On the road, it was traditional to offer a meal and a place by the fire to any wanderers who passed on by. A traveller who joined for longer than a day would have to earn their keep, but once night fell and the roads were no longer safe, even the smallest caravans would spare a bowl of stew for a stranger.
The traveller had accepted the meal, and even helped with the cleanup, and as the caravan gathered around them, he offered to tell them a story. A few of them hid smiles when, with a playful seriousness, he asked their youngest member if she knew where the elfroads had come from. With the solemn dignity of a scholar, she answered that of course she knew, but did he.
It was an old story. Every caravanner knew it, or a version of it. The traveller leaned back against a stump and produced a finely carved clay pipe from the depths of his cloak. “I will tell you the version I learned,” he said. His fellows around the fire settled in, tucking blankets around their shoulders, or over their laps. “It begins, as the story always does, with the end of the elven cities. Once, the elves lived in cities-- ”
“Grand cities,” the child interrupted, even as her parents hushed her.
The traveller chuckled. “So you have heard that version.” He blew a puff of smoke into the night sky. “Many of them were grand, it’s true. Some were just cities. But in every city, the elves built using a special stone.” He tucked his pipe between his teeth and picked up a handful of the worn gravel of the elfroad, letting the coloured stones trickle through his fingers. “And the finest building in every city -- grand or not,” he teased, as the child nodded her approval. “Was the temple to the Wanderer. In those days, the elves believed that he would visit at the oddest hours. They wanted him to feel welcome, like how you have welcomed me.”
“Was he called the Wanderer then?” the child persisted.
He did love an enthusiastic audience. A good story could stand up to interruptions. It made it more interesting the next time it was told.
“He had a different name in those days,” the traveller said. “None remembers what it was. When the cataclysms began, the elves needed a Wanderer, someone unafraid to walk into the wilds and find the next road. As the skies roared and the earth trembled, the elves gave up their cities, and when their god saw this, he happily gave up his name, and his temples. His children needed him more than he needed a fine home. A temple need not be a building. Any place where a god is remembered will do. The Wanderer took the stones from his temples, and he laid them across the land wherever he roamed, so that his children would have somewhere safe to rest their heads at night.”
The child gave him a stern look, as she considered the story he’d told. “I liked that one,” she said at last, and he was pleased that he’d met her high standards. “That is the best one I have heard so far.”
She did not falter when he met her gaze and studied her in turn. “What is your name?” the traveller asked.
“You will have to remember this version, then, Thyra.” Though the traveller spoke with the same gravity that she had pronounced her judgement, he could not quite keep the smile from the corners of his mouth. “Although I imagine that it will be different when you retell it.”
“The story is always different.” Thyra yawned, and her parents bundled her into a blanket, before bidding the traveller goodnight. The other caravanners followed; the day had been long, as had the day before, and as would the next. But because the caravan had welcomed him to their campfire, they would have fair skies and the first signs of summer to ease their journey.
The story was always different, but the Wanderer knew that.
He never told the same story twice.
