Maduo posted:

I had a really dumb idea and then worked way too long on it here you go!!!

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“I used to run this city, you know.” The drifter looked up with a startle at Beechburn. He had been absorbed with his meal of roasted squirrel, the first he'd had in days, and wasn't paying any attention to his campside acquaintance.

“Oh it wasn't just me of course. There were dozens like me. Hundreds perhaps. We'd whisper in an ear here, squeeze a shoulder over there, etcetera, etcetera. We would move like shades, yet we were always seen.”

The barrel fire crackled as Beechburn learned closer. The drifter looked confused. He knew little of the old world, before The Day He Was Stumped, before Endlessgate. Beechburn looked old enough to have seen it though, that much was sure.

“I was the best at it. Of course, any of us would say the same. But the look they would give as I spoke to them, as our pact was made, I could tell no one did it better. I can still... see it now.” Beechburn slipped a craggy finger under his eyecloth. The drifter tried not to stare, but with him so close it was hard not to. Hard not to try and peek at what might be. When did the old man get so close anyway?

“Things are different now. I... am different now.” Beechburn slowly pulled his shaky hand from under the cloth and stared at it with eyes unseen. “But perhaps it's not too late. For me, for any of us really.” His head turned slowly to the drifter. This was all too strange. Was Beechburn always like this, he wondered? He tried to search his memory, but it all seemed so foggy. He had to have been traveling with him for some time, right? Then... why couldn't he remember meeting him before now?

“But enough about this old man. What about you?”

He tried to back away from Beechburn but night had already come in earnest, and the terrain past the barrel was a dark morass. “I-I-I don't... I ain't got m-m-much to tell, bro.” he finally sputtered out.

“Nonsense. Why a young man like you...” Beechburn was inches away now. He pressed his forehead into the drifter's and gave a manic smile.

“...you could be president one day.”

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