The image of a mentally unstable Nathaniel Derrington wandering around the castle unsupervised haunts me as I ride to town, so I start a scavenger hunt for comforting thoughts. I only find one that actually alleviates some anxiety - should Nathaniel do something questionable at least I'll be a safe distance from the Queen's wrath.

Luckily for me, Arthronia isn't the place for gloomy thoughts. The bright whistling of songbirds, open blue skies, and melodic hoof beats of the horses' trotting eventually lulls them away.

I wouldn't describe myself as a shut-in, but I did spend half of my apprenticeship studying behind a desk. The other half was spent in the greenhouses collecting samples and nurturing finicky plants.

I suppose I never really had the chance to appreciate nature in its natural state. There's something oddly refreshing about seeing a clump of weeds without being told to excavate them, or noticing an uneven bush and not being sent to prune it. It might be a little silly to admit, but it's those small displays of unabashed imperfection that make me realize, really realize, that I'm leaving the comforts of a castle for a quest. An adventure.

As our horses trot closer to our destination, more of the town becomes available for me to take in.

The marketplace stationed at the entrance is a wellspring of life. Vendors line the streets, their wares crammed against one another as tightly as the cobblestone beneath our feet. Townspeople peer at competitively priced goods with discerning eyes and haggling tongues while others maneuver through the stalls like fish in a current, deaf to the cries of the merchants advertising fresh milk, spotless silverware, luxurious pelts, homemade pigeon stews.

I try to fall in step with the latter group, but it quickly becomes apparent that I don't fit it - literally. Our horses and all the supplies they're carrying quickly put us at the center of attention as people are forced squeeze around us, causing a backup of impatient consumers that have very little reservation when it comes to screaming obscenities. By the time I reach John's apple stand I've been on the receiving end of so many dirty looks it's hard to keep a straight face.

His stand has been there for generations, sandwiched between several ancient trees. There are some surrounding plots of land that other vendors could use, but they've been empty for so long it seems to be an unwritten rule that those grounds remain open to the public.

John's stand seems to mark the end of where the consumer traffic trickles. With nothing better to do, I secure the horses to a nearby post and lean against a tree for a little bit of people watching.

There's an exasperated mother in a balancing act with an infant on each arm and a toddler grasping at her dress, fingers sticky with apple juice. Just beyond her is a boy in a straw hat, maybe around Nathaniel's age, reading a book. To the right there's a group of men gambling, their raucous laughter juxtaposing the dainty clack of wooden dice on wooden board. To the left there's a rosy cheeked old man staring off into space, hands lightly folded on his protruding belly.

Something about him gives me a pleasant feeling, like cookies and warm milk on a chilly evening. I image a kindly grandfatherly figure that dotes on his grandchildren and spends his mornings watering pea plants. He's so still a butterfly lands on the brim of his hat, which makes me smile. But the smile drops when the insect crawls onto his unblinking eye.

"Excuse me, sir," I say. He doesn't reply. I clear my throat. "Excuse me, sir," I say a little louder. The mother gives me a quick glance and turns away when I catch her eye.

I stand up and walk over to the old man. He still doesn't move.

I kneel and start an inspection. His nose has been freshly sunburned and he has a hearty pallor to his skin. His blue eyes are slightly bloodshot, but otherwise they seem functioning and healthy. However, the pupils make no dilation as I wave my hand in front of his face.

"Sir," I repeat. "Hello, sir, can you hear me?"

The butterfly's proboscis starts tapping away at his iris.

I stick my forefinger and middle finger together and reach under his beard to take a pulse, barely grazing his skin when he whips his head toward me, eyes bulging.

"Get your hands off me, motherfucker!" the old man screams, sending both me and the butterfly tumbling backwards.

I barely have time to register the fact that he isn't a corpse before his hands are entwined in my collar and he starts shaking me like a purse of loose change.

"The fuck are you playing at, buddy?" he continues screaming, moisturizing my face with his saliva. "The fuck are you playing at? You think Pat plays games? You think Pat is a game playing motherfucker?"

No, I think to myself, I was under the impression that Pat was dead.

I can't quite get the words out of my mouth because my teeth are being shattered together. He is deceptively strong - no matter how firmly I push his forearms his grip on my collar doesn't budge. Since I'm quite fond of chewing my food and being able to speak coherently, I clamp my jaw shut and hope that he gets tired before he gives me a mild concussion.

Just when it seems like Pat is dead set on brain damage, the assault stops as suddenly as it begins. I would like to say that I quickly brushed myself off and gave him a piece of my mind, but I found that falling to my back and staring at the clouds was actually a much more forgiving course of action for my muddled brain.

"-think that's a bit contrary of you, don'tcha think?" a voice says, far off in the distance. It's a nice voice, country slick and summer sweet.

There's someone replying, someone stuttering.

"Well, you'd best be on your way now," the voice says.

A bit of silence follows. Then a silhouette looms over me, blocking out the sun. A hand is extended and I drift mine upwards to meet it. The moment my legs unfold from underneath me time snaps back into place and I find myself thanking the boy in the straw hat.

"Shucks, it ain't nothin'," he says with a cockeyed grin. He nods his head to the receding figure of the man that almost shook my teeth out. "That's just Crazy Pat. He's a little kooky, and stronger than you'd think, but he's just a big ol' baby. A harsh word is usually enough to get him to lay off."

"Why was he...?" I drift off vaguely, unsure of how to describe what exactly Crazy Pat was doing when I first saw him.

"Oh, that?" the boy replies, using a corner of his book to scratch his straw colored hair from under his straw hat. To my surprise it's a copy of The Nine Princes, an obscure, dense classic. "Yeah, no one really knows what to make of it. He just likes to mess with people, I suppose." He pauses contemplatively and shrugs. "Well, hey, the world is full of odd characters and you need 'em to keep things interesting. Anywho, where are my manners? Connie Copper, at your service." He tips his hat with his free hand.

"My name is Devon Whittle. Thank you again for your aid."

"My pleasure," he says brightly. I notice a small gap in his front teeth. Paired with the smattering of freckles across his face, he looks younger than I previously thought - maybe around Marigold's age.

"Anywho," Connie continues, peering over my shoulder at the horses, "what brings you here? You don't seem too familiar to these parts."

"I'm employed under the royal family as a medical apprentice," I reply. It's the automatic answer I use whenever anyone asks me about myself, but this time I don't like the way it sounds, like I'm trying to put on airs.

"Fancy stuff," Connie says, letting out a low whistle. But that still begs the question - what's that got to do with you bein' here? Forgive me for my curiosity, it's not too often I get to talk to someone new n' interestin'."

"Well," I begin, self-consciousness starting to wear on me. Who else is listening in on this conversation? Is the mission supposed to be a secret? Surely not. I assume the Queen would want for us to receive as much aid as possible. "Well," I start again, "I'm accompanying Nathaniel Derrington on a journey to rescue the missing princess."

No drum roll, no buildup, I practically shove the sentence out of my mouth in an attempt to play it down as much as possible. But with the way Connie's eyebrows shoot up into his cowlicked bangs, I know I failed in my efforts to not impress.

"A quest with the Young Dragonslayer? Shucks, you sure are somethin'." His wide eyes go slack and starry. "A quest. And for Princess Poppy, no less. A quest."

I can't help but inwardly grimace at his awe, especially when he blurts out his next question.

"So, what's gonna be your first move?"

Because I don't know.

With that question my budding excitement is snipped right off the stem. Because I don't know what I'm doing, Nathaniel most certainly doesn't know what he's doing, and the two of us are just on a wild goose chase for a dead girl. But I can't bring myself to admit that out loud.

Suddenly the stars in Connie's eyes go out and I instinctively wonder if he read my mind.

"Hey!" he shouts, eyebrows furrowed.

I follow his line of sight. To my shock, it leads to the scene of two complete strangers rummaging through the knapsacks tied to the horses.

I stalk towards them threateningly, inwardly praying that they don't have any concealed weapons. Fortunately for me, that's all the discouragement they need. They flee like startled quail.

"It's a good thing you saw them before they managed to make off with anything," I say, grinning. Or I try to, at least. The royal Arthronian insignia is clearly woven into the horses' saddles. Maybe the would-be thieves didn't make them out in their haste to steal? I could hardly believe that anyone in our kingdom would knowingly pilfer from the crown.

"You sure about that?" asks Connie, head cocked, eyes narrowed. "I saw him slip a scroll into his pocket."

My heart drops to my feet.

I rip open a knapsack so quickly I startle the horse into a whinny, shoving aside medical scrolls, folded up calculations, several valuable textbooks, only to make the discovery that they had stolen the most irreplaceable item there - the royal decree.

Although magic is seldom used in Arthronia, there are a few exceptions. One would be for the decree the Queen wrote for us. Any seller we show it to will be legally bound to provide goods we require on the grounds that they will be paid back, with generous interest, once the decree makes its way back to the royal family and the ruling monarch signs it off.

The magic bit comes into play when proving the authenticity of the decree is at hand. Any scroll that is personally issued by the crown is composed with ink and finalized with a seal concocted with the blood of the ruling monarch, creating a legal and magical oath bonding the royal family to the words written on the parchment.

Because it would also be bound to Nathaniel and I, the royal decree the Queen wrote off with King Stephen's blood would not be complete until we finalized it by reheating the seal and adding our own blood to it. It's a process designed so that the seal can only be reheated once. After the wax hardens for the second time no fire could ever melt it again, helping to ensure that the crown would only be obligated to the designated recipients. Nathaniel had made off before I remembered to ask him to complete the pact with me, so I decided that we could get it done once we met up at John's apple stand.

That is, until it was stolen.

If the thieves had even the slightest idea as to how the decree worked, they could do anything, from wasting good money on booze and brothels to hiring an entire army and waging a war.

"I know where that lot is headed, if it eases your nerves any," Connie says, instantly pulling my head from under an internal quicksand of panic.

"Yes!" I blurt.

"Alright, but we gotta leg it. Those guys don't got so much workin' upstairs, but their feet more than make up for it." He looks over his shoulders at the group of gambling men. "Oi there, fellas!" he shouts, breaking into a slow backwards jog. He tosses his book and one of them catches it. "Make sure those horses don't meet any other sticky fingers!"

Connie's request is met with a chorus of affirmative grunts. Satisfied, he presses his hat onto his head and breaks into a run.

I'm not sure I can trust his friends, or if I can trust him, even, but I don't have much of a choice.

I sprint after him and pray for the best.

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All votes and comments well appreciated!

For critiques: Any grammatical errors or slips in character related to vernacular? Thoughts on Connie?