There are the occasional opportunities to consider alternative paths my life could have taken, because in retrospect you see the forks quite clearly.\u00a0\u00a0 And it’s not like after having something that gives you heartburn and lamenting, “I should have taken the dessert fork,” it’s like, “Maybe if I’d taken that left at Albuquerque, my whole life would have been different, and not passing before my eyes like it is now.”<\/p>\n
I did not have to respond to the Gillikin’s Dragon (alas, he was not purple, and I didn’t dare nickname him, “Puff”) because he was interrupted by the flapping of something vaguely batlike that landed as a person in a light crouch behind him.<\/p>\n
“Ah, little vesper.\u00a0 I had wondered if you would show your face,” the man said.\u00a0 He did not turn around.<\/p>\n
Matana moved around him, completely unconcerned with her nudity.\u00a0 For that matter, with the pressure of the situation, so was I, except for essentially being me and still noticing it.<\/p>\n
“This one is under protection, Peredur,” she said in an English unlike she had used earlier in the evening, full of lilting accents.\u00a0 I do think it was her native language, but the being inside her may know others.\u00a0 Of course, that’s retrospect for you, concentrating on the little details.\u00a0 At that time I was very focused on the “Oh good, someone’s keeping me safe.”\u00a0 I was still concerned that he’d called me wizard – as if he believed I was capable of making a stand for myself.<\/p>\n
I just couldn’t find it in me to argue with a Dragon.\u00a0 Not yet, at any rate.<\/p>\n
The being she had called Peredur looked at me again, the black from his eyes fading and turning all shades of red for a moment.\u00a0 “Yes, he was to be championed by the flower from Angharad’s hand.\u00a0 He seems to have misplaced it, and I would not have it wilt for lack of care.”\u00a0 He was talking to her and pinning me to the door with his eyes.\u00a0 I felt like the oppression had lifted some, though.\u00a0 He wore it like a cloak of invisible smoke, except a living cloak he could control.\u00a0 Which doesn’t make any sense now, but you weren’t there, and it made perfect sense at the time.<\/p>\n
“I’m also good friends with Ed the exterminator,” I said, my mouth filling in for my lack of conscious thought.<\/p>\n
“He has a great number of friends,” Matana agreed.<\/p>\n
Somehow my mouth moving released some paralysis from my arms.\u00a0 I had always guessed that was how it worked for the superheroes, too.\u00a0 Except that my mouth kept moving.\u00a0 “And the best of them would tell me I’m up too late because I had a very bad day, so if you two just want to keep talking about me, I’m off to bed.”\u00a0 I managed to use my arms to start swinging the door closed.<\/p>\n
“Hold,” Matana said.\u00a0 Peredur said it too, only he did it with a whip of his cloak of presence.<\/p>\n
My arms went back into that frozen state, my mouth shut, and the door slammed back open into its original state.\u00a0 I think I did that last, but I’m not entirely sure.<\/p>\n
Peredur’s eyes were larger than a normal human’s, I decided.\u00a0 They clouded with smoke again, like I wasn’t looking at them but at a place far away that focused on a fire, the only light in a strange darkness.<\/p>\n
Nellie’s eyes were blue.\u00a0 Did she look upon a watery location?\u00a0 Do they get together like fire and water?\u00a0 Did I have more evidence for my elemental premise, or was I just blowing smoke, so to speak?<\/p>\n
“He will find her if you ask him to,” Matana said.<\/p>\n
“He will find her because I demand it.”<\/p>\n
Oh no, here comes the mouth.\u00a0 “I was looking for her anyway,” I pointed out.<\/p>\n
They ignored me.<\/p>\n
“You cannot charge him wizard,” Matana said.\u00a0 I agreed because I didn’t have that kind of metaphysical credit rating.<\/p>\n
“All times are the same to me, darkling.\u00a0 I see through many eyes.\u00a0 I do not name without consequence.\u00a0 I speak his tongue so he understands.\u00a0\u00a0 It is one of the three ways I will assist.”\u00a0 He began gathering himself up, that invisible cloak wrapping around himself and making him flicker between worlds.<\/p>\n
I have to admit, he was opening a portal I could interfere with, but maybe this was the real fork in the road.<\/p>\n
Actually, I didn’t understand.\u00a0 He was saying I would become a wizard some day?\u00a0 Or did he not differentiate the way I did?\u00a0 Or that he was speaking English as a help?\u00a0 Oh, so tricksy!<\/p>\n
My mouth spoke up again.\u00a0 “Actually, if you want to be of real help, you can get me to the Questor and back after dinner,” I shouted after him.<\/p>\n
Matana laughed.\u00a0 “Aye, we could.”\u00a0 She looked at me, her eyes glittering and black.\u00a0 “You will find her.”\u00a0 She moved her hands and a cloak of fog covered her, hovering over her nudity.<\/p>\n
“I’ll try,” I said.\u00a0 It was the best I could do.\u00a0 Besides, how else was I going to collect on the Red Poets?\u00a0\u00a0 They owed me more than a bowl of ice cream.<\/p>\n
She went all batty, and I shut the door.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“He will find her if you ask him to,” Matana said.
\n“He will find her because I demand it.”
\nOh no, here comes the mouth. “I was looking for her anyway,” I pointed out.
\nThey ignored me. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chapter-four"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3-2-1-boom.com\/doctor-e\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}