Prelude
Alys Scout was a small badger best known for tripping over pants that were too big for her and busying her hands with sleeves that were too big for her. She had promised her parents that she would be at the commencement ceremony but she was late and she was in a rush. It’s a big day, they said to her, I know she said back.
It was oddly cool for a day that late into the spring, the marigolds and forget-me-nots were in full bloom but their stocks were not strong enough to keep their petals at bay. It had been a dry spring so far, but nothing the local forest-folk and their gardens could not manage through. The apple blossoms, too, were showing up.
He managed to make it through the towns archway before the commotion died down, but not long before. She sprinted and ran as fast as she could, she jumped over some barrels in the street and tripped over a few more. Alys almost ran into a couple she knew at the end of a wrong left turn and ran into one of the couples’ wives at the end of a wrong right turn.
When Alys finally made it her pants were soaked and torn and her parents were not too pleased.
"Get up here, you brat, they are starting," Alys’s father leaned over and offered his daughter perch on his shoulders just in time.
"This is the first day of a new age, my friends," bellowed a much older, much taller mole, "and I believe I can speak for us all of our wish to put the past few years behind us. Wars were fought, brothers and sisters and friends were lost to us, but peace has finally been found, my friends. We have finally found peace in New Lorcastle," he tugged at his shirts collar as he backed off, letting the rat take the stage.
"No longer will by badger brothers be forced to work in their fathers’ masonry, nor will a rat be stuck to tilling their grandfather’s fields. If a beast is able to think, to speak and to pay taxes they are more than welcome to make home here, and more than welcome to work wherever their proficiencies lay."
Their emcee then stood up and presented the two a placard to present, the crowd erupted in applause. It was a thick sign, one too long for any of the men to hold on their own. The sign was painted a dark blue and bordered by a strong, sharp golden colour, a slight burgundy silhouette of a mole and a rats head, the light yellow text read Welcome to New Lorcastle.
The sign was to be hung atop the archway of Mayor Winthrop’s office, right in the centre of town, betwixt his favourite places in the world; the bar and the bakery. Neither the first Winthrop of New Lorcastle nor many of his descendants, were slim creatures