The village square—or more accurately, the somewhat flattened communal mud-patch next to the ceremonial compost heap—had been haphazardly swept for the occasion. Swept, in this case, meaning that someone had moved the larger goats. A string of mismatched bunting hung limply between two crooked poles, one of which was clearly just a very surprised tree. Smoke curled lazily from a nearby firepit where someone had attempted to roast root vegetables and instead summoned something that smelled faintly of betrayal and undercooked cabbage.

  Standing in the center of it all was Forehorn the Recently Rebranded, a Goataur of noble posture and wildly inconsistent branding. Formerly known as The Forehorn of Moderation and Slightly Regrettable Decisions, he had changed his title following an unfortunate incident with fermented marmalade and a very judgmental oracle. He had just received the notice that his name change request had finally be granted. His companions still called him Fergus, much to his chagrin.

  “Right then,” he declared, stomping one hoof with the solemnity of a minor holiday. His tartan cloak billowed dramatically in a wind that seemed to only exist for narrative effect. “We gather this day t’ send off these brave travelers on a quest most sacred, most fraught… and most likely doomed, bless ‘em.”

  He unfurled a parchment scroll—sealed with cheese wax and bound with twine that looked suspiciously like leftover sock string—and presented it to Sir Wobblethighs with the reverence typically reserved for royal decrees or extremely discounted boots.

  “These be yer official travel documents, signed by the hoof of me own secondary assistant scribe. Ignore the part about the Goat Census. That’s a clerical redundancy.” He squinted at Derrin. “And dinnae try to eat the seal this time. It’s symbolic. Not lactose-free.”

  Derrin blinked and held the scroll gingerly, as though it might explode or ask him to lead. The Forehorn cleared his throat, then raised his voice for the speech portion of the event. A gaggle of Goataur villagers gathered, mostly out of curiosity, partially out of boredom, and possibly because someone promised there’d be oatcakes.

  “May yer boots never betray ye,” he began, with the gravity of a bard mid-ballad. “May yer luck be only mildly catastrophic. May yer socks always face the same direction as yer soul, and may ye never wake to find plaid inside yer dreams.”

  Calla, already mid-curtsy and absolutely radiant with delusion, whispered to Pip, “This place really speaks to my aesthetic.”

  Pip, the chipmunk, trembled slightly and muttered something that might have been a curse, prayer, or existential plea. It was unclear which.

  The Forehorn raised both arms, nearly flinging a ceremonial horn into the compost pile behind him. “Beware plaid mirages, my children! They weave what ye fear most into flannel! And beware the Custodian of Unclaimed Wonders, guardian of the caves ye seek. No soul has glimpsed him clearly and lived to describe his hat.”

  Wobblethighs bowed stiffly, his left knee making a sound like a disappointed accordion.

  “We accept yer warning, Lord Forehorn of... Branding Recentness,” the knight intoned. “And we thank thee for these scrolls of bureaucratic leniency.”

  The Forehorn gave a humble nod. “Aye. And should ye perish, we shall speak well o’ ye. Or at least vaguely.”

  He turned and gestured with his staff—a ceremonial stick covered in bells, socks, and what might once have been a hedgehog. The path forward shimmered faintly, as if reality itself were bracing for nonsense.

  “Go now,” he said, voice dropping to a tremble, “before the mirage of lunch distracts me. The Wastes have moods, and they’ll not wait for yer dramatic timing.”

  With that, the crowd half-heartedly bleated in farewell. A bagpipe played a single, tragic note and promptly caught fire. And so they departed, scrolls in hand, fate hanging loosely by a frayed plot thread.

  They crossed the threshold with the solemn dignity of a troupe of wandering buffoons led by fate and poor decision-making. Behind them, the Goataur village faded into a misty memory of oat-based hospitality and bagpipe-related trauma. Before them stretched the Plaid Wastes—a desert stitched together by forgotten fashion trends, rogue enchantments, and a deep, cosmic grudge against linear storytelling.

  The sands shimmered in overlapping patterns of red and green and blue and mustard, shifting in disobedient squares as if some drunken weaver had given up halfway through a quilt and flung it across the land. A wind picked up immediately, smelling faintly of boiled wool and old cheese, and whistled a tune that might have once been a jingle for cough syrup.

  “This,” Calla breathed, spinning slowly in place as if the landscape were applauding her. “This is my vibe.”

  “Your what?” Derrin muttered, clutching his cloak against the wind as a gust nearly stole his hood and self-respect in one go. “This place has mood swings. The sand just frowned at me.”

  Sir Wobblethighs adjusted his helmet, which had slipped askew again thanks to a tartan breeze that seemed to take personal offense at metal. “Ah, yes. The Plaid Wastes. Legendary for their shifting patterns and complete disdain for logic. Many noble quests have perished here. Along with the will to live.”

  A sharp burst of wind whistled through, rearranging the dunes into a series of arrows—each pointing in a different direction. One of them bent slightly and pointed at Derrin’s feet, then wiggled, as if unsure.

  Calla squinted. “Clearly, that one means follow your heart.”

  “That one means fall in a hole,” Derrin replied.

  “We’re saying the same thing,” she insisted cheerfully.

  Behind them, Pip the chipmunk sat hunched atop Morinxandar’s pouch, the muffin carried like a sacred idol, utterly crumb-stoic. The wind tried to jingle at him too. He bared his tiny teeth. The wind thought better of it. Just then, a small whirlwind spun up to their right. At first, it looked like a normal dust devil. Then it coughed. Then it cleared its throat.

  “YOU THERE!” it screeched, voice grating like sand in one’s metaphysical underpants. “You look like discerning travelers with an eye for value. Have I got a cart axle for you!”

  The group froze.

  “I—I beg your pardon?” Wobblethighs said, stepping back as the dust devil shivered with entrepreneurial desperation.

  “Lightly cursed! Very stable! Only screams at night and on Tuesdays!” it said, spinning tighter. A splintered cart axle emerged from the whirlwind’s center, levitating as if blessed by a confused minor deity of wheels. “It even comes with a complimentary illusion of functionality!”

  “We don’t need a cart axle,” Derrin said firmly.

  The dust devil paused. Its winds faltered, then resumed with greater indignation.

  “UNGRATEFUL!” it bellowed, and the axle was flung angrily into a nearby dune, where it immediately turned into a cactus made of coat hangers. Then the whirlwind vanished, leaving behind only bitterness and a faint smell of burned coupons.

  Derrin looked up at the sky, which was starting to pulse in fuchsia pinstripes. “Why,” he asked the heavens, “is this normal?”

  The sky gave no answer, except for a single, lazy cloud that reshaped itself into a question mark and floated away with ominous indifference.

  “Well,” Calla said brightly, already skipping forward into the sands with a scarf raised like a banner, “I think the universe is inviting us into a performance about identity and market-driven self-deception. Which is to say—onward!”

  Wobblethighs sighed and trudged after her, his armor rattling like a bag of indecisive tambourines. Derrin followed, muttering to Morinxandar, “If we die here, and someone asks where it went wrong… tell them it was the sentient dust salesman. That was the turning point.”

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  Morinxandar, as usual, said nothing. But a tiny, plaid-patterned crumb flaked from his edge and landed precisely at Derrin’s feet. A sign, perhaps. Or just a symptom of the sands. They walked deeper into nonsense, where meaning was optional, geography was decorative, and the Bargain Bin Caves waited with a sigh and a smirk.

  ****

  Derrin trudged forward, one boot slightly more filled with sand than the other, and decided—after two hours of confused dune spirals and the subtle humiliation of being corrected by a mossy rock—that he should finally ask the obvious.

  “So,” he said to Sir Wobblethighs, “just how big are the Plaid Wastes exactly?”

  The old knight turned his helmeted head, the visor squeaking like a disapproving mouse. “Ah,” he said, voice full of that wistful vagueness unique to retired soldiers and forgetful grandfathers. “Now, size is a relative thing. Relative to what? That, of course, is the true question.”

  Derrin frowned. “No, I mean, like… how far until we reach the mountains? Or a town? Or literally anything that wasn’t embroidered by madness and sand?”

  Wobblethighs scratched his chin through his beard. “Well, once, I marched three days east and arrived precisely back where I started. Another time, I went south and ended up owing a goat my boots. He’d made a compelling argument, mind you.”

  Calla, who had been pirouetting around a particularly dramatic tumbleweed, chimed in helpfully, “I once walked from one end of a town to the other and it felt like it took a week, but in truth, I was just on the same block the whole time. That’s the price of emotional detours.”

  Derrin stared at her. “So you don’t know either.”

  “I don’t believe in knowing,” she said, placing a hand delicately on her chest. “Knowing limits improvisation. And improvisation is the birthplace of catastrophe. Which is where I live now.”

  Pip, perched atop her shoulder, twitched in protest. He had witnessed too many of her life choices up close in the short time he had been traveling with her to stay silent any longer, but his protests remained mostly silent and furry. Morinxandar, nestled in Derrin’s pouch, remained stoic. He had accepted this journey long ago and simply awaited its inevitable collapse with baked dignity.

  By the time the sky began turning a suspicious shade of mauve with herringbone accents, the trio had silently agreed that progress was, at best, interpretive. Derrin, who had started the day with hope and a mild cramp, now just had sand in places he was certain weren’t on any anatomically accurate chart.

  Eventually, they found what passed for a campsite in the Plaid Wastes: a narrow cleft between two undulating dunes that breathed gently when no one was watching. A brook burbled nearby, its waters curling in paisley spirals and occasionally muttering softly in lowercase runes. The bank was spongy and smelled faintly of lavender and poor financial decisions. A bent sign nearby read: “Rest Stop #3 – Please Do Not Feed the Echoes.”

  Sir Wobblethighs declared it perfect. Calla declared it moody. Derrin declared nothing, mostly out of exhaustion. They set camp with the sort of practiced incompetence only adventurers truly possess. The fire pit was half a hole and two-thirds optimism. The bedrolls were arranged in a triangle, mostly because no one wanted to sleep directly next to Calla, who had started composing a new performance piece titled “Six Shades of Beige: A Study in Worn Hope.”

  Derrin sat awkwardly with his knees drawn up, watching her dance in silhouette against the lavender-and-tartan sky. He had never really had friends. Not proper ones. Just Morinxandar. And Morinxandar didn’t talk. Which, in hindsight, had likely contributed to the longevity of their relationship. Still, he found himself wishing for something—companionship, maybe. Or at least a conversation that didn’t involve metaphorical somersaults.

  “So…” he began, tentatively turning toward Calla, “how did you… I mean, what made you want to be a bard?”

  She paused mid-stretch, one arm pointed toward the sky, one leg awkwardly tangled in her own scarf. “Have you ever heard the silence of a room that doesn’t want you in it?” she asked, not looking at him. “That’s where it started.”

  Derrin blinked. “That’s… very poetic.”

  “Thank you,” she said, adjusting a jingle bell on her belt. “I stole it from a pamphlet about mold prevention.”

  So much for meaningful conversation.

  Later, while the fire hissed gently and Calla rehearsed in slow motion, Derrin moved to a quiet spot beside the brook. The water whispered things like “refund policy” and “twelve easy installments.” He knelt, folded his hands, and tried to focus his mind.

  “Voherin,” he murmured, “are you there? I’m trying. I’m really trying. A sign would be helpful. Or a hint. Or even a—”

  The sands shifted. The wind stilled. And the brook bubbled just so. A shimmer rose above the fire. For the briefest of moments, just past the edge of comprehension, Derrin saw it: a mirage. Humanoid. Ethereal. Profoundly unimpressed. It shrugged. Then vanished.

  “That tracks,” Derrin muttered.

  Sir Wobblethighs, having finally removed a boot that had been filled with sand and possibly a gerbil, finished stirring his mystery stew. The smell was not quite offensive, but it made promises no tastebud could legally enforce. He handed out bowls. Calla sniffed hers and declared it “conceptually edible.” Pip refused his outright. Morinxandar didn’t blink.

  Over bowls of steaming ambiguity, Wobblethighs leaned back and said, “Reminds me of the Great Sale of ’82.”

  Derrin looked up. “Was that a real battle?”

  “Could’ve been,” the knight replied thoughtfully. “I remember smoke, shouting, and a terrible shortage of gravy boats. Might’ve also been a family reunion.”

  Calla leaned in, wide-eyed. “Was there interpretive shopping?”

  “There was interpretive looting,” Wobblethighs said with pride. “By the end, we’d liberated three aisles and accidentally summoned a minor economic god.”

  Sir Wobblethighs stretched, which in knightly terms meant groaning, clanking, and announcing to no one in particular that his spine was “beginning to plot against him again.” He stood, shuffled to a slightly flatter patch of sand, and declared, “Should the wind change or an enemy ambush arrive in the dead of night, wake me not. I shall face it with the dignity of unconsciousness.”

  Derrin gave a distracted nod as the old knight clanked into his bedroll and immediately began snoring with the stuttering rhythm of a bagpipe mid-collapse. Pip, still chewing on a suspicious root, dragged himself under Calla’s scarf with a long-suffering squeak. Morinxandar remained where he always was, perfectly still, perfectly crumbly, bearing witness to the slow unraveling of Derrin’s composure.

  Derrin sat back against a soft rise in the sand, watching the flames flicker as shadows lengthened and the plaid mists curled above them like bored smoke rings. His stew bowl sat forgotten by his feet, only half-eaten. He stared into the fire the way people did when they hoped it would talk back.

  Calla danced her last spiral of Six Shades of Beige, then collapsed gracefully into a seated position a few feet from him, breathing hard but satisfied, her cheeks flushed from exertion and some deeper current beneath it. He didn’t look up, but she didn’t need him to. Her eyes studied him for a long moment before she broke the silence—not with a joke or a metaphor, but with something unusually soft for someone who once weaponized scarves.

  “You looked like that before. When the system shrugged at you.”

  Derrin winced slightly, then sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I keep asking Voherin for signs. For anything, really. A word. A grunt. Even divine silence with meaning behind it. But all I get is more… actual silence. Which is supposed to be his thing, I guess.”

  Calla tilted her head. “Maybe he’s just really good at it.”

  “That’s not comforting,” he muttered.

  She stretched her legs in front of the fire, boots tapping against each other rhythmically. “You think this quest still matters?” she asked, not mocking—just curious.

  “I don’t know,” Derrin admitted. “I thought it would. I thought if I could just finish it—bring back the Cup of Slight Inconvenience or whatever—they’d take me seriously. Maybe even stop charging me barn rent.”

  She chuckled softly, then caught the tone in his voice and let it fade.

  “I just…” he swallowed. “I wasn’t born to be anything. Not like you. You have... lineage. A purpose. A story.”

  Calla was quiet for a while. Then: “You think that helps?”

  He looked at her, really looked for the first time. The flickering firelight caught the edges of her wild braids and clashing scarves, but it also softened her eyes, and there was something in them—something not quite performance-ready.

  “I was born in Vellittara,” she said, voice gentler than he’d ever heard it. “Right between the crocked and singed spires of Haggleshatz and the towers of the Silver Lyric. My family practically reeks of prestige. I’m a direct descendant of Dorellin Vint—the founder of the greatest bardic college in the world. The man turned heartbreak into music and started a cultural movement by accident while looking for rhymes for ‘tragedy.’”

  “That’s… a lot to live up to,” Derrin murmured.

  “I’ve never written a song anyone liked,” she said, a half-smile twitching on her lips. “Can’t play a lute without summoning bats. Can’t sing without frightening livestock. My parents moved and didn’t leave a forwarding address, Derrin. That’s how much they believe in my potential.”

  He blinked. “Seriously?”

  “Dead serious,” she said. “Which is hard, because I’m not used to being serious.”

  They sat together in the hush of crackling fire and plaid-shadowed quiet.

  “I think,” she said slowly, “we’re both trying to be what we weren’t made to be.”

  Derrin nodded, gaze still on the fire. “But still trying anyway.”

  Calla smiled—not her usual dazzling grin, but something smaller and far more dangerous: something real. “Maybe that’s what makes us heroes,” she said.

  “Or fools,” he countered.

  “They’re not mutually exclusive.”

  He glanced at her, and for the first time since the quest began—since the system grudgingly assigned him power, since Voherin first groaned from on high—Derrin smiled. Not because anything made sense. Not because the quest was clearer. But because, sitting across from him, wrapped in scarves and accidental pathos, was someone who understood the ache of becoming.

  Calla tossed a small pebble into the fire. It popped and fizzed violet.

  “Tell me about your muffin,” she said, and somehow, it wasn’t ridiculous.

  Derrin blinked. “You mean Morinxandar?”

  “No,” she grinned. “The other sacred muffin you carry on your hip.”

  He smiled back and began to tell the tale of Morinxandar... The fire cracked. The night deepened. Somewhere beyond the dunes, a wind picked up and danced softly across the desert, humming a faint commercial jingle for discounted destiny. And beneath the stars, under the great mismatched patchwork of fate and flannel, the strangest party in the Wastes chewed quietly on mystery stew and prepared, in their own misguided ways, for the caves ahead.