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I am telling this story as it was told to me.

Some time ago, before Paregoric became what it is today, there was a village called Parse. It had been founded along the Penn Stream, slowly ebbing along Hooker's Run, and pooling in Critic's Corner. The village was a simple one. There was a blacksmith, a mining shaft, marketplace, and fields of nothing but farms.

In a sense, it was farming country, complete with the obligatory trees at every foot one makes going any direction.

It was after Farmer Nark had established the first mill on Penn's Stream that the Doctor came. It is said that Farmer Nark had thought he had come from the capital. The Doctor never really gave him his name; just that he was looking for a place to stay with his paramour.

The Doctor, as Farmer Nark said to Steven Soot, the smithy at that time, had the trappings of the City upon him. He was bright. He was chipper. He even wore a suit with a tie around his neck.

The only thing that really stood out was his commoner's shoes and the eyes. Farmer Nark made it his mission to tell everyone in the village that the Doctor had a sage's eyes. There was just something about him that belayed the youthful countenance to him.

His paramour made even more ripples, for she was considerably older, too old for the young Doctor. At best guess she was about midwife's age, streaks of blonde fading into white, the beauty taunt upon the trappings of age, a motherless sage was the words that lay upon the lips of those that peopled the market. Her name, as it came to be known, was Renee or Rennet - some higher lord's name that clearly branded her - but she was so graceful in her ways that what story that made her fell upon the road.

The Doctor and his lover, a Renee, elected to stay the fortnight in the village. He had chosen the pub and prattled on in an alien tongue. Sage Wend did talk to him and found out that the Doctor had known more about the Stars Themselves than his forefather and his forefather before him.

They elected, after a fortnight of helping the villagers, to make their own hearth beneath Dagger Rock. It was quite unusual for he had chosen to build a blue shack of sorts with glass windows set inside underneath Dagger Rock. How it came to be, cast in the neat setting that no man could ever aspire to, lay unsolved, even to this day.

Yet they chose to make their own hearth. The building still stands to this day, lying beyond the shadow of Dagger Rock, near Penn Pool. The Doctor had given into his paramour's suggestion that the villagers would welcome him. She spoke with a strange accent that lay many miles away from the capital, perhaps even farther, as Sage Wend did say.

For three years they lived there. The Doctor presided over the burial of Sage Wend, creating the massive Tomb of Wend, far grander than what Jack Carver could do. For those three years the village was blessed, a thousand times over, and naught a single deed of misfortune ever visited any doorstep.

Three more passed and people started to call the area Rose Meadow for Renee always grew them. She started to teach her own language. Youth always shown in her face far beyond any child could bear. She said that it was the music she was told when she attended her own fireplace as her years only accounted no more than six seasons.

They were the blessed years.

Then, one day, they vanished. They vanished in a storm, they say, where the lightning scalded the trees into blackened skeletons of horror. Everything was wet, muddy, and desolate. It was a time of great flood and sorrow.

At the same time, the Lords came on by, claiming that they had suffered a great loss in the West, and needed help. Farmer Nark, aged that he was, went to the Doctor only to find the stone cottage abandoned and the blue windowed shack gone. The vines that had conquered it over time lay in a great heap, as if God Himself, had plucked it away.

Farmer Nark called forth the Doctor in the house. In there he saw that everything had been set as the Doctor wished it to be. There was a fallen cup on the floor. The Doctor had run out, it seemed, in a moment of weakness visited by the Fiends Below upon his paramour. The Lords themselves did affirm that what they saw was blood upon the ground. They had seen war themselves.

In honor of the Doctor, it was decided by the village that bore his absence as they did so honorably in that time, the area he occupied was forever stated as holy. Farmer Nark himself made it his mission to forever guard the legacy that the Doctor had made upon the people. It was Steven Soot that made the fence that surrounds the area as his last gift to the Lord on High for the mercy of the Doctor.

This is the reason why what lies beneath Dagger Rock is the only place where the dead lay outside the gate, outside the rose garden, and outside the stone cottage was the Doctor's Home.

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This story is very old.

Once upon a time there was this man who appeared over there. He was different for he wasn't Fleet nor Syndicate. In fact, he appeared to be one of those type that takes a vacation without the fact that he's some years out of date, and that he really should see a tailor about those clothes since he always that suit day after day.

He brought with him this box that was labelled Poles Lease. There were windows set in the red wooden frame. Two other people followed him, each blonde, but one wide eyed about the scene around him. In fact, she seemed even more out of touch than the pinstriped suit man, always pottering around in some tongue that was nigh near High Riyon.

The pinstriped suit man introduced himself as the Doctor, the hanger on as Renee, and the other as Rose. He had done this in a bar where I was doing business with the bartender. I said my greetings, salutations, but never really got an answer on what he had doctored in or his name.

It stands in my mind on the fact that the other woman, Rose, stood out in discomfort personified. She was a more modern woman, a dame of the highest order, but never knowing the concoction that would turn her man to her eyes. She was rather shapely I might add.

They stayed overnight at the pub. I, being generous, gave them a tour of the city, since I had nothing else to do. The Doctor seemed to have a better grasp on the people of the Bed Quarter. He could chat on in Bed that I myself couldn't quite hold. Renee - I should add - was graceful in the way that when she did speak my language - appeared to be a lady or a queen.

It was at a garden where Renee was looking over the roses when this black man came on by. There was some talk between him and the Doctor. I would have knee jerked a person if they ever reached that voice level.

It was the woman Rose that made things difficult. She pointed out that she was from Earth - a far more different one than what I had remembered - and kept giving an eye out on the Doctor. I told her of a shaker in potions that she could consult in but she didn't want hide nor hair to do with those skilled shakers of the vale and flask.

They left the following week but it was just me consulting Rose that has stuck in my mind as one of those repeating keys that you find on a music box. She was looking at the two and for the first time I believe she saw how tender the Doctor was with this Renee. It was something out of a romance saga except that both were blondes.

I myself would have taken Rose out of that horrible equation had she not disappeared on me. The Poles Lease Box followed them as well, leaving this sound that I cannot describe to you, and fading as a ghost. Me, being single at the time, gave Rose a holograph pad for her amusement, and perhaps a solution to that potential future with the Doctor that she would - perhaps, probably, and I'm guessing here - never had or have.

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It was some time later that I ran into her. I was utterly agape at her being there. Mind you that I had already situated myself in the ranks of the Fleet's most infamous criminal minds and there was her, not an age over twenty, attractive in the way that only the Politicals had.

I asked her about the Doctor she was talking about, since that was all that Renald talked about when he was either drunk or sentimental at some parts of the day.

She smiled wanly as Renald did. She pulled out a later model of the G20. She said that she had lots of fun with it but she was now returning it to Renald.

I looked at her.

I told her - "Miss - Renald was executed by the Dark Elves".

She blinked. The G20 just sat on the table. We were in the White Quarter of Political Capital. The lanai had been preserved as something of a reminder of the early days long ago.

I pushed her a dish of sweets.

She then asked me if I knew a room she could rent out. I smiled. I patted her hand.

"Anytime of the sol week me dear" I said.