today was her birthday, and although her mother was sending her to tend to the sheep as she did every day, today her mother had included the gold coins with instructions to buy a roasted chicken and a honey cake for dinner. That evening they were going to have a proper celebration!

On the outskirts of the village Cassy waved as she passed her Uncle. He was busy, like usual, in his smithy shop. The sword he was working on was absolutely enormous and she wondered what sort of man or creature could effectively wield such a large blade. She hoped she would be nearby to see when whomever commissioned it returned to pick it up.

The village proper was bustling with activity. It held a great many specialty stores along with a very large inn and was a popular place for visitors from all over the continent to shop at. The stables were in constant motion with riders dropping off or retrieving their mounts. Her favorites were always the colorful horses in their bright saddles and bridles. But all manner of mounts were boarded there including giant docile bears, armored wolves, and enormous two legged birds. Once she had even seen a pig with a saddle on it!

In-between the many shops, livestock pens were evenly spaced, including the two sheep pens that belonged to her mother. Wolves roamed the encircling woods and it seemed safest to keep the animals within the borders of the town. Generally the wild predators were reluctant to come near the roads or houses.

Cassy gasped when she reached the sheep pens. Both gates swung open in the breeze and the sheep were nowhere to be seen. Not again! Why did this keep happening? She was certain she had secured the gates last night. She looked around at the nearby villagers and the visitors. No one was paying her or the pens any mind. She found it hard to believe that anyone would be purposely sabotaging her mother’s livestock, but how else could they keep escaping?

Cassy clutched her basket tighter and began watching everyone with suspicion. Then something very strange began to happen. A man she didn’t know started walking in place just a few feet away from her. She glanced around and saw that two other people, also visitors to the village, were doing the same thing. Then all three of them slowly began to fade away until they disappeared completely.

Cassy looked over towards the inn. The innkeeper stood out front beside the mailbox. Two women that were checking their mail began to fade away as well, but the innkeeper seemed totally unaware of the strange thing happening right beside him. The village which had been so busy just moments ago, was now strangely quiet.

Cassy looked around and realized that every single visitor had just disappeared. The only people left were the villagers and all of them continued to go about their day as if nothing was wrong. Cassy cautiously walked around the shops peering into their windows. The baker continued adding fresh loaves to his shelves, the alchemist continued mixing her potions and medicines and lining them up neatly on a table to cool, the stable boy seemed stuck cleaning the same stall out over and over again even though there was no muck left in it to pick.

At the edge of the village, the traveling merchant and his mule were just standing in the middle of the road staring straight ahead, down the path that led to the city. Cassy tried calling out to each of them, but no one responded. She noticed a strange shadow on the ground and looked up to find a flock of birds suspended in the air above her, mid-flight. Above them, the clouds stood completely still, like in a painting.

Cassy walked to her Uncle’s shop. Maybe he would know what was happening and, more importantly, maybe he could help her find her sheep before the wolves got to them. She could already hear their howls drawing closer. The visitors typically kept their numbers in check, but with all of them mysteriously vanishing the wolves seemed to be multiplying at a surprisingly fast rate.

Unfortunately, Cassy found her Uncle to be just as unresponsive as the rest of the villagers. He just loudly banged on the same part of the blade he was working on over and over again without looking up. Cassy began to see the wolves prowling amongst the trees and decided that heading back in towards the center of the shops would be the safest plan.

Someone always came along to help her bring back her lost sheep. She had no weapons to fight off the wolves and gather them back up on her own. She would just have to return to the pens and wait until someone came along to help her.

As Cassy headed back to the middle of the town, she looked into the shops she passed. With no one to buy his bread, the baker’s shelves were overflowing, yet he continued to bake, stacking bread on every available surface.

Likewise, the alchemist’s shop was piled high in little glass bottles with colorful liquids, tinned ointments, and rolls of herb infused bandages. The medicinal smell coming from the doorway was overpowering. A small avalanche of bottles from an overstocked table cascaded off and shattered on the ground.

In the middle of town a large fountain stood. The water still flowed but the fish inside floated like inanimate toys. The vendor that always waited nearby tried to sell her a fishing rod and some bait. She declined, but since he seemed more responsive then the others she began to question him about what was happening. The conversation didn’t prove very successful. He just kept asking her if she wanted to buy a fishing pole.

***

Mark’s phone buzzed across his nightstand for the fifth time. Groggily he reached out from beneath his covers and slapped a hand around on the wooden surface until his sleep clumsy fingers finally managed to close around it. He brought the display close to his face, blinking at the bright screen. It was 5am on a Saturday morning. Who was texting him so persistently at 5am on a Saturday morning?

Mark swiped at the screen and typed in his code to unlock it. Shit. He had 10 missed text messages from his girlfriend. Hazel was really chill and he was head over heels in love with her, so he doubted it was about a fight. His heart thudded in his chest, maybe something was wrong. He didn’t bother checking the messages, he just called her. She picked up immediately.

“Hazel? What’s wrong?” Mark’s voice came out all gravely and he had to clear his throat twice.

“Nothing. What’s wrong with you?” Hazel asked, sounding remarkably awake. “Are you getting sick?”

“No. I was asleep. It’s five in the morning.”

“Didn’t you read my texts?”

“Not yet.” He responded.

“Oh. Well, I can’t log in. Can you?”

“What?”

“I can’t log into the game. I was playing and then all of a sudden I got kicked off and now I cant log back on!”

Mike sighed. “Did you even go to sleep last night?”

“No.” Hazel replied, a bit sheepishly.

Mike laughed. He considered himself lucky to have met a girl who enjoyed online gaming as much as he did, but this was a bit much. “Its probably just maintenance. The servers should be back up soon.”

“I checked that though, there’s no tweet about it and the forums are all full of complaints. No one seems to know what is going on.”

Mike laid back in bed. He could hear his girlfriend in the background typing in her login credentials repeatedly and then furiously slamming the enter key. “I’m sure they will be back up soon. They probably just needed to do an emergency patch and restart them or something.”

“But I am so close to having enough gold to buy my mount! I just need to do like four more quests!”

Mike smiled at her enthusiasm. “I told you I’d loan you the gold...”

“Wait!” Hazel interrupted him. “I just got back in!”

“Servers are back up?”

“Yeah!” Hazel’s mechanical keyboard sounded like it was under attack. “The beautiful and deadly elven assassin Hazelanna Songblade is back in action!”

Mike could hear his girlfriend bouncing with excitement in her desk chair. He laughed again. “Well the handsome and agile troll Zengu Silentpaw will have to join you in a few hours after he has gotten a bit more sleep. I love you, babe.”

“Love you too!”

***

Cassy suddenly found herself standing in front of the empty sheep pens. She clutched the picnic basket from her mother and looked around in confusion. One by one all of the visitors who had gone missing began reappearing with little popping noises. No one but her seemed to take notice though.

The visitors immediately went back about their business running around and buying things from the shops, retrieving their mail from the postbox, and talking to the villagers. One even jumped up onto the edge of the fountain and began dancing and cheering and yelling something about not having to work this weekend. Maybe he was drunk?

Cassy looked up and saw that the birds overhead were flying once more and that the clouds had begun to move again on a slight breeze. The traveling merchant and his stubborn mule were no longer stuck at the edge of the road leading into the forest. In fact, they were quickly disappearing down the path that led to the city. Everyone around her was behaving as though nothing strange had happened at all.

But something had happened, hadn’t it? Something important… Cassy’s mind began to feel a bit foggy. The more she tried to remember what was wrong, the more it seemed to slip away.

Cassy jumped as a stranger approached her. The woman was very tall and dressed in exquisite leather armor. Two wicked looking blades hung on either side of her hips. The woman’s belt was covered in tiny glass vials filled with dangerous looking liquids. She introduced herself as Hazelanna Songblade and smiled at the bewildered young shepherd.

“Is there anything I can help you with, little girl?” The elven assassin inquired.

At her prompting, Cassy’s memory suddenly came flooding back. That was what was wrong! The sheep! They had gotten out of their pens! How could she have forgotten something so important as that?

“Yes, kind traveler! The sheep have wandered from their pens! Their wool is the only income my mother and I have since my father passed away two winters ago. The woods are full of dangerous wolves that would love a belly full of mutton. Will you help me find them and bring them back to their pens?”

“Accept,” The tall woman immediately replied.

“Oh thank you so much! You are truly a kind soul. I can see you are a seasoned adventurer and to take on such a lowly task as this speaks enormously of your virtue.” Cassy handed the woman eight braided lead ropes, which the woman slipped into a pack on her back.

“There are 8 sheep that you must find and 3 wolves that you must kill. Once you finish your task I will give you all of the food in my picnic basket and 3 gold coins. My uncle runs the smithy. If your armor or weapons need repaired he will surely give you a discount for assisting us!”

“Accept,” The tall woman repeated. She promptly turned and ran off into the woods to complete her quest.

Cassy waited patiently by the empty sheep pens for the woman’s return.

The End

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/logout