Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
From: cam@mullet.gu.uwa.edu.au (Cameron Neylon)
Subject: [W] William's story Part 1
Message-ID: <1992Aug11.014349.3180@mullet.gu.uwa.edu.au>
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 1992 01:43:49 GMT

William looks back at Serene as he begins to start his story:

"I was born somewhere, I don't where anymore or what the place 
was called. I've been wandering too long. My father was a potter,
so of course this was what was expected of me as well. Our family
had been potters for a long time, I've no idea how long.

Children were well looked after in our little village. Everybody
took care of them, and never scolded or hit them. We spent a lot
of time playing childrens games, make believe adventures and such.
We'd all go off and kill the dragons or the demons from the north.
Somehow I always ended up playing the all powerful wizard with the
group, who always struck the final blow and killed the enemy. Of
course it never happened that way in real life . . . . quite the
opposite.", he grimaces slightly, and then chuckles a little before
continuing.

"In any case, as we grew up we began to realize that something was
wrong in our little village. People went missing and never came back.
Obviously we all had fanciful explanations for this, as children do,
but as we grew older we began to realize that life wasn't a game, 
that the people who went missing were dead, though our parents
tried to keep this from us. Nobody knew where they had gone, or
why, or who had taken them, but everyone knew they were dead.

One day, a strange man came to the village. A mage, of course, all
strange looking men are mages, but I found this out later. He 
asked the elders of the village if he could take on an apprentice
from one of the children in the village. They agreed, and he chose
me, for reasons that neither he nor I understood.

This was the first time my life was completely changed. I never had
time anymore to play games, I spent all my time working and studying
things that seemed of little use to me. My parents had had another
son, so I was left out of a place inthe village as I grew older,
and more apart from the other people I had known.

For years I spent most of my time sweeping floors and being scolded
for tipping things over, wondering what I was doing and what the
point of it was, but then one day when I was sixteen, the world seemed
to turn upside down, and my life was totaally uprooted again . . . 

Admin: [To be continued when I can remember what happened]  
-- 
Cameron Neylon  cam@gu.uwa.edu.au
I can't think of anything witty enough that people 
would really want to see it time after time after . .