[Mkguild] Noname, Part 2

[George Holmstrom]

The second part of this little tale. I should have said before, and advice welcome, from grammar to narrative. Enjoy peeps. 

- Traxer

O   O   O



Noname lay on the bed for a long time,
staring at the ceiling of wood paneling. He didn't quite know what to
think. As long as he remembered, his life had been careening down a
mountain slope, jumping from ledge to ledge, sliding along the edge.
Along the edge of what, he didn't know, and he hadn't let himself
stay on one ledge long enough to look over into the abyss below. At
rare moments, while bound up or tied to a stake, he'd had a brief
chance to reflect upon it, but soon enough he was unbound again and
off to the races. 




Now, he might have actually fallen into
the abyss, into the complete unknown, because he had no idea where he
was going to land. 




Particularly when he saw the snout in
the lower part of his vision. He opened his mouth, it moved up. He
felt it. The whiskers tickled his pawpads. He scratched it with a
claw. Noname rose and went through the motions. He had changed while
in his reflective haze, his entire psychical being different, longer,
sleeker. He licked his nose. Now that was weird. 




Not quite as weird as he expected
though. Though, what was he supposed to expect. He looked about the
room. Curses, no reflective surfaces. Well, he knew his arms and legs
were of a sable fur, his body was a light brownish, and he a long
body, complete with twitchy tail. Only one option. He sunk his
shoulders and plodded over to the caribou. 




Noname gave a weak wave. The caribou
nodded back. Now what was he supposed to say? He rubbed his muzzle.
So much easier when he was under a persona, selling wares, making out
contracts, playing with words towards a certain devious means. Now,
here he was, no longer human, trying to talk as...himself. 




Himself. Noname didn't like the sound
of that. Still, what choice did he have? There was no game to be
played. Yet. Ooo. The possibility appeased him. 




“Sorry to be a bother, but what am
I?” he said, letting the words tumble out in as level of a tone as
possible. 




The caribou eyed him. Noname tried not
to flinch. “Oy. Robert, what do you think this hellion is?”



The mouse at the other door squinted.
“Let me get a look at that tail.”



Noname lifted his smock (which he had
the dignity to put on earlier) and twitched part of his spine that
hadn't existed a few minutes ago. 




“Considering the mask of fur on his
face, I'd say a polecat of some kind. You know, type of wild ferret,
eh?” the mouse said. 




Noname chewed on this information.
Weasel type. Shouldn't he have found this more disturbing. Would this
one be permanent? If that George fellow was to be believed, he had
been other species too. What did that mean? Admittedly, his knowledge
on the Curse was limited at best. But...



“Ah-hem,” the caribou interjected.
While Noname hadn't been paying attention, his paws had clutched onto
the hilt of the caribou's broadsword, and were in the process of
pulling the shiny thing. Shiny. Well, he just wanted to take a closer
look. It sorta sparkled if the sun hit just right and it made his
heart beat a little faster and he really just wanted to have it a
little while so...



Noname stopped himself. Where had that
come from? Oh. He put on a guilty face and pulled his paws off the
sword handle, backing away. “Sorry.”



“No problem,” the caribou said,
nonplussed from the attempted stealing, “Instinctual actions are
completely normal for a newly cursed subject. Can't tell you how many
times I've had to keep from charging intimidating predators.”



Noname nodded. Civil caribou. He made
it his policy to not let himself take note of the qualities of people
he spoke to, either good or bad. In the long run, it never made sense
to bother, especially because he never even knew them in the long
run. Noname shuffled lives like cards, and with them all the people
he met shuffled away with them. 




That brought a thought. “You don't
have some sort of writing utensil, do you ur...what's you name?”



“Montgomery, call me Monty. As for
your request, perhaps Luke over there as something.”



“Right ahead of ya. Just nibblin' out
a point for ya,” the mouse, Luke, called, chewing on some sort of
black stick. It turned off to be a charcoal stick, freshly sharpened,
as evidenced from the mouse's blackened incisors. Noname murmured
thanks and returned to the bed. This wasn't quite what he expected.
Wasn't he supposed to be roughed up by now? He expected at the very
least to be mauled a little. Then again, he glanced back at Luke. He
could smell a slight tinge of...fear on the air. To be sure, the
mouse would not think twice of laying Noone out with that flail, but
the simple matter was that Noone was a polecat, and if he remembered
correctly, they ate rodents and so... Metamor was a twisty locale
indeed. How did anyone go on about here without going made with the
details? 




He pulled out the scroll and set to
work. 




O   O   O



Soon enough, next to each of the
labels, he had scawled a name, so that the list roughly read as so:



Unknown (Begger Boy) – Child
Reginald (Accountant) – Squirrel
Lackaday Takern (Beer Trader) - Shrew
Loridor Copper (Gem Evaluator) - Mole
Ms. Rosetta (Matchmaker) – Woman
John Ritanoose (Executioner) –
Wolverine
Happy (Fortune Teller) – Child 

Carrage (Undertaker) – Monitor lizard
Harkens Senderjay (Wares Seller) –
Polecat



Noname finished reading these aloud
from the foot of his bed. He still remained a polecat. He then spoke
vaguely towards the guards. “Strange. These are may past
scams...ur...identities used in my business. Each with their own
personalities, stories, and occupation. Of course, none of these
people actually existed except for the brief time that I portrayed
them. But, I'm so rarely myself...I'm not even certain who I really
am, so how can the Curse decide on whom to curse?”



Monty quirked a brow. Noname didn't
know caribou even /had/ brows. “Well...what's you name again?”



“Noname.”



The brow quirked further, but he
continued, “I've been in the Keep for a long while, and I've seen
plenty of strange things, but if there's one thing I do know, the
Curse is a wildly unpredictable thing.”



“Everything has a pattern,” Noname
said, “Creatures, the seasons...sometimes its harder to see than
others, but everything goes a certain way. Everything can be
manipulated.”



“Like you tricking Keep guards into
buying faulty weapons,” Monty said, a layer of ice on the words. 




“Yes, quite.” Noname said, then
grasped his muzzle. Oops. Oh, and he'd thought they'd been getting
along so nice, Noname reflected. 




Monty's jaw clenched. “Noname. You
seem like a nice person, on the surface. Very congenial and
kind...but as Commander George said, I'm not certain you understand
the levity of your situation.”



Levity. Nice vocabulary. Scary in a way
too. 


The caribou clicked his hooves.
“Well, perhaps its about time for you to get some fresh air.” 




“Aren't I under confinement?”



Monty smirked. “In a sense, perhaps.
We're just going to being you on a little stroll. Meet some friends
of mine would /love/ to meet you.”



Was this caribou flashing a devious
grin? Oh, crud. Noname started scrambling back. What had he said? Had
he made a mistake in his wordings? He was just doing the same thing
as...he...usually...did. Which was try and gain trust to find an
opening in the situation for his own twisty ambitions. But was he?
Well, yes. Of course he was. That was the instinct of a con artist
for you. 




“Luke, get some armor for this
weaselly fellow. I believe he is going to need it.”



O   O   O 

 		 	   		  
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