Selcouth, God of Wanderers

Two Little Men Also on their First Quest

I have no trouble retracing my steps to where I battled the rabid squirrel and lost, and where my equipment (all two pieces of it: board-with-nail-hammered-through-it and charisma bracelet) is indeed waiting for me in a neat pile, and I do it without the aid of the overworld map, which I consider a small victory; although, truth be told, all I really did was take road out of the village in the right direction and keep going.

I pick up my equipment with pride and re-equip it.

I continue onwards, this time keeping eyes and ears alert to any wildlife sounds, and when I hear anything—or even think I may be hearing something—I dash away to safety. This, I decide, is one of the adventurer's basic skills. I call it: fleeing in the opposite direction. I am bad at combat, so whatever keeps me out of combat should help me survive. "Isn't that right, Randy?" I ask.

"I don't know. I can't read your mind."

Oh. "Because sometimes I swear I'm thinking something and you comment on it, usually snidely."

"Two observations, Suckleslav. First, snidely? I've heard you brag about how many books you've read. Were most of them thesauruses? Because I bet you'd die of cowardice if you ever met a real, live thesaurus."

"There's no such thing as a 'real, live thesaurus.'"

In as much as a ring can sigh (and if it can talk, why can't it sigh?), Randy sighs. "I keep forgetting you haven't been places."

"You're just trying to make me crazy by telling me that crazy things are real."

"Second, you have an unconscious habit of either talking to yourself or to some imagined audience, so you may think you're only thinking when in fact you're also talking. That's when I make snide comments about your so-called thoughts."

I don't do that.

"I don't do that," I say.

"No wonder you don't have any friends."

"They left."

"Yes, no wonder."

I reach the top of a small hill and look at the surroundings. Sure, it may just be a few fields and some mildly untamed woodland, but to me it's freedom, the call of the unknown. ("See, you're doing it again. You may have a narrator complex.") I ignore that. The sun warming my face, the wind carrying the scent of the exotic. ("It's dung. You're smelling cow dung from the cows over there.")

"You can't see," I say.

"Apparently neither can you if you believe you're smelling 'the scent of the exotic.'"

"You're a ring. You don't have eyes."

"I don't have ears or a mouth either—yet here we are, talking to each other."

"Let me have this." As I was saying: the wind carrying on it the scent of the exotic and the promise of distant realms. And the most amazing part of it is that I'm not scared. I have left home and I am happy to be wandering on my own.

"You're like ten minutes outside your village."

"I said, Let me have this."

"Ever consider that maybe you should think about where you're going? You have a quest to complete. You were supposed to talk to your parents about that. Then you forgot, and here you are enjoying the smell of dung."

I did forget. "I'm getting acquainted with the act of solo travel," I say.

"Then again, it's not like it matters. You were never going to catch that blacksmith or find that sword. The moment you accepted the quest, Fate thought, 'Thanks, I'm done here.'"