Ghost Lion Crag And the rain

The particular story that he had brought up was one that had frequently vexed him. Smokestep had imagined that his life had been fairly fortunate for him not to have found himself placed between two evils and forced to pick. He was a master at weighing the odds, but a quick-to-action fellow who liked to leap before he looked. Oftentimes, it was this that ended him in trouble. It did not meant that he didn't think about his odds of success, only that he preferred not to be told whether or not it was likely he would fail. In this, the story of Charybdis and Scylla brought about a new form of irrational fear; if he were faced with such a task – a rock and a hard place – could he have made the correct choice to save himself? It wasn't likely, and he wondered if Wraen had better judgment over things of that nature. She seemed a level-headed woman. He was pleased that she was fond of stories, and she had encouraged him to share this one – though she knew the takeaway without even a second thought.

“Let's see if'n I can tell it like me dad does,” he began with a thoughtful expression. “Long ago there were two great immortal creatures positioned on either side o' the great blue channel. One called Charybdis, and the other called Scylla. These two beauts were the peril o' all sailors that crossed 'em, y'see? The two sides o' the strait was too close to each other. Ye try to avoid Scylla and ye'd pass right over Charybdis. Those who tried to pass Charybdis would sail too close to Scylla an' would die by 'er gnashin' teeth. It's said that only one had passed through their terror, an' by a bleedin' accident, mind ye, but still pass through he did. Name was Odysseus er summin' o' the sort. His story is the real story, I s'pose, but I still can't wrap me head 'round it; how could ye move through if ye knew ye were doomed either way?” Smokestep had lost track of his tale, but he was never a story teller to begin with. There was something in the underlying moral of the story that bothered him in his core.