Chapter 105

It’s Not About the Game.

Boggo

Now that night had fallen, I could let my eyes relax and enjoy the beauty of the moon whose reflection rippled on the freezing sea. The sea was calm and slushed against the hull of the sloop. In my crow’s nest, I saw the thousand and some lights of Lavenfauvish. Both the glow of the city and the glow of the moon lit my fur lined space.

I moved aside and placed a new wooden figurine in the middle. In my downtime, I’d carved a crude likeness of our elder blue bestie. Hannak Anak Kana, he who bested the north. I set the elder down in front of the carving of the wiregull.

“Halt!” I declared. “I am defender of blue besties! Off with you!” Then I narrated, “but the wiregull wouldn’t leave! Instead it crept forward! I said halt! But the wiregull crept closer still! You leave me with no chance. AND THEN ELDER BESTIE WHIPPED OUT HIS HAMMER AND…”

I powered up a roll of the die with a shaking fist. I worked my tongue and glanced out the archway of the crow’s nest. I saw a shadow move on the sloop.

I dropped the die and scampered over to get a better view. I saw the pier guards but they seemed unbothered.

Strange.

I climbed down the mast with my hide waterskin and hammer slung over my back. I slid down, then plopped onto my butt. I patted my fur, crossed the sloop deck, and approached the figure.

As I neared, I saw their hands twirl in circles. Then barley and hops began to grow from the sloop deck. Water began to appear from thin air.

Abigail does that to brew her Brewer’s Portals before she goes to Lavenfauvish. Is this human a friend?

I crept closer.

“Excuse me,” I whispered.

The figure didn’t hear me. I came even closer until I could almost reach out and touch them. I grabbed a fistful of dress and pulled twice.

“Excuse me,” I said.

The woman gasped. “Ew!” She swung her leg and punted me. I don’t know which was louder, my squeak or the crack of something. I felt the kick in my bones, and my lungs froze in shock. I sailed through the air, over the taffrail and into the slushy sea.

∞

It was warm. Dark. Dark enough and quiet enough that the setting was familiar. I was underground. I fought to sit up, feeling like I’d suffered a cave-in.

“He’s awake!” someone said. “Blue’s awake!”

A group of red besties scampered over. I coughed and continued fighting to sit up. Every cough and wheeze that I suffered made me tremble and lose my battle to sit up. Red bestie hands helped me.

“Oof,” I managed. “Red? Red besties? It’s true then!”

“Name’s Pitu Patu Peeto. It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Mr. Blue.”

“Boggo.”

“We’re thrilled you’re still alive, Mr. Blue Boggo. Wow. We have been watching you for a while.”

There were other red besties in the chamber. I heard them giggle.

“I can’t believe you squared off with a human!” Pitu continued. “Cracked half your ribs and you were bleeding from a tear in your belly.”

I looked down and went through a moment of shock when I saw stitches in my belly. Then a dozen red besties surged toward me and began firing off questions. I couldn’t make out a single word. My eyes flicked from face to face, until-

“-Wait, wait, wait. One at a time, I’m dizzy. Human? What human? What happened?”

The red besties hushed. Pitu spoke up. “A human kicked you with a crack that echoed through every bestie tunnel! Ella dove right into the sea and saved you.”

“Ella?”

“We made a bet.”

My ears perked. My tail shook with a tinge of excitement. “A bet?”

“Several bets. You’ve got tea in the waterskin, you’re the only blue bestie left, and you’ve been captured by the goblins!”

Another red bestie scooched forward with another line up of guesses. “Water in the waterskin, there’s a colony of blue besties and they live under the ocean, and you killed all the goblins on your boat and made a deal with the captain.”

“I can’t believe my eyes,” I said. “Red besties. You saved me.”

“It was Ella who saved you,” Pitu said.

“Ella? Where’s Ella? I need to thank them. Wait, Pitu, are you sure I was kicked? I don’t remember anything.”

The red besties began to take turns recounting what they’d all seen. Detail by detail, things began to come back to me. They’d been watching me since I arrived. A blue bestie on a ship had been the talk of the tunnels. I listened as much as I could until I began to cough and fell into a wheezing fit again. Then they calmed down.

Pitu patted my hand. “Take it easy Mr. Blue Boggo. We’re supposed to keep an eye on you until Ella gets back. She’s getting some medicine. Should fix that wheeze you got going on.”

There was a commotion behind the red besties. One of them shouldered their way through the group. They had a weathered box in their hands. They set it down in front of the red poof I sat on. The red besties, obviously recognizing the box, cheered.

“What’s this?” I said.

“It’s a board game,” the owner said.

My eyes lit up. I could feel them go wide. “Board game?” My tail twitched in excitement.

“I’m Koopa. I found this board game a long time ago, in the sewers, but it’s all cleaned up and we saw you playing a game by yourself up on your boat and I figured you liked games and might want to play with us.”

“I’d love that!” I said too forcefully. I fell into another fit of coughing and wheezing.

“Take it easy, remember,” Pitu said. “Ella will be mad at us if we didn't look after you proper.”

Koopa opened the board game. There was a board folded up in thirds. He laid it down then began removing pieces from the box. Red besties gathered around and began chanting “bestie, tunnel, rock.” They waved hand signs at each other. I was curious and they explained that bestie beats tunnel, tunnel beats rock, and rock beats bestie. Two besties play at a time to see who wins.

They played to determine who would be the first to play the board game since it was a 4-6 player game. I committed the bestie-tunnel-rock game to memory.

With the winners declared, Koopa began passing them items from the box. “Player pieces,” he called them. There was a shoelace tied in 2 dozen knots, the bowl of a spoon, the handle of a spoon, a thimble, a false human eye, a bent copper coin, and a tourmaline crystal. They let me have a painted figurine of a weasel with a cape.

Ears forward, I turned the figurine in my hand and gaped in awe.

“This game is called tunnels and potholes,” Koopa said. “You have to move along spaces. The first one to make it to the final chamber wins the game. If you land on a tunnel you can use it to cut closer to the final chamber. If you land on a pothole, you have to fall down and start over.”

“How do you know how many spaces to move?” I said.

“With this.”

Koopa brought out the final item from the box. It was a die, but-

“-It has so many sides and so many numbers!” I said.

“Twelve sides and twelve numbers,” Koopa said.

“Where did you get this?”

“I’m only telling you this because you're a guest.” He leaned over to whisper in my ear. “Ella bought it from the game master in the above world in Lavenfauvish. The one by the courtyard and fountain.”

“Game mas-”

“Sh! Keep it a secret.”

Another red bestie said, “come on, Koopa. How come he gets to know? He’s new!”

“Yes, but did you see how he walked up to a human! I’d trust him with my life! He deserves to know a harmless secret for something so brazen. Ok, Boggo, are you ready to play?”

I grinned from ear to ear. I wound up a roll and tossed my first roll with a 12 sided die. I rolled a 10. The red bestie spectators went wild.

For the rest of the game, everyone was glued to the action. Though I didn’t win, I ended up watching the faces of my new friends more than the actions of the game. They were having a good time and actually enjoying playing games—so unlike the blue besties who took life a little too seriously.

Wow, what company I was in. All ears were perked forward. Tails swished back and forth with every roll, then sank when a player landed on a pothole. Seeing everyone so happy playing such a simple game did something to me. Suddenly, my enjoyment wasn’t about the game anymore. Perhaps it was never about the game.

When the game was over, I taught them all how to shoot dice. I won the pot most of the time but I gave everything back and said the games were just practice.

Afterwards, they wanted me to settle their bets. I did. It was warm warm root beer in the waterskin; I fell asleep on the sloop and accidentally began the adventure of a lifetime; there was a whole colony, and then some, of blue besties in the north. As I spoke and coughed and wheezed, the red besties listened with wide eyes and wider ears.

To settle their curiosity, I uncorked the waterskin. “I promise. It’s warm warm beer. Have a taste.”

I passed Hawkin’s beer around and watched as red bestie after red bestie took sips. One by one, I could make out that they felt the relaxing warmth of warm warm roots suffuse their bellies. If stumbled upon, someone else might think we’d just been bobbing in a hot aquifer.

We went through half the waterskin.

“Who would have thought,” Koopa said at last. “That’s good beer Mr. Boggo. Is there more where that came from?”

“There is,” I said. “I made a deal with Thrush and Hawkin. I give them warm warm roots and they give the blue besties warm warm beer.”

“Thrush? Hawkin? Are they blue besties too? We’d be happy to trade for as much warm warm beer as you’ve got.”

“Hawkin is a human-”

“-another one! How many humans do you talk to?”

Another red bestie battered her eyes and said, “Oh my earth, you are the bravest bestie I’ve ever met! Do you have a companion bestie?”

“A companion bestie?” I said, then blushed. “No, no, no. I’m as they say: single.”

The female bestie fell into hushed conversation with her friends. The other red besties began discussing the fact that I talked to humans left and right.

I tried to get a word in, tried to tell them that Thrush wasn't human, but between coughing and wheezing, and the volume of their excitement, I couldn’t get a word in. The clamor died down when a voice cut through from down the tunnel.

“Excuse me, we’re not over exciting our blue guest are we?”

Red besties began to part. The voice belonged to a female bestie. As she came through, I discovered that she was a yellow bestie. My tail shook for a moment when I laid eyes on her. She fluffed some yellow fur from her coat and fluffed a seat for herself.

I had to hold my tail down.

She smiled at me. “I’m Ella.”

“Boggo,” I wheezed.

“Well, Boggo the blue bestie, it’s a real pleasure to meet you.”

“Is it true that you fished me out of the sea?”

“Got soaked. Drink this.”

She handed me a potion. As it changed hands, red liquid tinkled within. I drank it and immediately felt relief from pain I didn’t even know was there. I could breathe twice as deep in a matter of seconds and I felt muscles relax.

“Could everyone give us space?” Ella said.

The red besties grumbled, but left.

“Thank you for saving me,” I said once we were alone. “I don’t know how I can repay you? I can’t believe you went into the sea to save me. You could have drowned.”

“It’s a long story, but I’m not afraid of things that most besties are afraid of. No one else was going to jump into the sea. No one else was going to go above ground to fetch a health potion for you.”

“You went above ground? Among the humans?”

“I did.”

“You’re so brave.”

“I’m just a little crazy.”

“I can’t believe you would do that for me,” I muttered.

“Let’s just say I’m starving for adventure.”

“M-m-m-me too.”

My tail shook despite my grip. Hers shook freely.