The Metaphorager.

(Five-and-a-half printed pages, inspired by our current situation. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. Enjoy!)

THEY SAY, SOMETIMES, THAT THE cure is worse than the disease. But to Prosatio Silban’s way of thinking, that just means it must be the wrong cure.

The Cook For Any Price was slowly driving his galleywagon along the dusty main street of an apparently deserted village. He had been there before, though long enough ago that he had forgotten its name. However, he did remember the laughter of its children, the music of its minstrels, and the burble of its creek. It had then been a small but bustling hamlet of some two hundred lively souls – but now, all that greeted him were the deep croaking of creekside bullfrogs and the dismal drone of hidden watch-crickets. A pennant of smoke hung in the distance, the view of its source blocked by tumbledown shacks.

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(Three-and-a-half printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction.)

MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT the quaint and lumbering buopoths native to the Exilic Lands and other curious places – but to this day, little remains known (and less understood) about the shy beasts. Read on, o seeker after mythic mysteries, and much more shall be revealed about the origin of one particular buopoth…

* * *

With an angry grumble, Prosatio Silban cast a final spadeful of earth on the makeshift grave and sighed.

Be more respectful, he reproached himself. After all, this was what might be termed a close acquaintance. But — what will become of my galleywagon?

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(Two printed pages. If you’re new to these tales, here are the preface and introduction. Enjoy.)

NOT FOR NOTHING HAD PROSATIO Silban parked his galleywagon outside cosmopolitan Soharis’ main military barracks. Soldiers are a notoriously hungry lot, and use any excuse to spend their extra pay on the sort of food they aren’t able to obtain in their daily mess.

His location was perfect – not so far from the bayside city’s bustling fish market as to discourage the attentions of peckish shoppers, not so close to the barracks as to be thought a security risk. The wind rising from the bay was also cooperative, keeping the market’s fabled aroma at a discreet distance.

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