I can almost taste it now...

We shouldn't be here at all, if we'd known more about it before we started. But I suppose it's often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs; adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull. But that's not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually - their paths were laid that way.

But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn't. And if they had, we shouldn't know, because they'd have been forgotten. We only hear about those who just went on - and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. Like coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same - like my grandmother did all those years ago. But those aren't always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in. I wonder what sort of a tale I've fallen into? And if I had already, by mistake or my own volition, turned my back on adventure.