A child runs around an orchard, trying to outrun the sun setting in the horizon. He feverishly scrutinizes the branches for something, and then resigns himself to disappointment. He has been at this little quest of his for hours.

He can feel the ominous winds from the western valley on his neck. The parents called it Valley of Despair, and he never knew why until very recently. For as long as he has known, it was just an ordinary valley, but something changed in the past month. Black winds rush past its rocks, threatening to engulf everything. Monsters, as if born from its karst, prowl more frequently in the night. Even the Holy Knights have long since abandoned this place. None dare to enter this valley.

Except for one whom the boy knows is coming.

“I need to hurry,” he mumbles, upset with himself and fate alike.

Then his eyes fall upon a single pod growing in a branch of another tree. Thanking the gods for this fortuitous discovery, he picks up a stone and takes his stance honed by countless practices, locks onto his target, and flings the stone like a bullet shot through an imaginary gun. His legs propel him forwards before the stone cuts through the pod’s stem. He stops.

He grins at the pod laying on his cupped hands like a baby.

He hears a roar. His joy turns to astonishment. A silhouette emerges from the glow of the sun, turning his astonishment to terror. Like the wind slipping through the orchard, he dashes towards the settlement where he came from, but the silhouette chases him all the same. He isn’t fast enough.

He takes cover behind a cart. His breathlessness interrupts his silent prayer for safety, so he grips his mouth to keep the monster from hearing him puff.

The monster prowls audibly in search for a prey it saw mere moments ago. The boy, too, cannot see his predator. Yet every action of this behemoth, every ruffling of its feather could be felt and heard from where the boy stays hidden. Its gnashing jaw opens, and within seconds a tree collapses right before the boy, startling him. The pod falls from his hands, catching the monster’s eyes. Sensing the hungry breaths closing in, the boy runs for his life.

Behind him, he can hear the monster tear through the cart with its claws to give chase. He climbs up an enormous stone wall to vault himself to the other side, but his legs cannot find a gap to step onto. Dangling helplessly, he braces himself to be torn to shreds.

All sounds cease in a single movement.

Still dangling from the wall, the boy opens his eyes and turns around to find the monster skewered by two arrows. The one holding the bow from which those arrows were shot is a cloaked and armored man, beaming at him. The boy had neither heard the man’s footsteps nor seen him anywhere close to the orchard. His cloak flutters in the wind as if he fell from the sky.

“How’s it hanging, kid?” The man chuckles at his own joke. “This is your orchard, isn’t it? You oughta learn to walk like you own the place.”

Gawking at this strange man, impressed by both his strength and statement, all the boy could say, “I’m not… I’m not strong. I–”

A growl interrupts his response. Its source is the stranger’s stomach.

“So, uh,” stumbling through his speech, the stranger points his bow at the monster carcass, “will you be needing that or should I–?”

—

Candle-lamps replace the sunlight in a small house. The stranger gapes at a massive bowl of food placed before him, unable to will himself to eat.

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“Wow, that’s a lot of snails…”

“Nothing less for my son’s savior,” the mother smiled kindly as she sat down beside her husband. “I picked them out myself.”

“When in Rome, as they say,” he mumbles to himself. “Bon appétit!”

He shoves a spoonful of snails into his mouth and swallows without chewing. The amount of courage that took was significantly more than it took to slay the monster from before.

Meanwhile, the father furrows his eyebrows at his son, who shrinks with unease into his seat. This does not go unnoticed by the stranger.

“Stare at him any longer, he melts like your candle,” the stranger informs the father. “And he isn’t even as bright.”

“He was lucky when you showed up, stranger,” the father sighs. “We have a barrier for a reason. He knows the rules and why those rules exist.”

“The Hero…” The boy struggles to explain himself. He hangs his head, staring at nothing but the bread before him. Then, mustering up some courage, he takes in a lung-full of air and speaks his mind. “The Hero will pass by the Valley of Despair to defeat the Demon Lord… for all our sake. I can’t let him go empty-handed.”

The stranger whistles. “The news travels fast, huh? What could a brat like you give to the hero, anyway?”

“Perigen walnuts.”

“Wait, did you say nuts?” The stranger tries to keep himself from giggling like a child.

“If the Hero needs walnuts,” the father interjected, “we have a barrel full to gift it to him.”

“It’s not the same!” The boy protests. “The processed nuts could aid him in his recovery, but it’s not as useful to him as the unbroken shells!”

“Ok, ok, calm down,” the stranger gestures to both the excited father and the son. “I don’t think the Hero is very picky, so it’s not about what you give him, but how you do so. I got a solution.”

He turns to the boy, who is immediately attentive.

“When you meet the Hero, before you give anything, simply ask him if he would like some nuts. Wait for him to ask, ‘what nuts’, after which you thump your thighs and say, ‘deez nuts’. Hah!”

“Excuse me, stranger,” the father gruffly asks, “but what are you teaching my son?”

“Eh, just… some courtesy among adventurers,” the stranger gulps.

“That is anything but courteous, stranger!” Says the mother, covering her now reddened face.

“What’s with this stranger crap?” The stranger protests. “I have a name, you know! It’s–”

“Calling you a stranger is fitting,” the father interrupts, “for you are strange.”

The offense fires an awkward pause that lingers in the air. Then the stranger, dumbfounded at that phrase, erupts in a belly laugh. The laugh has an aura of neither anger nor spite, but that of childlike mischief.

“Haha! That is a good one! I’m saving it for later.”

Saying that, the stranger pokes and waves in the air at nothing in particular, as if there was something only he could see.

“I am sorry, I was hasty with my words,” the father hangs his head apologetically. “I have no right to be so ill-mannered towards you.”

“Oh, no biggie,” the stranger shoots him a smile, and helps himself to another spoonful of snails.

“That said, the way you behave, your manner of speech…” the father hesitates. “Tell me… are you an Off-Worlder?”

“Yeah. Can’t escape a farmer’s eyes, huh?”

“We’ve heard about many Off-Worlders, but I have never conversed with one until now.”

“Where did you come from,” the mother chimes in, “and what brings you to this world of ours?”

“Long story,” the stranger answers flippantly. “You guys should go to sleep. Don’t you got farming to do tomorrow?”

“It’s not every day we have an Off-Worlder in our house!” The boy insists with a smile playing upon his face, “I’m happy to stay up for a good story!”

The stranger’s eyes dart back and forth between his bowl of snails and the family watching him with expectations. The boy, particularly, has a polite face he can never, in good conscience, ignore. Those puppy-dog eyes make the stranger’s heart heavier, pulling it towards the center of the earth.

The family was, after all, kind enough to feed and shelter him. No matter what he thinks about the food in particular, he feels he owes it to their kindness.

The stranger sets his bowl aside, rubs his hands, clears his throat and dons a dramatic tone for the occasion.

“Alrighty then, story time. This is a tale of immense bravery and a tiny bit of mischief. At the risk of sounding clichéd, it actually did start at a dark and stormy night. I was in a lobby, waiting for a game.”

The family pull themselves closer to the stranger to hear his adventure as clearly as they can.

“A game?” The mother asks. “A hunt for an animal?”

“Or perhaps,” the father adds, “a monster?”

“Monsters,” the stranger points at the father to affirm his guess, then points to himself, “but the realest monsters. The kind of monsters that have lived inside of us all along.”