The Trashscarf Tales

Chapter 8: On the Way

The stick stood upright for an instant-- then teetered, and fell down. The butt end of it remained on the path, but it had fallen roughly Eastward, slightly Northeast.

Massive amounts of impressive magic failed to manifest in any way whatsoever. But Trashscarf seemed quite pleased.

"Gotta say I was expectin' a lil' more," Fluffy said glumly, as Trashscarf flung himself down beside the stick, squinting along its length into the distance, like a surveyor with a theodolite.

"Oh, there's always more," Trashscarf chuckled. "You want to talk about the fundamental interconnectedness of all things? Clustertuft, my friend, I could tell you stories."

"It's true?" Fluffy's mental voice sounded muffled in Trashscarf's imagination, as he chorfled into the dirt while trying to sight along the stick. "I always just figured it was just me."

"Absolutely," Trashscarf said firmly. "You're connected, so am I, so's everything. That's why I do what I do. It's got to stay connected."

"Says who? You got a Grand Poobah Waywalker you report to?"

"What a horrific idea! No, the whole point of the Way is it's -your- Way. It's for everyone and anyone, if they want to find it. And our Way, now, goes--" Trashscarf stood up, holding the stick, and now sighted along his thumb. "That direction."

He frowned, squinted, and tapped the road with his boot again; echoes of footsteps gave him an impression of what lay along the roads, and he could feel the presence of Barking-By-The-Sea to the North, and Bridgetower to the South.

There was a strange vibe coming from Bridgetower, though-- he hadn't been there in a long time, and he'd quite liked the cute twin seaside villages of Bridge and Tower, sharing their brave little span of steps across the river rocks. But now it seemed like a stranger instead of an old friend, and he wondered how long it had been, after all. He tended to lose track of time; it was harder to weave into the scarf, and his adventures on the Way had left him a little bit unconnected to Reality at the best of times.

But! Bridgetower was South, and Trashscarf headed East, along the line of the fallen stick.

Very probably, he explained to Fluffy as they proceeded, it was actually vitally important that they dropped off a crumbled ledge and rolled through some more ivy and got mud and dead leaves all over themselves, and there was surely a deep interconnected symbolic reason behind Trashscarf putting his foot into a nest of yellowjackets and having to run wildly, slapping at himself, up through a tangle of manzanita and shore pine.

"That's Chaos," Trashscarf explained, picking individual yellowjackets out of his scarf and flicking them away as he continued. "I could have flipped a coin, or just set off. But I didn't have a direction, and now I do. Whatever happens along the way? That's the price. It's also the reward. I don't make maps. I don't make plans. I don't have a schedule. I have duties and desires, but how I make them happen-- that's up to me, inasmuch as the World will let me." He smiled up at the clouds thinning out above, as changing and free as the Way around him.

"Do you know where you're goin'?" Fluffy asked, as down-to-earth as a talking mustache can be.

"Not exactly," Trashscarf said calmly. "But that's because I use Chaos. Some people prefer Order. Laws, rules, maps, regulations, things set down safely and solidly, in stats and stones and suchlike. The Greyfaces of the World would have the Way locked down, and probably would appoint a Poobah as well." He snorted.

"An actual map or somethin' would be helpful, though," suggested Fluffy, faintly.

"No it wouldn't," Trashscarf retorted. "It would only limit us. The World, my friend, is what you make of it. I make a mess of it, and it gives me that mess right back. We respect one another. Understand each other. Maybe sometimes we squabble a little bit, but I've been in this particular World... a long, long time," he admitted.

He smiled, and Fluffy could feel the curve of it beneath the mycorrhizal filaments it wove into his skin and nerves; it was a weary smile, but a happy one, content in a way that only a mushroom could understand.

"I guess I like rules and order and stuff," Fluffy said. "I mean, it's just easier to understand, you know? Chaos is... well, chaotic."

"That's the beauty of it," Trashscarf said. "It keeps you on your toes. It's unpredictable, sure, but that's what makes it exciting. You never know what's going to happen next."

Fluffy pondered this for a moment. "I suppose that's true," he said. "But what if we get lost? What if we never find our way back?"

"Ah, but that's the thing," Trashscarf said, his eyes twinkling. "We're never truly lost on the Way. The Way is always there, waiting for us to find it again. We may take a detour, or get sidetracked, but as long as we keep moving forward, we'll always find our way back. Just like you told me, when I was in the murk-- you've got to keep going, with help or without. Now we've got help; I've got you, and you've got me."

Fluffy nodded, still uncertain. "I guess I just need to trust in the Way," he said.

"Exactly!" Trashscarf exclaimed, throwing his arms wide. "Trust in the Way, and trust in yourself. And in me, for the moment anyway. You're on this journey for a reason, my friend. You have a purpose, even if you don't know what it is yet. And if we keep moving forward, we'll find it together."

With that, Trashscarf set off.

"We get out of your valley, we're out of the Fractals," Trashscarf puffed, now climbing up a steep slope of decomposing granite splatched with grey sagebrush, blue ceanothus, yellow broom and still patches and streaks of the autumn ivy. "Then we'll be back on the main map, as it were. I think we'll come out somewhere along the desert."

"I ain't adapted fer deserts," Fluffy said, sounding a little nervous.

"You're not adapted for my face, either, but you seem to manage," Trashscarf told it briskly. "Look. You hitched yourself to me and asked for help. You're in it now. You're on an adventure, my friend, and I'm your guide."

"I thought I was more sort of -your- guide."

"Nope. Doesn't work that way. Many things I may be," he said grandly, "But a protagonist is not one of them. I'm the cause of plot in other people, but I don't touch the stuff myself. Not anymore." He chuckled. "Although I might have stirred some up. Help me think up some more rhymes for 'mustache'."

The sun was setting, and they had a marvelous view of it from the crest of the last hill, Fluffy's valley a foggy murky mess far below them.

"--And we never take credit, just-cash!" Trashscarf warbled off-key as he put a booted foot atop a boulder to pause dramatically on the summit, Fluffy blowing in the cool breeze.

Before them, the hills rolled back down-- an undulation of dry grasses and yellow mustard flowers. The dry hot winds blew off the scrub desert, where yuccas and chollas and chuckwallas and rattlesnakes dwelt in their prickly private passions.

A kestrel wheeled squeakily high above, but what really caught Trashscarf's attention was the threads of smoke rising from a village nestled far away in the distance, along the green-blessed banks of a silver-glinting river.

"Wow," Trashscarf said, his eyes wide. "That's Creel! I never realized it was so close to the coast... only a bunch of jagged rocky hills full of very rude insects standing between it. Yes, we'll definitely have to run a road from your valley to Creel, once it's safe."

He paused, waiting for a reply, and then realized he hadn't heard Fluffy in a while. He frowned, and rubbed at the soft fibers fuzzing his upper lip. "Fluffy? Glomerafloccus?"

There was no reply.