Five long months had passed since his wife had given him his third child, not that he paid them any mind. Nevertheless, the problems that followed Silas Salt like vultures only swelled and intensified under the sick humid air of his estate. Silas sat upright in his chair, certainly too baroque for his current situation. One more kid meant another mouth, another bed, and another tuition. As he stared out into the verdant bogs his family had carved their name into hundreds of years before, the thought of bog iron, and how, as most of the famous resources that the Salts could export, their recent finite nature. He wondered again, as he had done throughout his youth and adulthood, why the first Salts of Salty Bog chose the Mosquito as their patron animal — surely immunity to a few bug bites could've been traded in for something more lucrative. Nevertheless, he sat. He looked around his surroundings, greenish-brownish wood dripping with moisture. Fine chairs, tables and vases placed neatly around the room in a pleasing pattern. He heard crying. His baby was crying. He decided to let one of the others deal with it, and briskly stood up and walked to the large door that stood sentinel, guarding the sinking manor from whatever enemies may be willing to plunder it for its riches. Once he opened it, he was immediately greeted with the putrid stench of raw eggs. It had become a staple as of late, another problem he didn't have the education nor the capital to fix. As his heirloom boots squished into the wet, mossy ground, he began inspecting his property, walking along the perimeter. As he walked, he saw dank bubbles gurgling from the water. As he walked, he saw a wet turtle lazily moving towards a patch of grass. As he walked, he tripped. The baron of the bog had been laid prostrate, face submerged marsh. He lifted now muddy head from ground, and saw his eldest son in the horizon, on a dry piece of land. He was surrounded by what seemed to be the village boys, "training" with mock swords as equals. He thought about how their grandfathers used to submit to his father, swearing their eternal allegiance. As his son finished up a round, he looked around the marsh. He looked eyes with his father for what must've been fifteen or twenty seconds. Silas couldn't tell what expression was on his son's face; the boy opened his mouth to begin a word, but he was interrupted by a playful push by one of the village runts, to initiate another bout. Once he saw that his son's attention had been lost, Silas mustered up the will to drag himself out of the mud and begin walking back to the manor whence he came from. He resolved that the manor could be surveyed another day, perhaps one in which he sported a cleaner face. At the bridge which connected one side of the largest segment of water in the marsh to another, Silas was forced to stop. Slumped in the middle of the old wood bridge was a rotting carcass. The animal seemed to be a red deer, killed by some pack of wolves or rebel fox that happened to wander into his lands. He realized that he had been smelling the certain smell of rotting flesh many paces behind where he stood, but it blended in with the general putrid smell of the bog. The creature was a gory sight. Blood covered its neck to the point where Silas had no idea whether whatever killed the magnificent beast had ripped it out completely. Its guts spilled out, staining the already delapidated wood with a red matte. He stared at the animal for longer than he was comfortable. This animal likely emblazoned the crest of some well-off family closer to the capital than he was, but in the bog it met its maker. In the bog, the creature, in its decomposed, putrid state had been reduced to the base form of all life within it. He walked towards the body, and stepped over it. He noted his wife could wash the blood off of his boots once he arrived home. After a few minutes he arrived at the manor. As he entered, he saw a familiar face sitting in the chair he usually rested in. His uncle had dozed off in his favorite chair while he was out! He had been getting older, about fifty-seven if Silas knew his numbers, but even he knew that fifty-seven was still young enough to have some sense left. In any other family, this would be thought as disrespect, but to Silas, there was nothing to be done. He wiped his muddy face with a handkerchief he left on the gold laced table that stood in the middle of the common room, and began his ascent. Reaching the second floor, he was greeted by his smiling wife with his baby in her arms. He managed to contort his face into a smile as he glanced at them while walking straight past to his main quarters.
His room had managed to escape most of the dilapidation that the rest of the house faced, mainly because that was the only part of the house Silas felt any need in sparing his increasingly thin budget for. It was actually quite simply arranged, with a large bed, and two simple night-stands. Sitting on the left night stand, the part of the bed with Silas slept, laid an unopened letter. He paid it no mind as he crawled into bed. It seemed to be only noon, but Silas had enough of a day.