“I’m all ears.” Briareth says eagerly.

“What sorts of things do you want Smay?” I say carefully.

“Nothing much, I’ll equip you for them of course.”

“Can I have the glowy bow?” Briareth chimes in.

Smay smiles, “Potentially.”

“I’m really good with bows.” Briareth wheedles.

“He is,” I say, backing Briareth up, he smiles at me gratefully. “He trained with bows a lot during his apprenticeship as a King’s Archer.”

“Back on topic.” Smay says, avoiding giving us a direct answer, “I want you two to-”

We are interrupted by a loud crash from downstairs.

“Smay?” I ask quietly, “Did you reseal the boxes?”

“Oh dear.” Smay says. “Wait here.” He runs toward the stairs. Briareth, predictably, follows him. I sigh and stay at the table. “Briareth,” Smay says from the kitchen below, “I thought I told you not to follow me… never mind now.” Since he doesn’t seem to care that much, I get up and head downstairs to join them. When I look in the kitchen I see Smay staring fixedly into an orb. He curses under his breath and says “Pseudodragons. You were right Faladel, they are after the open boxes! How did they find out?

“It wasn’t either of us. We have been with you nearly the entire time. When I wasn’t with you, I was opening those boxes.” I say.

“I know it couldn’t have been you, Faladel. Don’t worry.” Smay says tiredly as if this is an all too often occurrence. “I kept checking up on you in my Crystalline Spying Orb; my CSO for short. You couldn’t have arranged a meeting with them without my notice.”

“Perhaps they just happened upon them, or maybe they have some sort of device that let's them listen in to conversations.” I suggest.

“No, no, they most likely heard about the box being open from one of their spies. Pseudodragons can infiltrate nearly anywhere. They are tiny and quiet when they need to be, so the bats don’t find them easily.”

“Do you want us to go after them Smay?” I say.

“Too late.” Smay looks glum, “By the time you get there they’ll be gone. I’ll find some other way to get them back.” He perks up, “In fact, I think I have an idea for that already.”

“Back to supper then?” Briareth says.

“Yes, I’ll continue telling you about what I want you to do before I show you the way out.”

We head out of the kitchen and back to the dining room after Smay puts away his CSO. When we get back he says, “I used to only have two tasks that I wanted you to do, but now that those cursed pseudodragons have stolen that bow I want you to get it back for me before I show you the way out. The original two were getting some of the rare finely ground black pepper from a jackawere tribe that won’t let me visit anymore, and-” he is interrupted by Briareth.

“What is a jackawere? And why won’t they let you visit?” I nod, throwing my support behind his question.

“A jackawere is a were-jackalope. There was a misunderstanding that was partly my fault involving a broken sacred urn. I was deemed too large and clumsy to be allowed to visit after that. Now, will you let me finish?”

“Okay, continue.” Briareth doesn’t seem to realize Smay’s annoyance.

“I will also need you to wake up an intruder who has been sleeping in my gardens for nearly two years. He is an elf like you and-”

“Wait, Smay!” Briareth interrupts again, “This guy is the one who you told us about earlier; the guy who went on the wrong path and didn’t have anyone to tell him not to go into side caves! Am I right, or am I right?”

“Yes you're right, but one more word out of you, Briareth, and instead of going on this adventure with Faladel, you’ll be staying here and helping me re-label some of the older parts of my collection,” Smay says grumpily. Briareth’s eyes go wide. He mimes zipping his lips, locking them, and then throwing away the key. Then retrieving the key and swallowing it. Then, he realizes that he couldn’t have possibly swallowed it with his mouth closed and so coughs it up, spits it out, locks everything up again, throws it away, and sits on his hands. All the while making great big puppy eyes.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Smay and Briareth must have talked a lot while making supper for Smay to realize how to shut Briareth up. Missing out on an adventure is the exact thing that Briareth wouldn’t want to do.

“So now, Faladel, you can speak for Briareth, do you want to take me up on this offer? I show you the way out, in return you do these three small tasks for me.”

I glance at Briareth. He nods eagerly, but stays silent, still sitting on his hands and using big puppy eyes. “We’ll do it.” I say.

“Excellent,” Smay says and wolfs down a few more of the spicy tortillas for emphasis. Briareth looks at the tortillas longingly, obviously wanting seconds but not daring to unlock his mouth for fear that he might let something slip out. As Smay gets up and says, “But all that stuff can wait for tomorrow, now I must find some rooms for you to bed in, and put away these delicious leftovers.” He looks at the tortillas happily. “I may keep some of your modifications, Briareth. They are some of the best things that have happened today.” Briareth smiles at the compliment, but remembers to keep his mouth shut.

Smay gets up from his seat at the table. “I don’t understand the purpose of chairs.” He grumbles to himself. “One would be just as fine standing; they aren’t even that comfy.” He picks up the trays from the counter and, doing an admirable feat of balancing, gets all of them stacked up. As we amble along behind him to the stairs, we enter the kitchen and Smay places the trays on a nearby counter and opens the doors of the device that I had only briefly noticed earlier. I walk closer to study it. Cool air slides out the door and glancing inside I notice it holds remnants of meals.

“How does that work, Smay?” I ask curiously.

“I don’t rightly know myself. I found it ages ago, and personally think that it must be magic. There is nothing cold inside it originally, but it can make things cold very easily. Strange, right?”

“Very.” I agree. Smay puts the leftovers in the container.

“It can also produce frozen water at the push of a button. Not snow, but ice, meaning that someone could make other things cold if they wish. Amazing.” He smiles. “Also one can eat the ice. Very useful.”

“I’ll bet.” I grin, wondering at all the things that this remarkable device could be used for. “Does it keep the food fresh?”

“Yep, and delays the time it takes things to spoil, especially raw meat.”

“Do you have any more of these devices?” I ask, poking at the door. It swings easily.

“Unfortunately, no, this was the only one I could find.” Smay replies.

“How did you come across it? What do you call it?”

“I call it my Icer. I’ll tell you the tale of how I came across it as we go to the guest rooms.”

We set off for the guest rooms, Smay and I talking animatedly. A silent Briareth follows along behind us glumly, obviously wanting to join in the conversation, but not daring to open his mouth for fear of it being called an interruption.

“I came across the Icer while I was exploring off the borders.”

I look at Smay confusedly, “You found this in the Dwarven Territory?”

“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous. The other border.”

“What other border?”

Smay looks surprised that I don’t understand. “You know, the border of the spell.” He says this as if it explains everything. I still have no idea what he is talking about and shrug, he frowns, “What do they teach young Elves in schools these days?”

“I never went to school, I was taught at home by tutors.”

“Hmm… still this is a really important part of your history, how come you don’t know it? Surely you know it, Briareth?” Briareth looks just as befuddled as me, “Well, I can’t explain it very well, but hundreds of years ago, there was another world just across the circular mountain range, that’s where I found this thing. It was beat up in some old shipwreck, and seemed to be missing it's old power source. Apparently it was meant to attach to something. So I took it to a person who I thought might be able to fix it for me. He was as flummoxed as I was to the device's intent, but knew how to find out. He and I agreed that even though this might be a doomsday device we would activate it in the pursuit of knowledge.” Smay looks very wistful at this memory of days gone by when every new thing could be a doomsday device. “He installed a power source, which happened to be one of our old doomsday devices that we never could make work. The world didn’t blow up, but we did discover that it kept things cold. We had no idea how it worked. Something to do with the specific arrangements of all the cords in the back we decided, but we couldn’t replicate it on our life.”

“There is another world beyond this one?” I ask.

“Well there was. This all was, let's see, a couple thousand years ago now. So a lot could have changed. Nobody told you about it though?”

“Not that I can remember, and I think I would remember something like that.” I reply.

“Well, here is your room. I hope you two don’t mind sleeping together, I didn’t have time to prepare two rooms.” But he had time to prepare one? When did he do that? Perhaps while he and Briareth were cooking supper?

The room that he gave us is very simply furnished, but after sleeping on the hard prison floor for years, a room with beds seems very extravagant. I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep tonight, despite the comfort a bed offers, I just have so much to think about. After all, there is a whole new world out there full of strange machines that can keep things cool using cords.

I slowly fall asleep, still thinking of what might lie outside of the borders of my reality. As I sleep, I slip into a strange dream.