Theo sat on his bed, playing with the coin Sparrow had given him last night. The morning was filtering through the one tiny window in his shack, and he could see the dust particles dancing in the sunbeams. The coin glimmered even in the shadows as he flipped it and caught it again and again, moving it between his knuckles and around his hand.

It had been hard getting to sleep, and to be honest with himself, Theo had held the coin and stared at it in bed until he’d started to drift off and dropped the coin on his forehead. That had woken him up, and definitely contributed to his current exhaustion and the trenches under his eyes.

It was a fascinating coin, in his defence. Clearly magical, but so subtle and elegant. It was constantly warm to the touch, and felt like it was full of some kind of energy. It might have been mana, but Theo never had the brains or focus (or chance) to learn enough about runes to become a mage, and so while he knew that there were runes and that they were activated, he had no idea what they could actually do, or if that was mana storage or just some kind of expensive pocket-warmer for the snowy winters.

Either way, it was a damn pretty coin.

It was the kind of coin Theo could imagine a hero in one of the classic bard standards keeping as a family heirloom that turned out to be a gift from a God, or maybe an artefact that granted great power to whoever held it.

Theo just felt like it made him a target for getting robbed. He shoved it deep into his pocket, held in his tightly-closed fist as he left his home, and awkwardly closed the door with his one free hand on his way out.

---

“You’re early, boy.” Said Alan as Theo walked through the door of The Pub. Alan was right. It was early, as normally he only started heading to The Pub around dusk, and it was still noon. But today he had no appetite for noodling around on his lute while letting his mind wander as his feet did. Loathe as he was to admit it, The Pub was one of the few places that truly welcomed Theo, somewhere he felt comfortable. Hell, Alan was probably one of his closest confidantes and actual friends. Gilth knew Theo owed him so many favours.

“I’m not a b-fine, whatever. Not important right now.” Hence why he was here early. He needed to talk to Alan, get a second opinion, figure out if this was just a fever dream and he was just holding a rock or worse, if this was real and an actual important decision that could change his life. Or maybe he just didn’t know where else to go.

Body on autopilot, he walked to the bar and sat down on the left-most stool, right in front of where Alan was polishing a cup as he always seemed to do when Theo walked in.

“Hey Alan, why are you always polishing something?” Theo asked, clearly trying to distract himself from asking for actual advice. He squashed the thought that maybe this wasn’t the most productive use of his time.

Alan paused, slowly finished the current wipe around the rim of the stein he currently held, and put it down.

“Lots of reasons.” He moved the newly-cleaned stein next to all the other steins, and stewed in the silence for a minute as he checked them over to make sure they looked clean and presentable.

“It keeps my hands busy.” He picked up a wine glass (that Theo swore had never been used in the four years he’d be performing in The Pub) and started polishing it with a fresh cloth soaked in a tub of water behind the bar.

“This way I don’t have to do them all at once.” He held the wine glass up to the light, making sure that no smudges or stains remained on its surface.

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“They look nice like this.” He raised his eyebrows and nodded to himself, as the corners of his eyes crinkled a fraction. Theo knew this was as close to a smile as Alan got. It disappeared as soon as he placed the wine glass where it belonged and looked straight at Theo.

“Out with it. What’s bothering you?” Alan asked, and Theo realised just how badly he was shaken by what had happened.

“I-“ Theo paused. He wasn’t sure how much he wanted to tell Alan, if he wanted to tell him anything at all. Maybe he could phrase it as a hypothetical, or about a friend, or leave out enough deta-

“I’ve known you since you were the cheekiest little shit in the neighbourhood. Out with it. Don’t tell me I need to bribe you with food to behave like I used to.” Alan spoke in the same calm monotone he always did, but Theo knew he was getting impatient. It was the way he spoke just before throwing a drunk out at midnight (which mostly wasn’t due to the fact that they were drunk, but the fact that they were drunk so early and were now a liability instead of an income stream).

“Well,” Theo began, as he considered just waffling and changing the topic again before deciding to finally just tell Alan everything. “I know I owe you so much already, but please could you keep this secret?” He let the last word linger, and let go of the breath he was holding as Alan nodded.

“I’ll put it on your tab.” To Theo’s surprise, Alan actually reached for a piece of paper, and began to write something down.

“I met The Dancing Wind last night!” Theo rushed out, finally deciding that stalling was just going to make things worse. Alan paused, crossed out what he had started writing, and put the paper down as he narrowed his eyes at Theo and slightly cocked his head.

“You’re jo-“ And now it was Theo’s turn to interrupt Alan, as he finally spat out the words that had been stuck in his head and throat since last night.

“When I was walking home last night I saw a bunch of people in an alley and one of them was The Dancing Wind and everyone else looked like they were there to fight them and a one-on-ten fight didn’t seem fair so I tried to help and they liked that apparently so they told me to go to the College of Song today and,” Theo paused for a moment, taking in a deep breath before continuing. “And they gave me this coin and told me to show it to the College.”

Finally removing his hand from his pocket, Theo brought his fist onto the bar top and carefully unfurled his fingers. To his relief, the coin was there, glowing and radiant and covered in his clammy sweat. He reached over the bar to grab a rag and used it to clean off the coin, as Alan glared and wrote something on a piece of paper.

“That’s my good rag.” Alan protested. “What are you going to do?”

Theo hesitated. “I don’t know! It’s THE College of Song! I’m not good enough. How do I know this isn’t just a joke? Or that I turn up and they just want to laugh at me? Or-“

“OR,” Alan cut in, grabbing Theo’s spiralling anxiety and forcing it back into its corner, “they saw something in you, and wanted to give you a chance.” The budding storm in Theo’s head stopped, and started to disperse, not out of refutation but just plain confusion.

“Why would they want to give me a chance?” Asked Theo. To him, there was no possible reason for them to ever want to give him anything. Nobody, except Alan, ever really gave him anything. And the audience giving him tips. But those aside, nobody. And those were for entertaining people, not for fighting or knowing how to be a proper Bard.

“They saw something in you.” Alan repeated. He deftly grabbed the coin (and his rag) from Theo’s hand as he was lost in his thoughts, and started to wave the coin in Theo’s face.

“This is not an ordinary coin, boy.” Alan bit the coin, and yelped, dropping it as it was suddenly wreathed in flames. After a few minutes of the coin burning a hole into the bar counter as they both watched flabbergasted, it extinguished itself and Theo gently picked it up. It was back to the same warm as always, and not a single mark nor bit of soot was on its surface. The spot on the bar that it sat in was now a blackened char, joining all the other pits and markings from years of being a piece of wood in a bar with clientele equally comfortable on either side of a bounty.

Alan stared at the new well of ash in his bar top, and sighed as he grabbed a piece of paper.

“As I was saying,” he continued, “You think you’re nothing special, but don’t forget how you grew up. You managed to charm everyone – including me! I didn’t shelter you and give you work for years out of charity. You were made to be more than a beggar, boy!” Theo flinched. He’d never seen Alan this worked up before. Ever.

“The Gods have given you a chance to grasp your destiny. Take it.” Alan’s voice returned to its normal tone, but the intensity in his eyes still remained. Swallowing, Theo nodded.

He looked at the coin in his hand, felt the grooves and the warm runes underneath his fingertips, the way it played across his knuckles, and the way it flew through the air. He flicked it straight up, grabbed it mid-air in his open hand, and slammed it onto the bar top. He stared straight into Alan’s eyes, unblinking.

“Heads, I go. Tails, I don’t. If it’s truly the will of the Gods, then they’ve made their decision already.” Still engaged in a staring contest with Alan, Theo lifted his hand away from the bar counter, and felt a knowing grin creep onto his face.

Heads.

Alan gave him a nod and a quiet chuckle, and crossed something off a piece of paper.

“Go to the College of Song.” Alan said. As an afterthought, he continued “And come back tonight, so I can tell everyone they’re listening to a legend in the making.”

Theo picked up the coin from the counter, checked to make sure it wasn’t going to catch on fire again, and looked at Alan.

“Thank you, for everything.”

“It’s all on your tab.” Alan replied, knowing full well that he didn’t care if Theo managed to pay it off.

“Do you know how to get to the College of Songs?” Theo asked, as he played with the coin.

Alan squinted closely.

“Wait, both sides of that coin are the same.” He exclaimed, more a statement than a question.

Theo grinned.

“Exactly.”