"---a mustache." She leaned back and fixed him with a calculating gaze.

An animation artist would have had a marvelous workout in the next few seconds, trying to capture Trashscarf's expressions. He blinked a bit, his eyebrows went up, then down, then each kind of went off on their own, like a chameleon's. His gentle smile froze, quirked higher hopefully, trembled, fell down into consternation, stretched into skepticism, then snapped back into seriousness as his eyes did their own survey of her face, skidding across the slate and steel of her expression, and then retreated from that unfriendly surface to ponder the ceiling, the floor, the scarf, the wall, and the empty mug in his hand, this last particularly wistfully.

Finally he raised his gaze again and met her eyes.

"But 'mustache' is a lot harder to rhyme," he said, plaintively.

"Look, if you can't take constructive criticism, then you really shouldn't be exposing your work to the public like this." The young woman folded her arms and looked away.

"All right, all right," Trashscarf sighed, shaking his head. "I really shouldn't be doing this, but... You did save my life. Fine."

He grabbed the handfuls of his scarf, running it quickly through his fingers like a ticker-tape, then hauling lengths of it past, then slowing again as he reached a section that was faded and tattered, but still some string and frayed rope tangled around a broken wooden button and the browned dry stem of a banana. He reached into the tangle, and made a very small adjustment.

"There," he said, with a weary sigh, throwing the scarf back over his shoulders with both hands, like he was climbing out from under a blanket fort. "It was a mustache. Happy now?"

"Yeah," nodded the young lady. "Here, you'll need this more than I will."

She handed him the stick, and, draining the last of her drink, she stood up.

Trashscarf tried to stand up too, because politeness, but he'd accidentally tied himself to a chair leg in the process of altering the scarf, and trying to stand on six legs at once especially when you've had enough cider that it's more like a dozen legs if you bother to count all of them is not so easily done, especially when you also now have a staff to cope with, and by the time he'd got himself untangled and upright and potentially mobile again, the girl was gone, the tavern's back door banging shut.

"Hmmph," Trashscarf muttered, then realized he'd never even got her name. She hadn't given it, and normally he'd only take what he was given, but he couldn't help but feel like he should have at least someone to blame besides himself for whatever was coming next.

So he stumbled out after her, into the cool night of the inn's stableyard. A few dogs trotting past gave him a hopeful wag as he looked around-- the girl was nowhere in sight, but the door of the stable was open just a bit, a thin slice of dim light spilling out.

Holding the stick awkwardly, he stepped into the stable and looked around. In one stall, the stout couple's carthorse munched quietly on some hay, and in an open loose box, Bander was curled comfortably on his side, a book open in the straw before him and a little lantern hanging on a hook above him. The door banged as Trashscarf burst in, and both horse and Horse snorted in startlement.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Shut the damn door, were ya born in a barn?" Bander snorted.

"The girl," Trashscarf said, looking around. "Did she come in here?"

"What girl?"

"From the road. With the stick. That girl," Trashscarf said impatiently, walking over to peer into one of the empty stalls.

"There wasn't any girl," Bander snorted. "Me and my two thumbs, and the Stouts. And you. I didn't see any girl all day."

Trashscarf's jaw dropped, as Bander turned another page with his upper lip and glanced at him sideways, then broke into low whickering.

"All right, all right-- I'm just joking with you. Yeah, I remember her, didn't catch a name. She didn't come in here, though."

"Uggh," Trashscarf sighed, "A mystery." He looked wistfully into Bander's stall; although the other stalls were in various need of mucking out, Bander was on a big pile of clean hay and there was plenty of room. "You know it's good luck to share your camp with a Waywalker," he said hopefully.

"Sure," sighed Bander. "Just go outside if you gotta pee or anything. Still trying to get my thumbs trained," he added with a groan. "Humans!"

"I know, right!?" Trashscarf exclaimed in honest agreement, scrambling over the wall of the stall and landing with a splat on his back in the clean hay. He was asleep before he'd stopped rustling.

The next morning, he and Bander shared a large bucket of oatmeal, and then Trashscarf was on his way again-- boots scuffing the morning dew from the new day's dust and now the occasional tap or clonk from the stick as he walked along. Coaster and several other dogs escorted him as he wound his way back up from the bowl of the bay, and waved him farewell with wagging tails as he carried on the windy winding road that cut cleanly through the curlicues of the coastline.

Along the Via Litoralis, you'd occasionally find deep cuts; hairpin turns where the road would climb or swoop down to edge a little gully or cross an ancient stone bridge above a tiny torrent. These were sometimes marked with helpful Waywalker signs; a "!" for danger, a "?" for caution, and a "!?" for, basically, serious WTF.

For the most part, a traveller need only take a due degree of attention and care to keep themselves on the proper road, but Trashscarf paused by the little gully at one "!?" to fill his waterskin, spotted a bit of string in the current, grabbed it, pulled, and followed it up to where an ancient kite was tangled in a fallen tree, and by the time he'd cast on the string and added a faded flag from the kite's tail, he looked up and realized he was.... not lost, for a Waywalker almost by definition is never lost, but he was pretty sure he was somewhere he hadn't been before.

The coastline was still to the west of him, he could feel it, but it was much farther away now, an impression rather than a presence. The tall trees that loomed up around him were familiar, at least; this part of the Fractal Coast had great stands of the coniferous giants, and they were always a pleasant sight. Well, not always, because these ones looked... sick.

Trashscarf mostly thought of trees as things that made wood, which was useful for more important things, like houses, fires, and toilet paper. But even his urban roots winced at the yellowing needles that fell like sad rain, the red bark rotting off the trunks with black mold, and the general air of desolation and decay that hovered over this hidden valley. He looked up-- it had been a sunny morning when he'd set out from Barking, but now, the sky overhead was growing ominous with grey clouds.

"Wrong turn," he tried to say, but as he looked down, he saw the faint twist of a trail at his feet, leading on-- into the sickly forest, into the stinking mold, into the shadow of clouds and into who knows what ancient horrors-- for his Waywalker senses could tell this trail had not be trod in quite some time.

The neglected road needed no puppy-eyes to plead with Trashscarf for attention, and he sighed, settled his pack firmly on his shoulders, slid his scarf to standby, and, gripping the stick, set off into the interrobang.