Vignette 42: People tend to see what they want to see.
Which must mean that I want to see magic carpets everywhere, because that’s what I’m seeing. They honestly weren’t there, before— I never saw them— but in the months since I met Khamid Al-Coursee and his family of weavers and jockeys, carpets are all over the place. Truly, the fruit is falling plentifully from the loom.
Or flying, rather.
For instance, just now, as I was writing the previous sentence, I spotted a fast-moving shadow on the ground, bigger than a bird, and when I looked up there was a massive runner carpet zooming overhead. It seated something like fifteen people! All in a row, one behind another, parents making sure their kids don’t buck the carpet. I’ll have to check with Khamid to be sure, but I suspect that someone got the bright idea to start hero-watching tours, and that’s what that was. It makes sense, if you think about it— no guardian spirit has yet created flying monsters (that is NOT a hint, oh Soul Supreme), so the safest place to see monster fights from is the air, and a carpet is the fastest way to get from fight to fight. I just hope that the tour guides keep a weather eye out for the— …well, weather. It would be a shame to see one of those runners spiraling out of the sky in flames because of a guardian spirit’s bad aim.
The tours weren’t what this chronicle set out to document when I started writing it, though. What it’s meant to discuss is a rather solemn adventure I had last night.
Don’t worry, it turned out well in the end.
Again, it started out in a rain storm. What is it with the weather and starting adventures, lately? But at least it wasn’t a lashing rain. Nor were there ominous peels and rolls of thunder to send me seeking shelter, otherwise I wouldn’t have been beside a nice creek with a hook trailing its lazy way through the current.
Fishing is good at that particular creek, so I won’t be revealing its location, suffice it to say that tall trees border it and branches criss-cross over it. It’s not the sort of place where one meets visitors from the sky or fishing inspectors. (Visitors from the heavens are a different matter altogether. SourceRunner had a bad day, once, and sent an angel to punch me in the nose while I was fishing there. I spun a full circle, staggered to the side, fell, and rolled into the water, which scared away any fish. Those angels pack a whallop.) On that particular day, I’d already fished out a brace of trout, a walleye, and a ><))))> when I felt something unusual snag on my hook. The way it flexed and tugged in the flowing water, I had high hopes for a wishing fish, a fenimal, or even— just maybe— that most elusive nymph of the waters, a mermaid.
I reeled it in consummately gently. While I don’t have a fishing rod with one of those fancy locking reels, I can spin my rod to draw the line in slowly. That’s no fun to fix, because the line comes off curly when I unwind it again, but a mermaid constitutes extenuating circumstances. By agonizing centimeters, my catch emerged from the waters, dark and draping wetly, like a nereid’s hair. Strands even separated and hung free. But no face of siren beauty adorned this shape.
Instead, I saw a paisley.
A pale, ivory paisley.
One, two, many paisleys.
If anything, my winding got slower. Partly out of disappointment, I’ll admit, but also partly out of bewilderment. Someone had dumped a decorative carpet into the water. Why? Old boots, I can understand. Sandbags, I can understand. But a nice rug? The more of it came out of the water, the more clear it became that it was the sort of rug that I’d be proud to lay down in the temple. It wasn’t rubbish.
Once I drew it near enough to unhook. I set my rod aside and held the thing up by the corners. Water streamed down it, and the dark fringe that I’d initially mistaken for sopped tresses hung in clumps, but it was undeniably of quality workmanship. The only sensible thing to do was drape it over a low tree branch to drip dry— or drier, at least, given that nothing dries fully in the rain— while I finished fishing.
My line did unwind in ringlets. Typical.
About half an hour later, I caught a fenimal, and was going to issue her a free ticket to my ark, but something distracted me. The hanging carpet seemed to flicker in one corner. I stared at it. There was no breeze, just steady precipitation falling straight down from the heavens, like a certain someone was crying (and I’d have tried doing a little dance to cheer her up if concerns weren’t converging), but the lower right corner curled and rippled as I watched.
It was a flying carpet. And I would be lying if I said that a few unsavory oaths did not rocket through my mind at just that moment of realization. Did magic carpets drown? Had someone tried to murder the carpet? Would water logging hurt it? What could I do to save it? Was wringing out appropriate? I knew people beat regular carpets to get the dust out, but was that carpet abuse? I didn’t know, and I had to ask fast. But Khamid and his family were all the way back in Godville! I’d checked, and it was a major racing week! I needed an excuse to return to the city.
Pity my health was so good and my armor shining.
Pity my bag wasn’t even half full of loot.
But I did have a fenimal. That might work.
“Milady,” I cried, sweeping my earmuffs of selective deafness from my head and bowing low. “You are precious and should be protected. Please allow me to personally escort you to my ark.”
Where her eyes had been narrowing in growing miffedness as I was distracted, her nose and the insides of her ears then blushed a pleased pink as I courteously abased myself. I prodded Toto the Terrorbull awake and settled her on his back, gently got the carpet down from the branch and rolled it up, then led the whole party back to the city at my best quantum leap pace.
For reference, Toto can outstrip my pace by at least half again my speed. What I have on him is stamina: if you have a terrorbull with a discipline problem developed from rambunctiousness, take him on a 750 mile run and then try some positive reinforcement training while he’s exhausted. It works every time, especially if your reinforcement treat involves Redham’s strawberry-flavored, extra-salty, wholegrain pretzel twists. I should invest in that company, as much of its stock as I buy.
The fenimal was an excellent rider. Great poise in her carriage, and she didn’t fall even once.
Risked trouble by blowing past the guards at the gate.
“Hayh! Youse get dat customs jumping tayul back heyah!”
“Aw, leave ‘im alone. ’E’s that particularly dumb ‘un. We’ll get ’im on the way back out.”
“But it’s da prin-si-pab-able of da ting—”
The city was too noisy and I was too far away to hear anymore of the conversation, but since nobody chased me, I assume the one guard prevailed over the other with the heavy Los Demonos accent. Anyway, soon enough the Fenimal Express was skidding into the temple courtyard, and I lifted the passenger down, firmly instructing Terror Twin Tyrone (doing an animal rotation under the steely gaze of Sister Diamondbottom) to get her settled in the finest cabin in the ark.
All of the fenimals get their own finest cabin, since the only differences in the appointment are the colors, but they seem to appreciate having something secret to be smug about as they settle in.
Bowing deeply to the fenimal as she elegantly led her small procession up the gangway, I muttered firm instructions out of the corner of my mouth to Toto. “Stay here. Guard my pack. Divide the fish between yourself, Number 7, and Pumba, and eat them before they go bad. I have something urgent to do, and I have no idea how long it’s going to take.”
The trek to the quarter where the Aeronauts of all stripes tend to gather was significantly longer than the mad dash to my temple, for the sole reason that I’d never been there before. Most heroes haven’t. In fact, so few heroes have that I got asked at least eight times (three of which were by city guards) if I was lost, drunk, or lost and drunk. It didn’t stop until I unrolled the carpet and draped it over my head and shoulders for all to see. Which choice got me unreasonably wet because the poor thing was still sopped despite the rain slackening.
If I’ve never been to the Aeronauts’ district, how did I know about the carpet race schedule, you ask? Simple: the bookies at the arena still get the race calendars delivered as a matter of professional curiosity. They share, if one asks nicely and brings them a bag of quantum dice every once in a while.
The good thing about the district is that once you get there, the Aerodrome is the biggest thing around. You can’t miss it. There are massive bronze hangars for the balloons, rivets studding every seam in the metal sheets. There are lofts and stables for the carpets. There’s a stadium with seating enough to rival the arena, where the races start, and a jumbotron so the audience can see the entire course of the race or some of the aerial exhibition battles that the venture capitalists for those new zeppelin things sponsor. And off to the side, in a low building close to the stables, are the quarters for visiting carpet owners and weavers. The signage said so. I went right in and stopped at the reception desk.
“Mr. Al-Coursee, please?” I asked, with my most winning smile.
The matron behind the counter looked over my attire, sniffed and caught a whiff of the carpet that was giving off the twin odors of mold and algae by this point, and gave me a truly eloquent sneer. She pointed at a brass plaque standing on the desk. It read, “No Solicitors.”
“Oh, I’m not a lawyer,” I assured her. If anything, her glare intensified, by which I deduced that the plaque meant “solicitor” in the Herolympus sense. “I’m also about twelve million away from retirement, so I’m not a merchant or trader of any sort, either. Look, Mr. Al-Coursee issued me a standing invitation to come see one of his races sometime, so it’s possible he left a note authorizing me. Can you please check for ‘Tarintodont’?”
With an eyebrow arched in scornful doubt, she opened her visitor log and scanned with a fingertip. “That’s ‘Gerontologist’ with a ‘g’?”
Apparently, Vignette 42 exceeds the character limit for chronicles. I have posted it in its entirety at http://wiki.godvillegame.com/User:SourceRunner#The_Missing_Vignettes. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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Thank you for reading the above vignette. Tarintodont and I hope you enjoyed it. If you feel you’ve arrived in the middle of the story, you are quite right; please find everything that came before (but one) on my GodWiki page under “The Missing Vignettes.” A link, for your convenience: http://wiki.godvillegame.com/User:SourceRunner#The_Missing_Vignettes
Chronicles updated infrequently. If you “Friend” me and send a message that you’re watching Chronicles, I’ll message you when I update them.