His age was showing up a lot lately. Tiring, even with the silver fire of Mystra fueling him. Falling asleep unintentionally on a warm summer afternoon. Becoming lost in memories of people and places now dust or ruin so that even their names were forgotten by those around him.
Recently he'd just started laughing, and then tried to explain to the Simbul (who'd been present at the time) a joke he'd remembered from a gnome named Cornith Metkog. That Cornith had died over a thousand years ago, took some of the humor from the joke. Well, that, and he'd had to explain the significance of the rice pestle.
There was the passage of time too. As one got older, one's experience meant that the days seemed shorter and years seemed to flit by more rapidly. People only a handful of DECADES old got some of that effect.
Still, he'd found a few diversions - particularly in other timelines and realities. Things to keep the old mind exploring new frontiers and all. Only as old as you feel, and so on.
The problem was that he WAS feeling old, more and more frequently. A tiredness that went down to the soul. Not just the sort that comes from watching every generation making the same stupid mistakes, though that was adding to it. Even with the outbreak of evil lords and villainous schemes, a monotony began developing over centuries.
A little boy still bearing auras of an uncontrolled transplanar shift landing on his doorstep was a significant departure from routine. This hadn't happened in...
Elminster ran fingers through his beard. Had it been four hundred or five hundred years ago? Even then it hadn't happened on HIS doorstep had it? One of those apprentices he'd had from time to time. Symbella The Yellow? Or had it been Ethelman The Unlikely? No, no, it had been Kirrana The Uncertain. Or that had been his nickname for the timid little mouse of a girl, as he recalled she had wanted to be known as Kirrana Of Greenbriar.
The Mage Of Shadowdale tried to remember what had happened with that one. Kirrana had been convinced that this was a signal of demonic invasion or a plot by evil wizards. The child had ended up... oh yes. Monastary of the Yellow Rose. Nice folk, a bit stuffy though. When he'd next checked back with them the child had grown up into a nice young woman. Ended up leaving the monastary for a job as a barkeep at the Wandering Inn.
Died a century later. Or was it two? Hard to keep track of anything at the Wandering Inn, on account of it wandering.
Well, the Yellow Rose was out. So what to do with the lad?
The boy HAD ended up on his doorstep, and was carrying an awful lot of transdimensional energies. Some of which had already altered him a bit. Made returning him to his own world a little chancy. At least until things had stabilized somewhat.
It was also more complicated in that somehow or other the boy was now:
(Posted Wed, 20 Sep 2006 09:54)
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