thoth
we spend all our time running for our lives, going nowhere

You’d think Thoth would have been used to this whole ren mastery fate-giving nonsense, but no. It was still annoying every time it happened.

This time it happened out of nowhere, when he was literally not doing anything except skimming through a book in the library. One minute he was stood in front of the bookshelf in a quieter section of the castle library, flipping swiftly through Aquatic Beasts and Where to Find Them: An Oceanographer’s Guide to Life in the Deep Trench, the next he was being pulled into this bizarre out-of-body experience. The library seemed to slip away and Thoth felt himself pulled upwards into space. He blinked, and suddenly he was floating in a star-studded void. A year or two ago this might have freaked him out, but this time Thoth simply groaned, folded his ghostly arms and squinted into the blackness, hoping the object would appear soon. Sure enough, the elusive ren shimmered into appearance before him, spinning slowly on its axis. The whole experience lasted a couple of seconds, and then he was back in the library.

Thoth blinked a couple of times to fully clear the weird vision, then glanced up and down the aisle. No one here. Dumping Aquatic Beasts back on the shelf, he headed for the end of the aisle and peeked round it, guessing that someone must have passed close to him from the other side of the shelf. Sure enough, a man was stood about half way down the aisle with his head in a book. Shoving his hands into his pockets, Thoth sloped down the aisle towards him.

“Hey,” he grunted. “Your ren is a fountain pen.” He half-turned to move away, before belatedly realising that he recognised the man. Sort of. “Do I know you?” He asked vaguely, blissfully unaware that he really ought to know him, given the number of times he’d run into him in the past.

The name didn’t help much, but after a second or two Thoth remembered his face.

“Oh hey,” he said, in the tone of one just remembering. “You’re the captain guy. Were the captain guy.” He scratched his chin. “Are you the captain again now that Gwythr’s sent the other captain back to her home planet? Unless she’s back now.” He glanced around, as though expecting Cal to pop up out of nowhere. “But I haven’t seen her since the ex-Alliance people got back and said Gwythr vanished her, so maybe not.”