Role

Chapter 3

I tried resuming life as I had known it, tending snares,
fetching water, and feeding chickens, and making my letters
by the firelight, but as the winter wore on and the chickens
struggled to find anything to eat, they quit laying eggs.
Eventually one died, one wandered away, and the third I set
free. Each day I traveled farther and farther trying to scavenge
freeze-dried berries that had escaped the birds and bears, and
each morning I checked my traps and trotlines to find them empty
or emptied by other hungry creatures. Ultimately, my hand was forced.

I did not like Galadon in those early days. The crush of people was
too much for my yahoo sensibilities, and being sent sprawling by
a giant fighting what I later learned to be a minotaur had me scurrying
for cover. Everywhere was motion and color, and my nostrils could not
recover from the stench of waste and fetid water. I sang in the taverns
when I could find a crowd in need of entertainment, and during the day
I supplemented my meagre earnings with what I could garner from an upturned
hat and a pitiful expression.

In the early hours, I would visit the bakery, and when he let me, I would
kneed dough or press almonds or walnuts into the bland cookies he occasionally
served, and of course when he wasn't looking I would slip one into my mouth
and let it dissolve slowly. And just as the banal cookie dissolved into something
I needed, my disgust with Galadon slowly faded, and I began to appreciate the
laughter and comaraderie, the inspiration and education, the sense of community
shared by those who had grown up here.

But I also felt how foreign I was to this wide world into which Fate had thrust me.