Sorry to have gone so long... I'm back now, though.

Faeber was Drystan's father. He was not Drystan's real father. Drystan did not know his real parents. He was a findenkilth, a bastard child. [lit: found-child, old Armourian] Faeber raised Drystan as his own child. Yet, despite Faeber's presence, he was in many ways as absent as Drystan's birth parents: Faeber, when he suspected his own thoughts may be more interesting than his surroundings, would tuck his circular, straw hat over his eyes so that one could just see the rough stubble over his weathered, darkened skin, and he would begin to wander and, when one begins to wander, it is often very difficult to stop. It is easy to lose track of one's wandering and lift one's straw hat up to find oneself in a completely foreign place, where people walk on their hands and have very dexterous toes to farm with. Usually, this is when Faeber realized he had fallen asleep. Sleep crawled up easily on Faeber. Aderyn suspected it was because the difference between Faeber's dreams and his waking life was slight, if there was a difference at all. When he did retire for the day, though, coming into his modest living room in the late afternoon, he would light his pipe, and remove his straw hat to reveal his wavy, lightly matted brown hair and his bright, piercing blue eyes. It was the alliance between his eyes and his voice that made his story-telling special. He would recline in his chair as Aderyn and Drystan sat cross-legged on the floor, and his eyes would dart between the two of them as a squirrel between branches of a tree. And his voice, the voice of a man who has been smoking since childhood, was rolling thunder over the farmland, threatening to those caught under its wrath while still placid, soothing those safely beneath a roof, lulling them to gentle sleep.