Ladder

Somewhere, far from the Exiled Lands, a scholar sits writing frantically. His master has given him the task of writing hundreds of descriptions of mundane items, from swords and armor, to plant fiber and stones. He glances at the next item on his list. Ladder. He stops, sets his quill down and looks at his reflection in a nearby mirror. He is a man grown old before his time, a slave in all but name to his masters. \'What am I doing\', he wonders. His life is a series of decisions that he almost didn\'t recognize that he was making. As his thoughts spiral into the past and as he traces that inevitable trajectory backwards he realizes that there was no single point, no decision that brought him to this point. It was an accumulation of decisions across his entire lifespan, building around him like sand in the desert that leaves him living a life of quiet desperation, drowning slowly as the quicksand fills his throat. As the realization hits him, he feels a vast sadness, an aching in his soul that he could have been so much more than simply this. A single, crystalline tear seeps from his eye and drips down onto the parchment he is working on, blurring the ink. Resolving to make more of this life, the man stands, pushing aside his parchment, and moving to the door. Which bursts open and, before the surprised scribe can even gasp, he is run through by a wild-eyed thief who has crept into the mansion in search of valuables. The thief wipes his knife on the dead scholar\'s clothing, and glances around the room. His gaze wanders across the parchment on the table, filled with a list of items and descriptions written in the neat hand of the deceased scholar. He grins, and reaches for the quill. Later, when the guards find the dead scholar, lying facefirst in a mingled pool of blood and ink, they will be briefly distracted by the bizarre message scratched into the parchment beside the word ladder. It simply reads: \"Something you climb, idiot\". The guards shrug. Nobody really cares about the text anyway.