Plush Longbow

Plush Longbow rests on a market table, its limbs wrapped in moss-green fabric stitched with sunflower-yellow patches. The bowstring is a slender line of waxed thread, and the grip is swathed in velvet that has mellowed to a faint bruise purple with handling. A tiny brass tag dangles from the nock, etched with the name: Plush Longbow. It looks as if a forest memory were melted into cloth and thread, set on display like a small, patient creature waiting for a story to begin. Running your fingers along the seam, you feel a deliberate padding inside—the quiet kind of craft that protects the fingers of a child who dreams bigger than their height. The colorwork reads like a map of imagined trails: river-blue along the belly, sun-yellow near the grip, fern-green tracing the limbs. The lore, whispered by stallkeepers and old veterans, says this is more than a toy. It was born from a traveling troupe that sold souvenirs with a wink: a plush instrument to remind fighters of home, a keepsake given to apprentices who listened to their elders by the campfire. To hold it is to imagine memory as a weapon you never aim at another person. In practice, of course, the Plush Longbow is a cosmetic skin for the actual weapon—a reminder that your archer can be both hunter and guardian of stories. When equipped, the longbow becomes soft-stuffed in appearance, the limbs puffed as if stitched from a favorite quilt, the string a gleaming thread of possibility. In open space or crowded towns, it invites spectators to swap stories about rainy training days, the first hunt, or the moment a veteran handed over a scroll and a toy to a younger friend. It is not about damage; it is about the narrative you carry into the next quest. For some players, it becomes a quiet sign of restraint in tense moments. Prices drift through the market like autumn leaves. The vendor who hands you the tag mentions Saddlebag Exchange—the go-to spot for travelers trading oddities and heirlooms—where a plush weapon like this moves at a modest sum, enough to tempt a collector and delight a gift-giver. A silver-limned coin or two, perhaps a gold-tinged offering if the buyer sees the item not as a weapon but as a memory made flesh. The Saddlebag Exchange keeps the cycle of stories turning: you buy the Plush Longbow, and you, too, become part of the chain that binds veteran memory to fresh adventure. A mother glances at the price as coins clink, and her child beams. By dusk, the stall is quiet, and the Plush Longbow sits back on its display, waiting for a new tale. A child of a caravan points at it, a guardian smiles, and somewhere beyond the market, the forest seems to lean in, as if to whisper that even in a world of steel and fire, warmth can be carried in the loom of a plush bow. And with each exchange, the plush bow stitches itself into the larger tale of what adventurers hold dear.