The mektoub who loved flowers

---

The mektoub who loved flowers

It was with a broken and upset face that Eolinius opened his bag and examined all his equipment this morning. He checked the presence of his armor, the weapons available and his food rations, not to mention the many slices of gingerbread stacked in Slavenis leaves to keep them from drying out.

It was still full of bumps and bandages on his face after the marauder's attack on Fairhaven, his first battle with the Black Dragons against a wave of attack on the lakes. He had tasted the dust several times but he defended his honour with his friends and his guild. But that wasn't the thing that upset him the most. After all, for him it was only the exactions of idle individuals who fight because they have nothing else to do.

No, there were much more important things to him. What worried him the most was the strange attitude that Nair'Pom had had recently, and then his sudden disappearance from the Rangers despite Nair'Kyriann's protests. He would have liked to help her, but what could he do? All this didn't mean anything good to him. He had a rationalist mind, he didn't like unexplainable things.

He came out of Fairhaven with a decided step towards the nearest stable. He weighed his purse in bodoc leather, which this time contained a little more Dappers than usual. For several weeks he had been determined to do analyses for the water company, which allowed him to buy a mektoub that would be very useful for his distant explorations. When he arrived in front of the stable, he put his purse on the counter. The groom O'Cauty Eoppie looked at him with a puzzled eye.

- What's my good friend for?"

We were always O'Cauty Eoppie's friend when he saw a purse in front of him. Eolinius pointed the mektoubs in the back shop. O'Cauty Eoppie gave him the parchment where the prices of the different animals were indicated. Eolinus fades. He certainly had Dappers, but at that rate, it was an exaggeration. O'Cauty Eoppie looked at him with an upset look and shook his head.

- These Trykers are all the same. Maybe I should give them with an extra haystack too?.... I have mouths to feed... And the taxes, did you see them?... taxes?... And the competitors of the other stables who only think of sinking me !

Eolinius was starting to have a headache. O'Cauty Eoppie then leaned towards him and looked around the counter to see if others could hear. He addressed him in a low voice with a complicit look.

- I may have something for you. I have a young mektoub here who is not yet fully trained. He may be a little gruff, but I'll leave him with you for half price.

Eolinius felt the scam, but the groom insisted.

- It comes to me from a travelling merchant Fyros whose female mektoub gave birth here. This one was in a hurry like an izam carrying a letter. As he had not been able to sell all his goods and pay his bill, he left me the young mektoub as a pledge. He left in a hurry because he wanted to marry his goddaughter in the desert. A real crazy story, hihihihi. She met a Zorai who was meditating in the desert on the turpitudes of life. Chased out of his family because of a dark history of debt with his cousin who was in trouble with local authorities, he was wandering on the dunes of Oflovac when a torbak attacked a caravan of mektoubs passing through there....

(15 minutes later)

- ... and his great aunt who was in pain had gone to a Matis rebutter in Yrkanis for treatment. Real charlatans, these are real charlatans. On her way back to her nephews' house, she wanted to catch a jar of capryni butter cream on the shelves and then...

Eolinius could no longer stand on the counter.

- Stop, it's okay. y take it, says resigned Eolinius.

In less time than necessary to say it, Eolinius found himself with his empty purse and a rope in his hands at the end of which was a strange mektoub, with his eyes globular and without expression staring at him. It was called by the sweet name of Tapioca.

For his first outing with Tapioca, Eolinius chose to stay close to the entrance of the city. He tried to make it work by pulling it at the end of its rope, but Tapioca was reluctant to move forward and Eolinius had to buy a haystack from O'Cauty Eoppie who rubbed his hands. After a while and with patience, Eolinius managed to get him to walk around the stable. But the Mektoub was stubborn and always shot right and left to sniff what was around to him.

At its second exit, Eolinius decided to build it. To his great surprise, Tapioca did not offer too much resistance. However, the step and the seat were not well secured and Eolinius was pitching on his saddle. But hey, maybe he was the descendant of corsairs and that's not what was going to make him seasick. Eolinius wanted to push the walk a little further and as he passed in front of the hill at the exit of FairHaven, the mektoub suddenly slanted to his right to sniff into the thickets again. Surprised by this sudden movement, Eolinus was disconcerted and found his head in the sand of shells, which ended in a tide of insults directed against O'Cauty Eoppie. He had no idea at the time that some time later, Tapioca might save his life....

Over time Eolinius finally domesticated Tapioca, but he was still sometimes quite devious, especially when the mektoub saw homina with flowers in his hair. He always wanted to sniff his hair, which sometimes caused delicate situations.

On a beautiful day, Eolinius packed his bag and decided to make an expedition by taking Tapioca to the dark moors. He didn't know why, but this place always had a spectacular effect on him. In fact, he liked these strange and sorry landscapes that others would have said were unhealthy but that he found romantic. He liked to sit on the large roots overlooking the green and brackish waters, study or reread his notes he had taken on his excursions, or write his personal letter. We didn't really know what was going on in Eolinius' head. Sometimes he would lie on the giant root, looking up at the sky and daydreaming.

After a rather long journey and with a step sometimes still not very secure, the duo finally arrived near the moors. There were several ways to get there. Eolinius did not take the fastest but the safest to protect Tapioca from the claws of the cloppers that abounded in the region. The rays of the luminous star were beginning to fade slightly and gave a beautiful contrasting light to the high roots on which the two companions were engaging. Eolinius descended from his mektoub and advanced to the central root, contemplating the landscape and swamps below. The grazing light gave a beautiful emerald green colour to the body of water below and gave an even more unreal impression.

That's when he first saw her. Its slender silhouette contrasted with the desolate landscape. She was there, insolent, admirable, proud and almost arrogant. A beautiful solitary flower stood in the middle of the great root. It was not very high but its colours were bright. Eolinius had never seen anything like it before. These petals seemed soft as velvet, its leaves were tapered and light as satin. It was obvious that she had pushed there by accident. A seed from nowhere had germinated in this hostile place and it seemed even more fabulous compared to the coldness of the place.

Eolinius immediately told himself that he would not return without her, he had to bring her back at all costs. It will be the most beautiful specimen of his herbarium that he had decided to build for the needs of science. Well, that's the excuse he gave himself. Maybe he had another idea in mind, such as offering one of the stems to a homina he had met. But we've already said that we don't know everything that's going on in his Tryker head.

He examined her for long minutes and looked at how he could easily take her. The flower was not ultimately so easily accessible. She had pushed on the outer edge of the root, a little below in a crevice full of foam. Eolinius approached and stretched out his arm to grasp her, but his fingers could barely touch her. He leaned a little more, grabbing as he could with his other hand on the roughness of the great root. He did not realize then that by the end of the day, the rays of light heating the stump had now almost disappeared, and the humidity of the place and the marshes below now filled the atmosphere, suddenly making his grip more and more slippery.

He felt himself going forward and mechanically grabbed the flower to grasp it, but it offered little resistance and uprooted itself almost immediately. With the stem of the flower in one hand, the other trying to cling to a slippery surface, he only had his salvation to his left foot, which was slightly caught in a piece of vine that would not last very long. Eolinius thus remained suspended above the void, his arms dangling, no longer daring to move for fear of slipping further. He now saw below the green marshes and pink fumaroles coming out of the goo springs. Was he going to end up like this? Crashing miserably into a toxic deposit? He thought of his friends in the Black Dragon Guild, Kyriann, Jazzy and Mohe, who were far away from him now. He also thought about his parents to whom he had promised to continue their scientific work. He had recently strayed into down-to-earth considerations and promised himself, if he could get out of this bad situation, to reconsider his priorities. These few seconds seemed to last an eternity.

At that moment he heard something moving behind him. Tapioca, who had stayed a little further away and surprisingly quiet until now, was coming back.

"It's time for him to start gambling again anywhere," Eolinius thought.

Suddenly he felt pressure on his left leg and felt suddenly lifted. The mektoub grabbed him by encircling Eolinius' leg with his trunk and raised him above him. We then saw a small Tryker hanging in the air and swinging, held at the end of a trunk of a large mektoub. He gently placed it on the root. Eolinius, still out of breath because he had just lived, still held the coveted flower in his hand above him. Amazed, he looked at Tapioca without saying anything or understanding, then ended up stuttering:

"Well then sul! y don't know how y can thank sul"

Without delay, the mektoub quickly grabbed the flower held by Eolinius with his agile trunk and immediately swallowed it in his mouth. Eolinius looked even more stunned at his empty hand, then Tapioca, and did not know whether he should laugh or cry about it. The small, black, globular, expressionless eyes of the big mektoub stared at him. Eolinius finally threw himself at Tapioca's neck laughing. Then Tapioca issued a triumphant "trrrompffe".

The two companions quietly returned to Fairhaven like two thieves at the fair, Eolinius singing and Tapioca wandering.