It was another lovely day on the trail, and somehow, Mazelton felt that he could greet it more lightly. That his ribs still hurt and his feet still hurt and he was abominably tired, but somehow it was all a bit less. That it was there, and real, but… manageable.

He had put down his parents. They weighed a lot. He wasn’t completely free of them. He was still their son, the product of their genes and teachings, but he wasn’t just their son. Mazelton was the next step. One step forward. And his children would take the step after him. Two steps further away from his parents. One step from him. But his children wouldn’t be fleeing him. They would proudly step into the future, with their father’s blessings and support.

Troding firmly on the road of corpses he would make of all those who threatened them, of course. But that’s just what families do.

Mazelton looked at the dwindling caravan and mentally counted the abusive scumbags still amongst them. It wasn’t a small number.

“Alright, it’s what good families do.” He muttered. Duane looked at him askance.

“Just reaffirming what kind of dad I want to be. And I do want to be a dad. Not a father.” Duane gave him a very patient look, which Mazelton correctly interpreted.

“Alright, alright, yes, I get up in my own head a lot.” Mazelton muttered through a smile. “I don’t suppose there is any art you want in particular? A sculpture or a picture or a core or something?” Duane just shrugged and shook his head.

Ah well.

“I’m just going to say it. I think the mountains are fucking with me.” Duane shook his head. Mazelton’s mental condition had never been stable, and now he had cracked. Well, he knew this day would come. Or so his head shake seemed to suggest.

“No really. Think about it. Big river. Nice, big, moisture providing river. So why are the mountains so bare? And not, you know, proud granite peaks, soaring far above the tree line, these mountains ain’t shit compared to their cousins back east. They are comparatively titchy, sandy, crappy things, with a few shame faced streaks of green tucked into some of the shaded bits. I’m half expecting one to come over and awkwardly apologize.”

Mazelton reflected for a moment. He would accept that apology. A shitty mountain is still a mountain after all, and it’s best not to offend them casually.

They trod steadily across the day, along the river and the consistently dry mountains, until they came to a fork in the river. Which really didn’t do it justice. A big river from one big lake connected to another big river coming from the north and another big lake (this one a sort of ribbon running along the valley) which in turn, became another river. And smack at the intersection of all three was Tkemlups. Which apparently was an old word from some local language that just meant the meeting of the waters, because people are boring all over.

And that, regrettably, was probably the second most interesting thing about Tkemlups. The first was that it was, by the standards of Dusty Cantons in the New Territory, big. Sprawling, even, for extremely limited values of the word sprawling. Like a rabbit lying on its back and trying to take up an entire sofa.

They tried. In their defense, the people of Tkemlups had really tried. They had some stunning water gardens, and they grew food all through their town, but… Mazelton had seen those things already. And they were done more charmingly there, too. Some things just take a certain density, and Tkemlups was built with the expectations of large future growth built in. It sort of puddled in place. It looked as defensible as a sand castle below the tide line.

They did a pretty nice job with the painting. Not amazing, but the fact that everything was painted was a real achievement. Some sort of whitewash. Sharp angled shingled roofs, mostly single floor homes, and loads of whitewash. Mazelton had a mischievous urge to start painting murals.

Once again, they camped on the outside edge of the town. Some wagons split off, though there was less singing this time. Mazelton was almost bouncing with excitement for the next day. The next day, they turned left. Which is to say, southwest. Which was the last really big turn until the hard right around some mountains, following the Roaring River up to Danae. A ways to go yet. A ways to go yet. But this was it. This was the second to last big turn.

He had to carve more ducks. He only had three ducks at this point- finished ducks, ducks that he could show off. He needed many more. Mazelton had to give up the glowing skull for health and safety reasons, but he would be damned if he didn’t turn up with an attractive centerpiece. A flight of ducks, ducks doing all kinds of cheerful, life affirming things. That would be awesome.

He picked up his pen to start sketching the most life affirming thing he could think of and… promptly put it back down again. No, all things considered, ducks fucking was not a good choice. Nothing wrong with a bit of copulation in sculpture, of course, but duck mating was pretty messed up. Just gonna skip that one.

Egg laying? No, no, going to skip that one too. Nesting! For some reason people always like the image of nesting birds. He looked over at his wood pile. Mmm.. Might have to construct an actual nest of twigs, and then make wooden eggs and a wooden duck. But what the hell did a duck’s nest look like?

Mazelton stroked his chin. These are the questions that fire a soul to discovery! And, you know, maybe Duane had a point about his iffy mental health. Screw it. It had been a pleasant day, and he was going to have fun carving this evening. And put a big dollop of oil on his flatbread too.

The next day was hazy in the morning, and lacked the bucolic charm of the last few. You can’t have everything. They rolled on and right around lunch time, they had a short, severe rainstorm. It lasted all of fifteen minutes, just long enough to really soak everything and then vanish. Lunch was seasoned richly with profanity. But right after lunch, they turned south and Mazelton couldn’t stop grinning. They rolled away from the irritatingly bare mountains, and within a couple of hours were deep into richly green pines and firs. This was despite an apparent total absence of large lakes or rivers. In fact, it looked like there were only a handful of ponds. The water would need purifying tonight, yes indeed. Also he was just done trying to understand how landscape worked. It was just too damn confusing.

Mazelton sat down with Polyclitus’ map and carefully used the measures. The road and rivers curved around, so it was actually a bit longer than it looked but...

“One hundred and thirty three miles. Two hundred and fourteen kilometers. One hundred and twenty five thousand, seven hundred and seventy four smoots.” He breathed. “That’s how far away I am from home. One hundred and thirty three miles.”

“Yep. Amazing, aint it? How far you can go when you just keep on going? Call it nine days or so. A little faster when you split off up north, and assuming no more delays. Which, so far, we have been pretty lucky about. I was fairly convinced we would get stranded up in the mountains.” Polyclitus said, smiling.

“Hard to imagine.”

“Harder to live.” Polyclitus patted Mazelton on the shoulder. “Journey ain’t done yet. Get some rest.”

“Journeys end with lovers meeting.” Mazelton murmured, staring at the map. “That’s one story we kept alive all these epochs. Hard to keep going without it.”

He was winding himself up. He knew that. Mazelton was very clear on that. But it was a boring, boring, boring pine forest like all the other boring, boring, boring pine forests he had been seeing for months and he was so, so, so tired of them, just so tired of them and HOME was coming. Rest was coming. He could just stop, for a while. For one blessed minute he could be safe, and wanted, and at rest.

The world wouldn’t stop. It would keep coming at him. He would be scared again and hurt again, but he would have a home.

Oh Mother Moon, what if she snored? Mazelton was a very light sleeper. He couldn’t stand a heavy snorer. It was the bed situation all over again. Farting in bed was bad enough, but it generally soon passed. Snoring though, that was every night all night. He looked into the woods in despair. Was nowhere to be his peaceful rest?

“Duane. Help. What do you do if your spouse snores?”

Duane thought about it.

“Learn to sleep anyway.”

Well that was no damn help at all.