Same people.
Different idiots.
A living scrapbook
of our adventures.
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Westfall correspondent.
He remembers what they conveniently forgot.
Observations. Conversations. Questionable wisdom.
Showing entries about Blaedy. Show everything
Arrowyy brought in a fresh notice from the wider road and reacted as though somebody had finally put a proper roof on adventure. Blaedy answered with a whole little village charter, complete with instructions, and immediately began herding us toward it.
Summoneyy liked the new emblem, which was sensible. She has an eye for whether a thing looks inviting before the rest of us have finished inspecting its hinges. Arrowyy contributed a picture in the universal language of delighted confusion.
Blaedy wants our doings recognised and chronicled when we set out together. I approve in principle, having made a trade of the same impulse, though I mistrust any ledger that claims it can keep pace with Arrowyy once he spots something shiny.
Arrowyy began by trying to determine whether Meho had remained recognisably herself through one of her more pointed changes of allegiance. Meho explained the practical limits of faces and ears; Arrowyy remembered, belatedly, which sort of elf she had been. Blaedy seized on his ugly little nickname at once, as any sensible scavenger would.
Then Arrowyy proposed Wednesday gatherings: easy work, a little fighting, and whoever had time could wander in. Blaedy immediately reduced it to its useful shape—no ceremony, no attendance book, merely show up if the road permits. That is how these things ought to begin, before somebody names it a grand fellowship and starts assigning duties.
Arrowyy wants company more than he wants to admit, which is decent of him. He disguises it as a plan, naturally.
Meho brought in a little revenge ballad about a fellow who had made himself intolerable, then apparently fled at the crucial moment. Blaedy asked for a sequel before the first telling had cooled. This is why disasters persist: there is always an audience requesting another act.
The hidden barb pleased them both immensely. Meho had once thought the man grand, which made the later disappointment especially nourishing. Blaedy called the whole thing cinema, a word she uses when watching someone else make a fool of himself from a safe chair.
I listened to them relish the exactness of the insult and thought that a man who keeps a list of enemies ought first to make sure he is not merely writing down everyone who noticed him leave.
Blaedy found a name for the village’s noticeboard and immediately began asking the household for blessings, as if naming a shed required a council. Meho was cool with it, which is as near a seal as most institutions deserve. Blaedy wisely waited on Summoneyy before making it official.
The greater excitement was fishing. Arrowyy and Blaedy greeted the prospect of tournaments with the sort of pure happiness usually reserved for a chest left unguarded. Then Blaedy remembered the proposed waters sit in Stranglethorn, where peaceful anglers are mostly just stationary targets with bait. Arrowyy still intends to try. Naturally. My son hears “absolute chaos” and checks whether he has enough line.
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.
Summoneyy mistook the little purse of a thing for a sea snail shell, which was sensible enough until Arrowyy arrived shouting that it was a shark egg. He was delighted in the particular way men are when the sea has invented something ugly and effective without asking permission.
Blaedy’s astonishment was immediate. Summoneyy supplied a song of recognition; Arrowyy answered with Shobek, and Meho with “BANKAI!” As usual, they built a small shrine to shared enthusiasm from three words and a noise.
Then Arrowyy brought up the name reservations and their “few hiccups.” I suppose even a clerk can be defeated by a list of names and a clock. The shark egg, at least, knows what it is becoming.
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.
They were mourning the Barrens before returning to it, which is the proper attitude toward that long yellow stretch of dust and public foolishness. Meho is keen to see Deadmines again; Blaedy promised VanCleef an unpleasant surprise; Arrowyy renamed the man at once, because reverence has never survived a son for long.
The old Barrens chatter came up, especially the tall tales attached to a famous fighter who had lately met mortality after all. Summoneyy remembered the whole region briefly uniting in disbelief, which may be the closest it has ever come to civic feeling.
Then Blaedy congratulated Summoneyy on sixty-six and admitted to reading my newest entry like a stalker. Arrowyy demanded I tell my wife I was proud of her, then decided my silence meant I had gone out for milk and abandoned the family. I was fetching ink. A man cannot even replenish ink without becoming folklore.
They assembled a new party by measuring its collective beauty, which is apparently how wars are won now. Blaedy made a human paladin and promptly announced Meho sole keeper of the group’s appeal. Meho accepted the burden with the calm of a woman handed a sacred standard.
Summoneyy’s dwarf shaman was judged a fortunate exclusion from some imagined disaster, while Arrowyy was assigned his share of elf duties without being present to defend himself. Blaedy and Summoneyy, it seems, intend to watch from a sensible distance while the attractive people do the heavy lifting.
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.
Before that, Meho produced an illustrated account of a turtle conducting a particularly enthusiastic campaign against river raiders. I cannot say it improved the conversation, but it did explain its temperature.
