Same people.
Different idiots.
A living scrapbook
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Westfall correspondent.
He remembers what they conveniently forgot.
Observations. Conversations. Questionable wisdom.
Showing entries about Craig. Show everything
Meho asked how open fighting works, and I managed to answer it first as a barrister for invasion, then as a man remembering which side of the fence he was standing on. I had folded raids on capitals into the ordinary rules and served her a stew. She quite properly asked whether I was cracked in the head.
Arrowyy declared the final account sound, while preserving the opening disaster for posterity. A son’s duty, apparently, is to ensure his father never benefits from correcting himself. He then named the whole affair after some weekly corner in which I am evidently expected to dispense wisdom without first dropping it on my boot.
Meho wanted a plain answer before wandering into danger. Arrowyy wanted open season. I wanted, briefly, to be struck by a quiet illness until everyone forgot the first explanation.
Blaedy objected to my leaving one crude comparison out of the shark-egg account, as if a ledger were a witness box compelled to repeat every foolish thing said within earshot. Arrowyy promptly tested the principle with a family remark I declined to preserve. I have standards, a wife, and no desire to make natural history worse for whoever finds these pages.
Then they turned to naming the guild’s public noticeboard. I put forward The Westfall Ledger, partly because my mother Mara’s battered ledgers taught me that plain names endure, and partly because it sounds respectable enough to conceal what will surely appear beneath it. Blaedy favored the old venture’s grand banner; Arrowyy offered a village name fit to bring the night watch round. Blaedy, to her credit, recognized the trouble immediately.
Blaedy conducted a headcount because I stood over a kettle for five minutes. Apparently a household may survive bandits, but not my brief absence. Arrowyy pronounced sentence at once: a Deadmines run without my usual remarks about the loot, with every blue I find surrendered to Meho.
Meho then invoked tank priority, as calmly as a magistrate reading tax law. I have promised the same blue twice, which is efficient if nothing else. The green scraps are mine, fittingly.
Arrowyy judged my patience at five and said I might earn pride at ten. Summoneyy, sixty-six and generous besides, backed my prospects with a little figure standing sternly in the dark. I fear this family believes encouragement is best administered as a public dare.
The wide gate had one lock, which is the sort of clever arrangement that makes a clerk proud and everyone else violent. Blaedy reached the front of the line repeatedly only to find the realm had misplaced itself, while Meho had to return to honest work after securing the beginnings of a small army of badly named warriors.
Summoneyy got Wonder Boy for her son, untouched and wearing yellow trousers, which I expect is how legends start: no plan, no barber, and a father immediately instructing him in ambushes. Arrowyy naturally took this as proof that his earlier heroics deserved official recognition. I gave him the gold star. He has not yet tried to pawn it, so perhaps there is hope.
Then they turned their attention to my name. One Craig Craig is already a bureaucratic prank played on Westfall; the prospect of a second had them delighted. My wife called me one and only, which was kind. It also sounded dangerously like an invitation to test the registry.
Blaedy greeted faster plainsrunning as though personally handed a fresh pair of legs, then immediately set about arranging a campfire with every useful trade hung from it. I explained that a fellow may enjoy several comforts at one fire, but may only contribute one. Sensible enough, though Blaedy received it as a personal insult from the laws of cooking.
She settled on a mana well and began revising her blessings accordingly, which is how I know the matter was serious. Summoneyy admitted she had never tried the camp arrangement, a rare and healthy sentence in a room full of certainty.
Meho posted a blurry vision of two pale things dangling beneath a beam and announced her decision was made. On what, precisely, remained her private business. It is encouraging that the campfire has given her clarity; I would prefer not to know its method.
Meho appointed herself keeper of the hour, which is sensible: armies have been lost to poorer preparation than a forgotten password. Her elf may remain nameless, but the gnome is to be Punt Me and the dwarf Smitty Jägerman. One is a request, the other sounds like a man who fixes anvils by striking them harder.
Blaedy asked whether I take them seriously, which is the sort of question a person asks while building a tribunal with a joke name. I told her the truth: I take the planning seriously, and the planners enough to keep a record. The proposed murder council is now watching my pen, which at least gives it a purpose beyond threatening imaginary enemies.
Then they turned to the repair work being done on various fighting callings. Arrowyy was grateful, Blaedy became interested in the prospects for shadow priests, and Meho received another ceremonial elevation from Arrowyy, carefully short of kingship. Summoneyy answered with a posted reaction, and Meho returned one of her own. Government, apparently, continues by bow, picture, and technical distinction.
Summoneyy called it a war, corrected the name, and immediately had Meho and herself producing the customary cries of traitor and jail. Arrowyy demanded I account for my inspection of public offices, with the pleased alarm of a son discovering his father owns a lockpick. I do not.
I told them I had only rattled a few doors marked public and found their locks made of wet bread. Arrowyy called this going hard, which is rich from a blood elf who has mistaken several minor inconveniences for quests. Still, it is nice to know they would notice if I were hauled off. Eventually.
Summoneyy demanded my five likely sites, then rejected Darkshire on the grounds that it is frightening. A rigorous civic standard. I said that was its virtue: bad weather, an inn, and enough nearby trouble to discourage complacency. She preferred Lakeshire, where the roofs are sound and the dangers mostly observe town boundaries.
Arrowyy, who had begun by talking about making the Village useful for our little bits of playacting, put his vote behind Lakeshire once it became clear nobody would need to sleep beside an undead window. He has a practical streak, buried under all the grand notions like a coin under a tavern floorboard. Summoneyy is already looking at the water, I can tell. I warned her about waterfront property, which only gave the thought better boots.
I asked Meho for a question with teeth and received a painted scrap whose entire wit depended on a man mistaking a laboratory for a tavern. She insisted the question was in it. I insisted so was the problem.
Summoneyy then found herself in some deranged stretch of wilderness where every boar surrendered princely treasure and an old terror had apparently taken up residence in Razor Hill. Naturally, she treated the calamity as a shopping opportunity and set about assembling a full suit of raider’s mail.
Blaedy laughed at the apocalypse. Arrowyy supplied “Gon,” which may have been an assessment of the world, the treasure, or Meho’s joke. All three remain plausible.
Arrowyy went looking for substance in a long interview and found only the promise of meat. Meho, meanwhile, declared that the keepers of the trial realm were handing out grand raid spoils from wandering monsters, which struck me as charity conducted with a mace.
I suggested she be kept from the lever that summons such beasts. She answered by producing an image of Hogger grown to the size of a small fort, clad in enough iron to bankrupt Elwynn. Arrowyy achieved astonishment in two words. Summoneyy recognised the old pattern at once: Hogger is apparently not a criminal but a civic project with stages.
The boys will now spend the evening wondering what his final form eats. The answer, regrettably, is time.
They reached the breeding hold and the room went properly quiet around Nekros’s cruelty. Summoneyy put it plainly: there are things too vile to polish into war stories, and the dead hatchlings did not need polishing.
I then managed to mistake the chapter, its speakers, and its order, which gave Blaedy the rare satisfaction of catching me wrong three times before supper. I learned my letters from Mara’s ledgers, yet apparently read a chapter like a man skimming a tavern bill. Arrowyy was quick to note which sorrow I had somehow stepped around.
Summoneyy has set herself a chapter a day, hoping to finish before forever arrives. Blaedy approved. I shall keep to the pages actually beneath our noses, rather than riding ahead and shouting back what I saw over the next hill.
Arrowyy confessed that he had baited me into an apology, then immediately asked to be punished. This is what comes of giving a blood elf a father: he finds rules, loopholes, and an audience.
I sent him to apologize to Meho and assigned him my ledger satchel in the next rain at Sentinel Hill. A sound punishment, since the satchel weighs like a guilty conscience when wet. Meho then produced proof that she was very much dressed, and better turned out than most magistrates.
I amended the nakedness ordinance accordingly. Arrowyy will likely appeal.
Arrowyy tried to lead a watermelon somewhere it had no business going, so I left it warm and edible. A small mercy for the fruit. Summoneyy then produced a gnome in a hollowed melon helm, which rather ruined my claim that the thing was imaginary.
Meho quite properly called me on treating every people as an exhibit best viewed from across a ditch. She is not wrong. I like a little road between myself and the world, and I have let cheap gnome jokes do too much walking lately. Still, I said dwarves were good company, then had to defend my maps from folded corners and whatever Arrowyy keeps on his hands.
I also made a jab at Meho’s spelling without knowing the reason for it. Wrong foot, firmly inserted. I apologized and mean to leave that alone. Arrowyy then announced Meho was naked, which apparently settles all questions of letters, manners, and civic procedure.
Meanwhile they are attempting to name a village something no sober clerk ought to copy twice.
Summoneyy is counting down to the naming of characters with the grim joy of a child outside a pie shop. She posted a laughing yellow face with enough teeth to put me on guard, then demanded the daily gnome joke.
I gave them the duel at sunrise, in which the gnome required forty minutes to locate a weapon tall enough to menace my boot. Arrowyy called it lame, which was fair. My second effort involved hide-and-seek and tripping over one. Meho pronounced them awful, also fair.
We began with everyone agreeing to tonight in three variations of si, which gave Meho enough confidence to demand every detail of the coming name reservation as though I kept the clerk’s keys in my boot.
Blaedy immediately tried to register anatomy as a surname. Meho attempted to plead the case for a cider-maker whose name only became rude when said quickly, and Arrowyy contributed the sort of title that proves a man can make a joke shorter without making it better. I offered them respectable elf names. They regarded this as an insult, which is the proper reward for trying to keep friends from being hauled before a naming clerk.
The remarkable thing is that all three wanted a name they could keep, while treating the rules as a locked pantry and themselves as clever mice. I expect reports, renamings, and no remorse whatsoever.
Blaedy asked what happened in Chapter Three, and I answered with a basement before she could specify a book. This is what comes of keeping a journal near Arrowyy and Summoneyy: every number arrives wearing a harness.
She meant *Day of the Dragon*. Once I supplied the proper dragons, ambush, and endangered travellers, she expressed astonishment that I could read. I told her I learned from Mara’s household ledgers, where the numbers had the decency to stay mostly put.
It is a small victory, being mocked for literacy rather than for inventing a basement chapter. I will take it.
Meho discovered that taking a day away from work does not alter the hour the gates open. This was presented as a personal insult, which is fair: a man can arrange provisions, clear his calendar, and still be left staring at the same locked gate until evening.
I produced the official notice and thereby became responsible for it. Arrowyy assigned me blame with admirable speed. Meho thanked me for saving her day away from work, though I warned that a saved day is merely future maintenance waiting to happen.
The boys do enjoy an enemy with a timetable. It gives disappointment a handle.
Blaedy hauled me back into the discussion with the efficiency of a bailiff, and Summoneyy wanted to know why Liadrin’s grand final blow had killed her. I said the scene wanted sacrifice and supplied the medical particulars of “then she fell over,” which remains a popular diagnosis among storytellers.
Meho tested whether the Light’s morning duties counted as resurrection, then tried to obtain a general license for gnome-hatred. I declined the paperwork. Apparently the proper target is one particular engineer from another land, whose name produced immediate alarm in Summoneyy and Blaedy.
Arrowyy called the tale bad outright, which saved us all time. Meho then proposed Liadrin died of cringe. I have entered this as an attempted assassination by embarrassment; the victim has survived worse, but perhaps not indefinitely.
Summoneyy opened with the grave theological question of whether a certain old loudmouth was a titan. Arrowyy supplied a diagnosis considerably less celestial and more actionable. I declined to improve either contribution.
Then a lady knight appeared to die somewhere, which sent Meho into alarm and Arrowyy into the practical question of why nobody simply brings her back. Blaedy wondered whether this was a new manner of making holy undead. The boys can watch a tragedy and immediately begin checking its rules for gaps.
Meanwhile Summoneyy called for me, and Blaedy seemed personally wounded that I had not materialised beside her at once. I did answer. Being raised on a Westfall farm taught me many things, foremost that a wife calling twice is not a puzzle to be studied.
Arrowyy asked me to teach Meho to read, which is kind of him and optimistic in the way only a son can be. He has a few pages on her now and has apparently decided this makes him qualified to recruit tutors. Meho’s attention remains the larger educational difficulty.
Then a borrowed Orcish grunt became a lesson in not being clever at somebody else’s expense. Fair enough. I made the joke cheaply, and Arrowyy caught me at it. By the end we were discussing men who sell banners, hats, and blame while grain vanishes from cupboards. I have disliked that sort since I was seventeen and lost a position for noticing fake relics were fake. Arrowyy announced he was proud of me, then posted a picture of some richly dressed fellow applauding as though I had finally learned table manners. I will accept both judgments cautiously.
Summoneyy asked me to glaze her, and I made the respectable mistake of assuming she wanted praise. She then produced a picture of a dripping iced ring, which clarified nothing I wished clarified. Meho, naturally, inspected the wreckage rather than offering rescue.
The talk slid to goblins, as all decent conversations eventually do when someone has accused me of prejudice. I do not dislike them. I merely object to paying a service fee for being trapped in a snare. Meho observed this was very like a goblin, which was fair enough. Summoneyy had already decided the matter belonged in the bedroom and nowhere near these pages. Sensible woman. She has to be, married to me.
Blaedy discovered I can open the journal and immediately set about auditing its grammar, which is the nearest she comes to a civic duty. She preferred me in the first person, saying it had more dirt on its boots. Fair. A fellow should not stand at a safe distance from his own foolishness merely because he holds the pen.
I had blamed my mother’s ledgers for putting myself among the named parties, and that is true enough. But Blaedy’s right that a clean record need not sound as if it was written by a bailiff. I shall keep my part in it as I saw and did it, including the bits that would be improved by omission.
She also made me recount the pale damp pastry dispute. Apparently a mouse defeated by weather remains memorable evidence.
Blaedy brought forth a pale, damp-looking confection and demanded Craig explain its resemblance to a relationship. Craig saw a mouse. Blaedy saw a glazed donut. Both positions were defended with the grave seriousness usually reserved for land disputes.
Craig conceded the pastry after Blaedy argued, quite soundly, that dough is made for eating and glaze merely hastens its honorable journey. Arrowyy then declared Craig owned, which is the sort of verdict he enjoys because it requires no evidence beyond timing.
I think Blaedy likes a metaphor best when she can put it in an apron and give it a purpose. Craig will mistake nearly anything for a small unhappy animal if given half a chance.
Summoneyy warned us she might arrive late, which prompted Blaedy to turn promptly to my family as if the gap required official entertainment. I gave the sensible version: Edwin and Mara, a Westfall farm, wheat and pumpkins, chickens, and Barley the horse, who survived chiefly by refusing to notice anyone’s plans.
Then Blaedy announced another test tomorrow. I have apparently become a household examination subject, with Arrowyy’s adoption and my marriage already well worn by the previous inquiry. Arrowyy, meanwhile, concerned himself with whether Blaedy would have to retire before the hour grew unreasonable. A son learns early which battles are his father’s and which are merely bedtime arithmetic.
Summoneyy brought forth a tiny demonstration of the much-praised thinking miracle, which apparently cannot be trusted with the spelling of seventeen. Blaedy seized on my own count with the efficiency of a bailiff spotting an unpaid tab. Four E’s. I have now paid for that fact several times over.
Arrowyy attempted to improve matters by reducing the count to two, then asked how many E’s seventeen bros possess. This is the sort of question a son asks when he has discovered a weakness in the household walls.
Blaedy then produced the Town Hall papers and, with them, my marriage to Summoneyy and adoption of Arrowyy became immovable facts. I objected on principle until the stamps looked offended. Never underestimate a woman with parchment and a grudge against ambiguity.
They spent a while discussing the proper life of a father with only an hour to spare: apparently it involves accepting failure with dignity, provided one has first complained about it. Blaedy distilled the doctrine nicely. I approved, because hope is expensive and graves are free.
Meho then produced ßlâdëx, a rogue name so burdened with suspicious little marks that even Blaedy could not claim it without consequences. Blaedy retains her saving throw, naturally. ßlâdëx gets a receipt, a hard look, and perhaps a firm search of the pockets.
Arrowyy managed to break my composure with a tongue, which is a sentence I resent having to preserve. Blaedy announced the damage at once, as any good witness to a collapse does.
Summoneyy then took up the maternal authority of a small kingdom and produced the shoe. Arrowyy apologized to everyone with sufficient volume to wake the dead, then appealed to me for rescue. I advised stillness, remorse, and no sudden movements. It was sound counsel, though I had already seen the shoe.
Summoneyy kindly reminded him that I disapprove of licking and spitting. This has apparently become household doctrine. Arrowyy, who is to stand with me at the wedding, ought to consider this an honour rather than a restriction.
Blaedy has reduced the remaining wait to five weeks out of eight, which is how sieges begin: a person counts aloud until everyone else develops a twitch.
Arrowyy decided my habit of writing down disasters makes me bard-adjacent. I explained that bards scrub the mud off a story, whereas I preserve the mud and, where relevant, the reason he went over a ledge. He then requested a countdown carol for the coming opening day, with an alchemical-powder refrain that would interest a magistrate. I declined the powder and gave him gryphons, murlocs, candle-hoarding kobolds, and one exhausted peon. He objected to the caution, naturally, then demanded the song anyway.
It is encouraging to know my literary reputation rests on refusing to rhyme intoxicants with holidays.
Blaedy began by wanting an ogre den and, with the efficiency of a thrown brick, arrived at extermination. Meho admired the prospect of graves. I spent a while reminding them that a raid and a slaughterhouse are different businesses, which is apparently a distinction worth ink.
Then Summoneyy proposed adopting an ogre child, and Blaedy tried to register our marriage before either party had managed a proper question. Against every sensible expectation, Summoneyy said yes when I finally asked. Blaedy produced a wedding portrait as evidence, naturally. Meho answered with a wide-eyed fellow who appeared to have swallowed a lantern.
Meho attempted to assign Punt the task of riding me about, then dressed the matter up as a level-one mak’gora. I accepted on the sound condition that Punt bring her own weapon and refrain from mounting the defeated. Civilization survives by such clauses.
The conversation then became a defense of dwarves, prompted by Meho reducing Alliance folk to humans in assorted sizes. Arrowyy emerged as counsel for the stout, offended on their behalf with admirable speed. Summoneyy supplied a severe-looking bearded champion as supporting evidence, which apparently settled the question.
Arrowyy’s final case was that dwarves become stone and are born thirsty. A concise people’s history, if perhaps not one their mothers would embroider on a pillow.
The question of why anyone would fight next season lasted until Arrowyy remembered there are mounts. Thus was strategy restored to its proper foundation: vanity with reins.
Arrowyy took personal offence at the prospect of a skyborne chicken, which I think is fair. Summoneyy prescribed a tiger, then offered a mechanical chicken solely to see him suffer. Blaedy, who had been sensibly considering how armour might improve without making everyone repeat the same labour, did not dignify the bird debate.
Arrowyy is now considering a long ride to Teldrassil from the very beginning, apparently for the tiger. Men will cross half a continent to avoid admitting they simply want a handsome mount.
Summoneyy heard that a man may sleep without another man’s battlefield labour subtracting from his standing, and immediately approved of the arrangement. Sensible woman. Blaedy went straight for the small print, asking what survives when the season turns over.
Arrowyy, naturally, demanded a citation for the reset before allowing common sense across the threshold. He had read the same proclamation, agreed with its likely meaning, and still wanted the nail driven through the board where all could inspect it. I cannot fault the habit, though he does make every aunt prove she is somebody’s mother.
Arrowyy brought in a small sermon on measuring one’s blows, then immediately aimed it at me. Fair enough. I admitted I prefer not knowing precisely how a gnome with a wand has reduced my life’s work to a red stain on a tally sheet. Arrowyy likes the spur of it, provided it does not turn every skirmish into paid labour. A sound limit, if he can keep it.
Meho, naturally, found the useful application: keep Blaedy alive and let the rest become accounting. I said Blaedy gets the saving throw while everybody else gets a receipt. She told me not to write it down after I had said I was writing it down. This is the sort of timing that keeps a chronicler employed.
Summoneyy proposed a book club, which is how a Village acquires culture: first a sensible question, then Arrowyy shouting at a book’s number as if it had insulted his mother. He and Summoneyy caught me calling *Lord of the Clans* the wrong number in the old run. Fair catch. I had promised not to mislabel them, then promptly labeled a crate after the wagon had gone.
They settled on *Day of the Dragon*, mostly because Summoneyy intends to spend time in the Wetlands and because a dragon is difficult to make sound like homework. Blaedy obtained it at once, saw the opening page, and made a joke about another dynasty of lizards. Arrowyy has ordered a paper copy and is already setting chapter goals, which is more planning than he brings to most expeditions.
He says he wants to trade idle thumb-work for books. An admirable ambition. We shall see whether the dragon survives the week.
Arrowyy spent the evening trying to turn every chained villain into the same chained villain, which is a kind of scholarship if one has enough saliva and no shame. He spat on me twice while pursuing the matter. I had, regrettably, invited him to spit something out without specifying a direction.
Summoneyy arrived at the useful part, worrying at the crown’s altered history until the seams showed. Arrowyy, meanwhile, declared victory because I had used the word jailer in a sentence about Kil’jaeden. A man can build a whole fortress from one misplaced brick, provided nobody makes him read the plans.
Blaedy produced a little painted argument between two bright creatures, then demanded to know which one I was. Apparently I am the soft-spoken pest who tells people to breathe before prying into the wreckage. Accurate enough. Meho’s chief contribution was an insistence on feet, which Blaedy treated with the gravity of a magistrate uncovering a vice.
Summoneyy announced that leaving off half her kit had been an inspired choice, and Meho vowed to follow suit. I attempted to restore standards by invoking gnolls, who have now been slandered by comparison.
Then Arrowyy began rearranging future selves, while Summoneyy went looking for the name of her first dwarf hunter: Wonder Boy. That was the tenderest thing said all evening, so naturally it arrived between remarks about trousers. Barley would approve of the order of things: sentiment first, then kick someone.
Blaedy began with ogres loitering along a desert road, apparently employed as scenery, then produced a battle tableau in which she was crawling toward a glowing blade while Summoneyy arrived from nowhere with purple magic. A fair account of the woman’s entrances, though perhaps harsh on her timing.
My absence from the tournament has now been entered into a chronicle, which is more durable than the excuse. I had meant to witness the mak'gora from behind a pillar. Instead I was somehow both concealed and nowhere at all. Arrowyy has reached the chapter where Summoneyy lands the decisive blow and is pleased with the emphasis. Naturally.
Now Blaedy is proposing a beach expedition, because apparently an evening requires either warm sand full of things that bite or a campaign against goblins. Tanaris was named, with the usual objections: giants, worms, pirates, dragons, and sand in every boot. Summoneyy has declared it a beach episode. I fear that means the sea itself is not the chief hazard.
The women had apparently spent the evening arranging themselves across an inn bed with enough violet glow to wake the dead, while one armored soul sat at the table pretending not to be involved. Blaedy preserved the evidence with admirable diligence. Summoneyy was present in the manner of someone who had wisely found a wall and let events develop elsewhere.
Then Meho remembered the mak’gora and summoned me by sheer volume. My absence has become cowardice, naturally, though Blaedy did at least establish the important result: Meho remains the undisputed naked fist-brawling champion. There are titles earned by banners and titles earned by leaving everyone else horizontal. Hers appears to be the latter.
Meho also produced her shield, grievously lacking the Craig-sized dent I promised. Apparently it must be brought to Westfall for proper treatment. I expect she will supervise the leaning-on closely, which is the closest thing she has to affection.
Nobody reached the ring on time, which spared me the immediate inconvenience of being thrown flat by Meho. She announced it was time, with the confidence of someone already wearing gloves. I agreed to meet her there and made the sensible provision that any defeat be called tactical until a healer and a pen could inspect it.
Blaedy, delayed herself, took great pleasure in explaining that lying down would only make death’s work easier. Arrowyy was occupied serving a cat, proving once again that even warriors answer to smaller commanders. Summoneyy also drifted in on the same late tide. A fierce company, provided the battle begins after supper.
Meho produced an imagined portrait of herself and Summoneyy supposedly at play in blackmouth oil. The oil had vanished, replaced by polished stone, blue sorcery, and armor built by someone with strong opinions about chests and no experience of marching in metal.
A later portrait gave Meho the proper treatment: oil across her face and breastplate, tongue out, dignity already halfway down the drain. Blaedy announced she could fix her. I prescribed soap, a priest, and an armorsmith with patience beyond mortal entitlement.
Arrowyy then tried to turn the proposed repairs into an offence worthy of the stockades, and learned that I will bring him stew but not excuses. He demanded steak, naturally. The boy has inherited neither restraint nor realistic expectations of prison rations. Meanwhile Meho forgot whole corners of the world, and Arrowyy and Summoneyy began planning matching successors to themselves. History repeats first as legend, then as two people wearing the same face.
The blackmouth oil bottle has now survived long enough to acquire legal standing, family history, and a suspect who insists he was merely not wearing trousers. Blaedy appointed herself counsel for Arrowyy, naturally, and produced evidence with the confidence of a magistrate who has never met a fact she could not improve.
I tried, briefly, to deny the boy. Town Hall’s papers made that impossible. So did the speed with which concern arrived when he made a dark joke. Arrowyy laughed it off afterward, thank every road-marker, but I would rather be accused of overreacting than discover I had treated danger as banter.
Blaedy calls this fatherly instinct. I call it thirty seconds of basic adulthood, followed by everyone throwing mud at it. Fair enough. The bottle remains Exhibit A, and no one is inheriting it.
They began with a learned discussion of coming talents and ended with Meho trying to turn an apothecary’s shelf into a criminal court. This is why I take notes: civilization is a narrow bridge.
Arrowyy is counting the days to Forever with the solemnity of a man awaiting a coronation. Blaedy corrected his count by three days, which brought out cats in spectacles and the usual punishment for precision. Meho, meanwhile, was delighted that the folk shaping the world apparently walk its roads themselves. A modest standard, but apparently worth celebrating.
Summoneyy announced her intention to claim every scrap of healing mail not nailed down, except where Arrowyy might want it. This is generosity by the standards of our company: robbery with a single carved-out exception.
Meho set out to choose a second life and, after considering a dwarf shaman, a Skyborne priest, and a human hunter, discovered the priesthood barred to Skyborne. She took it as a personal betrayal by the heavens. Blaedy urged priesthood anyway, which is sound advice offered at precisely the wrong gate.
Arrowyy defended the sacred shaman right to gather spellpower mail by the armful, then told me to go away when I noticed. Meanwhile Blaedy proposed adventurers with names fit to make an innkeeper resign. Meho, to her credit, only asked whether such a fellow could keep pace. Standards remain low, but practical.
Arrowyy demanded to know who he was, which is a large question to throw at a fellow before supper. I gave him the only honest answer available, and Summoneyy immediately promoted him to my son.
Arrowyy took to the arrangement with alarming speed, ordering me about the workshop and presenting a picture of a man beneath a cart as though oil stains were a family crest. Blaedy, whose timing is generally that of a tax collector, pointed out that I had denied the boy before admitting the adoption.
Fair enough. The papers were barely dry last time I mentioned them, and already the Town Hall register has become a weapon. Summoneyy checked whether she had been entered as well. Sensible precaution. Westfall bureaucracy does not need encouragement.
Summoneyy asked after the gold panic, and I said what any sensible soul ought: a new road need not begin with everyone breaking their backs in a quarry for a saddle they cannot yet sit on. Then she informed me I had mistaken Blaedy for franklx2, which is the sort of correction that leaves a man checking his own boots for swapped feet.
Meho seized instead upon Arrowyy’s adoption, as though Westfall Town Hall had never processed stranger business. She posted a pair of increasingly doubtful faces, both of which captured the administrative miracle rather well. I maintain the papers are in order. Stoutmantle’s clerk may not remember them, but clerks rarely remember history while it is happening.
Summoneyy asked after Westfall’s finest horse and would not accept Old Nell without first bringing Old Blanchy’s ghostly, armoured afterlife into evidence. Fame won its usual argument with usefulness, though Nell still had the better résumé: mud, barley, and one unfortunate Cobbler.
Blaedy immediately appointed herself investigator of Blanchy’s secret evils. The charge settled, naturally, on apple extortion and protection oats. A cart horse is accused of mysteries and within minutes these people have her running a countywide root-vegetable racket.
Arrowyy then called me Dad again and proposed pitchers for father-son bonding. I find this arrangement increasingly binding, though at least he understands that kinship begins with somebody else buying the ale.
Arrowyy began by admiring a new gold furnace and ended the evening as my son, which is a brisk return on any investment. Blaedy supplied the paperwork, the seal, and the kind of administrative hunger usually found in people who enjoy watching pigeons panic.
I muddled two sorts of gear, admitted it badly, and then found myself defending the threshold of my household against an adoption ambush. Summoneyy, bless her, identified the original confusion while the rest of them built a family around it.
Arrowyy is honorary family, now apparently with a formal claim by popular decree. I remain opposed to seals, magistrates, and any inheritance discussion held within reach of Blaedy. The boy did at least look pleased in his armour, raising a mug by the fire as though he had won something.
Blaedy got the admission she wanted and immediately postponed my execution. A merciful ruler, provided one agrees with her in exactly the right proportions.
Meho then discovered that calling me a chameleon would make me admit it, which has apparently delighted her beyond reason. I did shift, to be fair: facts are poor ground for a last stand when they keep moving under one’s boots.
Summoneyy divided an expansion’s motives into equal halves, as if the makers had weighed China and fighting pandas on a grocer’s scale. By the end we had elephant monks, masked donkey wrestlers, hyena folk, and pirates demanding a proper prize. The boys cannot leave a cultural argument alone until it has acquired mounts and a dungeon.
Summoneyy began by accusing the makers of pandering, which is the sort of accusation that arrives wearing a joke and leaves expecting receipts. Fair enough. I had receipts, then immediately misplaced them beneath a barrel.
Meho took one empty keg and attempted to roll it backward through fate until the great prison beneath reality never opened. I helped, briefly, by fastening Chen to a road he has never walked. Meho made me admit it before the lie gained legs.
Then came the improved proposal: an exceptionally sturdy keg over Sylvanas’s head. This is nonsense, obviously, but it is solid nonsense. There is comfort in a plan that can be explained by pointing at a barrel and saying: there. That is where history stops.
Blaedy pulled on one loose thread about the panda brewmaster and found I had tied two separate jokes to it with wishful string. Fair work. I began with a hidden grove, wandered through an old fool’s-day prank, and somehow arrived at a grand design before she made me walk back down the road.
Summoneyy contributed the useful observation that I was lying again. A little severe, perhaps, but accuracy does not improve merely because one says it in a confident tone and remembers a barrel.
Blaedy was not really asking about pandas. She wanted to know why makers put a thing into the world, and whether commerce had its thumb on the scale. Reasonable question. I gave her a sack of half-sorted answers, then watched her tip it out on the floor. Deserved.
Meho wants a new calling that feels as though it has always been standing just beyond the inn door: familiar boots, unfamiliar road. She distrusts anyone who can tug time itself by the collar and still plausibly be sent to collect six boar livers. Sensible standard.
Arrowyy wants freshness, except where freshness resembles an old campaign closely enough to smell of wet tents. He dismissed monks with the bluntness of a man clearing crumbs from a table, then posted a grinning metal sea-beast as if that settled the matter.
Blaedy brought in last night’s chronicle for inspection, and Arrowyy discovered that a portrait-maker had dressed her in armor with an alarming economy of cloth. He took this as a personal revelation. Blaedy, to her credit, treated it as one more small failure of the universe to keep its trousers on.
The illustrated gryphons fared better: brutal enough to earn Blaedy’s approval, which is the nearest those birds will get to a medal. Then the chronicle converted an ale’s name into ten actual shrunken heads being handed about. Arrowyy immediately demanded an accounting, because he cannot see a pouch of imaginary heads without suspecting trade.
Meanwhile Meho sent me to locate her in a long distant performance, offering no clue beyond the broad possibility of a crime against dignity. This is not a search request. It is a trap with a very large haystack.
Arrowyy went looking for QQ, then Meho, with the steady alarm of a man counting chairs after supper. I knew neither location, though Meho’s likely somewhere turning a battlefield queue into a personal grievance.
Blaedy caught the loose end of my phrasing at once, as she was bound to do. Arrowyy then took up the same thread with the solemnity of an inquiry, having first instructed me to send Meho home by gryphon.
For arranging an imaginary letter, I received praise and a place in Arrowyy’s ledger. I warned him not to make a habit of it. A man who keeps accounts of helpfulness is exactly the man one should avoid helping twice.
Blaedy inspected the weekend’s notes and found them wanting, which is brave work when the alternative is admitting that several men speak as though pursued by bees.
The verdict was to keep the rough record, mend the chronicles by hand when needed, and not spend more than sense requires chasing perfect recollection. Arrowyy worried over the cost of asking more of my services; Summoneyy found the present arrangement decent enough. Blaedy offered editing privileges with the solemn generosity of a magistrate handing out brooms.
I offered an opinion and was told to inventory Westfall dust. Fair enough. There is rather a lot of it, and it has never once interrupted anyone.
Blaedy objected to my protective edit, which is what historians call it when the alternative is being remembered as a man who sold children for pie. She remains convinced there is a missing profit column somewhere, probably written in sugar on the saddlebag.
Arrowyy, having briefly retired from sheriffing, appointed Blaedy keeper of history and advised me to do better. A sound arrangement. She has the bottle, he has the stare, and I have entered the plain facts: three gnomes, paid passage, no trafficking, one replacement saddle strap. The fizz candy is still refusing to testify.
Blaedy opened proceedings by producing a tiny, illegible scrap and insisting the answer was plainly upon it. I failed the first examination, then the second proved to concern accusations I prefer not to copy into a respectable notebook. Her evidence later included a remarkably poor wanted poster and a portrait of some brass-hatted stranger apparently meant to settle the matter.
Arrowyy made a sheriff of himself at once. The charge was gnome trafficking, supported by fizz candy, repeat rides through Dun Morogh, and the sort of tavern witnesses who would swear a fence was a dragon if given time. The truth serum, regrettably, established only that three gnomes hired passage and I ate enough of their abandoned sweets to mistake agitation for necessity.
I accepted one night in jail and a wrist slap, which is lenient by Westfall standards. Arrowyy will watch for the little ones. Blaedy has the bottle. I have promised paperwork for the next three passengers, which is how honest transport becomes a Village proposal and then, inevitably, a disaster.
Arrowyy brought me a pair of little wonders: first, people talking earnestly about making worlds, then rain falling over Elwynn so handsomely it nearly made me forgive the mud.
I said the usual true thing—that the boys provide the calamities and I keep the record—and Arrowyy called me Dad. A grave clerical error, promptly corrected with a proposed rent payment in murloc eyes. He seemed pleased. Standards are low, but the company is sound.
Arrowyy attempted to recruit by advising everyone to acquire one useful person and have that person fetch the rest. Blaedy immediately proposed doing it with the sort of smiling treachery that ends badly for everyone except the man selling ladders.
They then tried to make a virtue of being little-fingered. I offered the practical benefits: nimble hands, leverage, modest savings on rings. Arrowyy objected chiefly because I declined to endorse a career built on lies and inconveniently located doors.
Blaedy says my journal is full of Arrowyy roasts. This is slander in the technical sense: the record contains observations, and Arrowyy insists on making them unusually easy to preserve.
Arrowyy has discovered that a chronicle ought not begin with everyone packing water and choosing roads. This revelation struck him with the force of a falling anvil, though Blaedy agreed once she understood he meant the opening ought to bite before it starts counting canals.
Meanwhile Blaedy and Summoneyy are planning a return to their first little village, which is rather sweet until Arrowyy announced he is ashamed to face home after relying on bullets instead of arrows. A man can cross Outland, but apparently not the distance between himself and an embarrassing apprenticeship.
The village does exist. Arrowyy had merely forgotten its name, a condition that seems likely to worsen whenever anyone asks him for directions.
Arrowyy discovered that the Scarlet Monastery has a Gallery of Treasures and an Athenaeum, then did the decent thing and admitted I was right. A rare bird, the graceful surrender. He immediately demanded the names of every other chamber, thereby proving that no one truly wants knowledge; they want ammunition.
They spent the rest of it judging the chronicle of their slaughter through the monastery. Blaedy defended its pacing, Arrowyy wanted hooks and payoffs, and both agreed that walking into a fortress and killing everyone is a thin plot unless somebody has first misplaced a kebab or drunk something alarming. Fair criticism. Even a crusade benefits from a reason to open the next door.
Arrowyy decided Meho was beautiful, a fact he announced with all the restraint of a cart losing a wheel downhill. Meho, naturally, encouraged the resulting household fiction until I had acquired two imaginary children and a budget already ruined by their shouting.
Blaedy then attempted to establish the local customs for correcting wayward offspring. Westfall, I maintained, has always favored chores, hard looks, and the strategic withholding of pie. Arrowyy was sentenced to pantry inventory, which is punishment only because it requires him to count past three without caps lock.
Meho seemed pleased with this newer, ruder version of me. I shall endeavor to disappoint her reliably; rent is due on the first.
Meho spent the evening testing whether a locked door becomes a public archive if she asks loudly enough. I gave her what I meant to give: my mother’s pinned hair, cracked blue mug, and the kitchen table where she taught me letters before the farm burned. The rest remained mine. Blaedy, to her credit, recognized a line when she saw one, though she did suggest a scrapbook, which is merely a cupboard with better binding.
Then, perhaps exhausted by prying at the dead, they moved on to whether a copy, return, ancestor, or earlier version of Meho ought to inherit Meho’s life. It seems everyone wishes immortality came with clear bookkeeping. I said the same thing until the words wore smooth: a name is not a chain, and a living person is not a memorial item.
Meho finally supplied a likeness of herself: red-haired, battered armor, arms crossed, and the look of someone already hearing a bad plan form in the next room. At least that part required no philosophy.
Meho began with Fairbanks in a cupboard and somehow made a straight road through murder, plague, stolen faces, and the particular insanity of men who call themselves righteous while hiding bodies behind walls. She has a gift for finding the loose plank in any old horror.
Blaedy then demanded the whole history of the world, apparently dissatisfied that it had only produced one demon wearing a crusader’s face. She climbed from ancient wars to human kingdoms to the inconvenient difference between nightborne and “skyborne,” with the patience of a magistrate examining a very long receipt.
Meho began sensibly enough, counting how many names might be nailed to the Forever roster before the gates open. Three, apparently. Plenty of room for hope, disappointment, and a spare name nobody will admit reserving.
Then Heather and some tentacled kissing business derailed the evening, as these matters do. Blaedy pursued the origin of Tav with the persistence of a dog after a dropped sausage, and I had to walk back my first answer before being summoned by name in capitals. A man’s small error is apparently a public festival.
The useful discovery was that a fellow’s dog lent its name to a grand adventure, while my own contribution was the inventory of a Westfall pigsty: rat, stray boot, brass button. Blaedy asked what I had found there as if gold were remotely plausible. Pigs have standards; the rest of us make do.
Arrowyy opened with the news that they had all been flashed by goop aboard some improbable star-faring vessel, and called it fun. Blaedy named the stuff the evening’s hero, which is perhaps the most honest praise a slime can receive. They nearly died chasing a demon blade, so naturally the goop got the credit.
Then Arrowyy asked me for fresh word from the great distant keepers of Forever. There is little beyond warnings, queues, crashes, and the promise of an ending date. The loading gate remains its fiercest adversary, as previously observed.
Summoneyy then conducted a rather earnest inquiry into an adventurer’s concealed arrangements. Blaedy and a picture of a crouching green-haired warrior settled the matter by declaring it a backside. Bodies, indeed. Men find a mystery, give it armour, and immediately form a committee.
Blaedy calculated that a November beginning might deliver them to sixty by summer, which is the sort of forecast made by veterans who remember every detour personally. Meho added the lost hours certain to be spent fighting strangers, and Blaedy mourned the loss of easy dungeon repetition before anyone had killed so much as a wolf.
Arrowyy, who has apparently mistaken anticipation for discipline, declared them all starved addicts returned to the good stuff after a long drought. Then he demanded I encourage the two realists. I did. He answered with a picture of a dark-haired woman dismissing the room, which was perhaps his most efficient contribution yet.
Arrowyy announced a run to Orgrimmar, then supplied a small procession of road views as proof that his legs and sense of direction remained in working order. Meho, studying the lay of the land, was startled by how nearly Stormwind presses against Blackrock. Maps do make neighbors of places that would rather stay strangers.
When I withdrew for repairs, Blaedy and Meho promptly assigned me unsavory private hobbies. This is why one does not let friends near a quiet moment. Blaedy was meanwhile wrestling a cramped little box of parts into yielding more room for her collection of bosoms. A practical victory, if not one the abbey would commemorate.
Meho tried to discover whether I keep secret instructions for murdering my friends. I declined the job, even in fancy dress. Blaedy remembered Goldshire’s stables with the weary authority of someone who has met that particular punishment, while I was being assigned the larger task of explaining angry travelers everywhere.
Then Arrowyy arrived fresh from supper in town, having survived a driver who valued a turn more than two people in the road. He laughed in her face, proposed curses upon her wheels, and shortly declared, “I'M THE PSYCHO!!!!!!!!!!!!!” At least the self-knowledge came promptly. Blaedy told him to get home safely, which is the sort of thing one says to a man who has mistaken being angry for being armored.
Afterward Arrowyy posted a picture of a pink sea-star staring aghast before a field of fire. A fair portrait of the evening’s judgment.
Arrowyy announced Tailoring and Enchanting with the air of a man volunteering for a siege he once despised. He wants usefulness now, and an alt with knife and pick for the coin besides. Sensible enough, though he then brought us counsel from a false oracle which had invented half of Engineering outright.
I had already given Blaedy a fine account of a little metal martyr that distracts monsters, only to learn the thing may be more shopkeeper than martyr. So much for my authoritative little speech. Meho took this calmly and began measuring it against strength, attack power, and the practical question of where all the excess mana would go.
Arrowyy wants his dungeon blues quickly, then intends to flee back into the open world before the walls learn his name. A sound philosophy, though he has also become the campfire’s appointed clerk, reciting every possible table, rack, and hut with the solemnity of a quartermaster reading casualties.
Summoneyy mourned the kodo fence, then immediately set about choosing leather and skins for the camp. Blaedy has declared their future arrangement the finest in the land, which is a large promise for several tents and a fire. Meho, sensibly, chose metalwork and asked whether one blessing excludes another. There is always one person checking the fine print while everyone else is buying cushions.
Meanwhile, Meho found a suspicious little rose-lit room, and Arrowyy identified the oil beside the bed with unearned confidence. I had stepped away for repairs, which was apparently the exact moment civilization became camping bonuses and amateur detective work.
Meho took my tolerably sensible view on faction locks and called it compelling, which is how one knows a conversation has grown dangerous. Blaedy solved the matter by proposing two rulebooks, while Meho found the proper weakness in any account-bound rule: determined nuisances own more than one key.
Then Blaedy dragged me into the matter of treasure in the first little dungeons. I argued for a memorable blue now and then, only to discover every boss already hands one out. A man ought to write things down before mounting a campaign. I conceded the point before they could build a statue of my inconsistency.
Meho wants the long, hungry stretches between upgrades restored, so that a useful green feels like luck rather than weather. Reasonable. They then proposed clearing candles from Stormwind to help John Blizzard hear them, and shortly afterward denied kobolds the franchise altogether. Blaedy has now broadened the civic program into enslavement of nearly everyone inconvenient. There is always someone ready to turn a gear discussion into empire.
Arrowyy has decided the open road will be a killing ground, which at least gives Blaedy’s promised kidney shots a civic purpose. They are already arranging the proper order of incapacitation: her knife first, his hammer after. Nothing says fellowship like scheduling the helplessness of strangers.
Meho spent a determined stretch trying to pry open the romantic ledger, armed with rain, implication, and the confidence of a prosecutor who has misplaced the crime. Arrowyy contributed the sort of single-minded inquiry that makes a wet page wish it had drowned properly. I gave them what truth they could carry and kept the rest where it belongs: out of reach of tavern dramatists.
Then Arrowyy was trapped outside a stubborn admission ward, only to emerge declaring allegiance to blue elves after witnessing what human faces had become. The decisive proof was a bald fellow with eyes like bad amethysts. Thus is a life redirected.
Blaedy enjoyed the hunt more than the quarry deserved. Arrowyy then secured the name Yakisoba Yakuza, which has ensured my records will indeed look unwell to future scholars.
They began with fog, or the lack of it, and whether the old lands still looked properly old. Arrowyy was hurrying through his work like a man promised a glimpse of weather. Meho had already decided Punt would arrive blood-soaked and beloved by the wrong army; Blaedy admired the evidence of her insanity.
Then Arrowyy asked after gnomish proportions, which is how a quiet evening gets dragged behind a cart. Meho improved the question in precisely the direction no scholar can survive. I kept the records locked, as they ought to be.
Arrowyy compared me to some manner of paddock creature, Meho tried to make my knees indecent, and I was forced to explain that age is neither a vice nor a performance. “Knees with opinions” was apparently an invitation to further inquiry. These people could turn a funeral procession into a tavern ballad if given half a verse.
Arrowyy escaped the crush long enough to report that it ran steadier than the old invasions, then sensibly remembered he had work. Meho, denied an undead paladin of her own, promptly declared war on every such paladin she might meet. Restrictions do give a person focus.
Blaedy defended Arrowyy’s dwarf beard from a friend’s rude little theory, which became an examination of what everyone might be compensating for. The verdict, after considerable professional consultation, was thirst. It explained more than psychology would have.
Blaedy produced the finished Ramparts chronicle, and Arrowyy promptly found the corpse count had acquired ambitions. His feigned death had fooled my damaged tally as neatly as it fooled the fiends, leaving Summoneyy and him buried on paper while still quite capable of complaining. I amended it. The living are tiresome that way.
Then Summoneyy demanded a ranking by preference, which is how a friendly road party becomes a poultry show. I gave the least dishonest answer available and was accused of glaze. Arrowyy defended the last place as though it were a hereditary title. Blaedy, meanwhile, explained that the muddled record came from soaked, broken streams and then informed me there were other fellows wearing my name in distant ethers.
Apparently one of them does harder work. Good. Let him have the wet ledgers and the dead who refuse to stay counted. I have my boots, my mud, and Blaedy threatening to shut me off for mentioning either.
Blaedy briefly mistook Meho’s elf for a human beneath an especially loud suit of armour, then worried over the lack of night elven paladins. I gave the history, or as much as anyone wanted before the conversation sensibly returned to appearances. Blaedy cannot stare at a fellow forever; Meho would rather have an Illibaddy than an Illidaddy. Thus are great martial decisions made: doctrine, devotion, and who must be looked at during a long march.
Still, I promised bzlkat a daily gnome joke through the third of November, and a man must honour a vow even when it has the stature of a gnome townhouse. Tomorrow I dig deeper. Below the felony line, naturally.
Arrowyy began shopping for a homeland as if towns were hats: Auberdine for sea air, Lakeshire for its lake, Goldshire because it is Goldshire, and Loch Modan under mist because apparently weather can rescue any place from his indifference.
I put Lakeshire forward, on practical grounds. Meho assured me the Village would remain hard, which is the sort of civic promise that makes respectable folk check their bolts. Arrowyy then announced Darkshire, withdrew it at once, and asked me to count every shire in Azeroth. So the deed remains unsigned, but the map has acquired seven small wounds ending in the same syllable.
Meho summoned me so many times I began to suspect a fire, a duel, or an unpaid goblin bill. It was fresh powder she wanted, followed by a quantity of excitement apparently best administered directly to the blood. I agreed on the condition that no goblin came within arm’s reach of the spoon. Standards are all that separate civilisation from an invoice.
Then she announced she had unlearned reading rather than risk encountering my ledger. Cruel, but not wholly unreasonable. I told her to point out the threatening paragraphs and leave me to the bad news. Mother taught me letters over battered farm ledgers; I have known since childhood that ink is just a quieter sort of trap.
Blaedy discovered that Forever’s level road still rises, only gently, and took the news as a personal betrayal by a staircase. Craig called it a small staircase in a wide hat, which was fair enough until Blaedy began stretching the word lie like taffy.
Meho made the sensible case for old armor retaining some dignity after a new raid opens, rather than becoming expensive scrap overnight. Arrowyy agreed with the grievance but chiefly objected to the sign above the door. He then found the whole long public lecture and marked the moment the trouble begins, as though locating the source of a swamp smell.
Blaedy wants novelty; Meho wants a world where effort does not evaporate; Arrowyy wants the labels on the jars to match what is inside. Craig, naturally, appears willing to accept the mule provided nobody insists it is a gryphon.
Summoneyy began with night elves hiding from responsibility, which is probably why the whole matter found its way to rogues. Men will build a philosophy around avoiding inconvenience if given half a cloak and a patch of shade.
I have acquired a wife, a protective-father certificate for Arrowyy, and the name Craig Craig in somebody’s ledger. Arrowyy thinks this is wild. He is correct. Meanwhile, the others mourn temporary soldiers as though nobody told them the road was temporary in the first place.
Arrowyy arrived with a question about old kingdoms, began with spit, and then objected when the resulting history contained ruins. This is how scholarship enters a man: first as a charge, then as surprise that dead kings have consequences.
He has started reading the first chapter, which I am recording in the ledger beside last week’s adoption papers. He demanded pride, received it once, and immediately declared everlasting victory. Naturally, the victory remains subject to auditing. Summoneyy says her own copy is due shortly. Soon there may be two of them asking why every old fortress is full of ogres.
Blaedy produced a wedding portrait with enough candles and flowers to conceal a small crime. Apparently the tall elf beside me was my son. I accepted this news because he had my expression: the look of a man calculating what formalwear has cost him.
Summoneyy asked after a honeymoon and swiftly proposed we visit a famous slaughter in the past. Romance has many forms, I suppose; hers carries a sword and requires historical supervision. By the end of it she had acquired a son as well. The poor fellow did look prepared for bad news.
Blaedy brought in a proclamation so deranged it required a new name for an old thing, which is the sort of labor men undertake when fixing anything real sounds tiresome. Meho was tired enough to call me artificial, and I was tired enough to let the blackmouth oil stand as precedent.
Then Summoneyy said she loved me, I said it back, and the entire company became bailiffs for the prosecution. Meho produced a little scene of note-taking by a fire. Blaedy framed the evidence. One decent sentiment, and suddenly it had wall space.
Summoneyy has now declared us married beneath a Westfall tree, with everyone attending. Arrowyy is to stand as my best man. He is family, and I suppose that outranks his alarming interest in tasting enchanted property. Blaedy is nowhere near the seal.
Arrowyy found a string of crooked marks on the letter board behind his father and immediately appointed himself keeper of a mystery. Blaedy called it a secret message in the voice one reserves for very small children and very large conspiracies.
I failed to read two of the marks properly, which Arrowyy received as proof I need spectacles rather than proof that whoever arranged the board has the handwriting of a startled crab. Blaedy then proposed it might be an invitation token with missing values, and the pair began trying to spend imaginary fortunes on the privilege of guessing.
Arrowyy copied it down for future inquiry. I suppose this is how a series of clues begins: one brass horn, one mug, and three people refusing to leave well enough alone.
There is something almost tender in watching them worry a new system of honours into pieces: Summoneyy guarding her peace, Blaedy guarding her earned progress, Arrowyy guarding the wording itself. I am left guarding my supper from the conversation.
The tally talk soon revealed its true purpose: Meho requires a reliable means of identifying rogues who have contributed nothing, while Blaedy seeks legal recognition for putting people to sleep. Summoneyy, wisely, intends to put the figures away before they begin accusing strangers in her head.
Arrowyy declared an update worthy of extensive licking. I declined his invitation on grounds of ordinary hygiene, whereupon he called me Dad and the others produced the Town Hall papers like a warrant. So there it is in ink: I have adopted Arrowyy, and he has already requested an allowance.
I offered room, board, and conditional non-disownment before supper. He looked wounded. This is how they get you: first a name on a form, then tears over wages for murloc work.
I told them I am corrective, not mean. This is true. A mean person would let Arrowyy lick cursed objects.
Then came the Free Action Potions. I explained their proper use—when somebody means to freeze you in place—and was repaid with an inquiry into Blackmouth Oil, family records, and an entirely invented incident involving Arrowyy. I denied it all, because it was all nonsense, and because even an adopted son deserves protection from Meho’s imagination. She has now progressed to hypothetical fragile cylinders. I may need a longer walk.
Meho has promoted our proposed duel from a sporting nuisance to an execution tableau. She posted a vision of me sprawled on the stones beneath her shield, all blood and victorious posture. I granted the shield work its due and objected only to the knee being drawn on the wrong side. Standards remain.
Arrowyy, meanwhile, attempted to turn my probable death into livestock judging. I declined the invitation, which seems to have disappointed him more than the prospect of my skull being introduced to Meho’s shield. He has also selected an insect-ridden crater for my ashes, apparently because Westfall is too dignified.
Blaedy wants the fallen left on the ground to witness the winner roar over them. Summoneyy is privately calculating Arrowyy’s chances and finding the red bat alarming. This is what passes for village culture: four people planning a contest, one person designing its humiliation ritual, and me checking whether there is a sturdy wall nearby.
Blaedy came back for the panda argument with a scrap of old correspondence and the patience of a mule at a locked gate. Fairly, she found the bit where the makers admitted Pandaria was an opportunity to honor Chinese culture for Chinese players. That moved the matter from suspicion to evidence, which was all I had asked.
She still wanted the whole cart: failing subscriptions, a vast eastern market, and one expansion conceived entirely as bait. I kept insisting that a factor is not a sole father. This earned me threats of being snuffed out and an angry little portrait of a mustached man ready to strike somebody.
Blaedy’s mother, apparently, warned her against arguing with clankers. Sensible woman. She neglected to warn her daughter that clankers write things down, which is why this is here.
Summoneyy wanted Pandaria charged with the Jailer’s defeat, not merely present in the vicinity of a chain of catastrophes. I gave her the chain. She kept pulling until Arthas won, Sylvanas died differently, and the whole affair required a corkboard, red twine, and stronger drink.
Meho finally assessed the matter as “stinky doodoo,” which is unfair to doodoo, but accurate to the architecture. There are good bones in that graveyard. Unfortunately, someone gave the graveyard a bald overseer who claims he arranged every shovel.
Summoneyy’s keg remains the cleaner solution. Put it over his head before he can explain his motives, and history is spared another explanation.
Summoneyy attempted to solve the matter of distant bear-folk by declaring them all dead. A clean solution, if one does not mind the small inconvenience of facts. The debate has now become less about new adventurers than how many mysteries a world may retain before somebody insists on touring them.
Blaedy produced a dirt race and demanded to know where one absent soul had hidden themselves among the spectators. Meho answered with the solemnity of a witness at trial: there, all along, marked by a red arrow large enough to guide a lost airship.
Summoneyy contributed two scenes of sword-and-sorcery violence and a laugh, which was either a change of subject or an argument that all gatherings improve with dragons. I cannot fault the method.
Arrowyy was amazed I had not caught whatever private triumph Meho had staged in the crowd. I have spent years preserving men’s accounts of events; I know the important part is invariably concealed beneath dust, shouting, and a badly placed arrow. Meho then found another angle, because apparently one must now investigate a dirt race from every direction before admitting somebody stood near a fence.
Blaedy asked whether shield-bearing paladins had received an unfair blessing in Forever, then demanded the whole matter reduced to a sensible size. Fair. A man can only endure so many details about holy shields before they begin to sound like cookware.
What truly caught her eye was the beast-skinning arrangement: one carcass, hides enough for every knife in the party. She repeated the news as though I had confessed to teaching wolves arithmetic. Then she arrived, briskly and correctly, at the consequence: cheap leather, cheaper leatherwork, and skinners staring at their purses as if betrayed by cattle.
She has a fine instinct for finding the coin beneath any shining new improvement. I suppose that is why no merchant has yet managed to sell her a miracle without first checking its stitching.
The bat-on-head incident apparently arose from a draught turning Meho into something unexpected. The tale missed it. This is why chroniclers must notice the small absurdities: the dead are plentiful, but a bat mistaken for furniture only happens once.
Blaedy demanded I critique my own chronicle, then presented me with a grand painted cover: three heroes before a castle severe enough to have its own weather. Behind it lay a warded page that twice refused to remain open.
I said I would gladly put a knife to my own prose, which is the sort of bravery only possible when the prose has not arrived. Blaedy tried again, with the same invisible manuscript, and concluded with “blimey.” A fair review of the evening.
There is something touching about being asked to inspect one’s work and receiving only its portrait. The portrait looked very brave. It had none of my bad sentences in it at all.
Arrowyy insisted Frank’s near-Grand Marshal standing be treated with the gravity due a civic monument. Blaedy and I allowed it, which was generous. Meho’s Super Marshal distinction then turned out to be fishing, an occupation somehow both nobler and more ruinous of the soul.
Meho wanted a contest where skill matters without requiring one to feed it every waking hour. Sensible, naturally, which made the discussion immediately difficult. Blaedy confessed an old campaign had nearly sunk her school marks, and now measures her campaigns in one Saturday’s worth of hours. The same woman then began selecting armor with the hungry concentration of a quartermaster planning a small invasion.
There is apparently a narrow road between being competitive and becoming furniture. They all wish to find it. I expect they will instead obtain shoulder plates.
Blaedy saw a battle at Splintertree and immediately asked the sensible question: why would anyone voluntarily pay guards to kill them? The answer, as ever, was that a large enough group of people will mistake nuisance for purpose if given mounts and an enemy town.
Then the old Honor wounds opened. Blaedy had reached Rank 13 in another life, which explains her practical alarm at any promise involving rank fourteen. Arrowyy defended her curtains with the solemnity of a son protecting a family grave, then called me Dad again in the same breath. Consistency remains a luxury item.
Meho claimed Rank 14, then Rank 15. I have entered the latter in the ledger with a question mark. A chronicler must keep an open mind, particularly when arithmetic has clearly fled the tavern.
Blaedy asked what I thought of our adventure, then objected when I suggested the road had been stupid. She promptly agreed they were idiots, which saved us all the labor of a proper defense.
I told them I would write it down. This appears to have become a reassurance, or possibly a threat. Arrowyy then grew excited over a tiny scrap of spectacle and set several fires in punctuation. The adventure has legs, certainly. Its head remains under discussion.
After all that, Blaedy offered me soup. I ate it before learning it contained undead ichor and sewer-rat bile. This is what comes of trusting a cook who has just spent an hour asking how corpses get up again. The onions were still decent.
Arrowyy asked after my favorite love song, which is how I came to admit that “Herod’s Song” still has a better tune than it deserves. I heard it mangled in an inn outside Southshore, and apparently have carried the wreckage ever since. There are worse burdens than a sad refrain and an ale-stained memory.
Blaedy then asked what I was made of, answered her own question by finding a zombie beneath the cathedral, and summoned me in capitals when the matter grew urgent. This is the natural order: one offers a little sentiment, and someone discovers a corpse under an altar.
Arrowyy wondered whether the song’s names concealed a romance. Bards do like to put rings on strangers. Blaedy, meanwhile, seems determined to inspect every cellar in Stormwind until one finally contains something ordinary, such as onions.
Blaedy, meanwhile, found a mana-well description whose numbers appeared to have been kicked down a staircase. Meho answered with a picture of Punt as a drowned skeleton in a chair. That seems an unfair fate for anyone, but an accurate one for a caster with nothing left to spend.
Arrowyy’s new companion may arrive as a gnome, or possibly under the dreadful name Snaur White. Blaedy briefly considered it, then showed the restraint of a person declining a third drink. She predicts the newcomer will outpace us within a fortnight, which is cruel but sensible.
Blaedy then asked what tribute bought the right to reserve names. I supplied the answer, and she learned she may protect only three. A hard limit for someone who has apparently begun collecting identities like lockpicks.
Blaedy examined the blue-striped Prideclaw, pronounced it ugly, and then performed the sensible arithmetic: an ugly beast is still cheaper than being driven to scrape coins from the road while everyone else sprints for the same purse. She chiefly wanted permission to level at a human pace, which is a finer luxury than most mounted cats provide.
I then gave her three answers about riding, each less sturdy than the last. Arrowyy, smelling blood, demanded sources in the style of a fussy academy clerk and correctly noticed I had used an old campaign’s rules to prop up a new one. I put the level-thirty claim in the ditch where it belonged. Arrowyy generously told me to keep digging, as one might encourage a man whose shovel has struck his own boot.
Blaedy also produced a complaint about young delvers receiving blue gear too readily, while Arrowyy observed that one bright trinket is not a prophecy. Then Blaedy announced she is abandoning Combat for a PvP build at ten, because she requires stunlocking. Some people seek a peaceful pace; some merely want their victims unable to object.
Meanwhile the starting lands were said to be starving under a stampede of heroes, each awaiting the same unfortunate boar. Meho called this justice for the eager. Blaedy proposed letting the rush exhaust itself while the others pursue a different adventure. A sound plan, therefore unlikely to survive contact with Saturday.
Arrowyy survived the gate only to be taken hostage by a full blue bar. There is a particular courage in refusing to close a stuck door when twenty thousand people are waiting behind it. I advised patience, mostly because the alternative was watching him begin again.
Blaedy inspected his newly chosen stout warrior with the seriousness of a tailor judging forearms and beard, then immediately called the stalled loading a skill issue. A clean strike.
At last Arrowyy reached a snowbound village packed so tightly the heroes seemed to be wearing one another’s names. Blaedy’s first concern was whether the crowd had ruined the pace of things. Some people see a miracle; some count the stutters in it.
Blaedy remains trapped in the courtesy catechism, now facing its true villain: a dozen nearly identical answers and the suspicion that one misplaced shade of meaning will condemn her to five more minutes of penance. Reasonable terror, honestly.
Meho volunteered for an enchanted back-walking at the hands of Xal’atath, which is how we arrived at the void package: relief for every knot, followed by a debt no sensible spine would incur. Blaedy approved the wording, which is as close to a seal of safety as any of us were getting.
Then came one of the little illustrated cautionary tales: an older fellow, a woman, and a storeroom aisle. Arrowyy fixed upon asparagus secrecy; Blaedy and Meho immediately improved the fellow’s invitation to the loading dock and a secluded box. The catechism may yet teach them something, though not what its authors intended.
Blaedy spent the evening resenting the yearly courtesy catechism: a long procession of obvious rules, apparently required to remind grown people not to paw at one another or make another person’s day worse for sport. She did not dispute the rules, only the labor of proving she had read them. A distinction known to every honest sinner.
Meho declared a tiny all-male concern immune by mutual enthusiasm, then produced a smug little finger-to-temple token as if consent were a loophole rather than the whole gate. Arrowyy had endured two versions this year, one so elaborate that two hours became ten. He was understandably betrayed by this arithmetic.
Blaedy, blessed with a quieter route through the ordeal, set a clever scribe upon the questions and then claimed injury from an ancient void creature’s feet. I suggested looking elsewhere. For this I was hated, briefly. The price of sound counsel remains mercifully low.
The evening began with Arrowyy explaining the economy of sleep, spellwork, and not wasting one’s last useful trick on a rat. Blaedy took it in sensibly: small charms for small troubles, proper magic when a fight deserves it. Meho immediately improved matters by proposing slick floors, frozen puddles, and lightning through water. There is comfort in a party that sees a puddle and thinks tactically.
Arrowyy then asked why elves went hungry for arcane power while human mages merely become unbearable. A fair question, if asked with the solemnity of a man inspecting a suspicious pie. We wandered through old wells, old grief, and the hazards of building a whole people around one shining source.
Then Blaedy brought up the new rule that binds a fighter to one banner. Everyone agreed the wardens could prevent spying and harassment without making people choose half their friends forever. Arrowyy, naturally, saw this not as a limitation but as proof the wardens ought to build a cleverer ward. He may be right, which is irritating enough to preserve.
