The Art of Packing
Guruk
I watched Sammy pack as if she were going off to battle...
or preparing for a dungeon raid. I still wasn’t sure what the latter entailed, but she had explained it as “going on a mission, seeking treasures, and facing a ‘big boss’.” The whole thing sounded fantastical to me.
Yet, she claimed Havenlore was an actual fantasy realm, and that her world—Earth—was plain in comparison.
I wasn’t certain I believed that. Her world sounded anything but simple.
“I don’t believe you’ll need a pickax, my little human.” I attempted to hide my grin at her antics, but she was just so cute when she fretted.
She pointed the aforementioned tool in my direction. “Guruk, you never know what you’ll need on a quest. Better to have it and not need it, then need it and not have it.”
I hummed, pondering her words. A wise sentiment for certain, but considering Havenlore had no battlefields or dungeons, I could not foresee the need for such extensive preparation.
Now, a picnic basket, cozy blankets, and plenty of snacks for my tiny human with the voracious appetite was a far more reasonable packing strategy.
“Sage words.” I smiled as she rummaged through our bedroom trunk.
“Yet, the eastern trails are scenic with some of our world’s greatest natural beauties.
” Wrapping my arms around her waist from behind, I pulled her back against my chest. “I’d prefer showing them to you and enjoying our time together as we search for your friends. ”
Her chin lifted as she bared her neck to me. I nuzzled against it, humming against her skin. She let out a breathy sigh, set the pickax back in the trunk, and spun to face me. Her brow shot up. “So, this is what you've been plotting, huh?”
I swallowed, caught red-handed in my planning. “I have been considering our options.”
Her eyes narrowed. “That’s the same thing.”
“It is a related but distinct thing.” I pressed my lips to the top of her head. She smelled of jasmine and the faint sweetness of a single rose. “You’ve adjusted well here, Sammy. I know how important your friends are to you, and we will find them.”
A quick quirk of her lips hinted at her amusement. “But…” she prompted.
“But,” I scratched at my chest, a nervous tic, “I don’t like you upset and worried. I want to help you relax too.”
She hummed, then eyed the bag I’d set near the door. “What did you put in the other bag?”
“Provisions.” The answer came out a little too quickly.
“Which provisions?”
I shrugged. “The important kind.”
She stepped out of my arms and marched directly to the canvas bag. I watched her rifle through it and catalogued each reaction. Confusion at the folded blanket. A small, helpless softening of her expression at the wheel of cheese. Outright suspicion at the jar of honeyed almonds.
“This is a picnic bag,” she said, holding up a tin of calming tea from Petalor’s apothecary.
I took the tea and placed it in the bag once more. “It is a supply pack.”
“Guruk.” She held up a container of grapes.
“You require consistent nourishment,” I said with great dignity. “You forget to eat when you are focused on a task. I have observed this pattern many times.”
Her mouth pressed together in that way that meant she was trying not to smile and was annoyed at herself for it. She set the container back in the bag. She did not remove it.
I considered that a victory.
“Fine.” She slung her own pack over one shoulder—far too heavy. We would renegotiate its contents after the sheriff’s office. “But I'm keeping the pickax.”
Sammy retrieved it from the trunk and hung it on her belt.
“I would expect nothing less.” I eased her pack from her shoulder and hoisted it onto my back along with the canvas bag I’d packed.
Before she could protest, Berry appeared from down the hall in a lazy, drifting path, their three pink tails trailing behind like ribbons in still water. They hopped atop my shoulder with the confidence of someone who had decided it was their rightful perch and settled in with a contented sound.
Sammy looked at the florin. “Et tu, Berry?”
Berry chittered something brief and indifferent.
“They say they agree with my packing and bag distribution,” I offered.
She rubbed a palm down her face. “They said five syllables. You do not speak florin.”
“I am interpreting the spirit of the communication.”
She stared at me for a long moment. Then she laughed—a warm, unguarded note that she sometimes seemed startled by herself, as if she had not expected joy to arrive so quickly. I would never tire of causing that glorious sound.
Sammy held her hands palm up in defeat, then clasped them together. “Alright. Let's go see the sheriff then.”
The village was already alive when we stepped into the town square.
Havenlore moved differently in the mornings than it did at other hours.
A particular quality of the light gave it an ethereal glow—the way it caught the dew on the slanted thatched rooftops and turned them briefly silver.
The cobblestones were slick and clean, glinting from a recent rain.
Market stalls opened their shutters with the slow, creaking rhythm of daily ritual.
A family of gnomes passed us on the path, the smallest of them waving at Sammy.
She waved back with equal enthusiasm, and something in my chest expanded the way it always did when I watched her love my home—our home.
She had come here as a stranger. Now, she belonged to this place and to me. I would never take for granted the gift the fates had granted me at meeting my little human.
“Morning rolls first,” she announced, and pivoted toward Baxter’s bakery at the corner of the main square without breaking stride. “Then, the sheriff.”
I snorted at her. “You are a general, my love.”
She held up her pointer finger. “I am a woman who knows what she wants.”
Baxter stood at the door, watching our approach.
The wooden sign above his head read, The Rambling Bun, in a scripted font.
It was the name given to his cafe and bakery after the villagers held a contest to see who could come up with the most creative names for the places in town.
The Rambling Bun was the clear winner for Baxter’s as the chatty shop owner and his delicious morning rolls were the stuff of legends.
Although, I had heard—much to my chagrin—Mrs. Robinson, a cougar shifter, once declare the minotaur’s other buns as the real prize winner.
I shook my head of such thoughts as the aforementioned Baxter greeted us.
“Lady Sammy,” he called, with the ceremonious gravity he afforded all of his most valued customers. His spiral horns caught the morning light. “And the large orc who follows her about.”
I let out a bark. Baxter and I had known each other for many years, and I genuinely didn’t mind his good-natured teasing. But I had to play along. “I do not follow.”
“He absolutely follows.” Sammy nodded solemnly.
Baxter laughed, a sound like a barrel rolling downhill, and ushered us inside.
Stepping behind the counter, he reached beneath the smooth marble top.
Two warm rolls, wrapped in brown paper, appeared on the ledge between us.
“Knew you'd be early today. Had a feeling.” He leaned forward on his forearms. “Something’s in the air, aye? Your pink friend there has been unsettled since yesterday, and the florins always know.”
Sammy paused in the middle of unwrapping her roll. Berry made a small, confirmatory sound from my shoulder.
“Word travels fast,” she said.
Baxter shrugged his enormous shoulders, unbothered. "Village is small. You heading to see the sheriff?"
“Yes.”
"Good." He nodded once, with the satisfied air of someone whose prediction proved correct.
“He'll have something for you. Travelers came through the eastern gate two nights ago.
Don't know the details, but they mentioned—” He glanced around the bakery with the habitual caution of a creature who knew prying ears were everywhere.
“Strange lights,” he finished quietly. “From the direction of the falls.”
Sammy's hand found my forearm.
I covered it with my own.
“Thank you,” I said.
Baxter waved us off with a large, flour-dusted hand. “Eat the rolls while they're warm.”
The sheriff’s office sat at the opposite edge of the square, built into the old stone wall that marked our village’s original boundary.
The gargoyle was particular about a good number of things, but especially about his desk items, such as the amount of oil in his lamp, the angle of the stack of papers, and of course, never for anyone to touch the painting of his mother and him as a wee-one that sat framed on the corner.
He even had an approved method of knocking when visitors stopped in.
Although he had recently added a new rule, which Sammy discovered through a combination of curiosity and relentless questioning: one could enter without knocking if one brought a morning roll from Baxter’s.
She produced the second roll—she had carried it the whole way—from behind her back as the door opened.
The sheriff’s expression did not change. It rarely did. But his wings settled, which I had learned to read as the equivalent of a sigh of contentment. He stood aside to let us in.
The office smelled of the old paper and lamp oil. Maps covered one full wall, pinned and annotated in Stoneclaw’s cramped, precise handwriting. Sammy’s gaze went straight to them.
“The eastern route,” she said. Not a question.
“Mm.” The sheriff moved to his desk and opened a flat drawer.
He withdrew a rolled map, the edges slightly worn, and spread it on the surface between us.
It was hand-drawn in the detailed, unhurried style of someone who had walked every line on it personally.
“This covers the trail from here to the highland ridge.” He pressed one claw to a point on the eastern side, then motioned toward me.
“Though, I’m sure, the guardian there knows the way well enough. ”
I preened at the mention of my title. Most of the time, the villagers knew me as a simple farmer and lumberjack, and well, a bit of a “handy-orc” as Sammy dubbed me.
Yet, I’d been given the appointment of Guardian of the Sacred Beasts by the council last year, and the thrill of it never wore off.
I loved working with the animals as did my little human.
“I do, indeed.”
Sammy tilted her head to meet my gaze. “I have no doubt about it,” she crooned. Then, she spun to the map once more, tapping its eastern trails. “But I wasn’t prepared when I first came here. And I won’t be caught unaware again.”
The slight lilt at the end of her statement betrayed her feelings. At least it did to me, who was attuned to my mate. I wrapped my arm around her shoulders. “Then, the map comes with us.” I eyed the sheriff, daring him to argue.
His thick nostrils flared, but he offered no argument.
Sammy smiled up at me. “Thank you.”
I tugged her closer, wishing we were alone. Then, Berry chittered at my shoulder. “Right.” I glanced at the sheriff. “Baxter mentioned something about travelers.”
Stoneclaw met my gaze. Then he looked to Berry, who had left my shoulder to examine the corner of the desk with deep interest. “The florins have been restless.” He said it like a fact he had already filed and cross-referenced.
“Two travelers, yes. Merchants out of the low valley.
They didn't approach the falls—said the light was enough to give them pause.” He paused himself as if deep in thought.
After a breath he continued, “Amethyst. They said amethyst light.”
The word landed in the room quietly. Sammy had gone still beside me.
I rested my hand on the small of her back.
“I know that color,” she said.
Stoneclaw didn’t respond, but he began making careful markings on the map.
He noted two points: the location of the reported lights and a rest point I recognized—a clearing near the base of the highland ridge, sheltered and well-watered.
It was the kind of stopping point that made a three-day walk considerably more manageable.
He pushed the map across the desk. “I cannot go with you. The village is short-handed, and I cannot leave it. But I want a status message morning and evening time.”
“How?” Sammy asked.
Stoneclaw’s gaze moved to Berry, who had abandoned the corner of the desk and now sat upright, attentive and luminous-eyed.
“The florin network,” I provided. Our inter-dimensional friends passed through space as we did through doorways.
Berry chittered once, as if to say, obviously, and returned to examining the desk.
Stoneclaw almost smiled. I was fairly sure. “You leave when you're ready,” he said. “The trail is safe. What you'll find at the end of it is,” he chose his next word with the care of a creature who rarely misspoke, “unclear.”
Sammy reached out and took the map. She folded it with the reverence she gave to all written things, carefully, along the existing creases. She tucked it into her pack.
“Unclear is fine,” she said. “I've played enough games to know unclear just means the map hasn't been filled in yet.”
Stoneclaw looked at me over her head.
I stared back.
We had, over the years of our acquaintance, developed a conversational shorthand that required no words. The type of communication only those with a protective streak running in their veins could understand. This one said: watch over her. Mine said: always.
We stepped back into the morning light, the map safe in Sammy’s bag and the rest of the rolls already eaten.
She was quiet for a moment, standing at the edge of the square where the cobblestones gave way to the eastern path.
Just visible beyond the last row of buildings, the road stretched outward.
It was a simple, unpaved dirt path, dappled with shade from the trees, curving gently away from everything familiar.
I watched her as she stared at the path. Her face took on that look she sometimes got when discovering something new in our world. It was a particular expression: not fear, exactly. More the charged, anticipatory breath before something begins. Excitement and the awe of the unknown.
“Are you ready?” She turned her face to me, a glint in her beautiful brown eyes.
I took her hand in mine, letting her feel the warmth of my palm. With conviction, I answered, “Always.”
Berry drifted between us and hummed a long, low note. A sound that meant they too, were ready.
Sammy nodded, her grip firm in mine. “Then, let’s go.”