Sethos

A new face appeared in town, though none can recall when he first showed up. The young man from the desert would show up at any occasion he was inclined to attend with a bearing so confident and natural that many only realized quite some time later that the person they had spoken with earlier was, in fact, a newcomer. After much asking around, they finally found out his name: Sethos. "So, where did you meet again? He's an old friend of yours, right?" People would ask each other such questions, before discovering to their surprise that none of them had known him for long. Like a grain of sand blown over the high city walls by some wild desert wind, Sethos blended into the crowd with ease, speaking with them of homelands and travels. People warmed to him immediately, for his unforgettable green eyes and way with words led them to believe he would make a good friend indeed. As the sun set, their new friend would regale them with the tale of how he and a group of Eremites had led Sumpter Beasts away from a sandstorm, setting up camp by an oasis to pass the night; of the desert night's bitter cold, and the euphoria of daybreak that made it all worth enduring. In Sethos's telling, suffering is merely another kind of experience, and all experiences can become stories; and the fonder people grew of his stories, the more they looked forward to seeing him. But one time, when his audience had collapsed on the tables in a drunken stupor, the still-sober Sethos was left sitting there spinning his cup. This is what he said: "All of you are always saying I seem too ordinary in my stories. So how about this for a change... In this one, I am the protagonist, and with me I carry a golden key, which I may use at any moment to open a long-lost treasure trove and lead the people to a place of great mystery. There's no way you'd actually prefer a story like that, right?" "If you ask me, that kind of story is just boring. Stories of extraordinary things happening to ordinary people... those are the ones worth telling! Besides, even if mysterious, special individuals like that did exist, they wouldn't be as young as you." The tavern's owner just couldn't stop himself from interjecting. "Exactly," replied Sethos, who for some reason looked particularly happy.