Escape from the Valley

[From the deep, dark files of Tales to Be Elaborated Later.]

I want to tell you a bit about the Valley. Home.

Grim and I didn’t leave because we HAD to leave. We left for the same reason most folks leave home: to escape the ever-present pull of tradition that digs us into the same place as much as any weight around our feet (or in Grim’s case, foot) might do the same. You understand. There were expectations. Plans made for us before we were old enough to plan at all. And I wasn’t ever willing to settle for that. Who could be, really? After all, what is certainty in life but the understanding that fate herself doesn’t care to ask for your opinion on the subject. And maybe it was never so cut-and-dry for the likes of Grim, who could have used that certainty so much guaranteed to me, but then so what? His sense was ultimately the same as mine: get out — at least long enough to loose a few fingers from the uncaring grip of fate.

We wandered for a while, our destination ultimately the collective, not-so-much-colony-as-hive collective we knew as Dimmnaut (where I was certain we could hire SOMEbody to lead us SOMEwhere interesting). Of course, on the way, it was tough not to fall into those old habits: patching up broken conduits, mending leaky caps and and restringing bits of loose and new-growth wires not yet discovered by whoever was tending it locally. It was so simple, but it seemed so right. Out there on the open trail, and far from the reach of Paps and the reproaching stare of Quin and her drones.

Funny, I didn’t even know what I was looking for. Answers, I suppose: whatever that meant.

- Telo