'And He of the Long Yarn said, "now go my children, and become a thread in the long yarn the people spin from the wheel of their life."'

-Excerpt from the Bell-Speaker's Chronicles.

Chapter 1 - Fence Posts at Dusk.

Luudin fled, the basket of stolen food pressed hard against his heaving chest. His eyes were starting to strain against the encroaching night, while the howls and barks of the dogs kept him going with reckless haste. But the uneven ground of the fallow field kept tripping him up. The dogs were getting closer, as were the shouts of men and the stomp of horses.

Panic was settling in. His head whipped back and forth while his eyes searched wildly for a way out. For a tree, a place to hide, a way to escape. Anything. What they did to thieves in these parts chilled him to the bone, but he was hungry. So hungry. And the man was a bastard beside. Luudin had offered to work in exchange for food. Most were polite when they told him no, but this man had sicced the dogs on him. So he had circled back and waited most of the day for a good opportunity to get revenge and food both.

While regretting these choices, and others that led him here (and abusing the terrible man in his mind, beside), Luudin was suddenly tripped at the waist. He pitched forward headlong over a fence, and to the perception of the men and dogs, vanished completely from sight.

To Luudin, however, the landscape had completely changed. The fallow field abutting another fallow field with a tree-line in the distance had been replaced with an ancient forest. He quickly scrambled to his feet, rushing to the basket he had released when he fell and snatching it up. He stopped as his mind caught up with his senses and he blinked around bewildered.

Old, tall, thicker than a man. The trees stretched out in every direction. He frowned as he took them in and slowly lifted an apple from the basket and took a bite. He barely noticed his mouth water from the unexpected ripeness of the fruit. Another bite as he observed the birds sing-song and flitter through the trees. He was spitting apple seeds out of his mouth as he noticed that the sun was rising now instead of setting.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

He gathered up the food that had fallen out of the basket and took stock of himself. No injuries, good. None of his clothing was torn, another good. He still had his belt knife in its old leather sheath; he relaxed a little. A few of the eggs were broken, so he ate what he could of those eggs raw, cleaned off what he could on his already dirty clothes, and looked at what food he had in total. A half dozen apples, including the one he had already eaten, three intact eggs, two large round loafs of bread, and about a pound of unwashed grain in a sack. It wasn't much, but it was all he had. He was thankful for it, even if he was confused as to what had happened.

He went over things again in his mind. He was running through the field, clutching the basket of food to his chest. He was running and looking around when he suddenly encountered a fence and went head first over it. His hand went over his face in realization and he felt he was going to weep. "A fence has fence posts," he said aloud. "And fence posts are often made all at the same time, from the same tree, and some of them are close enough to each other to be called identical."

He felt incredibly silly. Never in his life would he have thought that "the duality of posts" would strike him, much less when he needed an out most. Posts, poles, trees, if they are too similar, or too like one another on a metaphysical level, can sometimes spontaneously create folds in reality that act as gateways to other places. The passageway only ever lasts a heartbeat when someone passes through it, and is said to never ever lead to the same place twice. Everyone knew the stories of people passing through a doorway, or a pair of trees, and simply disappearing from sight. Mothers and other caretakers the world over told children every day not to pass through posts and to avoid trees that looked too similar. He shook himself. Now was not the time to lose his head.

He contented himself that there were no dogs that wanted a piece of him, no men out to string him up, and no hunger keeping his thinking dull. He cursed the God of Fate, as is expected in a situation such as this, and began clearing a space on the ground of leaves and debris. When he was finished, he used a simple belt knife to carve an arrow, feathers and all, into the hard earth. It pointed in the direction of sunset and toward the future. With a quick made prayer to the Sisters Gestalt, in hopes that the Goddess would weave his future to be a more favorable one, he set off.