Untitiled - 290816

Chapter 3

"What are you fighting for?"
"What's that?  Did you say something?"
"What.  Are.  You.  Fighting for?"  he rasped, his hoarse voice like the ferocious teeth of 10,000 saws shredding across the metallic trunks of the world's oldest petrified forest, each word crunched by as he tapped his pen on the coffee table like a stoned drummer entranced in the world's longest solo; each beat was a slow echo booming in the silence.

Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap...tap...tap.

The sounds stowed me away into a grandfather clock of the Titans, ticking away useless seconds pointlessly into eternity, and I stood there, looking at myself from outside of my body, shrinking into an ant's oblivion, drifting away into the gears of time, forgotten and lost in my own thoughts.

'What am I fighting for?  Could this furry fluffball of a man, in fact, be my master? Must I triumph at each and every one of his noble quests in order to be in his graces of glory?  Is the fuzzy, naked one my shaolin grandmaster?'  OK, I'll bite.

I turned to him, and as bravely as I could muster, I squeaked, "The Truth."  The Fuzzy One turned his head ever so slightly, and gave me the side eye.  In doing so, he appeared to have solved the elusive riddle of life, arriving at the solution to eradicating all trace of systemic racism, with hairy hide firm and intact, and I saw his peachy ears perk up as he just sat there, motionless to the discerning eye.  Not an inch of him moved.  Counting each grain of sand that existed between desert and shoreline would have been time better spent.  After the last granule of silence plummeted due to gravity's seduction, Furry focused all of his heart's intent, his burning gaze burrowed into my brain.

With serenity's breath, as gently as a giant could, he whispered, "Find The Truth, and bring it here."