The trumpet let out a sudden, violent blare, the brassy note slicing through the crisp air of early november like a butcher's cleaver. The sound rolled across the plain, where a great expanse of emerald green stretched until the horizon swallowed the world. Beneath the morning sun, the grass still clung to the dew left by an early rain,its dampness turning the road ahead into a treacherous slurry of mud.
"Must you really play that thing now?" Basil asked, his palm clamped firmly over his left ear. He spoke doing his best to not let his irritation of a man forced to endure one of the many peculiarities that defined the creature at his right.
"I like being announced, dear lad. It sets the stage." Merelao muttered. He was busy scratching the line of his jaw, his fingers feeling the skin where he had just been shaven clean; there wasn't so much as a nick, a pimple, or a phantom scratch on that smooth face.
