Episode 1: A Journey Begins

* * *

Rikkard opened one eye experimentally.

"Oh, so you're awake! Finally!" the impish voice spoke impatiently. "I thought you might sleep through the next hundred years!"

"What happened?" Rikkard open the other eye and looked around at what appeared to be a low, dirt-walled room. Low shelves with various pots and bottles with strange-looking contents sat beside a miniature rocking chair. A fire burned in a small fireplace, and something with a distinctly spicy smell wafted by him, probably from the simmering pot on the fire that the little woman tended. She turned on him, pointing her dripping wooden spoon at him.

"You, buckeroo, you died."

"Died?"

"Yup. Finito. Perished. Shuffled off your mortal coil. Kicked the bucket..." She continued to sing out other colourful expressions, some of them in languages that Rikkard didn't recognize, each expression punctuated by a wave of her spoon.

"But, what happened? How did I come to be here?"

"I caught you! Just in time, too." She walked over to him, hands on hips, waving her spoon at him. "Didn't your mother ever tell you not to play with trolls? They tend to be dangerous, and can never remember all the rules..." The little woman went back to tending her stew.

"You saved me! Thank you! Of course, I was just about to go back to the town, and --"

The woman whirled around so fast that droplets of hot soup rained across his face, stinging slightly. "To town! No, no, my boy, no town. Let me try to put this simply to you:" -- she leaned close to his face, and he could see that her head was smaller than the palm of his hand -- "you. was. DEAD!" She rapped him across the forehead with the spoon. Stunned, Rikkard could not answer.

The woman hummed slightly to herself. "And now, you have to repay me; that is, if there is any honour left to that family of yours..."

"HEY!" Rikkard stood up quickly and winced when he rapped his head on the far-too-low ceiling. "Ow! Look, I'll have you know that my family --" But she cut him off with a wave of her spoon.

"I know, I know, grand quest for generations and all that... That's why you were running away, wasn't it?" She emphasized her point with a jab of her spoon. "Hmm? Here, hold this." She handed him what to here was sword-size, but to him was a knife. He drew a breath when he recognized the skill and worksmanship in its manufacture: it matched the exotic sword that that old master had given him.

"I thank you for your gift, little one," he replied. With a smirk, she hit him on the head with the spoon.

"It's not for you, fancypants, it's for your leader."

"Huh?"

She turned to him and huffed, as if she were explaining something to a child. "You are to present that knife to a woman named Serafina, and declare your allegience to her quest."

She waved away any questions with her spoon, and then rushed him out her tiny door back into the forest. "No questions! Why does your kind always ask so many questions?" She slammed her tiny door behind her.

Exasperated, Rikkard yelled at the house. "And where am I supposed to FIND this `Seraphina', anyway?"

The door opened, and Rikkard's pack when sailing out it, narrowly missing his head. "You will find her under wood!" came the reply, and the door slammed again.

Rikkard angrily grabbed his pack and stalked away, trying to get his bearings. Looking around at all the trees, he yelled out in frustration: "Under wood? It's all under wood out here!"

Annoyed, shaken and tired, Rikkard slumped up against a nearby tree. Soon, he drifted off to sleep.

* * *