Quinn sat against a towering oak enjoying a plum while his son, Keiran, played in the grass nearby. It was a cool autumn day and Keiran had finally managed to guilt the librarian into the day outside the city walls of Westcrown. Keiran was busy looking for that perfect rock to lay his shirt and shoes on. It was the juiciest plum Quinn had ever eaten. The river was the clearest blue it had ever been. Keiran was the happiest he would ever be.
“...so do you know what this rash is or what?”
Quinn was pulled back to the present. His hands aged forty years in an instance and the riverbank vanished -- replaced with a dimly lit, musky cabin.
“Hmm? Oh. It’s poison oak,” Quinn set a small jar of salve in front of the young halfling. “Stop shitting in the bushes and put this on it twice a day.” The aged half-elf waited for the halfling to grab the jar, “And pull you breeches up, Harley.”
After the Halfling was gone, Felix crawled out from under the table and rubbed against his master’s leg. When the plump skunk looked up, Quinn could feel the itching in the back of his mind “He’s going to keep getting poison oak until someone finally kills him.”
Tonuxuasohr loved to tempt him. Being a devil, it tended to come naturally to her. She was always doing that. Trying to sway him to do awful things. A few times he has come close to giving in. Only once has he actually done what she wanted. Quinn sighed and took a seat in the chair by the fire, “Gods dammit, Felix! Stop spraying on my chair.” The wizard jumped from his seat and began rummaging through a trunk. He was shoulder-deep in the trunk one moment and back on the riverbank scanning the water for Keiran the next. The roughspun fabric of his sleeve scratched his face as he wiped away the tear.
“Would you cut that out?” Tonuxuasohr whispered in the back of his mind, “If you keep torturing yourself like that and I won't have anything to do when you die.”
Quinn had not always had such a slippery mind. Sure, his wife-- exwife used to call him her “Handsome Daydreamer” but, soo after leaving Westcrown and settling in Phaendar, some thirty years ago, the villagers had taken to calling him “Absent Quinn.”
With a fresh smelling powder sprinkled on his chair, Quinn sat down again with a fresh plum and a tome that had just arrived from Cheliax. Felix stood on his hind-legs and begged to be lifted up. Quinn knew that the skunk would always be truly loyal to Tonuxuasohr but, Felix had been his companion for four decades now.
“C’mon you little bag of piss,” he scooped up his familiar and smiled as Felix nestled in the spot between Quinn’s thigh and the chair. He took a large bite from the plum and set the rest in his lap for Felix before cracking open his new copy of “Devils and Contracts: A Former Cleric of Asmodeus’ Professional Account.”
