"Do you want to talk about what happened?" Gillan asked, having no idea what happened. The Knight inhaled a jagged breath. He then snorted loudly. The girl to her sporran and tried searching for something for him to wipe his face.
"Do not worry," he said while pulling down the handkerchief he wore under his helmet. He then blew his nose onto the sheet of dyed linen. The Knight raised his head and closed his eyes, taking deeper and slower breaths every second that passed. Gillan watched him like that for a good three minutes.
"I feel," he began, "very frustrated right now. I do not know where we are, I barely know how we got here. All I know, is I am the farthest from home I have ever been."
Gillan couldn't help but be impressed by his honesty. The peace, the lack of shaking in his voice, with which he had just delivered that line almost scared her.
"What's your home like?" she prompted. "Do you want to tell me about it?"
The Knight leaned back. He inhaled the coming breeze and once his heart rate slowed down even more, he spoke:
"My home is an ocean. There once was a god of water who blessed my people to have feet of salt so that we could walk upon our homeland. Some were given the rocks, others drowned.
"The ocean itself is salty too. So much so, that the salt forms small isles in a few regions. There is an entire settlement on dry land. Other than that, the buildings are balanced on a collection of poles sticking from the water. They themselves are inserted into salt rocks deeper below. My home—" he gasped quickly.
"I live in a small house behind a field of bamboo. Bamboo is a kind of grass, it is tall and usually spires out of the ocean in dense bunches. I sometimes practice my cutting there. Children often make swords out of the grass to play-fight with them."
He paused. "And what's inside your home?" Gillan asked further.
"Inside my home..." he halted in thought. "My floor is made of dried grass. I sit on it and stare at the rising sun as I drink a [brew-of-discarded-basilisk-skin]. Cha. I like to watch the sun and feel its warmth both on my face and in my stomach as I drink.
"I also like it when my Dearest comes to sit beside me." Though the Knight's speech was calm, the last sentence barely squeezed out of his pained mind. "We watch the sun come up together. I am sorry, that is as much as I am comfortable sharing right now. But I thank you for asking."
Something stirred inside of Gillan. She felt something and nothing at the same time. Like she wanted to drown the poor man in a deluge of kindness. Not love. Just pure, unabashed, kindness. So she hugged him.
The Knight said he appreciated the gesture and — as was his manner — thanked her for it. She helped him stand up and both of them took a scouting look at the landscape stretching before them. Then they noticed a road.
Not the Road. Just a normal road. It seemed to move, like hot air above a walkway in the sun, but otherwise, it looked extraordinarily boring. With a knowing look, the two agreed to follow it.
As Gillan stepped on the road, exactly when her foot touched the brick below, a voice spoke out:
"Well, that's a bit rude, innit!"
She looked around in confusion, but there was nothing close that could've said that. Not in that accent.
"I said," it said, "get off me, harlot!"
Well, that was just plain rude. Gillan finally checked below and solved the mystery. Twitching below her boot was a road brick. A road brick just like any other. A toad brick.
