The Good Loaf

The Wetlands are exactly as miserable as their name suggests.

Everything is damp. The road is half-swallowed by marsh water. The sky is the color of old dishwater and it hasn't stopped drizzling since I crossed the pass from Loch Modan. Even the trees look like they'd rather be somewhere else.

I was walking alone through a stretch of sparse forest when I felt it. That prickle on the back of the neck. The sense that something was watching me.

I stopped.

And then I saw it.

A boar. But not a normal boar. This thing was enormous. Black as coal, with tusks that curved like scimitars and shoulders that came up past my waist. It was standing perfectly still about twenty paces away, just watching me with small, intelligent eyes.

I didn't move. I didn't breathe.

I reached slowly for the small knife at my belt. It felt like reaching for a toothpick while staring down a dragon.

The boar took a step forward. Then another. Each hoof-fall was unnervingly quiet for something that size.

I was calculating my chances of reaching the nearest tree when the forest exploded.

"LOAF!"

Branches snapped. Leaves scattered. Something large crashed through the undergrowth like a boulder rolling downhill.

A dwarf burst through the treeline at full speed, tripped over a root, stumbled six paces, and came to a stop with his hands on his knees, gasping for air.

I stared at him. The boar stared at him. He stared at the ground, wheezing.

"Don't... move..." he managed between breaths.

"I wasn't planning to," I said.

"He's..." More gasping. "...a good..." Deep breath. "...Loaf."

"What?"

"Loaf. His name. He's a good Loaf."

I looked at the boar. The boar looked at me with what I can only describe as mild interest.

"Get it away from me," I said.

The boar — Loaf, apparently — ambled forward. He moved with the calm confidence of something that has never been seriously challenged. He sniffed my boot. Then my leg. Then my bag.

I stood frozen, hand still on my knife, utterly unsure what the correct response was to being inspected by a giant black boar while a wheezing dwarf watched from six feet away.

Loaf finished his examination. He looked up at me once, snorted softly, and then turned and began wandering back toward the trees.

The dwarf straightened up, still breathing hard. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and grinned at me.

"Well."

I waited.

"Congratulations."

"...for what?"

"Loaf likes ye."

I blinked at him. "I didn't know I was being evaluated."

"Everyone is," he said, as if this were the most natural thing in the world.

Then Loaf circled back and began nosing at my travel bag with unmistakable intent.

The dwarf's expression shifted. "Loaf! That's rude."

Loaf ignored him completely and continued investigating my bag. I heard the distinct sound of a very large snout pressing into my wrapped bread.

That was when I laughed.

I don't know why. The situation was absurd. I was alone in a marsh, soaked to the bone, being mugged for bread by a boar the size of a pony, while a dwarf who couldn't finish a sentence offered congratulations on my approval rating. Nothing about it was funny.

But I laughed anyway. The first real laugh since I left Goldshire.

The dwarf grinned wider. "There ye go. Loaf's good at that too."

I pushed Loaf's snout away from my bag — gently, because I still had some sense of self-preservation — and turned to face the dwarf properly. He was older than I'd first thought. Grey streaked through the dark beard. But his eyes were young, curious, and completely unbothered by the fact that he'd just crashed through a forest and nearly given me a heart attack.

"Where are ye headed?" he asked.

"Southshore," I said. "Eventually."

"Wonderful," he said.

And then he started walking in the same direction.

Just like that. No question about why I was traveling alone. No comment on the knife I hadn't quite put away. No probing into my business.

He just walked.

It was the strangest thing that had happened all day. And I had just been evaluated by a boar.