Angry Pipe speaks beside a fire


Home


The path of my days billows up from the bowl of my pipe; grabbed by the wind, it is pulled to the north, the south, the east. My footsteps appear in the dirt before me, and I follow the road of unknown predetermination.

In Freestone I was bartering my knowledge of local deer migration in exchange for pipeweed when a ship came into the harbor. A big ship, said the humans. Big, but only compared to other ships. It was not as big as the plains, the forests, the ocean it sits on; it was not as big even as human buildings, human cities. I'd never been on a ship before, and since I was now freshly stocked with pipeweed, I signed up to be on this one.

I agreed to one year's service. One year's service is not so much time to me. The deer will only be coming home again by the time my commitment is up. The days run like a river through my dreams. And I will outlive everybody anyway, so I have many days to fill.

There are few people onboard: myself, a Nothing Fancy elf who signed on after me, and five or six others who I have not met yet. We are the only people onboard. Mostly the rest of the crew is human. But I have met a half-orc named Garfer who has strange and powerful pipeweed. And a gnome named Jonrat who offered me a fight.

I took the fight. I took the fight because it sat like honey dripped from a bee's hive. When you find honey in the woods you scrape it onto your rations, or onto crackers or dry bread, and wrap it carefully and save it for when you need to be strong, when it is cold, when you are fighting sickness. And so I took the fight, and it was better than honey scraped onto dry bread.

There was a second fight also that I took. I did not win, but winning is not why I fight. I fight for the fight itself, because even losing is better than honey scraped onto a cracker. We need to do the things that bring us strength.

The rowing also brings me strength, and peace, and comfort. Tomorrow, if there is no wind, there will be rowing. Rowing reminds me how small this ship is. Onboard this ship, there are no plains, no mountains. But when we are rowing, the sea becomes the plains, the waves become the mountains, and the ship becomes a sprinter, taking long, loping strides. The days run like a river through my dreams.

To be continued...