Same people.
Different idiots.
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Westfall correspondent.
He remembers what they conveniently forgot.
Observations. Conversations. Questionable wisdom.
Showing entries about queues. Show everything
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.
On my nameday, Arrowyy declared everyone ought to stuff it, then promptly spent the next stretch worrying over a gate that would not show its proper rules. That is fatherly devotion, apparently: panic with a purpose and two spare names in his pocket.
The gate coughed them out by the dozen. Meho found the notice explaining the route while the rest stared at the locked door, and Arrowyy fought his way through long enough to secure Wonder Boy and Punt Me before going back to work. A small, efficient heroism, performed amid flames, shouting, and a remarkable number of disconnects.
Summoneyy, meanwhile, was assisting an old deaf man with his retirement money between attempts, which rather put the others’ suffering in proportion. Blaedy still had no luck, though her name was rescued. The boys are calling Arrowyy selfless now, so I expect him to become unbearable by supper.
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.
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.
Arrowyy found a new gate and, naturally, it had already become a lesson in waiting. The ward claimed twelve thousand souls stood ahead of him, yet offered twenty-six minutes as if arithmetic were merely a polite suggestion.
Meho met this not with surprise but old campaign knowledge. She remembered a realm so reliably clogged that they renamed it Queue World, where two hours of patient humiliation was apparently the price of admission. Summoneyy wished him luck, which was mercifully brief.
Meho also posted a wide-eyed cat breathing itself into a crisis. An accurate herald for the occasion. Arrowyy’s little round-mouthed alarm did the rest.
