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<\/a>The “great” city of Bowerstone.<\/p><\/div>\n
While I tried to scrape the worst of the bird muck out of my hair, Rose stared at the majestic Castle Fairfax in the distance and started to talk longingly about what it would be like to live there, as she always did when we were cold and hungry.\u00a0 That is to say, all the fucking time.\u00a0 She tried to tell me all about the castle’s owner, Lord Lucien, and how lonely he must be since his wife and kid died.\u00a0 Like I <\/em>care about any of that<\/em>, I wanted to say.\u00a0 He’s not the one out here freezing <\/em>his balls off while scrabbling around in the dirt for food, begging for gold <\/em>and fending off drunken tramps.\u00a0 I’m sure <\/em>he’ll understand if I don’t send him a freaking sympathy card.<\/em><\/p>\n Now, Rose and I have had to grow up more quickly than most — living in poverty kind of does that to you.\u00a0 This is the only life I can remember, and our parents died so long ago that I can’t even remember them (not that they were anyone important anyway). \u00a0The reason I’m telling you all this is so you understand why the two of us were so eager to listen to the weird old guy who claimed to be peddling “magical” items from his run-down trader’s caravan in the square.\u00a0 Actually, Rose told me he was bullshitting us at first, but I knew she secretly wanted to believe, too — after all, magic has been gone from Albion for hundreds of years.\u00a0 Our curiosity only increased when a mysterious old lady in a hooded robe appeared out of nowhere and declared “We live in grim times indeed if the young are too world-weary to believe in magic”.\u00a0 Strangely, her voice was the one I’d heard in my dream, but I dismissed it as a coincidence.\u00a0 My first mistake of the day.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Home, sweet home. Sorry, I meant “shitty”, not “sweet”.<\/p><\/div>\n Rose politely tried to make excuses to leave, but the creepy old lady just wouldn’t take the hint — she kept yammering on about a decrepit-looking music box being sold by “Mystical Murgo”.\u00a0 According to her, the crummy old thing held more magical power than even the trader himself realized.\u00a0 Thinking back, neither I nor Rose thought to ask her how she knew so damn much about all this, especially since she appeared to be blind.\u00a0 The robed woman finished her mystical rambling with a beguiling “For five gold pieces, you could find out for yourself.”\u00a0 Rose told her we could eat for a week for that amount, but I could already tell she was having second thoughts — after all, if we did stumble upon something truly magical, we’d never need to worry about food or gold again!\u00a0 As she walked off into the snow, the woman dangled her carrot one last time, imploring Rose to think about “her dream” and “the inside of that beautiful castle”.\u00a0 Unless she’d been eavesdropping on our earlier conversation, there’s no way she could have known about any of this.\u00a0 But we didn’t let a silly little thing like that trouble us — we had to find five gold pieces for that shiny music box!\u00a0 Even if it turned out to be a piece of junk, we could listen to its out-of-tune melody as we tried to ignore the hunger pangs and the bitter winter winds.\u00a0 It was a win-win!<\/p>\n The first gold piece was easy enough to obtain — our old friend Derek the Guard had lost a bunch of arrest warrants, and needed somebody to find them.\u00a0 He always was such a scatterbrain!\u00a0 The next gold coin presented itself just as easily, and all we had to do to get it was pose for an eccentric gentlemen with a strange contraption he called a “camera”.\u00a0 Now, this situation isn’t as disturbing as it probably sounds, diary — the man in question (Barnum, I think his name was) said he was an inventor, and needed to test out his new creation.\u00a0 Apparently, this camera thingamajig creates an exact image of the person standing before it!\u00a0 How amazing is that?\u00a0 We are truly living in the age of innovation.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I messed up the picture — while Rose struck a coquettish, inoffensive pose, I…well, farted.\u00a0 Don’t blame me, diary — it was probably the brazier-roasted rat I ate for dinner last night.\u00a0 Vermin just doesn’t seem to agree with my sensitive stomach.\u00a0 Still, Barnum seemed happy enough to hand over the gold piece as he’d agreed, and even promised to show us the picture once the three months development time had passed.<\/p>\n Not exactly a Kodak moment.<\/p><\/div>\n So, two down, three to go.\u00a0 This was even easier than we’d hoped to imagine! Wondering where to look next, we heard a commotion down one of the many alleys in the area.\u00a0 Turned out one of the local bullies, Rex, had cornered a stray dog and was going to kill it.\u00a0 Well, Rose didn’t like that idea at <\/em>all<\/em>.\u00a0 Neither did I, but I was too scared to intervene.\u00a0 Hey, the dude had a knife!\u00a0 When Rose tried to remonstrate with the young ruffian, he straight-up headbutted her down to the ground.\u00a0 Okay, I know the girl annoyed me at times, but she was my sister (yes, that’s “was”. More on that later), so I had to act.\u00a0 I drew my wooden sword and went to town on that little punk.\u00a0 Crappy as it was, the sword hurt him enough to send his ass running back to the alley he crawled out from, calling me a “nutter” as he left.\u00a0 Rose thanked me for my help, but insisted she “could have taken him”.\u00a0 Well, I’d have liked to see her accomplish that, seeing as she was out cold on the floor. More importantly, the dog we’d saved seemed quite taken with us, but we were forced to leave him behind because, duh, we were homeless – we couldn’t even\u00a0afford to feed ourselves.\u00a0 Plus, he probably had fleas, and I doubt the bedbugs in the hessian sack I called a bedroll would have wanted to share.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>