No, I am the best friend ever.

Good Friend. Probably the best friend ever.

We burried Strongflower tonight. As prepared as she was to see the ocean, we weren't prepared the Ogre Tribe ambush. It turns out, after a short, heroic interrogation that their Medicine Woman was using my blood in a very unheroic manner. For he who uses any form of magic is unheroic by virtue... except when I need it. Bristlely wept openly. Normally, when someone cries I usually cover their face with my burly hand until they stop. I made an exception for my pointy, pointy friend. More of us would have been lost if not for my prowess in battle. They tried to distact me by pointing their clubbed fingers at my friends but after a manly roar they fled straight-away. Bristlely beat me to the pursuing (and occasional devouring of delicious Ogre thigh) task by sand-surfing to block their escape. He pounded them all until there was not a single edible piece left. Even the one I interrogated. I too cried that night, in hunger, mostly.

My noble friend Bristlely woke my the middle of the night. I was covered from eye-to-groin with cactus needles. He explained that I transformed into a furry monster with needle-like teeth and a fattened, elongated needle appendage emerging from by behind (Note: The Cacti are not a descriptive bunch). He also plead for his life. "Hmmm..." I wondered scrubbing the spiny bastards off my chin. "Perhaps it had something to do with those Wererats feasting my innards." Something about the look in eye-holes I drilled for Bristlely told he of his honestly. To be sure I tilted my head so I could stare into both of them. What? I'm a hero! Not an artist. Suddenly, tales from Moore the Clunky of desert Shamans who banished curses arose in my mind, they vanished as I realized I never listened to those tales. If a man lives by himself who is there to admire his pectorals? I left that up to the philosophers. Desires to scavenge for goat-cheese suddenly surged through me. Not good.

It has been a long time on the run. It appeared the entire country wanted my head hanging from a gibbet. Or, in some cases, at the end of their pointy pitchforks, dinner forks and forked tongues (Note-to-Self: anyone who disqualifies a lizard woman's advances more than once can expect them to advance into their stomach, kidneys and other precious innards.) I've been shamed into wearing disguises and hiding in ant-pits to thrwart off attacks from man and half-man, half-scorpion pursuers alike. I've learned the ways of the cacti and convinced several to join me on my quest of fleeing the country. Although they are slow and talk only of sand and sun, one of them, I call him Bristlely, spoke of his dream to see a large body of water called an ocean. So moved I was by this revelation that I pledged to aide him and his friends... as long as it was on my way out.

Gwendolin, for she spits everytime I ask for her true name, attacked me with a wooden stake tonight. Narrowly dodging her advances, I bound her and gave myself time to think. How could I, the hero, avoid succumbing this woman's obvious advances? The first day of her capture I tried carrying around her husband's head to repel her but for some bizzare reason that appeared to make her even angrier. Women are mystery. After much comtemplation, I decided it better to free her rather than prolong the enevitable romance. Alas, instead of flocking into my burly, chisled arms she swore a blood-oath that her unborn son would avenge his father. I nearly cried then, knowing I had brought another hero into the world.