Oh, and the formatting is a bit of a mess, as you can probably tell.
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It was a warm summer afternoon. The wind playfully made its way through trees and over hills. It was perfect.
There was a large field, just outside Ascalon. On one side of it, under a few trees, sat Samuel. Even in the shadow of the trees it was warm.
He was concentrated, gazing into the distance. It was one of his favorite places, a location where you could see so many fine sights that you were almost guaranteed inspiration. He looked down. He had a small book, in which he scribbled with his quill pen. On a nearby rock he had his little inkwell.
A few years earlier, the charr had been stopped. A group of heroes, led by the warrior Devona, had risen up to the challenge, and had stopped the charr invasion. The charr had plans of invoking powerful magic, which would have led to Ascalon's downfall - but it never happened.
He added a few lines to the page, and looked up again. His house, just outside the sprawling city, was not far away. He could see his beautiful wife from his spot, enjoying the weather. There were little to worry about these days.
He looked thoughtful for a few moments, and crossed out a line on his page, rewriting it. He had a large collection of books at home, and dreamt of writing his own. Most of his days were spent working on his own book, a collection of short stories.
His wife was pregnant, and they were both in the happy, fuzzy mood of soon-to-be parents. The child was expected to arrive in about two months. As he was looking down at his wife, she turned her head and looked back, giving him a little wave and a big smile. He waved back, suddenly even more inspired by his muse, as he affectionatelly referred to her.
Life was perfect.
After the searing, the Ascalonians suffered from heavy casualities, albeit they had not lost their homelands yet. It was a matter of time, if you were to be realistic. The morale, both in the army and among the civilians, was broken. Many of those that had survived the invasion were alone, and cursed with survivor's guilt.
The monks of Ascalon had converted their abbey at Ashford into a sanitarium, housing the mentally ill, most often from the horros that the Searing brought.
It was night. Deep in the sanitarium, there was the sound of someone sniffing quietly. It was Samuel. Nobody had been able to communicate with him since he was taken there, by a group of travelers that had found him in the charred remains of his home, by the corpse of his pregnant wife. A victim of charr raiders.
In the corner of his room, Samuel had curled up in fetal position, crying tears of happiness. He had since long escaped somewhere into his own head, fleeing from the sorrows of reality.