Into the Nanten: the Record of My Exile

Entry 73 - Day 191

Somehow an endless stream of calm runs through Balthandar. He is ever steady, and inserts himself into the most volatile of moments in just such a way as to cut off their escalation. In the mornings he hums to himself as he packs for the day. And when Starlark and Bolton get after each other, he tends to insert a fable or legend from his homelands.

He told one such story tonight that I had never heard before. I liked it so much that I thought I would record it in my journal. Starlark was harassing Kantoo, calling the Nantese backwards and telling him how his people could learn a lot from the Old Empire. Bolton, of course, did his best to defend Kantoo and the Nantese in general, which only exacerbated Starlark's frustrations.

Finally Balthandar, no citizen of the Old Empire himself, piped up with a fable about Toron (a classic, recurring figure from Islander lore) that I had never heard before. The style is different than most of Balthandar's stories, which I think speaks to its origins. It is long, and overly silly, but I think it perfectly illustrated the point he wanted to make.

~Toron and the Pickle Famine~

Once there was a man named Toron, a man both fat and foolish. Toron came from a land whose people ate naught but pickles. And Toron loved pickles, they were by far his favorite food. Toron moved away from his home to work in a poor village a great distance from his own, and of course he brought his own supply of pickles to last the transition.

The day came when Toron's last pickle jar was empty. "Well then," he said. "I shall simply buy more." So Toron made for the shop at the center of the village. "Hello, fine sir. I will take some pickles, please. Two jars if you can."

"I'm sorry," the shopkeeper responded. "But we have no pickles here."

"No pickles?" Toron was shocked. "But how can that be? What do you eat?"

"They simply are not something we know around here."

Toron returned home, certain he would find pickles if he looked hard enough. There were none in the pantry, and none in his cupboard. There were no pickles in the stove, and there were none under even his bed.

Toron looked everywhere for more pickles until finally, after half-destroying his home in the search, he gave up.

"Whatever will I eat?" He said to himself. "Without pickles I am surely doomed to starve!"

He thought and he pondered and he wracked his thick brain. "Of course!" he said at last, after no small time had passed. "I'll ask my neighbor! I'm sure he'll have a pickle that could hold me over."

He got up off the floor, where he had been sitting for some time, and made for his closest neighbor across the field. "Excuse me," he asked through a low window. "But can you spare a pickle? The store seems to be quite out."

"A pickle?" His neighbor looked confused. "But whatever is a pickle?"

"A pickle! Long and green and delicious to eat." Toron shook his head in wonder at the ignorance of the man.

"Oh, food?" His neighbor said at last. "Well I have no pickles, but I do have bread and cheese if you have need."

"Bread?" Toron asked. "Cheese? What things are these? I need food, my good man! And so must you, for surely this 'bread' and 'cheese' can be no good."

Toron continued on from his neighbor's, flustered at the poor man's condition. "How can a man live without pickles? Surly he must be malnourished and sick." But every neighbor he visited was quite the same. Some had bread, others had cheese, and even a few had nothing to share with him at all. There wasn't a single pickle to be found in the entire village.