This Place was as usual: the people were
cheerful, the trees were plentiful, and the buildings grew larger and
larger. Children ran about like rats in
search of food while the adults walked from place to place, spending their
money or making more. Robert walked
among them with an obvious look of loathing. Every smiling face, every sound of laughter seemed to taunt him. We're
rich, we're rich, they seemed to
call. We made a fortune off your rock, Robert. A fortune.
Robert sneered at some children as they
pranced past with chunks of gold in their hands; he knew where they had found
it. Look what you lost, Robert. What you lost. Robert thought of snatching the rocks from
their hands, claiming them as his rightful possessions, but he held himself
back. I can't let myself become one of them, he thought to himself.
He entered the town's tavern and sat down on
a barstool. The bartender approached
him, as expected, and offered Robert a drink. "Yes, thank you," said Robert, and a moment later he was handed a gold
plated mug of ale.
Robert looked at the mug and snarled. The
nerve of these people, he thought,
this is my gold; it should have
stayed in the rock where I liked it. Just then, a man abruptly sat himself down
on the stool next to Robert. Robert
looked at the man, who conspicuously was looking right back at him. They stared at each other for a moment before
the man said, "Don't I know you from somewhere?"
Robert turned on the stool, "I highly doubt
it," he said as he stood up to walk away.
"Yes," argued the man as he turned and
followed Robert with a taunting grin, "You're the fool hermit who claimed that
the gold mine was his."
Robert turned to the man, "It wasn't a mine;
it was a rock, and yes it was mine."
The man laughed out loud at the claim. "In all my years, that has always been the
funniest thing I've ever heard," a few other men joined in the laughter, "I
remember the day that Old Phil came to the bunch of us and said a silly yap was
going around claiming ownership of our gold. We laughed for days."
Robert filled with anger, but managed to
find some control over himself. He
stared at the man and his mocking cohorts and tried with all his might to burn
a hole through them, but to no avail of course. He took a swig of ale and slammed the mug down onto a nearby
table. He turned and stormed out of the
tavern followed only by the heightened laughter. As he stomped up the street past all the people whom he despised
even more than the taunting, he began to feel as though coming to This Place
had been a mistake.
He began to make his way to the southern
most entrance to the town, intent on leaving as soon as possible. If it had been anyone else, they may have
thought it logical to spend the night in This Place where it was warm and
better protected. Robert, on the other
hand, would rather be gnawed to death by a monkey than spend one night in This
Place, especially if the monkey was high on the sugars of a banana at the time.
As he made his way south through the city,
he was forced to pass the spot where his beloved rock had once stood. Now a gigantic hole in the ground, the
memories flooded back and a tear formed in Robert's eye. He turned his face from the horrid sight and
kept moving. He didn't look forward
again until he stood at the gates to the town.
He stopped there for a moment and
sighed. Why did I come here? he
wondered. Just then, a voice from
behind him called out, "You there, wait!"
Robert turned to see what was happening,
assuming there had been some sort of robbery that had taken place. Instead, a man was jogging towards him with
his arm in the air, waving it about like a fool. "Wait," he called again.
Robert recognized the man from the bar. When the man began taunting him, Robert had
noticed this man next to him at the bar as he turned on his stool. The man had looked as though he had
recognized Robert as well, but had said nothing. Now here he was running towards Robert as though he had something
urgent in mind, but Robert couldn't for the life of him think of what it could
be.
The man wore a light brown tunic with a
slightly darker pair of pants pulled up above it. The pants were held up by a black leather belt wrapped around his
waist. On his feet, the man wore a pair
of brown heavy work boots, covered in a thin layer of dried clay, which
suggested that he worked in the mine and made it awkward for the man to
run. As the man approached, Robert
noticed that the man's hair was also a light brown shade and would probably be
able to hide well in the sands of The Unexplored Deserts to the east. When the man stood a foot or so away from
Robert, he stopped and began to draw in heavy breaths, worn out from his run. "What is it you want?" asked Robert.
The man stood up again, one hand on his
belly as he continued to breath heavily. Sweat dripped down his forehead and Robert knew the man was terribly out
of shape. "My name is Tribbon," said
the man.
Robert waited for more, but none came,
"And?" he urged.
"I remember you, just like Morgan Fritz, the
man in the bar, only I don't wish to mock you."
"What do you want, then?" asked Robert.
"Well sir," he began as though he was about
to start a long story, and indeed he did, "I had heard a while back that you had
been seen in Town, but I never quite knew why. That was over twenty years ago and at that time we all thought you to be
a loony. I next heard that you were up
in the vicinity of what is now Forestville, but then it was only still a
dream. After that you disappeared for a
few years and most forgot about you, but I didn't.
"I began to wonder about you. Had you been telling the truth about the
rock? Were you just more than a lonely
hermit whose home was ruined when we moved in? I became fascinated with you, though I never knew what you looked like
or whether you would despise me if we ever met.
"One day I received a book on my doorstep, a
man had placed it there as he passed by. I later learned that the man was our beloved Phil, who had purchased a
copy of this book for everyone in the town. I looked at the cover of the book and read it out loud, 'The
Bibble.' I opened the cover to see more
of this strange book and saw there on the first page, 'Written by Robert
Willex.'
"I was stunned to see your name in print
upon this rather large book which I had received so ironically from the very
man who had stolen your rock from you – by this time I was quite sympathetic
towards you and had published many anonymous flyers on your behalf.
"I decided, then and there, that you were a
holy man and that I would follow you to the ends of the earth. When I saw you in the bar, there was
something about you that seemed different, and when Morgan said your name, my
eyes were filled with joy. At last, I
had found my mentor and we could be together at last."
Robert listened to the story that Tribbon
seemed quite enthusiastic about. He
wasn't sure what to think about it; it was all quite sudden and very
surprising. "You followed me here
because you consider me your mentor?" he asked finally.
"Yes," said Tribbon, "and also because I
picked up your tab at the tavern. You
owe me four gold nuggets."
Robert looked at the smiling face of the man
who started to giggle. "I'm only
pulling your leg," crowed the man, "How could I possibly ask you to pay me
back?"
Robert was starting to get the impression
that he wasn't going to be getting rid of the man any time soon. "I believe," started Tribbon once more
causing Robert to cringe as he expected another long story, "that you are on a
quest."
Robert relaxed slightly as he realized that
the man had stopped talking before expected. "A quest?" he asked cautiously, "what sort of quest?"
Tribbon smiled, "A holy one," he said.
Robert looked shocked a little, but after having
no one to talk to about his journeys for so long, he found it hard to resist
gloating about them. "Well, I wouldn't
call it a holy quest. It's more of a
quest for the earth," he said.
"What do you mean?" asked Tribbon, and
Robert suddenly found that he was going to have to come up with a pretty good
explanation aside from saying that he converses with Mother Earth.
He thought for a moment, but soon decided
that Tribbon would probably believe anything Robert tried to tell him, so he
did.
"You talk to Mother Earth?" exclaimed
Tribbon in awe, "That's amazing!"
Robert found this praise somewhat flattering
and continued, "I was asked by Mother Earth to seek something out for her,"
Tribbon's eyes widened, "She requested that I to discover what happened to her
before The Great Beginning."
Tribbon grew excited, "That's
astonishing. I can hardly believe it,
you truly are a holy man," Robert blushed slightly, "But you said, 'before The Great Beginning.' Where do
we find information from that era?" he asked.
Robert was suddenly faced with the reality
of the situation – he had a follower. "Are you suggesting that you're planning on following me everywhere I
go?" he asked.
Tribbon nodded vigorously and Robert
sighed. It seemed futile to try and rid
himself of the man, so he let himself succumb to the fact that he now had
company, "I've been told of a building in the Chainsaw Mountains that may hold
a major key to the truth. I'm going to
find it."
"This sounds like an adventure," cried the
man.
"Indeed," sighed Robert, who was beginning
to think he was going to be sighing a lot over the next little while.
Together, the odd couple disappeared into
the forest with the jagged images of a mountain range looming on the distant
horizon. Robert could only hope that
they would hold the end of his journey. Only time would tell.
