Dear travelers,
There is a curious thing about stories … Sometimes they do not change because a new chapter adds an answer. Sometimes they change because a new chapter asks the same question a second time. And yes, you may focus on the collar. Or you may be more interested in the tavern … Some follow the songs. Some follow the huntress.
Yet there is a challenge I would offer you:
- Read “On the Road Again” once more.
- After this, read “Morning Dew“,
and then return to
- “The Mentor“
- “The Task“.
And after that, return to “A Lake in the Forest” ….
Ask yourself a simple question:
What exactly made Fian angry in the tavern? Was it the collar? Was it the boar? Was it the insult? Or was it something else entirely?
The strange thing is that hindsight changes the scene. For after “The Task”, we learn something important:
Fian is capable of reasoning. Fian is capable of judging danger. Fian is capable of making decisions. But he simply does not understand the rules behind. In fact, when Fresco asks what he thinks, this stubborn bard immediately presents a surprisingly coherent assessment of a situation and interpretation of relations.
And that raises another question:
If Fian is not afraid of being owned, why does the collar in the tavern make him so furious? Read carefully.
The boar does not merely insult him. The boar renames him. The boar takes a bard, a
traveler, a free spirit … and turns him into somebody’s pet. Suddenly the rage may no longer be about a collar at all. It may be about identity. And perhaps that is why the scene becomes sadder when read a second time.
Because later, Fian willingly says: “I belong to her.” Yet, in the tavern, he explodes the moment someone else says it for him.
The difference is small. And enormous at the same time:
One is choice. The other is definition. And perhaps that was what truly broke his composure that day.
Have fun with reading,
Gunnar
