My Middle of Nowhere

[From the deep, dark files of Whereabouts We Wander.]

I’d be the first to admit that we hail from the middle of nowhere. A few hundred bugs living away their little lives tucked at the furthest edge of anything remotely important. The Valley is all the but the last stop of a handful of prospectors headed into the endless wilderness oustward of our small hive. And when those same prospectors step into that wilderness rarely do we see them pass back our way. Lost forever or benefactors of a better life beyond, who can say. But few come back.

Bugs in nearby Dimmnaut will tell tales of the lands beyond, but those tales are often little more than vague rumours magnified into grandeur beyond their true worth. And Quin has always discouraged mixing with those kinds of bugs, anyhow.

I once made the trek sudward with Paps to Swtichaven. He had needed some very particular supplies — the exact details of which escape me at the moment — and none of the traveling merchants who occasioned the Valley stocked for his specific needs. On foot we walked for nearly ten days before we arrived in that hive, a bustling place with thousands of bugs and an entire street of shops and vendors selling more kinds of wares than I’d ever imagined. We stayed for three nights in a two-story hex run by a family of bees and overlooking the nearby conduit before we began our travels back home.

Stan hadn’t led us much further here than I’d been on that trip. A few days of walking along the edges of the wilds until his announcement that we would be tapping the wires and seeking our fortunes — answers, goals, artifacts — within a short walk into the wilderness. You know the rest.

- Telo