Storytime

[joegoda]

“Chrome!”

It was a muttered curse, directed more inward than outward, barely audible, barely spoken aloud. In fact, had there been anyone within any sort of distance, they would have said that the lips moved but no sound came out.

“How in the seven hells did I ever get so old.”

A bony, knob-knuckled hand at the end of scarred arms pushed back a dark blue cowl to reveal a lean face with a scraggly white beard set below lips still full as they were in youth, but no longer rosy. Pale eyes, the color of a bright spring day after a fresh rain has pushed the clouds hither and yon, blinked furiously into the sunlight. A nose like a blobby afterthought, shot through with red veins and pockmarks sniffed the air.

“How in the seven hells did the world get so old?”

The skiff was pushing it's way along a sad ghost of a river, no longer roaring, no longer flowing from here to there, no longer doing a whole lot more than just existing. Thick broad leaves of swamp-grass choked and spread green mossy carpet like from shore to shore. The river, or rather, the reeds and grasses and sandbars that used to be a river parted occasionally just enough to give a glimpse of clear water, only to close up the tease and present the hard reality of harsh, sharp barby blades of mean green. Still, the low sided, flat bottomed boat, propelled by the strong arms of the cloaked figure, made it's way, albeit slow.

The lone passenger, cloaked against the coolness of the morning air, pushed a long pole from the bow of the skiff to the stern. It was the only way to make the origami like craft move at all. Breathy clouds of mist fogged the air with every exhale from wheezy lungs.

“Ah,” sighed the old man. “Bout damn time. Thought I was gonna die... again.”

He unconsciously nodded toward a point up ahead. This was where the floating green salad parted and split, becoming a forked thing that had, at one time in a previous incarnation as a waterway, produced rapids and rainbows, laughter and wonder.

He maneuvered the skiff to the left, letting what remained of a current whimpishly and sluggishly knock him against the side of the piers that used to, long ago, support a dock. Only a few well worn and well worn-out planks still remained. Even back at the height of the world before, it was a smallish dock. Just big enough for a single ship to pull up against. Had it a memory, the old and blackened poles, half buried in saddened silt, might had told a story of pirates and magic. But that would be silly. Wouldn't it?
Stepping carefully onto the weakened planks that threatened in a weak plaintive voice to crack and crumble under his weight, the traveler stood on something rather than a soggy flat bottomed boat for the first time in weeks. He stretched the kinks out of his back, feeling each vertebra argue against the movement. His knees would have complained if they had held the strength and the voice.

He didn't even bother to tied the skiff to anything. What would be the point? Instead, he just turned around and looked. Really, really looked.

At the end of the dock, the end that pointed away from the, and the term is still used loosely, river, there was a tall arch of what appeared to be two tall, tall as in nearly twelve feet tall, carved arches. The traveler knew better. He knew the History, you see. History with a capital H. This arch was not just some arch, tossed up by someone just to say “hey! Look what I tossed up!” These were the arches of the Dragon's Gate. Not carved, this arch. This arch was made from actual dragon ribs, lifted to stand high and joined at the tips by a carpenter, who long ago joined the dust and wood shavings that he loved and smelled like, and they came from the Very Last Dragon to ever fly from the Twin mountains.

Now, though, like everything else, the ribs were not so gleaming as they once were. Now they were old looking, the old looking of ancient cue balls, yellowed and cracked. In fact, the rib on the right had a crack from somewhere near the top to near the bottom, so it now had the appearance of being peeled and split like a pea-pod not quite shelled.

The old man stood under the arch and looked behind some shrubbery that had grown up along the base of the left rib. It was still there, as he suspected. There wouldn't be enough cruelty to destroy the statue of a girl, holding a flower, although time, being incredibly cruel, had removed her nose and her ears and made her look more like a golem than a girl. Still, the statue was there, sad as it was. It was something, anyway, he thought. Not much, but something.

There was a path leading a short ways from the Dragon's gate. About a hundred yards away from the gate the path split, the left hand heading away from the dock and the right hand leading down parallel to the river, leading to fallow fields and empty house boxes that nobody lived in anymore. There, he knew, lay what used to be the farms that fed the Shopkeepers and traded for all manner of things in the Village.

He took the left hand path, the path well traveled, the path no longer traveled. He wandered and wound his way up a small rise, past a rusting pump that used to water horses and give fresh water to all manner of creatures who came up the path thirsty. He didn't stop. He wasn't thirsty for water and there hadn't been water dripping from that spout since before Hek, whoever Hek was, was a pup.

Dust rose up around and about his feet as the day warmed and grew sticky. He debated taking the cloak off and carrying it over his arm, but gave that up as rather stupid. He looked around and found a helpful crumbling fence post to hang in on. He left it there and continued on his way. Who was around to take it, anyway?

Onward, onward, up and up and winding round a small curve in the path, he entered the village. No longer a capital V. No longer a village at all, because a village is a place where people live, where children play and dogs bark at cats who run up trees chasing mice who eat bread left fresh to breath and cool on the windowsill.

Another fork in the path. To the right was the center square of the village, which was not the center of the village nor was it square. The path ran past a large man-shaped stone that had split from top to bottom and out, out to a field of wild flowers and plants which ran forever until forever stopped.
The left path led to the village proper, back when it was a proper village. There was, or used to be, a tavern. Not a pub, mind you, where they served food as well as ale and beer. He remembered beer. He remembered... many things. He remembered that it was here in this tavern that two lovers broke through a veil of magic and mystery and saved this old, cold planet. Long ago and far away, crumbled into dust those lovers. Even immortals die, given enough time, it seems.

“Except me, I guess.”

The tavern was like the village. No longer a tavern if it had no customers. What the building did have was unshuttered shutters and undoored doors. Had there been a wind, it would have whistled through and around the many openings of this non-tavern cave. Not even a cavern. Not brave enough to be a building. This was just a box, with holes poked in it by a giant who carried a massive pencil and an enormous hourglass.

There was where the butcher shop used to be, empty as the tavern with rusted hooks hanging hungry and waiting for hams and steaks and bacon that would never, ever age there again.

“I remember bacon.” He sighed. “It would be cool to have bacon again.”

He passed the cobbler's, knowing that the wooden family who once occupied the second floor (well, one couldn't say they exactly lived there) had long ago crumbled to dust and was eaten by termites, who had since then turned to termite dust and crumbled away on the wind, or breeze or whatever there was anymore.

Over there was the Toymaker's, once a magical deliverer of toys to children all over the world, now just a box with holes. And over there was the Milliner, who made crowns for kings and queens from fabrics that didn't exist and adorned with jewels that could only be found in dreams.

There used to be the Bakery, which produced confections and pastries and cakes and pies and just about whatever could be imagined that could be baked and quite a few things that couldn't be baked and yet still came out mouthwateringly scrumptious and made any eight year old's party more than just something to talk about. It was the Bakery that caught the gingerbread man, and made him a wife. It was the Bakery that made the 10 blackbird pie and the pie that Jack Horner stuck his thumb in.

And here! Here was the clock maker, who could make timepieces that did not only tell time, they made time, kept time, wasted time, and were about time. It was rumored that his clocks ran in an enormous cavern at the center of the world and kept the world running like a well oiled machine.

“Yeah,” sniped the old man, who chucked a rock at the broken window of the clockmaker. It wouldn't have done any good to chuck at a window not broken. It would have taken to long to find one. “As if. A clock at the center of the world! Whatta joke.”

A block up there was a short jog from the street, which turned into an alleyway, almost hidden that led off into a confusing maze of building that loomed high up and seemed to lean inward. Voices used to be heard by those who walked the alley. Voices from the buildings. Not human voices, Building voices. Whispers of brick upon mortared brick. Moans of old and rusty hinges swinging breezlessly. Sighs of windows opening and closing without a hand on them. The singing of the wind though the chimneys.

The traveler took the alley, knowing full well that the voices were silent, that there was no heart behind the buildings anymore. There was nothing for them to talk about, to wonder about. There was no life here.

The buildings still loomed, but it was the looming of old trees in a forest, full of moss and lacking the scariness of trees that talked and threw rotten apples at you. Blank and blind, the windows peered down on him as he passed below. Silent and dumb, the hinges mutely ignored his footsteps as they echoed up from cobbly stones and off of crumbly mortar and dusty brick which no longer shifted mysteriously, passing rumors like notes in class.

He didn't stride down this alley, as he might have once. He didn't walk, either. He sort of... slunk. Slinked. Slanked. As if he was ashamed. No, not ashamed. It was as if he was afraid. He walked as a man might walk who was walking towards a gallows of his own making, knowing that he was not only going to put the noose around his own neck but that he was also going to pull the lever. He walked as a man might walk, who knew what the answer was, to the very core of himself he knew, he knew, oh Gods he knew, and yet hoped an impossible hope.

At the far end of the alley, hidden from eyes the might come looking, but never from eyes that wouldn't come looking was a fearful building that rose three stories above the rough cobbles. At least, it was assumed that the building was three stories. Nobody could have told for sure, back when there was nobody to tell. The top of the building, a round tower with a peaked roof and a cockadoodle weathervane on the very tippy top of the point of the point, was somehow almost always hidden in mist, except when it wasn't, which occurred only if you didn't look directly at it. Looking at the building through a squint or out of the side of your eye might, just Might, with a capital M, give you a small glimmer of a tiny window high, high, high up, and if you were very, very lucky, might even give you a smaller glimpse of the person who lived up there.

The traveler opened the door at the base of the tower. Said door would have, at one time, verified the openers identification and if the identification were found wanting, would have turned the opener away, sometimes violently. There might still have been a couple of splat marks on the far wall that would have testified to the force of the rejection of the threshold. This was, at one time, one bad assed door. Now, sadly, not so much. Or maybe the door just didn't give a hoot anymore.

He walked up the stairs which wound around the inside of the tower building. Once upon a time, the treads would sing or whine or complain or just carry on a normal conversation, depending upon whose feet they were holding up. Once upon a time, there were horrid spiders spinning giant webs that sectioned off the floors into separate arachnid territories. No one actually lived in the rooms on the first and second floor, but they weren't there for show, either. Each room was a place where there was room enough for anything. Even a planet could fit into one of the rooms, if the decorator was careful. Or so it was rumored, back in the day, once upon a time, long ago and far away.

On the third floor, there was a landing. That's pretty much all there was. Just a little space to stand. Oh, and a door. An old, grumpy, whiny, squeaky voiced, complaining type of door who would stay shut forever telling you how abused it was and how misunderstood it was until you were forceful enough to make the door through guile and persuasion. Possibly a bribe of oiling of stuck hinges. A coat of paint. Or maybe a key. Sometimes a key worked best. If a key could be found.

Mostly the door kept shut and kept it's own council. Nobody likes a door who complains too much.

Now the door hung open. Hung because there was only one hinge holding the old guy up. Just one. The traveler brushed passed it as if the door had nothing to say, which it didn't. Well, maybe a nearly silent whimper that went unheard because, really, how could a door talk?

The old man stood and turned around in the room, searching, but not seeing.

“So this is where it all happened,” he whispered. “I remember once a long time ago when you talked to me, buddy. Made all sorts of promises and talked a good talk. And now I'm back to ask a favor.”

Every single section of the wall was covered by some sort of writing. Books, magazines, scripts, loose recipes, manuscripts, scrolls... if it was a surface that would hold a scratch, carry ink, it was there, with writing on it. The languages were every lingo there was. Gutter to Crass, High to Low. Piles and piles and heaps and mounds and shelves and tables and even on the ceiling there were scratches of letters.

Dust was everywhere, two, two and a half inches thick in some places. This was a place that nobody had come to in a very, very long time. Longer than that, even. Longisher than longer than that, even, even.

The traveler walked to the window and looked out over the bleak landscape. He sighed, long and deep and his shoulders slumped. It was as if he had deflated, did his shoulders round so much, did his lumbar flex in, did his hands reach instinctively for the pockets that weren't there anymore. It was the deflation of the defeated.

He slowly turned away from the window and lifted his skinny butt and sat right there, right there on the sill of the window. And then he saw. In a corner. By the back wall, was a table. Why he hadn't seen it before was a puzzle. Maybe it was because the table, like everything else, was covered with paper and words, words and paper.

And back there, sitting behind the table, looking directly at him, was the exact person he had come to see.

“You!” The traveler stood up, and felt his knees crumble a bit more. “Why didn't you say something when I first came in!”

There was no answer from the thin lipped figure. There was no blink from bespectacled eyes behind huge round lenses. Not a twitch from long, pointed ears with tufts of hair at the tips. In fact, there wasn't a single solitary sign of recognition, or to be more factual, a single sign of life from the man behind the table.

“No way! No way.” The traveler walked over to the still figure. “You can't die! You aren't even really real!” He leaned across the table and looked into the eyes of the unblinking.

The eyes were covered with a slight film of dust, as was everything else in the room. The eyeglasses that perched on the end of impossibly pointed nose were glazed over from a film of filth. The right hand held a bedraggled and befeathered quill, held halfway between the air and an inkwell, which still held a decent dollop of black and shiny ink, but even that shiny was just the reflection of the afternoon sun on crystallized dust.

It seemed that somehow, sometime he had simply... stopped.

“Oh, I get it.” The traveler started softly. “I get it, okay! I understand how it works, all right??” His voice rose, cracked and rose again. “I have three hundred and sixty brains that have circled this planet for so long I don't even know how long and I'm pretty damn smart!”

He was shouting by now, and if anyone cared to listen, if there was anyone left in the whole wide world to listen, that person probably would have heard him. But then, if there had be anyone left in the whole wide world, then he wouldn't be where he was. “I'm friggin so smart that I killed it all, okay? I made it all go away! I damn well get it, okay? All right? I Understand!”

He flew across the table and flicked the figure's tufted eartips with his finger. There was the sound of “Fwapp”, the sound that a sheet of parchment makes when it gets flicked with a finger.

“Wake up, Dammit!” The old man's voice had started to crack, but not from volume. It was cracking from the dam break of emotions. He deflated again, slumping down to sit cross-legged on the floor. “Wake up!” His voice faded to a soft and sad, hoarsy whisper, a tiny thunder of a whisper, promising the storm cloudiness of defeat with a guarantee of teariness. “Wake... Up... please.” The first of the raindrops fell from his nose to be instantly soaked up by the dust. “please?” he whispered in a small, smaller, smallest voice. “please, StoryTeller. Tell me a story. Please.”

Not a response, not a recognition, not a single, solitary, simple sign of anything from the still body was forthcoming.

“Give it up, bub,” said one of the voices in his head, a deep manly voice – the voice of a man used to commanding armies. “You know it's all done and gone. There's nothing that'll bring it back.”

“You did your best, honey,” said the other voice. This voice was soft and sultry, with just the hint of laughter. “Time to give it up, now. Time to come home.”

“Shut up, you two”, said the third voice in his head. “You're not helping. And besides, you're part of the problem. Which means you aren't part of the solution. You're just memories that should have passed a long time ago.”

“Oh now... don't be that way,” said the feminine voice. “He needs us.”

“Yeah,” said the masculine. “He'd be nothing without us, and he knows it.”

“He's nothing now, so he must be without you, right?”
“Uh. Wait... that's not what we meant...”

and suddenly there was silence in his head for the first time in decades.

Sitting on the floor, defeated and deflated and alone, the old man raged inside at what IS, and he grieved at what SHOULD have been. He cried like a newborn. No, he cried like an oldborn, sad and alone, feeling that the end was near and he was already past it. Feeling as if he had tried just a tad bit, just the teeniest bit harder, it would have and should have and could have turned out so much differenter.

All that he had loved had faded and crumbled into dust. All that he knew slipped into the morning mist like a thief stealing kisses in the night. All that...

“NO!” A word broiled out of his lungs, out of his rage, out of his sadness. It up pushed from that tiny place where his soul hid away, slithered along his spine, which he thought he had lost, and shoved it's way out through vocal cords that were tired of crying.

He crawled along the floor, dragging long skids through the thick dust and hand-hauled his way up a table leg. He pulled himself across the papers and the pages lying scattered across the old wood table top until he was eye to eye, nose to nose with the StoryTeller.

“So don't blink, you motherless son of a bitch,” he hissed. “Don't move, don't breath, don't even so much as squeak out a greasy fart, I don't care. I know you're not dead. I'm not dead either. Since I'm not dead, MY story isn't done yet. Isn't that what you told me a long time ago? Huh? Isn't it?”

A tear fell from the end of the old man's nose and splashed into the dust, cratering and uncovering a few letters that lay hidden under the gray moon of a surface.

“So, StoryTeller... let's see what you were writing there at the end, shall we?” He brushed the layers of dust away from the open pages on the table until the words last written by the quill were visible and readable, even upside down.

“Ha!” A short, bitter bark launched into the silence. “Finally, I'm glad I can read.” He reached under his cloak and into one of the many pockets underneath. Retrieving a pair of reading spectacles, and adjusting them on his nose, he read the last line on the page.

“Esmeralda and Chet became Queen and Kings of Tears and lived happily every after. The end. “

“Huh. The end.” The old man took off his glasses and roughly shoved them into his cloak, where they disappeared somewhere. “The END.” he repeated, bitterly. “As if.” And then softer. “As if.”

Glaring back into the dust covered eyes, the old man poked a finger into the bony chest of the seated figure. “We know what really happened, don't we, chum. We really know.” He poked the man again, this time harder. “Ouch. That would have hurt if I cared anymore.”

He rolled off the table and walked over to the window and stood there, staring out at the twin moons that rose over the far horizon. His cloak was covered with dust, his face was covered with dust, his hands were caked with dust. There was dust everywhere on everything, and nobody cared. There wasn't anyone around to care. He certainly didn't care. Caring about dust was as far away as that mythical place called happiness. Totally unreachable from where he currently stood.

Softly, as if he was speaking to an audience and was playing for dramatic effect, he said, “Yeah. We know what really happened. You had to do it, didn't you? You re-wrote the ending of the story. Esmeralda and I never got married. I died in that war. Transfigured into golden dust and scattered from one horizon to the other. Bags died at the very same time as Griz. He by a sword through the heart, she by an arrow.”

Turning back to glare at the Storyteller, he spat on the floor, making a two inch crater. “And you! You re-wrote reality!” He was shouting again. “You stole from what should have been and made it what you FIGURED it should be.” He took an enormous, wheezing breath and screamed out “You incredible idiot!” Softer, then. “You retarded moronic meddler.” A sigh. “If you had just left everything just the way it was, I would have fixed it. It's what I DID, you …. Hells, I don't even have a word for you any more! I FIX THINGS! What in the great seven hells made you think I couldn't fix this!”

He had just hit his stride, and started pacing back and forth across the room, stirring up so much dust that he practically disappeared from sight had anyone been watching. As it was, the Storyteller did a couple of times get eaten by large gouts of cloudy dust. The angry, pacing man didn't care. He was practicing a new skill. The skill of venting of the spleen with extreme prejudice.

“Hells bells, I had died two or three times before that, you know. Dying was not that big a deal. It was practically a hobby of mine. And I CAME BACK every single time! What the hell made you think I couldn't bring me back, Bags back and Griz back? What the hell made you be so damned presumptuous? Who the hell do you think you are, anyway?”

He snatched a book from a nearby shelf and threw it overhand and hard at the Storyteller, right over the plate and in the middle of the strike-zone. The book bounced off the dust glazed forehead of the not dead and not alive Storyteller's head. The effect was to shake the dust off so that gray eyes stared back from behind round windows at the raging Pockets.

“And even if I didn't,” Pockets continued his rant, “even if I stayed dead, which, by the way, I didn't, so what? So what? At least I'd be as dead as Bags and Griz. At least the world wouldn't have crumbled while I had to stick around and watch. At least I wouldn't have had to watch Esme die and everyone die and all the cats and dogs and birds and frogs and fish and EVERY living thing on this planet die and crumble to dust! And it only took six months! Six months after you monkeyed with the stupid magic of this planet, the machine stopped working!”

He held a hand up to his ear and leaned that ear toward the silent Storyteller. “What's that? What machine you ask? The stupid machine that only kept the reality of this world in a stable state, that's all. You rewriting that ending threw the machine into reverse and you know what? IT WASN'T BUILT FOR THAT! So it did what machines with no reverse gear do when they are forced to reverse! It choked and died. Choked, you idiot, and died. And me? Well, hell... I have 360 copies of myself sitting in a circle around this worlds equator, don't I? So there wasn't any way I could stay dead. So it would have, should have, been obvious to a STORYTELLER that the golden dust I was broken into would reconstitute someday. And you know what, Storyteller? That happened. After the ending you wrote. A long, long time after that rewrite you did that broke everything.”

He sighed. “And no. there's no way to restart the machine. See, there's no engineering shop here to create the tiny bits I need to fix it, since it burned OUT! Oh wait! Maybe there's something in the Village of Shopkeepers that I can use! Hey... there's an idea. But no. There's no Village of Shopkeepers anymore because the freakin' magic has faded when the machine stopped!”

Pockets launched himself over the table at the Storyteller and grabbed the rock hard figure by the lapels of his green coat. “So now! I want you to snap out of it! Snap out of that stupid stupor you're in and write me a Gods Damned Story! You're the StoryTeller. You're the only one that can! At least write me a story where I can find the widget that'll fix the machine! Do something useful... Please!”

Pockets held that position for just long enough that his lumbar started to hurt, bad. When his body yelled loud enough at him, he violently release the Storyteller and painfully stood up, still locking his eyes with the unseeing eyes of the mannequin across the table.

“To hell with you, chum.” Pockets brushed as much dust off as he could, realizing that the only way to fully remove all of it would be if there was a nearby tornado that would suck it all off. “To hell with you. I'll figure out how to fix it. I always do.”

Pulling the hood over his head, one last dramatic gesture that went unnoticed, he left the tower room where the Storyteller used to write the world. He passed the old green door and for good measure, kicked it. Secretly, in a place hidden from his fore-brain, he hoped the door would kick back, but he was disappointed. The door took the kick, uncomplaining and offered nothing in the way of retaliation.

Pockets swept down the circular staircase and out the door of the building, walking, walking, and not even thinking about where he was going. He wandered, blinded by rage, by tears, by frustration, by loneliness down the alley, and back the way he came.

When he reached the fork in the pathway that would take him back to the dock, he stopped. He stopped and thought for a very long time, long enough that the two moons, Lil 'un and Big 'un had risen far up into the night sky. Then, silently making a decision that maybe he wasn't quite sure he made, he turned to the left and meandered, slow and thoughtful up the weedy path toward the square at the center of town.

Once there, he walked over to the split stone that sat in the middle of the not quite square square. The stone was roughly man-shaped and about half a foot taller than Pockets was. There was a giant crack straight down the middle of this stone and sitting at the base of the stone was a white rose, that had a continuous bloom.

No longer. There was no rose at the base of the split. Just a shriveled brown thing on the end of a broken necked stem that lacked the teeth of thorns or the flesh of leaves. A bulbous knobby bubble. A knot of brown... stuff... that might have been petals a billion years ago.

“Yeah, “ he said as he stooped down and gently touched the head of the dead rose. “Yeah. I'm sorry dear, I truly am. And yeah, I know it isn't really the Storyteller's fault. Not really. Mostly. Almost. He only wrote the story that was told to him. It's just that,” here he sighed and the sigh ended in a sad little wracking sob. “It's just that I never figured I'd be alone. I just never figured it would all end. I figured we'd all go along like we always had, you know?”

He snapped the neck of the rose a bit harder, letting one of the last, a hidden thorn, tear his finger. “Yeah, I don't blame you. I'd make me bleed too, if I could. At least it would be something new.

He stopped, still and silent. His eyes rolled back until he was staring up at the sky, as if there were rafters up above and he was searching for the answer his brain was passing to him. A wicked grin, the first in a very long time, so long a time that his face didn't even recognize it and tried to reject it, spread from one side of his mouth to the other.

“I wonder.” He ran his thumb over the brown husk, pealing it away, away. Hidden inside, kept safe from time and tide by the wrapping of dead brown rose, was a seed. Small. Naked. Solitary. A single seed. “Huh.” Pockets said. “Hee!” Pockets said a bit louder. “Ha!” and he danced a small jig right then and there and if anyone had been anywhere to see him, they would have just said “Oh, that's just Pockets.”

He reached into his cloak and pulled out a trowel. Why he had a trowel in his pocket, he couldn't have told anyone because it was something he had carried for so long a time the best answer he could come up with would have been “Well... never know when you'll need one.” And sure enough, here he was, needing one.

Holding the seed gently in his cheek, nurturing it, soaking it as it were, he bent down and dug up the old rose. He dug deep, but not too deep. He dug just so deep, just deep enough. He took some of the crumbling rock from the split stone and mixed it with the soil he had dug up.

“Bound to be some calcite in that stone, I'd bet,” he muttered. He dropped the seed into the hold and reverently covered the seed with soil. When done, he tamped it gently and patted the spot lovingly.

Then he ran, skipped, practically danced down to the dock and whipped off his dusty cloak. He and the cloak jumped into the weed clogged river and both got soaked as deeply soaked as they could be soaked. Then, he climbed slowly, painfully, achingly back onto the shore.

Singing a little song he learned many a century ago, a song about beans and how they were a musical fruit, he ran as fast as his tired legs could take him back to the fresh mound of dirt and it's sleeping infant below. He wrung, gently but with severe intensity, as much moisture out of the cloak as he could, being careful to not flood the mound and wash the seed out and away.

“Fertilizer, Chet.” He looked around and over and about and up and pretty much everywhere there was to look. “We gotta feed the baby, you know.” Throwing his hands up, he growled. “Damned camels, it's just stupid that there's nothing dead abou...” He stopped as sure as time, as sure as the world, as sure as old stories. And then, he started to giggle. He started to laugh, long and hard. He laughed until tears ran down his cheeks and snot from his nose.
“No greater love, they say...” he guffawed. “Maybe this time it'll be permanent.” and he lay down on top of the mound. “Hey! Storyteller, you old motherless bastard! To hell with old stories! To hell with all the old stories! Tell me a NEW story, you old faker! Tell me a NEW Story.”

Somewhere high in a tower room, softly, softly, even more softly than that, the faint sound of a quill being dipped in ink was heard by a grumbly door.