In a time that hardly matters and a place almost nobody has ever seen, there lived the girl named Lura and the boy named Owen. Their ages weren’t very important, but Lura was older than Owen and Owen was taller than Lura. They had a trusty steed named Rhian and a less-than-trusty Thing named Sebastian. Nobody asks Rhian her age; otherwise, she might think you thought her old looking and slow (she was neither) and begin to fret (mostly about looking old). As for Sebastian, as a Thing he probably didn’t have an age, but he did have quite a few sharp teeth to keep people from general inquisitiveness.
All the stories in here are stories of adventure, and they are all true except for the parts Lura and Owen forgot and had to make up again. These are stories of adventure because Lura and Owen were adventure-chasers and went out a-hunting adventures as a regular practice. They nearly always caught one, for Rhian was swift of foot and Owen had a very large sword.
The chasing part was especially important, for adventures didn’t just drop down on their doorsteps. Lura and Owen lived in the valley called Manaqua, where adventures were never invited (unless they involved laundry or dishes or the occasional renegade house-spider). Thus, when our hero and heroine found that they had a swift steed and a sharp steed but no adventures to be found in Manaqua, they ventured beyond the valley’s borders in search of excitement (after asking their mother, of course).
When Owen and Lura chased adventures, they sat astride on Rhian’s bare back with Sebastian perched at the base of the steed’s proud neck. Lura always rode in front. Owen had protested this at first, but then Lura pointed out that she was shorter, and if she sat in the back, she couldn’t see to guide Rhian while Owen wielded the sword in the event of danger. The thought of fighting off giants and dragons with the great sword made Owen quite happy, even though he had to fight from the backseat.
There were no universally fixed rules for adventure chasing, so when Owen and Lura picked up the hobby they had very little idea of how to go about it. Indeed, when their mother first shooed them outside for adventuring, they couldn’t think of what to do. An hour later found them in their back pasture, snuggling against Rhian’s warm flank and wondering how to begin.
“We can’t catch an adventure if we don’t begin chasing, and we’ll never begin if we don’t do something,” Lura said finally. “Why don’t we take Rhian for a bit of a ride about Manaqua?”
“I don’t see how riding about Manaqua will help. I thought the whole point of adventure-chasing was because there are no adventures here,” Owen protested, but he clambered onto Rhian’s back behind his sister all the same. Once seated, he eyed Sebastian distrustfully. “Must we bring him along?”
“Mum said so,” Laura answered, looking at the malevolently grinning creature a bit nervously herself. “I think she thinks he’s good protection.”
“Protection. Ha! I think this Thing’d eat us sooner than dragons or ogres,” Owen laughed as if making a joke, but he didn’t seem very amused all the same.
“Hush! You’ll only make him angry,” Lura said, and nudged Rhian into a walk.
They went on at a lazy pace, although Rhian was not at all tired. Had they spotted an adventure, she would have sprung away after it like lightning, but nothing that resembled an adventure crossed their path. The fact that they’d no idea what an adventure looked like made the whole matter harder still.
Once Owen heard a giant in the bush, and they stopped so he could draw his sword and challenge it, but just as he got the weapon out (he hadn’t quite got used to the sheath) the giant turned into a rabbit and hopped across the road. Sebastian would have happily chased it (rabbits were one of his favorite meals), but Lura snatched him by the scruff of his neck just before he could dive from his perch. Owen still had the sword out, and he waved it ’round threateningly until the disgruntled Thing stopped trying to bite off Lura’s fingers and settled back down in his place on Rhian’s neck, sulking bitterly and snapping his polished teeth at the flies that buzzed too close.
