I have disappeared for six years, honed my craft, and worked on a new story that I think is probably better than this one. Check it out ;=) (It's about a stupid dickhead stuck in a timeloop in a fantasy world)
Sorry for raising anyone's hopes with this update, Living a Long Life is, as always, dead in the water, just like my dreams of buying a bag of groceries without taking debt.
Thanks to a commenter on my new story that reminded me this one existed.
Short preview if you need something to judge if you're interested (link below):
In the hot, barren fields of Mitelos, a puddle of sweat smushed around in Jim's pink, leather boots. To console himself, he looked at Lebowski, his poorer and girthier friend. Lebowski’s longer brown hair was sticking to his scalp and he was breathing heavily as was befitting of his station as the third-in-line heir to a wine fortune rather than a second-in-line heir to a mercantile empire.
"You think they sent us here as a sort of hazing for recent graduates?" Jim eventually asked.
Lebowski chuckled in the wheezing good humour integral to his character as a person often out of breath. "More like they sent the best to deal with the worst."
Jim laughed. "Well, regardless of the reason. We have to find the village head to figure out what the situation even is." He ran a hand through his black hair and looked around, using his height advantage to peer further than other people could even conceive. It was a scorching September day, so he was surprised to discover a dust-covered farmer tilling the empty field to the right off the road.
"You over there!” he shouted, prompting the man to look up from where he was stabbing at the light brown dirt with a hoe, creating neat little lines of slightly darker upturned earth.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
“Lead us to the village head!" Jim shouted again when he noticed that he’d gotten the man’s attention.
The farmer hurried over and looked the two mages up and down. Both puffed up subconsciously at the knowledge of what the farmer was seeing. Two respectable young men of good breeding, about 19 years of age, dressed in black wizards’ robes, one tall and athletic, one short and fat.
The farmer respectfully removed his weather-beaten cap. A mark of low social status. No real gentleman would have to spend enough time in the sun to require one.
"I'm afraid that I can't stop me work, me lords. But if yer walk down this path, yer should find the old Hanaphres the Third easily enough. He lives in the big building with the village emblem on the front and doesn' like to leave it," the man said apologetically.
Jim looked down the road - the village was only a few minutes’ walk away. It would indeed be easy finding the village head with the description of the man's house. It was just impolite for the peasant to suggest it. "Alright then," he begrudgingly said. "But why are you out here farming if there’s danger? Also, Hanaphres the Third, odd name.”
"We are on the other side of the kingdom, I guess," Lebowski commented with a sigh.
Some hat-wringing commenced at the interrogation, and the farmer bitterly formed his next words. "Well, me lords, if I die to the monsters, I die to the monsters. If I don't sow my field, I ain't got nothing to eat and die just as well. As for Sir Hanaphres the third, he's named so after his venerable grandmother, Hanaphres the first, who left us just last morn, may the gods bless her soul."
"Where did she go?" Lebowski asked, confused.
The farmer looked up into the spotless blue sky, the sun burning down on the three with weak rays of sunlight. "Well," the man started, "I hope she went to heaven. But before she did, she walked up to the nearest cliff we have to this village. Ten men, tall men, not short fellas- and jumped straight off. So, I guess she went up, then down and then maybe a lil’ bit up again. Either way, all I know for sure is that she left.”
"The mortal coil, you mean?" Jim tried to clarify,
