| Rules | • | Spyragia Setting | • | Monsters | • | Stories |
I set down the teacup. Why does my sword have its own name, but this teacup does not? It was small and fine, clearly the pride of a master potter. It was a gift from my host.
I dip my pen in ink. A few more pages to go for my tenth booklet.
After a life as an Errant, it is time to let go. I am filled with my past. Maybe putting it on paper will help me be empty.
Little Humble values all flavors of emptiness.
You know me as Turim. I walked Maceweight and Spyragia, fighting bugaboos. Not all Errants focus on fighting bugaboos. But Little Humble had many many, and Turbulence had made many more. It was work to do.
Now I wish to retire. I am visiting my friend, Wudh the master potter. He has much skill in porcelain. He has an extra room, where I write.
The tenth booklet retells my fight with a bugaboo mantis with too many eyes. I do not know which child dreamed that monster. I only know that Little Humble took it away to help the child, and made it real far from the dreamer. It troubled a village, and I killed it.
I thought I was prepared. I knew its form was like a giant mantis that could fly. I had a special shield to parry its scythe-like front limbs. I had set up the area with nets, to tangle it if it flew at me. My blade was painted with a magic goo that did more harm to insects.
I was lucky. It was so used to deadly that it leapt at me undivided. We wounded each other. It bled an odd ichor.
Since its first pounce was not deadly, and it was hurt, it used its magic. In a blur it became ten of itself. This was a surprise. All ten moved, and reached, and tried to grab or slice me. I was in grave danger.
Maybe killing the first would make the copies go away? I saw the trail of ichor. It was hard to follow, with ten foes all moving. But I saw which had the wound, and it was my turn to pounce.
The copies did vanish when the bugaboo died. I drank healing potions and bandaged the wounds that stayed.
When I set down my pen, I felt like that story had ended a second time with a gentle sigh. But I was wrong.
I clean the pen, drink a bit more tea, and walk to meditate in Wudh's garden.
It is late morning, one week later. The fourteenth booklet forms. Wudh knocks at my door.
"Come in, my friend."
"You have a guest, Turim."
"A guest?" This is new. I am an Errant. I solve a problem and move on. I am used to leaving people behind.
Wudh explains, "Many copies of your booklets are spreading through the passportal network. Your fame grows. People have learned you are here. This man says he dreamed one of your bugaboos, and wishes to offer thanks."
"I will see him."
Years have indeed passed. A child that had nightmares is not a young man. Little Humble helped him. I did not, I only fought his bugaboo some place else. I wonder what he will say?
The man enters, and bows. "I am Luran. As a child I had the mantis bugaboo nightmare."
I return the greeting. "Sit. I can see you wish to share."
Luran sits. "Yes. It was good to read your story. For me the nightmare was also a daytime fear. At first, in a dark corner of the house, or outdoors at night, there was one glowing eye watching me. The next time there were two eyes. The third time there was three. Each time it was bigger, and more eyes. Its claws made scraping noises up the walls, and on the paths outside the house. Each time the noises were louder."
I nod. I look for fear in his face or voice, but there is none. Little Humble removed it.
Luran continues, "When it was gone, and my fear was gone, I knew Little Humble had made it a bugaboo. I knew it could be a danger to others. But I never knew where it went, or what it did, or how it ended. Then I read what you wrote. Thank you, Turim."
I ask, "Why thank me? Little Humble was the one who helped you. I helped other people. The bugaboo being made real was not your doing. Little Humble was responsible, not you."
Luran says, "I do not think Little Humble would help as many scared kids if she did not also have Errants like you to deal with our fears."
"Hmm."
Luran shows me a basket. I brought small cakes. They are an important part of celebrations in my homeland. These I baked myself."
I give a small bow of thanks. "Let us eat!"
When Luran leaves, I give him the original of the booklet with the mantis bugaboo story.
My next visitor, two days later, had her nightmare as a very young girl. She had a mean aunt. She dreamed of a bulletin board, like the one on the town kiosk, but all of the colorful papers pinned to it had cruel insults and mocking questions. In her dreams it haunted and chased her, piercing her with doubts.
That fight was not as exciting. I did have to do a lot of research to find how to get past its magic, so my blade could hurt it. But after that research, the fight was not hard.
Now that girl is a woman with her own young kids. She is also an aunt, but not a mean aunt.
She is polite. She asks if the bulletin board bugaboo screamed or cried when I cut it.
I am still an Errant and cannot lie. "It had no mouth to make such noise. But I could tell it was very afraid."
"Good," she says.
Today I learn that Little Humble takes away the fear, but not the bitterness.
She has no more to ask, or say, or do. I give her the original of the booklet with the bulletin board bugaboo story.
The next day I am visited by an old woman and a bugaboo.
This bugaboo was a child's friend: an idealized friend. That child's best friend had moved far away. The child pretended the friend had not left. He invented an imaginary playmate, as many kids do. But it seemed too real. It kept the child from making new friends. It seemed like a best friend, but was really a trap. So Little Humble took it away, and made it into a bugaboo far away.
It found a small village and began luring kids away, all day long. "Come play with me! I know all the best games! We can do so many fun things!" It did this too much. The kids in that village were taken too much from family and school and chores and life.
So I took that bugaboo to an old widow who lived in the woods about two days distant. Her husband had been a woodcutter. He was drafted for a war and never came back. She was lonely, and needed a helper.
As we walked to her home I told the bugaboo, "Here you will be okay. A child who always stays a child is not bad for her. You do not eat, and are not another mouth to feed. You can help her do things. She will enjoy paying attention to you. Your job is to help a woman who could use a child, not to spend time with other children."
They talk of neighbors and visits to the town market. Their garden is doing very well. She sits and drinks tea with me while the child bugaboo plays with clay.
I give them the original of the booklet with their story.
Other visitors came. You understand.
Now it is a month after I finished the booklets. I decide no more visitors will come. I take those original booklets that I still have with me to one of Maw Lute's museum temples.
"These can live here," I say to a curator.
The curators takes them. We walk to a shelf where the booklets will live.
The curator tells me, "I have read copies of all your booklets. It is an honor to keep these there. To make Little Humble proud, you have collected so many kinds of emptiness."
"Yes," I agree. "But I was like a potter that could not stop making a teacup on a potter's wheel. The inside of the teacup, where it is empty, is the useful part of the teacup. To make that inside emptiness, the potter has to push away the clay that will be the teacup. When I lived as an Errant I had to keep pushing so much away. I had to keep at arm's length all the thanks and connections."
The curator asks, "No more?"
I say, "No more. During my months of writing I have made promises. I will visit some people and places. I will enjoy hospitality. I will even accept some money, having found good and generous plans for it. One village wants me to live there and be its mayor: I am not close to saying yes, but I have not yet said no."
The curator agreed. "'Maybe' can be its own kind of emptiness." Then the curator asks, "So you still walk Sublimity Street?"
"I do. As an Errant I made a name for my blade. Now I want to make a name for my teacup."