Faithful Pebble

Part One Hundred and Eight

The wanderer stepped over a branch, avoided crushing the violets racing quietly beneath his feet.

"I have not seen any bodies, well felt them anyway. There were some near the dragon's cave, but those were nowhere near the numbers indicated in the story." At this, she paused. Pebble picked up an armful of utensils she barely remembered and then dropped them into his empty sac. Forlorn, she watched them stay put. She waited for them to disappear like they did before. They didn't move, at least not yet.

The wanderer watched her wearily.

"I may have taken it for granted," she confirmed, "but the villagers did die. Father and Mother used to talk about it. They would often reflect on a friend or an acquaintance they'd lost, or reminisce on how the town had changed post the disaster. Ten thousand people don't just vanish."

"No, they don't," the wanderer confirmed. He bent to help Pebble pick up the mess scattered about them, the secrets that had fallen from his sac to lay forlorn at his feet. He returned four forks, five plates, six bags of exotic spices and then finally the grey blanket, the one he had given to her previously before the well, the moon and her tears. His eyebrows crumpled. His thoughts did too. "May I ask you a question, Miss. Iris," the wanderer asked. He licked his lips, cautiously, steadily, absently. "Please don't be upset with me."

Pebble paused. She watched him from beneath her hood, beneath coarse brown fabric that had lived, fought and survived like she had in the darkness, her darkness, brought on by the world, the town and her family. "What is your question?" she replied. Her words were just as cautious as his, just as steady, but not as absent. They were pointed, hard. Beneath her hood, her eyes never left his.

"The dragon, how long has it been since you last fed it?"

Pebble startled... a little. In the soft light of the fireplace beside them, she stared, but then after a moment she shrugged and looked away. She spoke cautiously, steadily... "Yesterday," she said, "before you came. I was actually looking to see if the town had dropped anything for him to eat when you arrived." Her words trailed off cold and still. She took the blanket from his hand and placed it inside the sac.

"You should take this," she said, frigidly. "I won't need it, at least not as much as you will. There used to be blankets in the closet in my parent's room. With any luck, they are probably still there. I should be fine without it, I think." She didn't need to look at him to see the confusion etch across his face. Yet as she turned her back, she missed the calculating gaze of his eyes tilt subtly towards his watch. The one tucked carefully in his pocket. The one tick-tick-ticking, tock-tock-tocking silently in the background. She couldn't hear it, but he did.

He swallowed, the wanderer. Her next question pulled back his focus. It was unexpected.

"When will you return?"

He started. He stared, in return. "I'm not going anywhere," he said.

But then, she shook her head. But then, Pebble looked about the room. She refused to look at him, meet him, relieve him of his disappointment, the wanderer, the stranger, the antagonist she just met. "I want to stay. Why don't you get the supplies from the town next door and come back here when you are done. Like you suggested earlier, I will stay and wait for you. Then, when you return, we will go. Where ever you wish, I will follow, like a coin in your pocket, that's what I'll be."

The wanderer's fingers twitched. His thoughts ran suspicious, repentant and paranoid. She repeated her words from before.

"I don't need you," she said. "I don't..." Pebble trailed off. She stepped away and didn't look back. "I'll see you when you return."

It was the last thing she said before the bedroom door closed. It shut quietly between them.

The wanderer stared at it for a while... a long while.

Even hours later, he stilled stared at it in his mind regretting words and actions. He sighed, the wanderer, before his thoughts twittered elsewhere, to time and clocks, dragons and villages. So lost in thought was he that he didn't notice the forest begin to change around him, nor the shadow following him step for step. A mile, two miles past and it followed unseen until at a particular juncture it finally spoke. "You are correct," it said. "It doesn't add up."

- Calla