Opinionated Facts

            We humans have a very bad habit of assuming our opinions are facts. It seems a strange thing to do, but we do it nevertheless, and, once they’re formed, we will defend our opinions ‘til the end of the world, often regardless of other information.

            The fact that a man lies dead in his bed is indisputable. Yet, with no other information than that single sentence, you just formed an opinion about the cause of his death. If you readers were to express those opinions to each other, there’s a good chance you would end up arguing about it. Some would say the man died of natural causes, comfortably in his bed. Others would say he was murdered. Some might even posit that an accident occurred where he slipped and bumped his head on the side of the bed.

            A few more facts would only fuel the argument. The dead man is splayed on the bed, face down. It can be argued that this is how he sleeps, possibly tossing and turning. Of course, it could also be that he was killed, and that’s how he landed – or perhaps he was smothered. The splayed position also works for someone who has fallen.

            A glass of some clear liquid lies spilled on the floor beside the bed. That may sway some of those who believe that this was a natural death to the side of the murder-believers, but the staunchest supporters will insist that he could have knocked it off the bedside table as he slept. On the other hand, it could be poisoned. Is it even water? Perhaps the man had been drinking, which led to that fateful bump on the head.

            Facts are points of information, but what they mean is so often opinion. This is evident in the scientific process – when an experiment is designed, it is done with the intent of proving a specific theory – which means that there is already an opinion about what the results will reveal. If there is any room for interpretation in those results, what do you think the findings will be?

            The more we discover, the more humans become aware of this discrepancy. It has led many to believe that there is no such thing as reality – that facts are only there to support reality. This has led to all kinds of confusion and even beliefs that the facts, themselves, may be changed to suit one’s needs.

            However, there obviously is only one reality (the one I believe in, of course), otherwise we wouldn’t be able to interact in it. The real trouble comes from the facts – or, rather, either the lack of facts, or the way the facts are presented. For there is far too much information in the world for one person to discover on their own, and the only way to get a sufficient amount of facts is through someone else’s opinion.

            That means we are required to trust someone else’s opinion in order to gain the information we require. That seems reasonable enough – only, why would you trust the opinions of someone who has a different opinion than you?

            So, the facts are that a man lies dead on his bed. He’s splayed face-down, and there’s a spilled glass of a clear liquid on the floor. There’s also a red silk scarf wrapped around his neck. How did he die?

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Become Aware

            May is Cystic Fibrosis awareness month, so, since I’m part of a fundraiser for it next weekend, I thought I had better spread some awareness.

            At first, I was planning to do a whole write-up about Cystic Fibrosis, but I changed my mind because I can just send you over here where you can hear about it from the experts.

            In case that version is too long for you, basically Cystic Fibrosis is a fatal genetic disease that currently has no cure. It causes a variety of digestive and respiratory problems that, through persistent damage, almost always lead to death. The average lifespan for someone with CF is 42-50 years; before research started, it was 6 months.

            Cystic Fibrosis spreads through defective copies of the gene – basically, if both parents have a copy of this defective gene, there’s a 25% chance their child will be born with CF (and a 50% chance the child will be a carrier of the gene). An estimated 4% of Canadians carry a defective copy of the gene (that may not look like a lot, but it really is).

            I, myself, was quite unaware of Cystic Fibrosis before I met Jeremy, who runs the Dungeons and Dragons games Colleen and I have been playing at our local board game cafe. Jeremy’s daughter, Avril (3 years old), has CF. When Jeremy mentioned he was planning a 12 hour D&D marathon to help raise money for CF, I was happy to volunteer to help out (running one of the game tables and donating some chainmaille prizes).

            When I subsequently met Avril and the rest of the family, my desire to help only grew. These are wonderful people who are incredibly strong. Avril spent the first six months of her life in a hospital, and her parents managed (between work and two older children) to visit every day – something I think most people would like to think they would do, but I suspect few could actually achieve. On top of that, while I didn’t interact with them all that much, I got the impression that Avril’s older brothers are not only completely on board with helping their sister get better, but they don’t seem to resent the extra time and effort Avril’s condition demands from their patents. In children that age, I find this remarkable. This is a family that very much deserves to have this struggle removed from their lives, and that alone makes the fight against Cystic Fibrosis worth the funding.

            So, with all that said, if you’re interested in helping in the fight against Cystic Fibrosis, please don’t hesitate to donate (every little bit helps). Let either Colleen or myself know if you want to sponsor Colleen as a player in the marathon – but do so before this Friday, because the event is this Saturday (May 13th)! The more money Colleen raises, the more benefits she will gain to help her team make it through the marathon.

            Or, if you’re running late for that, you could always donate directly to Avril’s Angels – Jeremy’s team that will be participating in the Cystic Fibrosis walk on May 28th. Colleen’s character doesn’t get cool new gear, but the money gets where it needs to, which is far more important.

            You are now as aware of Cystic Fibrosis as I am. What you choose to do with this knowledge... I leave to you.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Peanutbutter and Patience

            Last Monday morning, our house rang was filled with singing. The song on our lips was “Ding Dong, the Rat is Dead”. That’s right – we finally caught that Rat, Donald, bringing an end to this particular saga.

            How did we do it, though? How did we finally, after two and a half months, catch this elusive pest? With peanutbutter and patience.

            As you may recall from the previous episode in this saga, we left off with Donald regularly eating a mixture of poison and peanutbutter in our closet, observed with a recently installed camera. This part of the tale continues from there.

            After the second night of filming Donald, the rat had finished off his poison-peanutbutter concoction. Because he should have been long dead from a lethal dose of poison by now, we decided that, rather than mixing more, we’d put in straight-up poison pellets. That night, Donald came – and he ate his fill of the poison, alternating with sniffing around in search of the peanutbutter he had been eating every night for almost a month, obviously disappointed.

            Then he freaked out.

            After a frantic search of the closet, Donald hopped up on the pipes and started shredding his way through the expanding foam that blocked what used to be his entrance to the kitchen. For a full hour (he usually only stayed in the closet for 10-15 minutes) he worked at finding a way through, but his efforts were in vain.

            And now we knew his weakness.

            The electrocution trap was already in the closet, so we cleaned it up and re-baited it with peanutbutter on a cracker. Unfortunately, when we turned it on it wasn’t functioning properly. So, we handed it off to my father-in-law to fix and, in the meantime, put a black plastic snap-trap (also baited with peanutbutter) in its place.

            That night, Donald showed up. He sniffed around and came close to going for the peanutbutter in the trap, but he looked like he’d seen such a trap in action before. He left, having only eaten a couple pieces of poison.

            The next day, we reinstated the electrocution trap, moved the black snap trap to a place Donald had spent a lot of time, and added a traditional rat trap – baited with peanutbutter, of course. Surly, eventually, Donald’s ability to resist would fade. So we waited. And the dirty rat didn’t even show up.

            For three days and nights, we saw neither whisker nor tail of the troublesome rat. We started to think Donald was dead – that the poison had finally kicked in.

Then, on the fourth night... something went haywire with my computer, and it didn’t manage to save the video from overnight. But, as we looked at the live feed that only a quarter of was visible on my messed-up monitor, we noticed first the empty poison container that was in the wrong location. Then we noticed a tail. A very still tail.

            We rushed downstairs and looked in the closet. Sure enough, there, in the black snap trap, was Donald. The poison was scattered, the traditional trap had been sprung as well, and there was peanutbutter everywhere. So, now we’re left wondering, what happened in the closet that night? Without the video, we’ll never know.

            At any rate, here’s to Donald! May he rest in peace. He was a worthy opponent and a downright nuisance. What more could a rat hope to have said of him?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Rat Warfare

            Back in November, I mentioned that we had a rat in the house – I never got around to sharing that we managed to get rid of it. At least, we’re pretty sure we did, because the poison my father-in-law put out vanished and we stopped seeing any signs of Templeton.

            Well, then on January 20^th Colleen baked a batch of cookies – and low and behold, that night we had a visitor chew its way through the container to get at the cookies. Reasonably confident that it wasn’t Templeton returned to haunt us, we named this one Donald (it seemed appropriate, due to the date of its arrival and the incessant trouble it’s caused).

            Now, in case you weren’t aware, catching rats is nothing like catching mice. You don’t just put down baited traps and they wander in – rats are clever enough to know traps when they see them. At least, this one is. (Also, a disclaimer here – I am opposed to killing the rat; I can’t even kill bugs. However, I also can’t live with a rat and remain sane, and peaceful methods of removing the rat have failed, so I have approved and even masterminded lethal methods for eliminating this problem.)

            We immediately put out the electrocution trap that failed to catch Templeton – baited with a cookie and the entrance concealed with the destroyed cookie container. Poison was also put out in the basement, as it had worked last time.

            We waited about two weeks. Donald wasn’t falling for the trap or the poison, but we were still seeing signs of visits. After a mousetrap was stolen (there were two that had been sprung for a while – it avoided the one that looks like it’s set and dragged the other one behind the stove and ate its peanut butter bait), I devised my first master plan.

            I had noted that every time Colleen baked, a rat seemed to show up. The smell was an irresistible lure. So, we removed the camouflage from the electrocution trap, removed the bait and cleaned our scent from it. We then placed it against a wall (an ideal place for catching rats), baked a fresh batch of cookies and baited the trap with one (sealing the others in the fridge so there were no others available).

            It didn’t work the first night, but the second night Donald couldn’t resist going for the cookie. Unfortunately, something went wrong – the trap didn’t trigger properly (we think the cookie got in the way), but a tuft of fur caught on the entrance (along with the untouched cookie) told us the rat had gotten a nasty shock. I was elated that I’d outsmarted this little monster, but I knew it wouldn’t fall for that trap again. So we decided to seal it out of the house.

            Since the rat was coming into the house through our front closet (and, from there, through a hole into the kitchen), we cleared out the closet (depositing the coats on the couch) and set to work. Using expanding foam laced with window screen, pepper, cayenne pepper, and peppermint essential oils (the internet informs us that rats can’t stand strong tastes and smells), we filled up the holes. Then we placed a few strategic crackers to determine if the rat was still able to get in.

            The next morning, we found that Donald had chewed several of our coats on the couch – on the opposite side of the room from the closet. It’s still unclear if it was searching for food or just getting revenge on us for blocking the hole. Luckily, the damage wasn’t extensive. However, it did mean there was another way in – one we’ve been unable to locate.

            A more traditional snap-trap was set on that side of the house, but, once again, it seemed like the rat was aware of what it was. Our hope began to wane.

            Then, a few days later, the cracker in the closet vanished – telling us that the rat could still get in there, even though it didn’t have a straight line to the kitchen from there. That’s when I came up with my next master plan.

            I knew rats to be cautious – they need to trust something and its location before they eat it. Donald had trusted the cracker in the closet, so we replaced it with another one – this one topped with peanut butter laced with poison. We placed two other crackers at other locations the rat was likely to go.

            Two days later, the cracker in the closet was gone. We rejoiced, because we’d finally tricked Donald into taking the poison! However, we knew the war wasn’t necessarily won yet. The cracker only had 6 pellets of poison, and it takes 6-30 to kill a rat. So, we moved one of the other crackers to the closet. This one took three days to vanish, but each of the next two only lasted a day each.

            The current cracker has been there for two days, and we’re holding our breaths. Has it worked? Are we finally rid of Donald the rat?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

The Death Slime

            This is the story of how I (may have) gotten my entire Dungeons and Dragons party killed in two sessions. It’s a bit of a cliff-hanger, as I won’t know the actual end result until the game session next Wednesday, but the journey is more important than the ending.

            A new campaign recently started at our local board game cafe and Colleen and I were probably the first to sign up for it. The setting for the game is called Primeval Thule – it’s a world that mixes a Cohen the Barbarian type environment with H.P. Lovecraft elements like Cthulhu. That alone should have told me that this campaign would be more intense than any game I’ve played before.

            It started out with our group of adventurers being sent on a mission to an ancient dungeon (surprise, surprise) to find a specific gem. During the first session, we arrived at the location only to find it crawling with zombie-like creatures being controlled by strange plants. It was a tough battle, but we made it through with only one near-fatality – my character (also the only healer in the group), who was almost turned into one of the plant-zombies.

            My character was saved just in time, but not before receiving severe brain damage (caused by vines). Our group then rested and healed up, and that was the end of our first session.

            When we continued on last Wednesday, we delved down into the ruins. While my character’s brain injuries would slowly heal, for now my intelligence points were well below what is generally considered the minimum for a character being able to speak properly. So, I decided I had to play it properly.

            While the rest of my group carefully explored the ruins, mine started ambling around aimlessly. My character was eventually tied to another with a length of rope in the hopes of avoiding catastrophe. Well... it worked for a while – right up until everyone else was distracted and my character wandered straight into a trap, getting covered with a clinging acid.

            My character was (barely) saved, but in the process another character was severely injured and I used up all of my healing spells. That’s why, when a spider dropped on Colleen’s character and knocked her unconscious and paralyzed her with poison, there was no way to heal her.

            Now, if our group had decided to take a rest at this point, allowing the poison to wear off Colleen’s character and for her (and a couple other injured characters) to heal a little, things may have gone slightly differently. But the group had just solved a riddle that had opened a secret door somewhere and, in our eagerness to find it, we ran straight into a group of animated skeletons.

            Now, to start with, there were eight of them and six of us. We had one person down and three injured (two severely injured). Our tough barbarian (injured from saving my character) charged right into battle while everyone else fought from a distance. He went down, but not before taking half of the skeletons with him.

            One by one, each of my companions fell to the skeletons (unconscious and with a chance of dying – it would take too long to explain the game mechanics) save for my character and one other – and that’s where the session ended. My character fighting one uninjured skeleton, and a companion fighting two (one uninjured, one almost dead). If either of our characters gets hit one more time, they’ll be down.

            And I can’t help thinking how much differently this battle would have gone if my character hadn’t stupidly wandered into that trap. Some healing spells would have saved us all.

            Yet, at the same time, it was the most intense and fun night of D&D I’ve ever had – and that’s saying something. Who knew that having your character mess everything else up for the entire group could be so fun?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Deathwatch

Of Dice and Glen is a story being written following D&D 5th Edition rules and using Minecraft as the battle mat (and to set the scene). Each of the two writers control their own characters and share the job of Dungeon Master (controlling the environment, story, monsters and background characters). As a result, neither of us has any clue of what's going on or where this is going. So, let's have fun!

This story is split between episodes being posted on the second Monday of every month. You can find the first episode here and the previous episode here.


Of Dice and Glen Episode 9: Deathwatch

Waiting for the injured dragonborn to wake, Luna realized she was shivering. Shaddar’s torch had burned out some time ago. Many was the time she had seen a lizard or snake sunning itself on a warm rock in the life-giving rays. Perhaps dragonborn had similar heat needs?

Standing suddenly, she set about gathering old and rotting wood from the bookshelves, the tables, even the bed and dresser from the floor above. Piling it an arm’s length from her friend, there was soon a small, fitful, but sufficient fire.

During this unusual firewood foray, she found two strange relics of the bygone inhabitant of the dessicated tower. The first was a pyramidal shaped lump of some substance she could not and did not wish to identify. As is fell from a shelf she was wrenching off for fuel, it toppled and bounced toward her. The foul odour it was exuding hit her before the black object could and, hissing in a distinctly feline manner, she skittered out of its path. After it had squelched to a stop, she approached it cautiously, but one sniff was enough and she kicked it off into the shadows.

The second trinket she came upon before disturbing it, and was very glad she had. On a bottom shelf, half buried in decaying and unintelligible books, was a tiny but intricate cage of some metal that may once of been brass, but now was so tarnished as to appear unrecognizable. Resting inside the cage was a minute, clockwork, canary. Fascinated, the tiefling caught it up with delicate care and examined it closely. It appeared to have no practical function but she stowed it away in her pack nonetheless.

Threatening shadows cast by the flames danced around the sinister chamber and every so often she would toss a handful of magical fire onto the smouldering pile. After a time, the tiefling’s black eyes began roaming and her concern for her friend was replaced by an almost unbearable boredom.

Her gaze fell upon the magical items they had retrieved above. First she regarded the emerald with deep fascination, still tossing fire onto her makeshift heat source.

After twenty minutes of concentration, a strange smell reached her and she sat up and looked around. A magical apparatus opposite her was sputtering with a feeble flame atop it, caused undoubtedly by a stray fireball and feeding on whatever ancient and mysterious potion had been contained within. She froze with panic, then leaped for the table, frantically reaching for the flame.

She had just reached Shaddar, her body between him and the potion fire cocktail, when there was a small explosion. The force knocked her back a few feet but she managed to stay upright, shielding her face from the expectation of shattered and flying metal and glass. All she felt was a slight tickle on her exposed flesh and when she looked up, the flame was gone. In its place, a fine dusting of what appeared to be chicken feathers sifted slowly toward the floor.

Luna almost laughed with relief and shook her head at the folly of whatever sorcerer had created a potion of chicken feathers. She gathered a few and stuck them in her purple hair as she returned to the study of her emerald.

The emerald was undoubtedly magical. When she concentrated on it, there seemed to be odd whispers surrounding it. There were also peaceful, almost mesmerizing sounds like waves and bubbling streams. After forty minutes of focusing on the confusing words and trying to discern their meaning, Luna was confident she knew what this stone was, and how to use it. It was an elemental gem; if she were to break the emerald, it would summon a water elemental to serve her for a short while.

“Water...” she muttered to herself as she stowed the stone in her pack. “All shall be alert, and beware. Balance there must be, of earth, fire, water and air.”

The recitation of a passage of wisdom an old mentor had given her soothed her initial distrust for such a blatant favouring of one element over the others. She knew there were Elementals in the world, and that there were ones of each type, including evil. This one however, while being wholly water in nature, was in balance with its fire, earth and air brethren and would therefore not be in disharmony with her self-proclaimed championing of the world’s elemental balance.

As she turned to face toward the dragonborn again, her movement dislodged the hood of the cloak they had found. It slipped past her small horns and over her eyes. Grinning, the playful tiefling batted fiercely at it for a moment, before pulling it off and turning her intense study on it.

She tried at first to imagine how the animal Shaddar had said it resembled would fly. Obviously it must be at least partially an air-faring creature with such magnificent wings. Picking up the long, thin tail dangling off of it, she frowned. It looked like the tail on a rodent.

“Sea-mouse... Flying sea-mouse...”

After much study, she found the secret, stitched along the hem with the gold trim. It was in a language she didn’t know, yet somehow she came to understand its meaning, as she had with whispers of the emerald. It told her that if the cloak was being worn with the hood up, it would allow her to breathe underwater and fly through the sea like the majestic manta ray.

“Not sea-mouse...”

Smiling, she fingered the beautiful gold stitching and closed her eyes, picturing herself speeding along under reeds and water lilies. Giggling, she tried to decide what item to examine next. Her eyes came to rest on Shaddar and she at length moved to kneel beside him.

The armour shirt was beautiful and well crafted. Lifting a corner now she wasn’t in the throes of panic, she did notice how light it was, as her friend had said.

The scale armour wasn’t brimming with magic, as had been the other items. It had a subtle magic, not from enchantment, but from the natural magic in the metal itself. On one of the scales, she found a delicate elvish inscription saying that this was armour made out of mithril, as strong as any metal and a fraction of the weight. It was to be stored in a dry place and cleaned by rolling it down a hill in a barrel of sand (or by some other similar means).

Shaddar groaned and Luna jumped back, hastily moving the shirt back into place.

Slowly, the dragonborn’s eyes opened. He blinked a few times.

“Luna?” he asked, sounding surprised.

“Whaddaya mean “Luna?”?!” she demanded, squinting at him irritably, but unable to suppress a wide smile. “I am who I am.”

Turning his head from side to side, Shaddar looked around. “The goblin?” he asked weakly.

“Everyone’s dead except me,” she said, reassuringly and pressed one hand to his shoulder, warning him to keep on the ground. With her other hand, she brought her waterskin out of her pack and offered it.

The dragonborn frowned, confused. “Am I dead? If I’m dead and you’re not, how are you here? Or how am I here?”

“You’re not dead,” she said with withering impatience, reticent of a teenage child explaining the simplest concept to a parent. “But you gave it your best shot.”

Shaddar heaved himself up onto his elbows, looking around. When he spotted the dead goblin, he smiled, impressed. His expression turned to a frown as he looked around.

“What were they doing here?”

Fowning, the curious tiefling glanced in the direction of Shaddar’s gaze. For a moment, the urge to abandon the precariously recovering dragonborn was overwhelming. With a visible effort, however, she dragged back her attention back to him and shook her head.

“Don’t care,” she pretended, obviously. “You’re really hurt and I gotta heal you before we can look around anymore. So now you’re getting better, can we both sleep? I’m really tired. And when I wake up I can heal you again.”

At this last cheerful thought, something of her old grin reemerged and she shook her mane of unkempt purple hair back from her face.

“I’ll be fine after a rest,” Shaddar said, waving his hand dismissively. “It’s one thing to have goblins and kobolds terrorizing the forest. It’s quite another for them to be excavating something no one knew was here.”

He pulled himself up and stumbled over to the kobold first. Searching through its pockets he found nothing more than a few gold coins.

“Dragons,” Luna muttered in exasperation, shaking her head. Clambering to her feet, she wheeled around in front of him. “If you want their metal bits I can do all that for you. What will it hurt to have the mystery wait 8 more hours?”

Ignoring her, Shaddar made his way over to the goblin. There he found more money and a pouch with several gems in it. Smiling to himself, he rolled a translucent white stone with a pale blue glow over to Luna, figuring it would distract her while he continued his search.

Luna had been opening her mouth to continue the argument, when her eyes fell on the shimmering, multi hued stone. It was even more spectacular than the emerald she had been clutching for over an hour. With one swift glance between her newest prize and the dragonborn, she was on it.

Smiling, Shaddar turned back to the goblin.

“Cards,” he muttered, pulling out the remnants of a deck and setting it aside. He kept searching until, finally, he came up with a crumpled piece of paper. “Ah ha!”

“What?” Luna blurted, rudely awakening from her jewel-induced trance. She leapt to his side and stared at the paper he held. Her face was so close to the mysterious document that all Shaddar could see was her shaggy purple mane with her two tiny horns poking through.

“Out of my way, imp,” the dragonborn said, giving her a playful swat as he turned to the side and flattened out the page.

Rubbing the back of her head good-naturedly, Luna decided she like the comparison between herself and an imp.

“Oooooh…!” she intoned, flapping around the room on imitation arm-wings. “I know many secrets of the Abyssal plane, wizard…! But lend me your skill and all my wisdom is yours…!”

The page was covered in a tidy handwriting, written in the common tongue. It read, Good, you have finally found the tower. I was beginning to think I would have to send someone more competent to get the job done. I want no further delays. Get digging at once. Notify me the moment you find it.

The letter was signed not with a name, but with a horned skull crowned with fire.

Frowning, Shaddar read the note again. Whoever had written it clearly had a lot of means and power. They controlled goblins and kobolds, which likely meant they were up to no good. What were they searching for in this tower? What was that skull-symbol? Did it represent an organization, a cult or a single person?

There was no way to know, but they were sure to send more monsters if something wasn’t done about it.

“We need to tell someone about this.”

“What?” the Imp-oster said as she whirled and looked again at the note. Reading it in a few seconds she shrugged. “Who would we tell? Why don’t we just go find them and deal with them like we did these ones? It could be an adventure!” she added with a sudden burst of enthusiasm.

Shaddar started to laugh, but stopped because it hurt too much.

“Because we have no idea who sent this,” he explained.

“But-! Rrrrrr...!” she snarled and scampered about on the floor, in tight, angry circles for a moment to let off her frustration.

“Besides,” Shaddar added, “this could be bigger than we can handle. We’ll have to take it into town to see if anyone knows anything about this symbol.”

He tapped the letter’s signature.

“Tomorrow, though. You’re right that we need to rest. We can use some of the time to figure out our new treasures.”

Pausing in her circles, Luna looked up and hissed viciously.

“What?” Shaddar asked, quickly looking behind him to see if there was some unknown threat approaching. He immediately regretted it as his head started reeling.

“Town...” Luna replied, a quiet growl deep in her throat. “Don’t like town. Don’t like town people. Don’t like walls. Don’t like stones. Don’t like-”

The white dragonborn laughed. “I agree, Luna. But if we don’t go to show this to people, we might have many more unwelcome guests in our forest.”

Stopping dead in mid-hatred, Luna glared up at her friend before standing erect, tail lashing. She frowned and there was a long moment before she spoke.

“Town.”

“After we rest,” Shaddar agreed.

A growl was her only response as she turned moodily and began to make a bed for herself. She did not like the idea one bit, but if it was a choice between some personal comfort and her forest, there was no choice.

Making his way back to Luna’s fire, Shaddar spread out his bedroll, but didn’t immediately lie down.

“Let’s see if we can’t figure you out,” he muttered, pulling over the magical bag they had found for closer examination.

The tiefling lay with her back to the dragonborn, unmoving, her hidden expression set in resentful anger. After a moment of staring defiantly at the nearest mouldering bookcase, her eyelids dropped and she curled into a tight ball of sleep.

After some studying, Shaddar discovered that the blue bag was what he’d guessed - a bag of holding that could carry an immense amount, yet always weigh the same.

Satisfied, but his weariness overcoming him, the dragonborn lay down to sleep.

Discover what happens next in Episode 10: Strange Happenings

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.