Myth The Wanderer - {FIN}

odair

Why hello there strangers! Mind If I warm myself by your fire? Much obliged. You don't see many people out in this section of the forest. My name? I've gone by many a title and been called far more. Most folks call me Myth. I'm a wanderer though I'm not rightly sure how long I've been doing so. I'm nearing thirty, but my best guess is that I'm around twenty-eight. Enough about me, what are you doing out here this fine evening? Searching for the mythical district thirteen? I'm not poking fun. I've been there. It's quite real, but since I'm a wanderer at heart I couldn't stay. I need the the open road underneath my boots and the open sky ahead of me. And all I really need is my trusty walking stick. Injured my leg several summers ago you see. Fist fight with some peacekeepers that wanted to run me in for vagrancy.

One of them got a lucky shot in. I guess I should count myself lucky that's all they managed to get in. I don't suppose one of you has a razor I could borrow? It's been some time since I was able to shave this brown mess of a beard. I've been told it covers up my jaw like a blanket on a good day and like fur on a bad day. I haven't cut my hair in years but I love hats. That's what's in my bag mostly, a hat from each district. So you can stop trying to edge towards my stuff, you won't find anything of value. I think I may have a pair of colored contacts I...found in the Capitol in their somewhere. Blue ones. My own eyes are brown, but I find it helps to change your appearance ever so often. You never know who you'll run into out here, and I? I've met more people than I can remember. And I'm sure they'd all have their own ways of describing me. I've been many people in my time.

***

There was a time when I was a lad and I lived fairly carefree. But that is a time that is far behind me. It's an interesting life out here and I feel its only right to be interesting myself. I am a friend to many, but an enemy to others too. I don't fault people for finding me mysterious and foreboding. This group of kids in three claim that a storm follows me wherever I go. That it rains until I leave. I didn't bother to correct them, but hey, why should I? People have a tendency to put others up on a pedestal when they don't know that much about them. They forget that they are people too and fill in the gaps with their imaginings. I find it helpful because then the peacekeepers don't pay me any mind as I make my way through the district. I make sure to avoid district one though. They've cracked down pretty hard since that serial killer debacle. Have you heard about that?


There's a lot of bad in this world, and I feel its only right to try t brighten a day or two. A kind word can go a long way, much farther than you'd think. There was this time I traveled through district six and saw a young couple out and about. I guess they were having some kind of relationship problem that I couldn't help but overhear. I told them to cherish each other unless they wanted to end up like me. I think that got through to them, because the nodded and ran away clutching each other like frightened rabbits. I'm what some would call a hopeless romantic. Kinda odd considering how badly I messed up the few relationships I had, but hey, what is the road for? Out here you can do anything and be anyone. You can also be anything and do anyone, but that is neither romantic nor healthy, and so I ascribe to the first saying.

I have to be genial in my line of work. I reserve my anger for true injustice and the seriously whacked out people. The stories I could tell. Why this one time, I think I ran into a trio of cannibals. Young ones with strange names. Its a good thing their handler was about to call them off. Needless to say, I haven't gone by that district in some time. That made me think though. You see, I have a soft spot for kids. I don't think its right the kind of childhoods they have. If you can even call growing up in Panem a childhood. You ever been to ten? It smells awful in that district, always walk downwind. There's this one district where I always make sure to give the street children some food if I can spare it. Their little soot-smeared faces light up like fireworks. Reminds me of my siblings in a good way.

***

Hey, you lot like stories to pass the time? Lemme tell you a story about an ancient far away land. Long ago there was a country ruled by the Dark Lord Snowraun and his legions of Keporcs. This man (If he really was one) lorded it over thirteen kingdoms. forcing them to send him their riches and the fruit of their labors. The king soon grew fat and lazy with such things pouring into his coffers and soon stopped paying attention to the goings on in the land of Pan-Earth. It was then that the various indigenous peoples, the tree-folk, cave-dwellers, sailors and all the rest rose up to throw off the shackles of oppression. This battle of the fourteen armies failed miserably for they were betrayed from within. To punish their insolence Snowraun destroyed one kingdom and forged a ring of power to bind the rest together. Every year, twenty-four children would by tied to the ring and only one would be able to resist its power. The ring would try many things to test them, changing size and color ever so often, but the outcome never changed. What's that? This sounds familiar? I wouldn't be surprised, most stories have a grain of truth to them.

But I can tell that you're not the types that have the time for large, sweeping multi-part epics. Maybe you'd like an adventure story with the search for truth?Here's a story about a boy --hm. That's not right. I'll start over. This is a story about a young man. A young man that lost a sister to that ring. He was a fisherman by trade and an adventurer by blood. This young man could do nothing but watch as his younger sister was consumed by that thing. She had tried to ride out the storm in the center of the ring, and for a couple of days, it worked. Not long enough though. It was a miner from the poorest kingdom that would emerge victorious, though not without scars and not unscathed. The young fisherman would be distraught after this event and spend some time soul-searching and reading dusty tomes. Eventually, he'd come to the conclusion that the world was not all that it was cracked up to be.But maybe you're the types that like a good scary story yeah? I heard this yarn about a man on the lookout for his shipwrecked brother. The brother was an explorer that had gone on an expedition to find something to defeat the dark lord; something to destroy the ring.

But what he found was murder most foul and a place inhabited by the things of nightmare. No one escaped from that hellhole. It was a mystery, but the older man had always thought there was something fishy about that island. He retraced his brothers steps and found signs of struggles. Shallow graves and bodies left to rot out in the open. They say he found something else on that island too. Something that drove him mad. Its said that he left that place a changed man, though no one knows how long he really spent there. He took his little boat and sailed the length of the coast before setting it aflame and vanishing into the forest, never to return to the place of his birth. It's been said that he's a ghost now, wandering the wide expanse and waylaying travelers, for what purpose, no one really knows. Always searching, always seeking, but never finding. What's that you ask? What's my story? I don't really have one, though I'd like to have one eventually.I'd like to make history some day. Maybe I already have.

After all they say over time history will become legend. And legend?

That becomes Myth.