Happy Birthday to The Trinity Tree! This time I'm actually mostly on time. It's weird. I don't like this feeling.

Alas, I lost the last half of the story in a tragic saving accident. So while it didn't end up going quite where I wanted it to go, I think it went some interesting places in the meantime.

I hope you had a great birthday, Trin, and I hope this makes you laugh! Thanks for always letting me play in your sandbox!

The Devil Went Down to Georgia

Or, why Tag and Kronan really, really hate the Fields of Fum caravan.

Esther always thought that Andy was cute. Maybe that's what started the whole problem, despite claims on Tag and Kronan's part to the contrary.

"He was always a slimy bastard," Tag protested, polishing his shield and pausing to admire himself in the reflection. "Smug. You can just see it in his face."

Kronan jerked his head once in a nod of agreement, doing an excellent job of taking his time sharpening the group's weapons so that he'd have to do no other chores. "Thinks he's better than us."

"Well, maybe he is," Esther remarked, clumsily stitching a patch onto one of her worn out pairs of trousers. Ignoring their identical hurt looks, she said, "He's been a caravan leader for ten years, after all."

Tag's eyes bugged out of his head. "Ten years!" he said. "Ugh, Esther, he's so old! I can't believe you find him even remotely attractive. He's old enough to be your father!"

Sam Teh looked up from where he was roasting freshly caught fish over their campfire. "Who's this Andy you're talking about?"

Kronan shot her a look of panic, and Esther was once again left to smooth things over. "He's the leader of the Fields of Fum caravan," she said. "We run into them on the road sometimes. And he is not old enough to be my father!

Tag nodded fervently. "Oh, come on Esther, he's not that nice of a guy."

"He's nice enough!" she shot back, but Kronan stuck out one of his bare feet and wiggled his toes right in her face. "Nuh uh!" he shouted. "Remember when he stepped on my foot?"

"That was an accident!"

Tag offered a rather scarred arm up for perusal. "And when he slashed me with his knife!"

Sam Teh raised his eyebrows and moved closer to examine the map of lines on his arm. "That long one there?"

"I don't remember that," Kronan remarked, scooting closer to look as well. "That circle-y one there?"

"No, no, that one there."

"That's not more than a knick!" Esther exclaimed. "You're all idiots! Andy is perfectly nice; you'll see when we get to Fum, Sam!" She finished the last stitch, knotted the thread, ripped off the excess a trifle too forcefully, bared her teeth, and stomped off to the other side of the wagon.

Much to Esther's delight and Tag's displeasure, Andy and company were home for the year by the time they stopped at Fum.

"Damn," Kronan muttered out of the side of his mouth. "Thought we might miss 'em. I swear she memorized their schedule." Tag nodded knowingly.

Andy spotted them almost immediately. He waited near the inn to greet them, face running through a gamut of emotion. First there was pleasure, accompanied by a smile for Esther. This quickly changed to a sour scowl that mirrored the dark expression on Kronan's face. Kronan pulled on his favorite gauntlets and did his best to break the other man's hand when they shook hands as formally as possible. When Andy finally wrenched his hand free from the determined Lilty with a loud clank and offered it to Tag, the offended Clavat sniffed and pretended not to see it. Sam took his hand instead and shook it amiably.

"Andy, this is our newest member Sam," Esther said after shooting a glare at her misbehaving compatriots. "And Sam, this is Andy, the leader of the Fields of Fum caravan."

"Well, aren't you a brawny fellow," Andy remarked, admiring the Selkie's build. "Wouldn't mind having a few of you in my caravan. Bet you kill a whole pack of monsters every morning before breakfast."

"Only because Kronan likes to eat them," Sam replied sweetly, ignoring an outraged squawk from said Lilty. "But I'd never manage in a caravan. I'm nowhere near brave enough."

Andy gave him a strange look and opened his mouth. Before he could ask any potentially incriminating questions, Esther hooked her arm through his and made a beeline for the cow pasture where many of the race contestants were being shown off to potential gamblers, dragging him along. "Wow, Esther," Andy managed when she reached the fence and halted abruptly. "I'd no idea you missed me so." His voice took on a teasing lilt that, accompanied with that farmboy Fum accent, made Esther a little weak in the knees. "Or are you only using me to rig another cow race?"

She slapped lightly at his arm and rolled her eyes. "Our Elder has yet to let us hear the end of that."

In front of the inn, Tag shook his head in disgust. "Look at that. Smug, smug, smug."

"Ugh, I can't stand arrogant people," Kronan added, conveniently missing the hypocrisy.

The next morning the entire Fields of Fum caravan awaited their arrival in the inn's common room. "There's a cow race today," Sheula teased the drowsy, tousled Belstone group. "Elder asked us to keep an eye on all y'all."

"In fact," Andy said, stepping close to where Esther was rubbing her eyes and smiling at her. "I've been assigned to keep my eyes on just you."

Kronan made a retching sound in the background.

Esther flushed bright pink. "Oh."

He reached out and offered his hand, moving slowly and carefully as if he were approaching a startled deer. "I know the best place in town to watch the races. Care to join me?"

She took his hand with a flirtatious giggle that neither Tag nor Kronan had ever heard emerge from her mouth. "I suppose I can't let you fail your Elder." Andy held open the door for her and they exited the inn.

Tag, Kronan, and Sam began to follow when the other Fum man, Jake, reached out his arm and blocked the door. "We've got separate instructions," he told the lads. "Andy's orders."

Kronan dashed right under the Clavat man's arm, latching onto the door frame as the Clavats tried to pull him back. Hollering at her back as she walked farther and farther away, he cried, "No, Esther, you can't! He's skeezy!"

Fum's second in command, the Clavat woman Sheula, gave a huff of irritation and yanked him back into the room. "Looks like I'm going to be the one to handle you," she told him.

"I call the hot one!" the other woman, Lulie, announced. Tag's face rose hopefully then fell as she latched herself to Sam Teh.

"Looks like I've got you, pretty boy," Jake said. As the three pairs left the inn for whatever destination the Clavats had in mind, Tag couldn't decide whether to take his words as a compliment or an insult.

Kronan and Tag sulked up on the rooftop that had been graciously reserved for their viewing pleasure. Through continuing correspondence with Belstone, Fum's Elder had decided that keeping them as far away from the cows as possible was clearly the best option. Sam, however, was an unknown entity, and reassured that he was harmless by Belstone's Elder, had no special instructions regarding his keeping.

Out in the field with Lulie, Sam was having the time of his life. He patted his favorite of the cows, a rather neurotic looking black furred beast whose eyes bulged outward, as if it might achieve 360 degree vision. The cow seemed unable to walk in a straight line, its gait swaying it from side to side. Occasionally it would give a little hop, then freeze, as if it had shocked itself and was too afraid to move, lest another hop occur. The cow eyed Sam with its eternally anxious gaze.

"Will this one be in the race today?" Sam asked, scratching behind the cow's ears as if it were a dog. "What a good boy!"

Lulie refrained from correcting him. Sure, he might've been dumb as a rock, but she'd found that Sam was incredibly sweet. Living most of the year between smartass Jake and gentleman Andy, she'd come to value kindness above all else. You could educate people, after all, but you couldn't fix meanness.

A farmer who overheard the question swaggered over. "With Lily about to drop her calf any day now, this one'll be taking her place. Why? Want to place a bet?" Though he looked away, he couldn't hide the glint in his eyes when he gazed at Sam's belt pouch, surely full of coin, all those caravanners were rich. "The odds on...him...are twenty to one."

"Don't do it, Sam," Lulie said with a shake of her head. "The minimum bet is a hundred gil. I know it's not much, but you'd be better off betting on a different-"

"I'll put down a thousand!" Sam said cheerfully, tugging the appropriate coins out of his pouch. The farmer watched, nearly salivating at the flash of other coins in his pouch. Perhaps he could convince the fool to bet more? He'd bet on his own beast, and so far she was the best of the lot. He'd fed her extra this morning so she wouldn't be tempted to graze during the race.

"Are you sure? You could pull a lot of money with those odds," the farmer said. Lulie put a hand on Sam's arm in warning.

"You're right. Two thousand!" said Sam as the farmer's eyes bulged. Lulie just sighed.

When Esther returned from her date that night with Andy, Kronan and Tag were in jail and Sam was 40,000 gil the richer.

When the race began she was across the pasture from the rest of the Belstoners, perched on the fence and laughing at something the handsome caravanner said. A light breeze lifted her hair, sent chills down her spine. When she shivered, Andy had smiled and stepped behind her, wrapping his arms around her so she could "keep warm" and tucking his chin over her shoulder. Together they watched the beginnings of the race, chuckling at the bumbling, befuddled cows.

Atop the roof, Kronan squawked with rage and made as if to climb down from their perch. "Slow down, little tiger," Sheula told him with a grin. "Elder says you're to stay right here until those cows are across the field."

"But he's cozying up to Esther, preying on her girlish heart!" he said, tugging at his hair until the spikes stood on end as if he'd just been zapped with a Thunder spell.

"Kro," Tag said slowly, "I thought you didn't even realize Esther was a girl."

"She isn't!" the irate Lilty said, "But she could be giving him caravan secrets!"

Sheula tilted her head to one side, as if he might make more sense from this angle. "You realize our Elders tell each other everything, right?"

Not about to let anything like contradictions or facts get in the way of his righteous tirade, Kronan began to pace back and forth, taking savage delight in the way the roof boards squeaked and groaned beneath his feet. "She might tell him our tactics, or all the artifacts we have, or the secret route through the Sluice-"

"Hey," Jake said, clearly wounded. "Aren't we all on the same side, here?"

Across the field, Andy made some gesture toward his hair and Esther laughed. "Look!" Kronan said triumphantly. "They're making fun of your hair, Tag."

"Nuh-uh," Tag said. Kronan loved to do that to him, make him think that-he glanced across the field, just in time to catch Andy making the motion again. "Oh, come on!"

Well used to the antics of the two, Sam steadily ignored them, sitting so that his feet dangled over the eaves and holding Lulie's hand in anticipation as he watched his favorite, his chosen neurotic little beast stagger a few steps toward the finish line. "You can do it!" he urged the cow from afar. "Don't give up!"

Behind him, Tag leaped to his feet and moved to stand beside Kronan, ignoring the squeaky boards, shielding a hand over his eyes as he watched Andy repeat the hair-smoothing motion again. "That bastard," he said. Kronan, happy that he at last had an ally, stomped his booted foot-

-and yelled as the roof caved in beneath him and Tag.

It sounded vaguely like an explosion. From across the field all Esther could hear was a muted 'whump' of displaced air and falling objects, coupled with a few faint shouts. Her attention was drawn to the cows, who remained mostly placid and meandering, except for that little black one. It leaped forward, stumbling into a run as it tried desperately to get away from whatever-the-hell was making all that noise in the nearby house.

Sam cheered wildly. "Go, little guy!" He whooped as the cow crossed the finish line and kept going. "I knew he had it in him," he confided to Lulie, who was staring behind her wide-eyed at the hole that had appeared in the Elder's roof. From below the sounds of scrabbling and incoherent shouting could be heard.

Down in the field, a certain greedy farmer threw his hat in the dirt and jumped on it.

On the rooftop of the Elder's house, Sheula, Jake, and Lulie exchanged glances that could only be described in polite company as "Oh, dear." At last Sheula risked a look into the hole.

"Well," Jake said, scratching his head and grimacing, "At least we can say they didn't cheat."

And when he finally arrived to see just what all the noise was about, the Elder was not impressed by this reassurance, to say the least.

Kronan blinked hard, unable to shield his watering eyes from the noon sun. At last the key clinked and the shackles loosened, and he was able to wipe his eyes.

Tag, looking a little worse for the wear after a night in the brig, held forth his own wrists to be released, squinting as well. That was Esther in front of them, he'd recognize her anywhere. But who was the person wearing such a ridiculous hat?

"Really?" Esther demanded the moment the jailer returned to his desk, shutting the door behind him. "We finally get to come back to Fum, and you get us banned again!"

"Banned, huh?" Perhaps Kronan sounded just a little too cheerful. Tag was grinning as the Esther-figure raised its hand dangerously and he dodged back. "I mean, oh, no, we're banned again."

The other figure with the wide-brimmed, tall hat put its hands in its pockets, which jingled merrily. "The tavern girls said they'd be sad to see me go."

Tag wiped his eyes again. "Sam?" he said, unable to keep his gaze from traveling from the top of Sam's head to the tip of Sam's toes. He really was wearing one of those cowboy hats, and a vest, and boots...with spurs? What had these people done to him?

"I'm a cowboy now," Sam told him, jingling his pockets again. "I even bought my lucky cow."

"Don't ask," Esther said to the other two, both of whom had opened their mouths. "Just...don't." She led them to where the wagon had been fully restocked, waving sadly to Andy and smacking Tag when he waved his middle finger.

And so the Belstone caravan once again left Fum: two in disgrace, one infatuated, one so happy he could die as he hugged his precious cow, and their newest companion completely and utterly terrified by every sight and sound. It was going to be a long trip home.

Fin

Additional notes: The cow is based on a real life creature, a small black rabbit named Helo who really does act like that.