Living life


When life is unhappy, it is difficult to endure; if it is happy it is terrible to lose it. Both come out the same.(Quote from Jean de La Bruyére; 1945-1996)

prologue

It is already getting dark outside. The clouds are pulling together. The first fog banks begin to form on the nearby trout weir. Within half an hour the whole area will be wrapped in white. At such moments you don't meet anyone in Schleierede anymore, as the local villagers are very cautious people, especially in autumn and winter. All windows are tightly closed. Nowhere does candlelight seep through any cracks. The whole village has already gone to sleep. But the seemingly impenetrable silence and darkness is broken by something.
A little away from the village, there is a building from which a warm and inviting light emanates. The turning wind occasionally carries isolated noises into the village. If you are close enough, you can hear musicians at work and drunks shouting along. A sign hangs outside this building. The forged sheet metal swings back and forth in the autumn wind, making screeching noises. A golden grain of barley is depicted on it, surrounded by edges that are to be understood as rays of light. The whole structure is embedded in a matt forest green and surrounded by a golden sign frame. The name Zum golden Gerstenkorn puts the finishing touches on the sign. With the backdrop that the village and the otherwise lonely surroundings offer, the local tavern looks like a place of pilgrimage for all the lonely and confused souls. Accordingly, it was very well attended even now in the transition period from autumn to winter. The people from the area come to forget their worries about how to feed their families over the winter for at least one evening. Even animals like wild boars, foxes or bears from the nearby forest find their way there and loot the waste.

All guests who come from further away and visit the Zum golden Gerstenkorn for the first time all go through the same ordeal. Characterized by the hardships and the constant bad weather conditions that one experiences in the region around Schleierede, one experiences a shock at first. Completely frozen and soaked through, you press the door handle of the guest house door down and open it. At that moment, a torrent of several impressions comes flying towards the victim. A mixture of different smells, beer, wine, food smells and other pleasant smells, a singsong from the singing of the employed musicians and the drunk guests and a pleasant temperature. All of a sudden, the downcast new guest feels secure and strengthened for inexplicable reasons, as if positive energy was emanating from the inn.Even the owner and host of the tavern, Mr. Filius, cannot explain this phenomenon.

Initially, his inn ran relatively normally. Summer and spring were his main periods of consumption. In autumn and winter it was closed most of the time due to a lack of guests. This was perfectly normal for a country inn. But at some point, more and more people came to him. At first there were a few guests in the winter and autumn weeks. Then there were already a dozen guests a day during the cold days. And now Mr. Filius couldn't save himself from the sheer number of guests. Every day the inn "Zum golden Gerstenkorn" was overcrowded to the last standing room. Even outside, people were bustling around waiting for someone to leave and they could go in for it. As long as this won luck would not leave him, it didn't matter to Filius why that was so.


But the biggest trademark of the successful bar was its regular guest. An old man. Nobody knows where he came from or what his name is. Strictly speaking, nobody knows anything about him. He came at some point and has not gone since. That's why he was simply called Old Tom. Since then he has always sat in the same corner of the inn and lingers there until the landlord closes his tavern late in the evening and Tom goes to his paid room. What he is doing there is unknown. In any case, every time he is back at his regular seat on time for the opening of Zum Goldenen Gerstenkornes.
Since he has been Mr. Filius's guest for over 12 years and a lot of people go in and out of the inn, people from the area also know him. Therefore, some positive but also a few negative rumors are spun around him. But the masses see him as the closed and secret protector of this area. It even goes so far that in some villages the young children are told bedtime stories about him. How he would have freed distant cities from demons or a pretty princess from the clutches of a supposedly invincible dragon.
After a while, the appearance of Old Tom has burned itself into the minds of people who have not yet visited Zum Goldenen Gerstenkorn due to the rumors and stories that were spread:
His hair is completely white and hangs down in long and shaggy plumbs so that most of his face is covered. But it is rumored that Old Tom had brown eyes that would fade easily. He also had a crescent-shaped scar on his temple, to the right of his left eye. There are few accounts of Old Tom's face. But each statement was different at the point of the scar. Sometimes it was described as narrower and reddish, at other times it was broader and brown to black, and others described it completely differently.
He wears the same worn out clothes every day: his black boots, beige linen trousers, and a pine green cloth shirt.He also has a travel sack in which he keeps his money and a strange-looking amulet, a folder with several blank parchments written on it and a walking stick that collects dust under the bed of his rented room together with the folder.

Many people have already approached him and wanted to find out something about him. But Tom is not a talkative person. He tends to speak less and when he says something, then only what is absolutely necessary. He sits in his corner all day, not really taking in most of his surroundings. Instead, insists on waiting for something.
But that is changing today.