Chapter 2 — Quest Marker
And thus begins Chapter Two.
Now, children.
University.
The council pauses.
Manipal?
No.
Earlier.
Much earlier.
Because remember
Manipal was my third college.
The council slowly turns.
Third?
Children.
We have established that I did not view higher education the same way most humans did.
Most people looked at college and saw:
Education.
Qualifications.
Career.
Opportunity.
I looked at college and saw:
Three year premium subscription to partying.
The council sighs.
Different curriculum.
And before Manipal
there was ICAT.
The council pauses.
ICAT?
Yes.
Odd name.
Horrible college.
The council leans forward.
Was it actually horrible?
Children.
I wouldn’t know.
I stopped attending after approximately week one.
The council collapses.
A reliable review.
Exactly.
Five stars for having a campus, probably.
Everything after that remains outside my jurisdiction.
Now.
I stayed in a hostel.
The council nods.
Ah.
One of those travel hostels?
No.
Normal university hostel?
Also no.
Children.
“Hostel” is doing generous linguistic work here.
This was more
a living arrangement.
Some guy owned a house.
He looked at the property.
Looked at beds.
Then apparently thought:
What if I put several of these inside
and charge students money?
The council considers.
Entrepreneurship.
Questionable entrepreneurship.
But yes.
So there we were.
Students.
Maybe other questionable gentlemen.
Beds.
Walls.
A roof.
The minimum requirements for civilization technically satisfied.
The council nods.
And I lived there.
One bed belonged to me.
And beside it
Nyx.
The council turns.
Children.
Meet Nyx.
Older roommate.
Interesting creature.
And very quickly,
I discovered we had something in common.
He too looked at college
and saw a subscription service.
The council freezes.
No.
Yes.
And this
was his third college.
The council goes silent.
Children.
Present Nuo sees the parallels now
and finds them slightly haunting.
Two people.
Both treating academia as a social venue with occasional administrative interruptions.
Both far more committed to partying than lectures.
The council slowly writes:
THIS FRIENDSHIP MAY HAVE BEEN INEVITABLE.
At the time?
I did not think any of that.
Nyx was simply
the older roommate.
The one with stories.
Cool stories.
Stories from previous colleges.
Different people.
Different parties.
Different disasters.
The sort of stories that make younger idiots listen very carefully.
The council nods.
And across those stories,
one thing appeared repeatedly.
Weed.
The council looks toward the quest board.
There it is.
Children.
At this point in chronology,
weed was not normal to me.
Important distinction.
Cigarettes?
Professional.
The council sighs.
Alcohol?
Also experienced.
Perhaps excessively.
But drugs beyond that?
Absolute novice.
Nothing.
No weed.
No acid.
No mushrooms.
No mysterious pills.
No psychedelic mythology.
Children.
This was Pre Drugs Nuo.
The council looks shocked.
Such a creature existed?
Briefly.
And Nyx kept talking about weed.
Not necessarily preaching.
Not trying to recruit me into some sacred herbal order.
Just telling stories.
And the more he mentioned it,
the more one particular defect in my personality activated.
Curiosity.
The council groans knowingly.
Ah.
The primordial engine.
Exactly.
Bottle caps had once done it.
Roads would do it later.
But now?
Weed.
I wanted to know.
What does it feel like?
Why does everyone talk about it?
Why does Nyx keep mentioning it?
What is the big deal?
Children.
Curiosity is dangerous when attached to a persistent idiot.
So eventually,
I asked.
“Can I try?”
The council waits.
Nyx:
No.
The council pauses.
Oh.
Simple.
Very.
I asked again later.
“No.”
Again.
“No.”
Another time.
Still no.
The council begins counting.
Children.
Nyx resisted.
Repeatedly.
Which honestly made the whole thing worse.
Because if he had simply said yes immediately,
perhaps curiosity would have remained ordinary.
But denial?
Denial creates mythology.
The council nods.
Suddenly this was not merely weed.
This was:
The Thing Nyx Will Not Let Me Try.
And therefore
I wanted it more.
The council sighs.
You could have respected his answer.
Children.
Have you met me?
I am a persistent creature.
Not always an admirable trait.
But a reliable one.
I asked.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Until eventually
Nyx reached the limit of mortal resistance.
The council leans forward.
He relented.
Children.
Victory.
Or
as Present Nuo might classify it
the exact moment patience lost a war of attrition against stupidity.
Nyx finally said yes.
But with a condition.
Not here.
The council pauses.
Not here?
No.
He said:
We shall go to my hometown.
And there
I will show you weed.
The council becomes curious.
Now,
this confused me.
Because weed existed where we were.
I knew that.
Nyx knew that.
People could get it.
So naturally I asked:
“Why not just try this?”
Children.
Perfectly reasonable question.
And Nyx
laughed.
Not maliciously.
The knowing laugh of someone who believed I was proposing culinary sacrilege.
He said something along the lines of:
“Not this low grade swill.”
The council gasps.
Swill?
Apparently.
Children.
To Nyx,
local weed was unacceptable for ceremonial purposes.
My first time,
he explained,
was sacred.
The council goes quiet.
Sacred?
Yes.
Children.
This man had standards.
Not:
Here.
Smoke this behind the hostel.
No.
The first time needed proper material.
Good weed.
The kind from home.
The kind worthy of introducing a novice to whatever world he believed cannabis occupied.
The council nods solemnly.
Initiation protocol.
Exactly.
“Wait for the good shit.”
That was his position.
And I
young,
confident,
completely uneducated in the matter
responded with perhaps the most dangerous sentence available.
“How good can it be?”
The council goes silent.
Children.
Words I would regret.
Not because the answer was necessarily terrible.
But because sentences like that exist specifically so history can punish arrogance.
“How hard can it be?”
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
“How good can it be?”
The council writes them under:
DO NOT TEMPT NARRATIVE STRUCTURE.
But Story Nuo did not know he had just challenged the universe.
He thought he was asking a normal question.
Nyx probably smiled.
Perhaps said:
You’ll see.
Perhaps nothing.
The exact wording is gone.
But something had changed.
Children.
A destination now existed.
Not yet Kanyakumari in my mind as myth.
Just
Nyx’s hometown.
And inside that destination
weed.
The good shit.
The first time.
The council opens the quest log.
QUEST ACQUIRED:
TRY WEED.
LOCATION:
NYX’S HOMETOWN.
COMPANION:
NYX.
EXPERIENCE LEVEL:
ZERO.
CONFIDENCE LEVEL:
FAR TOO HIGH.
Children.
There.
The quest marker.
And notice how beautifully undignified the beginning is.
Not:
I longed to see the southern horizon.
Not:
I felt called toward Kanyakumari.
No pilgrimage.
No existential wound.
No university assignment.
No anniversary.
No bottle caps.
Just one younger idiot listening to his older roommate talk about weed until curiosity became unbearable.
The council nods.
This Wandering began before I knew I was a wanderer.
Before substances became familiar.
Before so many later stories acquired their own rituals and language.
At this point,
I was simply a guy who smoked cigarettes,
drank alcohol,
rarely attended class,
and had become extremely curious about one plant.
The council smiles.
Foundational indeed.
But we are not getting ahead of ourselves.
Archive law.
No prophecy.
No importing meaning before Story Nuo earns it.
For him,
this was uncomplicated.
Nyx had something I had never tried.
I wanted to try it.
Nyx refused.
I annoyed him until he stopped refusing.
Then he made one promise:
Not the cheap stuff.
We go home.
We do it properly.
The council nods.
And somewhere in that sentence
Kanyakumari entered my life.
Not as a destination yet.
As the answer to a question.
Where is the good weed?
The council laughs.
A tourism campaign would perhaps phrase it differently.
Probably wise.
But this is my Archive.
And the Archive does not clean the motivations.
It records them.
Children.
The Tenth Wandering had its quest.
Simple.
Specific.
Completely unserious.
And yet
important enough that years later,
one forgotten bone tag would bring the entire era back with it.
The council looks toward the next page.
For now,
however,
Nyx has said yes.
The journey is no longer hypothetical.
Somewhere ahead
his hometown.
And somewhere there
the thing University Nuo had been pestering him to try.
The council nods.
The first quest marker had appeared.
Not mushrooms.
Not LSD.
Not healing.
Not relics.
Weed.
Children.
A modest beginning.
Potentially.
Thus concludes Chapter Two.
ICAT.
The Week One Academic Retirement.
The Questionable Hostel.
Nyx.
Pre Drugs Nuo.
The War Of Persistence.
And The First Quest Marker.
Children.
Nyx said:
“Wait for the good shit.”
I said:
“How good can it be?”
The council sighs.
And with those words,
Kanyakumari entered the Archive.
