When the light grew bright enough to wake me, I opened my eyes, and lay motionless for a few minutes, listening to birdsong, making sure everything was well in the valley. I couldn’t actually ask them like a Druid could, but they told me, nevertheless. I heard pigeons and grouse on one side of the valley happily chirping, and a robin on the other tapping out a ground predator warning. In England a ground predator is almost always a human, likely someone peeing.

I found a shirt that wasn’t too dirty, it proudly proclaimed I had built a bridge in Botswana. Which was mostly true. I even changed my pants, as I would be seeing the kids for the first time today. That sounds suspect but I just wanted to be in the right mindset. And clean pants helped me get there.

I slithered out from my tent, rolling the outer up and tying it to let the tent air out the nights drunken sweat. I then put trousers on, it was easier to do out in the open. This was my routine every morning. And had been all my life.

I made my way to the circle of groggy people around the hearth, some groggier than others. I was the last to wake. I almost always was. Jenny stood hunched over a vat of porridge.

“I reckon that’s about ready guys.” She straightened, wafting smoke away from her now-teary eyes.

We lined up dutifully with pewter or wooden bowls. I slopped a very responsible portion into my bowl. I added butter and sugar and stirred while I was still going through the arduous process of waking up.

“You know, this is lovely Jenny,” began Robin, swallowing porridge, “I’m glad we’ve got actual cooks here now. Jack, would you like to tell them about him?”

I bobbed my head. I knew all about him. I couldn’t be more glad he was gone. This kind of project attracts some people who don’t quite understand it.

“Gather around, let me set the scene.” The hearth changed from what it was now, to a dirtier, grimier version, there were still cans littered around but these ones were full of something rotting, the tables were cracked and had cigarette burns in them. The ground was sodden, with cut bracken laid across so we didn’t slip. The canvas above us was now a leaky tarpaulin. A collective shiver of discontent ran through the staff.

“We had this guy, turned up out of the blue. He wasn’t even awakened; he was a level 0 nothing. I’m not sure I saw his face once, he had this huge greasy beard and hair down to his back, covered his whole face,” I said, in-between mouthfuls, “he turns up to cook, and all he’s got is this leather apron, and a leather roll-up, with literally one crusty chefs knife in it. No tent no nothing. No idea where he slept. And he would disappear into the kitchen tent, and just stick his head out, find any woman and shout from inside:” I deepened my voice, hunched my shoulders and began swaying slightly, pointing at Abby, “Oi Love, giz us a swede,” I laughed, voice back to normal, “Okay I’m not sure he asked for swedes but you get it. Anyway, this guy would just make us these huge vats of stew, I mean it was enough to feed an army, we would all just eat and eat and we would always have to throw away like half. And it really pissed him off but we tried to say, ‘if we only ever eat half, just cook half as much, surely.’ He didn’t want to, that was just the perfect amount for him. Anyway because he was cooking so much by about day 15 we ran out of meat. And he just thought we were somehow doing it to spite him, as if he wasn’t using half a cow every meal. One morning Robin sits up and says, what did you say?”

“A cow’s been stabbed.”

“Yeah, yeah, ‘A cow’s been stabbed.’ So I go into the field to check and this guy has just mutilated this poor thing with that rusty knife of his, he’s just slashing and slashing at it, I try to pull him off but, you know me, all charisma no strength. So, I do the only thing I can, I whack up an illusory phantom and he sees the farmer levelling a shotgun at him. He runs off. But now we’ve got this shredded cow. So, we carry it back and throw it on his table ‘waste not want not’ we say. That night we have another massive stew as per, but one of the kids pipes up and goes ‘oh chef, there’s a chunk of your hair in this.’ He lifted it up and yeah, it was this hunk of hair, no idea what the man thought butchering a cow was. And the chef nods and goes back into his kitchen tent. We leave half the stew untouched as always. And uh, uh,” I stop and look at Robin, he nods, eager to hear the climax of the story. “Uh, yeah. Didn’t see that kid again.”

I was met with smiles, hums and knowing shakes of the head. As if to say ‘shouldn’t complain to chef, serves him right.’ I wave my hand and the scene drops, and we’re back in our cosy, well maintained hearth.

“You didn’t finish the story Jack.” Said Robin, he pointed his spoon at Jay. “Got this guy in after we saw him off. Found him as a camera man for the NFL, most grass he’d ever seen was on a pitch. But something about him screamed Druid. And look at him now. Best stew in the south west, and none of it’s got druid in it!” He chuckled, maybe at the folly of the unawakened, maybe at the memory of the taste of the boy. Either way, little bothered him. Robin gained five levels after that stew. We all did.