Who Was There at Medic

When Lord Medic (his actual title has been lost to antiquity) planted the grains in his royal field, he did so that none in his country would know hunger. That had been the plan, but, over time, the green grains withered. The grasses Pan knew were pincer grass, gall cane and such weeds. All his father's fathers had to eat was culled from the earth. All they could drink was a brackish beer. This was far from the mead and amber brew of the Medician legends, but so was everything else in Pan's world.
Entering Medic Field this day, Pan found something of a rarity: a red mushroom. Pan's father told them they made men into heroes. Pan just thought they were tasty. Even though, he found them fairly often, more than anyone else.
He picked the fungus, and was just about to pop it in his mouth and enjoy the warm feeling it would give him, when he head someone say, "Can you trust the fungus?"
Pan, startled, looked to his left, to his right and saw no one. When he faced front again, he saw the man who had spoken.
He was a man of slight frame, just taller than Pan, with hair just beginning to gray at the temples. His clothes may have been a faded black, or just very dirty. Whatever the color, the tattered suit revealed him to be a traveling Questian. Pan had heard of men and women who went from place to place, raising hackles and queries. They were troublemakers.
"I do believe," Pan sighed, "I can."
The man leaned toward Pan, and the Sun flared off his glasses, glinting on the frames. Had he been wearing those before? "What do you see when you look at the mushroom, young man?" The Questian was more smug than Aeric when he actually answered one of the teacher's questions correctly.
Pan contemplated the tepid toadstool, and was shocked. The spots were not white, but yellow! "What's that?" Pan asked, a pained expression on his face.
"That, young man, is a quashroom. They are said to make one lesser. They are succulent, with a repulsive aftertaste. They make excellent wine. The wine causes horrid hangovers. The hangovers are quickly forgotten, but the bad humour in the liver is not. Is that enough information?"
Pan suddenly understood why Questians were so disliked: they made you feel dumb. "Yes, that's quite enough."
The Questian snapped to attention. "Of course," he gave a little laugh, the Sun sanguine in his spectacles, "there is no 'enough' information. So, I think I'll learn your name, young man."
"My name is Pan," said Pan, not looking the man in the eye. It was as if the Sun reflected in the Questian's pince-nez burned Pan's own cheeks.
"Ah! Pan! Do you know what your name means, lad?" The man was smiling, no longer priggish.
Pan kicked at a clod of elf grass, which wasn't nearly as pleasant as you'd think. "No."
"'Pan' comes from the early-Medician 'Pane.' It means 'bread.'"
The wind whistled through the gray grasses of the field. Pan clutched his flute. "Okay."
"Well," said the man, "aren't you going to ask me my name?"
Pan hated when adults prompted you to questions for which you didn't care to have an answer. Still and all, "what's your name, sir?"
"My name is Vic the Sage, of the Questian order." Vic seemed proud, but Pan couldn't tell is he was so because of the knowledge being shared, or the knowledge itself.
"I'll remember you ere and after, Vic the Sage." Pan used the most formal greeting he could, hoping it would placate the grown-up.
Vic beamed down on Pan. "And I you, young Master Pan. Now, tell me, what brings you to Medic Field?"
"I came to play my flute." Why had Pan told him that? He never told anyone that!
The last flash of true day shimmered in Vic's glasses. "Why?"
Pan noticed the first waxing of the moon as he looked into Vic's eyes, which seemed a little closer now, a little sunken, all of a sudden. "I just wanted to." Pan felt no need to say anything about bullies or moots or begging the land for food.
Vic scanned the horizon. "Hmmm. Sure. Well, would you like to know why I'm here?"
Pan didn't want to, but his father had taught him to be polite. Pan had wished his father had not. "Why are you here?"
"I am here to find something to eat, because I cannot afford anything. I told you not to eat that 'shroom because I wanted it, despite its mephitic nature. I was also, somewhere in the back of my mind, hoping to find the Princess's lost moot, so I could afford some victuals. Alas, I have been nowhere where knowledge of moots in abundant, so I have little awareness of them."
Pan thought that was entirely too much information, but knew not to say so. "Well, I can give you something to eat from my father's pantry. We haven't much, but there are some crusts."
Vic chuckled. "Pan indeed."

Various Moots

An Immutable Moot

"Children," said Pan's teacher, Instructor Bedelia, "the palace wants everyone to be on the lookout for the young princess's moot. It is white like when you see the moon through dark clouds, and its wings are green as leaves on a flower."
One of Pan's classmates, a know-it-all little girl named Cerebella, raised her hand. "But even though the moot is rare, don't most look like that?"
"That's true, Cerebella, but this moot is a Royal Moot, and it's special. It has golden veins in its wings and a circlet of coruscating silver in its fur."
The girls all marveled at the beauty of the princess's misplaced moot. The boys groaned at the palpable excitement for a stupid fluff beast. They all wanted their own fang beast, like a Lesser Manticore, or a Greater Tarantula. Either would have scared any of those girls to death.
"Instructor?" asked another girl as she raised her hand, "how would we even get ahold of the moot if we saw it?"
Bedelia thought about this for a little while. "Well, you could try calling its name."
Aeric, the rude boy, the son of the richest, most powerful farmer in the whole district, spoke up. "What's it's name? Something girly like Powderpuff?" All the other boys laughed, but Pan didn't think it was funny. Aeric was rarely funny, but always wealthy and often mean, which made him funny enough.
Of course, Bedilia did nothing. "Now, Aeric. I don't know what it's name is, but. Hmm. I seem to remember," she said as she flipped open her copy of Tobin's Bestiary. "Ah, here we go. 'The moot is also very fond of flute music, and will often fly from great distances to perch upon a flautist's pipe. This allows it to better feel the vibrations, and, if the player is especially talented, will jiggle with the music.' There." She closed the book, then opened it, remembering it was the subject of the next lesson.
When school got out, Pan knew he would be made fun of, and he was right. He was a bright boy, after all, and had little recourse on his walk back to his father's house.
"So you gonna play your little flute and rescue Powderpuff?" Aeric asked in his ridicule voice, the one he saved for people who were good for something besides being born into money.
"Probably not," Pan said.
"Why not? Because you're a loser? Yeah." said Bubula, Aeric's sniveling little cronie.
Pan had to listen to Aeric, but Bubula he could get away with a little. "Wow, you can have an entire conversation with yourself. All with knowledge you already have. Why not just sit at home with your thoughts? I'm sure they'll both be delighted."
"What do you mean by that, you little turd?" asked Bubula.
"You don't know the answer to that one, do ya?" Pan smiled.
"Help me out here, Billiam," said Bubula.
Billiam was a quiet, intelligent, popular boy. Which is to say, he did Aeric's homework and thus was not the subject of his ridicule. This approximated to popularity.
"Hm? Oh, yeah. Bubula's father actually owns land, while yours, Pan, can only work it. That good?" Billiam did not seem to care if this passed for a good put-down, and returned to his book.
At this, Pan turned and marched home as fast as he could without running. Behind him he could hear Aeric yelling, "You're just mad because it's true! It'll always be true!" Pan did not so much care about it being true, as everyone has to make a living. He just didn't like being ostracized for it.
When Pan reached his father's house, he dumped his book bag just inside the front door, grabbed his flute and went out the door. By the time he stopped walking, he was on the outskirts of Medic Field.

The Princess

Pan

A long time ago, but there are still a few alive who remember, there lived a boy named Pan. Pan was a boy just like any other back then, living in the place whose name no one recalls. He dreamed of adventure, excitement and marrying a beautiful princess. But his father was not so well off, so Pan could do little more than go out into the hills every morning, when the night still grips the sky, and play his flute.
And it was wonderful. His father's neighbors, the Fauns, said his playing called forth the Charioteer himself. That, without Pan's playing, the Sun would never come up.
Pan's father would tell him, "Son, you play the loveliest flute below the snow-capped mountains and above the Medic plains. You don't want to do what I do, work all day until the Moon claims the sky, do you?"
Pan would look into his father's sad, hopeful eyes and tell him, "No, Papa, I don't expect I do."
A star would flare in his father's eye, and he would say, "Good, son. Play your flute and study hard." But Pan did not believe this would help. Pan had seen flautists more talented and scholars more scholarly fail to reach their dreams. Why did anyone think he could?
At school, Pan knew the other boys spoke more truly, even if they were very mean.
"Fool," they'd call him, "do you think your playing is anything special?"
"No," Pan would say. "I just do it."
"Well you will work for me," any one of them might say, "just as your father has worked for mine."
Pan would not argue. Instead, he would turn to his books on scrying, or mossy cures. He didn't think they would do him any good, but it was all he could think to do.
And so it continued. The Fauns would say he summoned the Sun, his father would tell him to work hard and the boys would echo his doubt back to him, painful as it was to a Narcissus who couldn't love himself or what he did.
It just so happened that, one day, there was an announcement at school. The Princess's pet moot had disappeared.

Pan

Being...

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