Crick pulled on his boots, making sure to tuck his pant legs into the tops of them to secure himself against the cold. “Really wish he would’ve just told us what this is about,” the goblin cook grumbled. It had been two weeks since he’d changed to working on first shift, and he was still in the process of adjusting. Thankfully, Sam had waited until Sunday afternoon to call him and invite him and Velis to come over the next day, keeping the reason for said visit to himself. All Crick knew for certain was that the lizardman mechanic had sounded giddy, as if he had made some great discovery that he wanted to share with a close-knit inner circle. Velis drew one of her plain black sweaters over her head, tugging it down and sniffling.
“Well, you know how he is, sweetie. He doesn’t bother anyone unless he thinks it’s important.”
“That’s fair,” he replied. “By the way, did you change your address yet at the post office?”
“Yeah, I did it online.” She stalked around the bedroom, leaning down every few steps to peer under the bed. “Are my boots out in the front hall closet?”
“Right side,” he said. She gave him a quick peck on the cheek and slipped out of the room, and Crick opened his sock drawer, checking once again on the small box he’d moved under his bundled socks, smiling to himself. Soon, he thought once again. The pair locked up and headed down to his car a couple of minutes later, letting themselves shiver a little in the chill of the winter air. “We got everything,” he asked.
“Yup.”
“Over to Sam’s, then?” Velis nodded, bringing up her right hand and flicking her hand forward.
“Make it so,” she said in her best impression of Sir Patrick Stewart.
“God, I love you,” Crick replied with a snicker. Driving at a modest speed to contend with the slush on the wintry roads, Crick half-listened as Velis’s phone pumped out audio play-by-play from the Rangers-Flyers game. She had tracked down a few sites that broadcast video and audio from the NHL’s east coast games, so he could keep up on his hometown Rangers. As he turned onto Sam’s street, he considered how she had slowly turned him from a casual hockey fan into someone who genuinely and thoroughly enjoyed the sport. She’s helping you grow as a person, son, he heard his father’s voice say in the depths of his mind. You’d better not fuck this up.
Pulling up into Sam’s driveway, Crick saw a curtain twitch aside in one of the upper floor windows. He and Velis climbed out of his car to the salt-strewn concrete drive, and the door to the stairway that led up to Sam and Libras’s place opened, revealing the lizardman mechanic in his usual workshop blues, looking as excited as a child on Christmas morning. “Gah! I’m telling you guys, this is awesome, I’m so glad you came! Eddie’s on his way too.”
“Aren’t you cold, Sam,” Velis asked, pulling on her gloves, hunching up her shoulders.
“What? Oh, cold-blooded, kiddo,” the lizardman said. “Yeah, I get a little uncomfortable, but not until it gets closer to zero.” Behind him, dressed in a new trench coat, tall boots, and a black and burnt sienna striped scarf, Libras came tromping out of the stairwell. Atop his pyramid-like glass head, he had perched a black fedora.
“Friends Crick and Velis, much welcome,” Libras exclaimed, the panels of his head flashing emerald green. As the roll of slush on the road sounded behind the goblin couple, the golem raised a hand to wave. “And here is friend Eddie as well! Sam, we should guide them quickly to your discovery; in these days when the sun is bright and the sky clear, it is deceptively cold, and the discussion we would share is more easily done when one is not freezing to the point of stiffness.” Crick lit himself a cigarette, turning to nod to Eddie Rygar, the burly minotaur smiling at him as he wrapped a plain black scarf around his thick neck, approaching from across the street.
“You know, I’ve lived here all my life, but Minnesota still manages to surprise me with how fucking cold it can get,” the minotaur paralegal said by way of greeting. “Libras! How does it feel to be a full citizen of these United States, my friend,” he asked, approaching the golem and extending his hand, shaking with the slightly taller creature. The group clustered up and began following after Sam, as the lizardman led them down the street. The street ended in a dead-end cul-de-sac, beyond which stood a flat area blanketed in snow of about twenty yards before a skeletal wooded area took hold, its leafless expanse obscuring one’s view further than a few feet ahead.
“It has been good, though I now find myself spending more of my free time reading current events news and political essays than before,” the golem said, bringing up the rear with Eddie behind Crick and Velis. Crick pitched his cigarette aside and put his left glove back on, pulling his knit cap down tighter on his head.
“Feel like a character in one of those old Playstation role-playing games about now,” the goblin cook quipped, offering Velis his lighter so she could light her own smoke. She pitched her own dead one aside into the snow as Sam led them into the thicket, handing Crick his lighter back a moment later. “You know, following along behind the leader on the overworld map?”
“I thought you usually had a party of three of four in those. We’ve got five of us here,” she replied.
“Well sure, but we also don’t have infinite backpacks we can toss ninety-nine healing potions of varying strengths into. Or little flashing white numbers that come up if one of us gets hit in the face,” Crick said. He felt a small twitch of some sort in his fingers, slowing up as he strode along behind Sam, and as he looked around to his companions, he noticed that they were casting about with curious looks on their faces. “Something feels weird here,” he said.
“It’s going to get stronger in a minute,” Sam said, facing his friends now along what was clearly a path of some sort through this portion of the wooded thicket. “I’m still not one-hundred percent certain what it all means, but I want you to see something right now.” The lizardman mechanic held out his left arm toward them, turning his hand palm-up, and a skirling orb of white-and-red flame snapped to life just above his scaled flesh, crackling and flickering jubilantly.
“We already knew you had magic, Sam,” Eddie said evenly. “This isn’t exactly news.”
“Look at the size of the fireball, though, Eddie,” Crick chimed in, staring in wonder at the pulsing ball of heat. “And look at how easy it was for him to make it.” Sam, as if to further emphasize Crick’s point, snapped his fingers, dousing the fireball, then held his two hands a few inches from one another, birthing snarling, snapping arcs of lightning power from one set of fingertips to the other. The smell of burnt ozone came and went in an instant, and the lizardman mechanic shook his head, still smiling broadly. “The magic is thick here. That’s what we’re all feeling, isn’t it?”
“And that’s not all, my friends,” Sam said, turning about and wheeling away from them swiftly, leading them another thirty or so yards on to a small circular clearing in the thicket. Nestled in a haphazard cluster of fallen twigs and branches, the group laid eyes upon three large ovoids of dull rust-brown coloration, nestled closely together against a thicker tree trunk. They were far too large to be any normal bird eggs, and the blotchy spots of dull blue on them further piqued curiosity.
“I’ve heard of these,” Velis finally said after a minute of staring intently at them. “They’re stamprous eggs, aren’t they,” she asked. Sam snapped his fingers and pointed at her, nodding rapidly.
“I think so, yes. I haven’t seen a mother or father stamprous in the area, but when I came out here about a month and a half ago to practice, boom! Here they were! And the magic was just, so much easier to bend and play with! It’s like this little area has become some kind of, I don’t know, a pocket, just full of power from Caldea!”
“We’re the only ones you’ve told about this, right,” Eddie asked.
“Of course. And I brought Libras here first because, well, not only does he live with me, but, I mean, just look at him.” Crick and the others did, noticing finally the brilliant shade of lime green that the glass panes of his head had turned as they stood amid the area of power, his towering frame seeming to exude a liveliness it hadn’t before. “I’ve been coming to this little area for a couple of years now when I want to practice using what little magic I have, and it never felt like this until the day I spotted those eggs. I’m not sure if the sudden uptick in power brought the eggs, or if the eggs are what brought the power.”
“Chicken or egg, what difference does it really make here,” Velis asked with a happy snort, grinning. “I think the bigger question right now would be, did this sort of thing happen anywhere else, and does anybody know about it?”
“I’ve been happily casting about in various online message boards and websites for similar stories,” Libras replied, as Sam started to lead the quintet back out of the wooded thicket. When they were about fifty yards away from those stamprous eggs, Crick felt it when he stepped fully out of the little pocket area’s circle of influence, a kind of subtle withdrawal of excitement from his skin. It reminded him a little of his first few days smoking, and he shivered a little; this was not the sort of thing he would want to get addicted to, this feeling. Maybe that’s why mages were said to be such assholes back in my folks’ world, he thought dismally. The feeling of that kind of power, I could see that becoming an addiction. “There have been a few indications that yes, this phenomenon has taken hold in a few other places throughout the world, though nothing seems confirmed just yet.”
“Do you think we’re looking at another Outworld Incident,” Crick asked.
“Nothing on so grand a scale, no,” Sam replied. “Similar, perhaps, but neither Lib nor I have come across any reports of people showing up out of nowhere.”
“Though, we should not dismiss the possibility that such has happened, and nobody has come across them yet,” Libras chimed in. “After all, the gotrin peoples were here for years before they revealed themselves to the wider world populace. Some still remain ‘off the grid’, as it were.” Ten minutes later, as the group sat gathered in Sam’s living room, Crick cycled through his phone browser’s image search results, wondering how accurate the illustrations were. From what seemed to be the consensus, visually speaking, the stamprous was effectively a horse-sized reptilian creature, bullet-shaped heads standing atop thickly muscled necks that seemed too long for their otherwise stout, powerful frames. Beasts of burden in Caldea, they often served as mounts for the larger humanoid peoples of those realms when domesticated, and the ones roaming the wilds were hesitant to be around people, and could be dangerous if startled.
“Should we bring this up at group this week,” Velis inquired aloud. Crick closed his phone and tucked it away in his pocket, musing on the question.
“I’m not sure what good would come of that,” said Eddie, wringing his massive hands together. “We don’t even know what exactly it is we’re dealing with here, not yet, anyway. Do we know how many other magic-touched folks are at the meetings?”
“Only a few,” said Sam confidently. “We’ve all had a couple of our own meet-ups the last couple of months, six of us in total, counting me. Maybe I just bring them around to see it?”
“That’s not a bad idea. You guys would have an easier time trying to decipher what we’re looking at here,” Crick said. “Anyways, thank you, Sam.”
“For what?”
“For trusting us with this,” said the goblin cook, heaving himself up off of Sam’s couch, Velis rising with him. “We’d stick around, but we’ve got some errands to run today.”
“Just some holiday shopping,” Velis added with a nod. “Did we want to hit Target first, or Wal-Mart?”
“Wal-Mart for gifts, Target for decorations, so let’s hit up Wally World first,” he answered. “Don’t forget, we gotta hit up the tobacco store on the way home. We’ll see you guys Wednesday night, then?”
“For sure,” said Sam, thanking them for coming once again. The goblin couple made their way to Wal-Mart over in Shakopee then, Crick thankful for the reduced late morning traffic on a weekday, timing the trip so he could have a cigarette before heading into the store. As they were walking from his car into the store, Velis took him by the arm to stop him mid-stride.
“Listen, before we head in there, I just want to give you a head’s up about something,” she said, which sounded ominous to him.
“I’m all ears,” he quipped, running his fingers over his knife-like ears.
“I’m, not much of a Christmas person, really,” she said, looking down at the pavement. “I don’t want you to take it wrong if you see me rolling my eyes, or sighing, or seeming like I’m just not that into it. It’s not like I hate it or anything like that, it’s just,” she said, folding her arms over her chest, her puffy black coat ruffling loudly in the otherwise quiet parking lot. “I’ve never felt really anchored to it, you know?”
“Hey, that’s okay,” Crick said, putting one hand on her shoulder. “We don’t have to go haywire or anything, and we’re not shopping for a lot of people. We’ll grab something for your sister and brother-in-law, something for Sam and Lib and Eddie, and maybe a few other folks, and be all set. And maybe later in the week, I’ll make a trip somewhere to get you something for the big day on my own, eh?” Velis smiled at him and nodded, put one arm around his waist, and headed inside, side-by-side with her beau. “And I assume you’ll be doing the same thing for me.”
“I’ve already got your gift in mind, big guy,” she said, giving him a squeeze. “And no early deliveries. It’ll be nice to give someone a gift this year and really, deeply mean it.”
From “How We Fit”, by Cedrick Welker (15th Chapter)
Since first arriving here on Earth, most of our offspring seem to have had a much easier time adapting to the calendar and its myriad holidays, of which there seem to be far too many for this particular lizardman’s liking. Surely no self-respecting Caldean would shutter their business for something like the celebration of the birthday of a long-dead elected official, or even one of the realms’ many emperors or empresses who have come and gone throughout history, yet in the nation of my current habitation, humes from coast to coast celebrate something called ‘Presidents’ Day’, and on that given day, one cannot conduct their usual daily business in many ways.
There are, of course, some curious parallels, the biggest being what we transplants once knew as ‘Gifting Day’ back in our homeworld. Known here as ‘Christmas’ or ‘Boxing Day’(depending on nationality), it is a holiday seemingly centered around the practice of spending a month, month-and-a-half of treating everyone as pleasantly as possible before taking a single morning to exchange presents with the people who are closest to us, including friends, family, and professional colleagues. Culturally, my people, the elves, the greenskins and even the gotrin have found ourselves in unusual alignment with our hume counterparts at this time of year, and in this gift-giving practice. The folks I actually feel somewhat sorry for, however, are the minotaurs here on Earth who, like myself, were not born and raised here.
It should be noted that the minotaur peoples of Caldea have their own, very different annual ritual during this season, and it is usually best to leave them well alone in the week before and immediately after Gifting Day. For them, this season is known as ‘Kompu Tu Kalak’, or ‘The Time of Challenge’. During this fifteen-day stretch, the warriors of the minotaur people routinely engage one another in mutual unarmed combat, in an effort to reassert or establish a new kind of ‘pecking order’ among their various tribes, and it can get pretty rough if you happen to be an innocent bystander standing too close to a couple of them when they decide to tee off on one another.
The number of unintended deaths that result each year from this ritual often surprises even the most staunch proponents of ‘the old ways’ here on Earth. In 1997, for instance, it was estimated that in the United States alone, between 300 and 330 minotaurs killed one another in their pursuit of re-establishing who among their peoples were the greatest warriors. Of particular note was the death of Minchas Kulwarik, a minotaur in Vermont who had become a relatively successful professional trainer with his own gym. He was thrown by his own brother in front of a train and killed. Owing to the queer cultural acknowledgement and acceptance of certain tribal practices, Sinal Kulwarik was never charged with his murder, and he inherited ownership of that gym from his brother.
It was bankrupt and closed its doors within six months. Humes don’t care, ultimately, about the ways of our various peoples; they impose their own moral judgements, and cancelled their memberships to his gym en masse to voice their displeasure with Sinal.
And there are, of course, the various religious holiday observances of the humes and Caldeans throughout the world, practically filling the calendar from one end to the other with special days on every day ending with a ‘Y’. Wondering if your morning commute to work might be made special by some kind of holiday observance? Look no further than the Internet, where you can discover that it’s National Donut Day, or International Knife-Fighters’ Awareness Week, or whatever we’ve all decided is cause for celebration. I’m not trying to be a jerk about this, but it just feels like maybe the Caldeans of my own generation had it right back in our world when we kept our cultural customs to just our own culture and peoples, rather than trying to ‘spread the love’, as it were, and cause everybody to adjust their lives according to practices that have nothing to do with most of them.
And the humes, well, they seem to be even worse about this than us and our Earth-born offspring. Saint Patrick’s Day? Why should any non-Irish, non-Catholic go out of their way to give this day on the calendar more than a moment’s notice? This day isn’t for us, after all. Yet if you go anywhere in the state of New York, especially the Big Apple itself, you will, I guarantee you, find men and women who are neither Irish nor Catholic on that given day, wearing green from head to toe, throwing back drinks and proclaiming their love of the people of the ‘Emerald Isle’, yet understanding almost if not absolutely nothing about the reasons behind the holiday itself.
So where does that leave us, in regards to the customs of our current host world? The answer to that question undoubtedly varies from person to person, family to family, and I’m hardly in a position to tell anyone what they should do. Just remember, when it comes to human customs, the best thing we can collectively do for now is to try and figure out how best to adapt to the fact that this is was their world first, and we are just trying to acclimate to it.
It may take a couple of generations to do that well.
[Inserted text from updated 2015 reprint follows]
‘Kompu Tu Kalak’, which I mentioned earlier in this section and which enjoyed its own particular protections internationally, was finally outlawed in many countries around the world, starting with the United States in 2011. The practice was apparently not seeing nearly as widespread usage among the Earth-born of the race, who have broadly given it up as a ‘throwback to the days of [their] people when they were less civilized folks, living in a world largely occupied by daily threats and monstrosities in the wilds’. I for one am personally glad to see the annual loss of Caldeans throttled with some common sense legislation.