Scheherazade Goes Home

I had been doing more jobs for Gryfflet. I made more money, and found more and more the opportunities available to me in the city of Britain. I was able to buy food and buy clothing. Life was becoming more comfortable. I had become my own woman and was making my own way. Because of all his extra time gained by my services, deliveries mainly, he was free to cut more lumber. One day, after a lumber cutting session, I watch over his pack llamas, he told me that I was free to do what I wanted this weekend. I felt that I had come so far that it was time to go home and show my family what I had become. I dressed in my travelling clothes and set out.

The road was more dangerous than I remember. Of course, last time I left from Trinsic, I traveled in a caravan, with what little money I did take from home. Strange creatures roamed the land. Rat men, orcs (of which I had only heard about in my youth), ogres, and a strange beast with many eyes. The many eyed beast caught sight of me, and began casting its wicked spells. I had never seen such a beast but for in the darkest of my nightmares. My first instinct was to run. Then from out of trees, a hideous troll roared forth swinging an uprooted tree branch. It had flanked me, and it was only by my reflexes that I escaped death by being crushed. The eye-creature had poisoned me, and weakened me with wicked magic. Running through the woods with my stomach vaulting over unseen obstacles, it was all I could do to push my legs every step, feeling the sorcerous weakness freezing my body. But I got away and hid quickly.

Soon the creatures gave up pursuit, and being out of range of that nightmare beast, its powers wore quickly off. I turned around and was amazed at what I was seeing. It was a shrine. My father took me to this shrine once when I was a child. "Spirituality," he said "is the exercise of the spirit. Just as the body must be exerted to grow strong, so to must the spirit be exerted."

"How do you exert a spirit?" I asked him. "By every good act you do, and by every new piece of knowledge and wisdom you gain, you exercise your

spirit. And just as a body suffers from contaminants, so too does the spirit. Every evil act darkens you." He spoke to me in his native tongue.

I continued on until I reached the gates of Trinsic. The city seemed quieter than last I was here. Those I saw on the streets seemed so somber. I moved as quickly as I could back to my home. My stomach knotted as I reached my home street. I slowly walked the path, counting each step. Why was I so nervous? They were just my family. I walked up the steps to the door and lifted my hand to knock, but waited. What if my father thought my meager earnings as a lumberjack's

lackey was a disgrace to everything he had brought me up to believe? It didn't matter. This was the life I had chosen. I knocked. And then, unexpectedly, I waited.

There was no answer. I knocked again, and again. Finally I tried opening the door and it swung wide to reveal a bare room. "Mom, dad?" It was not just this room, but every room. The house was barren, as if no one had lived there. There was no dust, and not stains. The home was like new. Where were

they?