《Reputable》


 Pt. 1 The Inn

    Travel wasn''t something that was ever new to me.


    Particularly I have one story through the same road I recall which troubled my thoughts to make me wonder how much time I had really spent working on my route.


    I''m not a fond believer in perhaps; ''losing my way'', however, every time I come back to this inn, they give me the same room.


    Respectfully, there had been a time I had fought off a thief through the window looking down into the marketplace. Though it was a long corridor of a street, and sand had cased the rooftops enough to set nothing but dyed tattered cloth apart from sandstone buildings and impoverished undyed tattered clothed folks that wandered each side of the street.


    Years had gone by, and I at one point had considered myself quite the Revolutionnaire.


    I came back to the same sand-tattered town, to reveal they had begun cleaning it quite often. Notably to the point the sand wasn''t anymore covering the tops of the buildings. I trotted my horse down the road to see color across the peoples clothing variety. A feature which could be solely left responsible for my account of routes I ran into this land.


    I walked into the same old inn I usually do, except I notice one rather disturbing difference of the interior of the building; instead of sandstone and wood, draped with carpet to withhold more of the heat into the building in cold desert nights. However now, the inside of the inn was worked with large cobblestones, such as the inside of a castle. Additionally, with what might appear to be more kinfolk inside the bar, they had given me the same room to stay the night, though the barkeep was a different person.


    I guess another question I might have asked myself was what might have become of my reputation? But that doesn''t answer anything about the stonework on the inside of the inn. Even the room I am so used to staying in during my visit was tattered with more prestigious appearance. Draped with banners from an unfamiliar lord, as if I was staying in some unknown to me, royal bureaucrat''s bedroom. And with the stones being so dark, sleeping at night felt all that much.....darker.


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    I must have been in the middle of a dream, because as much of the journeyman I was, I could never have had a woman travelling with me at the rates which I accord myself to be made steady. However, I awoke in the same room, however with different walls, once more, to face the same foe I had killed while trying to steal from me all those years ago.


    Though the walls were wood again, there was paint on the walls, with only a subtle hint of the same banner perhaps decorating this room. I saw a picture on the wall of a woman, who at a second''s glance, I had felt much compassion for her, and appreciated her beauty. I remember it was more of a drawn feeling to think of her being above my windowsill.


    Regardless, I had killed the thief just as I had before. A quick toss of a flowerpot at his grip on the wall had made him slip down the side of the building and land on his back on the ground maybe thirty feet below.


    I looked down the street to see cables draped across the rooftops, and foliage enriching the bright colonial appearance of the long stretch of street.


    The image hurts my mind looking back at it now. I stepped back from the window and took one good look at the picture above the window. I turned toward the door, opened it up, and ended up in the same dark sandstone hallway I had been so used to walking into before to get to this room. I turned around and looked at the room I had gotten so used to, with no decoration.


    I was very confused to what I might have witnessed, whether that be in my sleep, or under the spell of some sort of dark sorcery. Nevertheless, it brought me no benefit.


    I walked back into the room which housed me in this dark twilight dawn in the middle of the desert oasis. I grabbed my weapon, my belt, and my headwear, and continued to pull my mask up to my face.


    Tonight, I headed into a darker oasis then I was so used to.

 Pt. 2 Mirage

    If I had thought for longer than it took for the moon to pass overhead, I could have easily mistaken sand dunes for water if it had dried up.


    I laughed.... reason.


    Thought of as reputable across the land was not only a blessing, but as well of a misfortune as fast as word of mouth could spread between lands. In many ways, the only thing that spread between lands is what made lands flourish. So, I considered it an honor to commit such a crime.


    In the dark, I had nothing but the thought of the mirage I had witnessed staining my mind. However, at this hour, I couldn''t explain why I thought I would experience the oasis as less of a mirage as that town. Though the moon was out, and you could see the surface of the ground, the terrain at a distance was rippled in its highs and lows. I find it only humorously convenient that a man could find only water where he could find constituency.


    At this moment, I only had a feeling in my mind. Maybe it''s the wind that carries such a song to change the tune for a man in the time of night one should be asleep. Maybe it was the man. Regardless, I deny a mirage to its promise when faced with no match to my torch. Then, low and behold, a group of men approached my horse over the hill in the middle of the slew.


    Now do not be mistaken, this wasn''t enchanted in the intention it happened instantly, but it''s only a superstition that is worked into the mind of suspended consequence. This language is common to the trade, and my craft is dear to my heart to spread the word.


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    Nevertheless, I pretended to ignore the men, as they trudged my direction. One of them shouts, "Traveller!"


    I looked back at him and his party and removed my hand from my horse''s side. I said nothing, and my horse stopped in its tracks, as did I.


    The men approached me with mild haste, yet in no rush. They must have carried official business, or some sort of message, unless they were lost.


    All four had gotten close enough to me where I could see that behind the robes they wore, all four carried swords which appeared crafted to mastery. Too dark to see anything else, I couldn''t tell where they were from, or maybe how long they had been out here.


    We spoke for what may have been around half an hour, and they very directly wanted to know where I was going and where I was from. Inquisitively I could tell maybe they were looking for some sort of possession or person, but I knew nothing of the sort, and the conversation became very dry.


    I too, were looking for some sort of possession, but to their souls in this desert, my voice was unheard. It must take a lot of sand to make men and creatures in the desert live without the need of water. This exact thought is what makes me think I never walked by this oasis. That these men never existed. And quite very distinguishably the superstition itself, which keeps me noble in a world filled with men and ambitions quite unfamiliar to my own.


    I only sit here in this exact moment now to inform you why I never travel in the night.


    I finished conversing with these men, and we parted ways on the slope of the dune, and I scraped my horse to urge it to keep its feet on the incline of the hill.


    I looked back down at the trees of the oasis, the shape of the pond, and the four men who had also stopped at the opposing rim of the dune they had climbed. All four looking at me, as if in disbelief from the same traditional lesson.


    I wonder what they had been looking for. Whatever it was, it definitely wasn''t what I had been travelling in the dark for.