Chapter 01
There is a true art to naming things quickly enough to catch them in the world of Terrakarwan. If you just go naming things willy-nilly without the proper training or education you can wreck all sorts of havoc on the natural order of things. Therefore the decree (a full grown law now) from, Lord of Meek Winder, Cam III. States that in no uncertain terms; No Willy-Nilly naming allowed on penalty of being named as something else and everyone agreeing on it.
Thomas had always dreamed of becoming a world renowned namonists for as long as he could remember wanting to be the first to name many things making them real. For, as it had been drilled into him and his schoolmates early on, up until a thing has a name it is not permanently real. Oh sure it is real enough while it is around but lots of times if you look away it may or may not be there and may or may not come back into existence. This is why children are always named the moment they pop into existence.
As the old saying goes; It takes a whole village to agree to have a child, it takes a whole village to agree to naming a child, but raising a child is definitely not the whole villages problem. You wanted it, you raise it! A rather long saying, this is probably the reason it isn’t used all that much anymore.
It was a Tuesday, no, no, it had been an entirely different day than a Tuesday, that I’m sure of — Could have been a Tuesday, now that I think of it. Any-who, on this day, that might or might not have been a Tuesday, Thomas Peegle, headed out from his village on his way to Big City. His Pa, had entrusted him with that week’s wares to be sold to the sometimes regular wares buyer in Big City. He’d never been to Big City on his own before.
Of course, he’d been to Little City, many many times making the weekly run for his pa. Little City was far easier to find, for it hardly moved at all. Where Big City was constantly relocating. So in light of this he’d never been confident enough to go to Big City alone, not even once.
So this, as you can imagine, this was a big deal for him. He wanted to make sure everything went just so, making his Pa proud of him. More importantly, if everything went well, his Pa would trust him to do it again.
So, as I said, he headed out. Cart, wares, donkey, his pack and his staff, not in that order mind you. Donkey first, always donkey first. He made sure the cart was gussied up with clankers and so was Sophe(the donkey’s name of course).
One thing he didn’t remember to do was to clanker himself up. This, he would learn, would turn out to have been a huge mistake.
Clankering up was something villagers did when they had to travel on the roads between cities or villages. The roads were as everyone knows a very dangerous place. Primarily because of the prags one is bound to encounter.
In the land of, Terrakarwan, prags are nasty little creatures. To the eye they seem somewhat grey-green in appearance. To the nose, hints of putrescence rise in almost visible glowy kind of smoke from their person. Very waif-like indeed.
They regularly attack any traveler found walking the roads alone. They live in burrows, (this is the currently accepted hypothesis by all modern namonists.) The only thing known to keep them at bay are the jingles and jangles of metal bits clanking against other metal bits, called clankering oneself up. But not bells, definitely not bells. This has been tried time and time again, normally by a stubborn Rationalist, and always to no avail. So bells are out.
Now because of all this jingling and jangling the roads are very noisy. Despite the fact that if a thing is noisy then someone must be around to make noise of it. For we all know our own noises are only sounds; while to others we make quite the racket unbearable. And as we have stated, the prags only attack those walking on the roads, alone. Even with the people knowing this, they still persist in making noise while traveling. Terribly unnecessary.
[to be continued....]
