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“How do you like snow?”
Mr. Grey looked up from the porcelain pile of cold water-sand. The captain and her soldiers stood atop the next rise in the road. They wore amused looks as they watched Mr. Grey, distracted by the foreign weather feature.
“It’s powdered like ash,” he said. “Almost as cold as jelly, but not as weighty.”
Mr. Grey stood and wiped his hands on his robe. He tightened the anchor shawl around his shoulders. The Wind’s chilly airs - left on these mountains for the purposes of blowing fiercely and whistling mournfully - undid the shawl no matter how he wrapped it. It flapped behind him like a pennant.
The captain called again. “See the blinding snow. Those cold embers in your eyes, fall first only once. But hurry up now. Lord Snake expects our return.”
Mr. Grey tramped the thin, rugged trail between himself and the captain. Other light flakes massed into thin piles on either side. The snow became thicker and brighter further up the slope on Mr. Grey’s left, as it climbed towards the rockier heights. Downslope and to his right, it vanished entirely before it reached the woods. The road ahead was blown clear by The Wind’s work.
“How much further to the shrine, would you estimate?” asked Mr. Grey. As he returned to the soldiers he met one of those mournful airs of The Wind; the anchor shawl danced out behind him noisily.
“We’re already here,” answered the captain. The soldiers - those not taken by the castle curse during their attack 3 nights back - chatted freely and with smiles. They pointed further along. Mr. Grey reached the top of the rise. He followed their fingers.
The unshaved trail had led Mr. Grey’s company up into the island’s mountains. Mr. Grey’s ears popped all along the ascent. They’d passed above the poetree forest, climbing to slopes where only Falling-boulder Flowers grew. Each very-sharp shoulder of the mountain looked angrier the higher they climbed; dizzyingly dropping away in a scabrous rocky waterfall on one side, and glaring down from the other with inarticulate threat. And somehow, all the while, the actual peaks - those ivory tusks chomping at the puffy clouds - never came closer.
Now, after following the path far into the vertical, razory land, Mr. Grey eyes rolled into a gentle moor.
The trail slithered through the mountain's stony cheeks a short way further. Then it broke into a wide slope of rolling gorse. No flowers of any kind grew among the terse grass, though Mr. Grey thought he saw the shoots of some tenacious beanstalks. The trail curved across the slope in huge, unnecessary loops. It terminated at a small, flat, open clearing. In that clearing stood their trip’s objective.
A thin pole of wood poked like a rogue hair through the hard mountain skin. The mountain’s teeth rose behind it in the backdrop, but the pole seemed somehow larger; as though it merely crouched, and didn’t stand on ceremony for something so trivial as a mountain. The wood was densely textured with whirls, knots, and poxy bark. In the patterns of the wood and bark, Mr. Grey saw no uniform direction or grain. Where incongruous patches met, the wood showed stitch-like grooves, filled with hard, frozen sap. As though the pole had served as a rail in a gang bar in its past, and been cut up and badly scarred, and needed wood grafts.
Around the disfigured post a wise ring of field stones separated the gorse from the hard dirt of the clearing. Mr. Grey saw what at first looked like alien runes chalked on the ground around the pole. He realized after a moment that they were hopscotch blocks. From the top of the pole, a dozen long strands of skipping-rope dangled to its base. Another discarded, melancholy breeze set them fluttering.
The captain turned to Mr. Grey. “This is where we part,” she said. Mr. Grey hefted his eyes off the pole and turned them to the captain. “The folkpole waits you; we’ll return to our castle. Most remain sleepy,” she added sternly, noticing the interjecting finger Mr. Grey raised.
“I thought this was a group task.” Mr. Grey’s throat tightened. He added, “A team-player game.”
“That’s not how this works. Folkpole playing is private; we wouldn’t intrude.”
“I wouldn’t mind you one bit.”
“Worried for supplies?” asked a soldier behind him. The soldier relaxed his shoulders and let a heavy leather duffel bag fall to the road. “This has food and a bedroll.”
“Can you explain the bedroll?” asked Mr. Grey. He knew it was a stupid question.
“To warm you in sleep…”
“I’ll be here as long as that?”
“Some will meditate for days,” said the soldier cheerily. She playfully punched the shoulder - not a bony one, lucky for her - of a comrade who’d obviously done that time.
“You’ll feel great after,” added the captain. “It clears your mind of worries; gives serenity.”
Mr. Grey felt the opposite of serene as the captain signaled her soldiers to return down the mountain trail.
“Just one moment please,” said Mr. Grey hurriedly. The soldiers turned to him. “What of animals? Are there beasts I should beware?”
“Many beasts dwell here,” said the captain with a shrug of her fur shoulder pads. “But they all respect Folkpoles. They’ll not bother you.”
The captain and soldiers turned to leave once more.
“Just one moment please,” said Mr. Grey again; externally in the exact same way, internally at a higher fear-pitch. “Will I need fire? I’m not good at striking sparks.”
The captain explained how to make a campfire. She assured Mr. Grey he’d find all the ingredients in the leather duffle-bag: kindling, firewood, matchsticks, oil. She turned once more to leave. Mr. Grey haste-conjured another question.
This question-and-answer cycle went on longer than the captain wished, and not long enough for Mr. Grey’s liking. Over and over Mr. Grey posed wilderness, survival, and folkpole-related questions. The captain answered each. Some answers were clear, some were vague and unhelpful. The latter kind came more often as the questions stacked. The captain and soldiers tapped their feet. They crossed their arms. They spoke to Mr. Grey while gradually turning away, until only the heads of the captain and her soldiers still faced him, twisted to owlish magnitudes.
When Mr. Grey had sunk to questions like, “What’s the best bedroll layout?” and, “Which ration should I eat first?” the captain ended the pattern.
“We have to go now,” she said in the middle of his latest question. She stepped forward and touched his arm. “Do this with optimism. You may enjoy it.”
The captain and soldiers walked down the slope. Mr. Grey spoke after them. “But I’m still confused. What am I supposed to do?”
“Escape from it all,” one of the soldiers suggested, just before the troop vanished around a jagged cleft. “Obtain an epiphany.”
Then Mr. Grey was alone.
This has been In Different Color, a fairy tale.
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