"This is a story that isn't true as far as I know, but I might be wrong. There was a young widow. She had been married for a year, and had no children, and she lived near a town but not within its walls. Her cousin had children, three of them, and the widow sometimes watched the children, and told them stories.
"One of those was the story of a brave hero who roamed far and wide, seeking out monsters and defeating them, and giving food to orphans. The hero's name was Tena, and he came from somewhere to the north - not Iral, farther than that - and didn't tell people what he had done, lest he never learn whether they treated strangers poorly.
"Eventually, the widow's cousin died, and she sold her husband's empty house and moved in with the children. Then one day a stranger calling himself Tena came traveling from the north and stayed with them. The children were extremely excited and said they knew all about him. The widow said nothing. She also knew something about him; she had watched him come in through town, heard how he spoke, been around him, even smelled how he smelled, and she knew well the signs that he was..." Why did she wedge herself into this, the stories contradict each other about what euphemisms go over well and which are insulting, and now she has to finish this sentence in front of a fairy. "...a traveler from farther than north, and no mere human. So she was kind to him, of course, but said nothing of where she thought he had come from, only told the children how to be polite to their guest.
"Then, a ravenous beast attacked. The children insisted Tena could and would and should defeat it and save the town. Tena, for his part, did not think so. He ran. He was afraid and he did not know these people or have any reason to love them; he would have fought if the beast had attacked his own people, of course; he was no coward. He simply did not care.
"Or so he thought.
"When he had stopped running, he found himself weeping with grief that he had never guessed he might feel. He began to pray to Laen for mercy, for something to have been different, for them not to have died. This wasn't such a stupid thing for him to do as it sounds like, because...
"Once, long before this, Laen boasted that there was nothing he could not destroy. All those who heard his challenge and understood it were welcome to try to bring before him a counterexample. Many men tried. They brought him the hardest stones they could find. Their greatest champions challenged him. They brought him to see a river and a mountain. And Laen crumbled their stones, cursed their champions with weakness or killed them outright, and so on. So it seemed Laen boasted truly. Until one day someone who might have been Tena's grandfather, or great-grandfather, or father, or mother, or could have been any of Tena's people, really, went to challenge Laen.
"And this person told Laen a story. It was a story greater than this one, and one I could not tell you, though some have tried to reconstruct it. It was a story about Laen himself, and it made him laugh, and it made him weep, and it woke in him anger and awe. And then it ended.
"'The moment has already passed,' said Laen. 'I don't see how you even imagined that your story could outlast a mountain.'
"And Tena's kinsman answered, 'you remember it.'
"'I could forget,' said Laen.
"And Tena's kinsman answered, 'I know all there is to know about you, and I could tell you every story you've ever lived. Will you destroy them all? Your recollection and mine and everyone else who has ever known you? Would you be nothing, just to prove me wrong? I'll start with the story of your boast, and then how will you remember you even want to forget?'
"And Laen admitted he was beaten. Which is why he's so much more willing to answer Tena and his kinsfolk's prayers than those of me and my kinsfolk. So Tena, in his grief and confusion, prayed to Laen. And then, when he had run too far to run any further, and wept too much to weep any more, and prayed the most desperate prayer he had ever prayed, he rested, and fell asleep."
Her voice grows quieter now, at least for a while. "He dreamed of the widow. He dreamed of his home. He dreamed that the widow had come to stay with him. In the dream, they were all attacked by a monster, and she told all the children around her to run, and stood to distract the monster.
"Tena woke, then, uneasy and ashamed, and went along on his way. He passed human towns but did not visit them. Eventually, he saw a palace, where there lived a beast, not so different from the beast he had run away from, but a beast capable of speech and intelligent thought. It invited Tena in, and offered him food, and saw that Tena's heart was very heavy, and asked what troubled him.
"'I am troubled because I wish I had protected the people who sheltered me,' said Tena. 'They believed I was a great hero who would do what they needed. They were wrong. I don't know what to do now. Laen has not answered my prayer.'
"And the beast said, 'I have a riddle for you, if you will keep a secret.' And Tena agreed to keep the secret, so the beast said: 'I am a beast and not a man, and so I bow to threats; yet rarely am I threatened, for I am strong; and none know this about me, save you, because you would not tell. No one else knows, because it has never come to pass that someone told me "stop or I will kill you" and I stopped. Neither has anyone gotten revenge on me, for no one I have ever hunted has had a friend who could avenge them. So tell me now: how did you save the people who sheltered you?'
"And Tena thought on this, and then he asked if the beast had weapons of any kind to trade him. And the beast said: 'you could try the maze in my courtyard, and see what you find there.'
"And Tena, whose people are wise in these things, said: 'and if I do that, will I be pleased with the results?'
"And the beast said, 'yes, because you asked, I have already placed a bow and a quiver of arrows in the maze.'
"And Tena asked more questions, then explored the maze, then left, and let it be known that the great hero Tena come out of the north had simply run to find his weapons and would avenge any who had been slain while he was gone.
"The beast Tena had spoken to had the power of understanding, but the one that had attacked the town had not, and all its people were dead. Tena avenged them, and went forth, the hero they had spoken of."