Chapter 12 — Home
And thus begins Chapter Twelve.
The final chapter.
Now, children.
We remained before the king a little longer.
No rush.
No timer.
No faculty.
No itinerary glaring at us from a clipboard.
We had wanted lion.
We had found lion.
And once the Philosophy Meter had been sufficiently filled,
once Mufasa had been cited as a legitimate academic source,
once Bro had called me cute
and the constitutional structure of lion society had been thoroughly misunderstood
we moved.
The council opens the quest log.
NEXT OBJECTIVE?
None.
Silence.
No sudden animal entered the conversation.
No:
Lion reminds me of elephant.
No:
Elephant reminds me of rhino.
No new pilgrimage.
For the first time in a while
nothing.
So we walked.
Aimless.
One path became another.
Animals existed around us.
People passed.
Trees.
Enclosures.
Zoo.
And Bro beside me.
No destination.
No quest marker.
Just
walking.
The council smiles.
Wandering.
And then Bro said it.
“I like wandering with you.
It’s fun.”
Pause.
Children.
The word landed.
Wandering.
The council slowly turns toward Nuo.
I stopped internally.
Maybe physically too.
I don’t remember.
But inside my head
click.
Oh shit.
This is a Wandering.
The council erupts.
WANDERING FOURTEEN DETECTED.
Children.
I had not come here looking for one.
That mattered.
There had been no plan to manufacture an entry for the Archive.
No:
I haven’t written a new Wandering recently, perhaps I should go generate content.
No.
I had been in my room.
Thought:
Zoo.
Rolled joint.
Smoked joint.
Bus.
Ticket.
Animals.
That was it.
And somewhere between the aquarium,
Bro,
the great snake pilgrimage,
reptile politics,
White Tiger Pro Max,
and Mufasa Studies
the shape had appeared without me noticing.
Until Bro gave it a name.
Wandering.
And I thought:
Oh.
Yes.
This is one.
The council nods.
And children
I was pleased.
Very pleased.
For two reasons.
One:
I like wandering.
Simple.
This should be obvious by Wandering Fourteen.
And two
content.
The council groans.
Children.
I love writing these.
I love returning to the memory.
Pulling apart the little moments.
Finding the jokes.
The people.
The strange turns.
The thing that felt ordinary while happening
and somehow became an era once remembered.
So when life casually hands me another Wandering?
Excellent.
I am a simple man.
Experience good.
Writing experience later also good.
Two joys.
The council approves the efficiency.
Then
second realization.
The smile disappeared slightly.
Children.
Relic.
The council looks toward the bracelet.
Ah.
Yes.
This was not a prequel.
Important.
With the old Wanderings,
the tags often existed before I understood what they were.
A pendant bought because:
cool.
A necklace won from Hex because:
haha mine.
A tag floating in a wave pool because Crow Protocol demanded acquisition.
The meaning came later.
But this?
Present day system.
The Archive existed.
The bracelet existed.
The relic tradition existed.
And a Wandering
needed its tag.
The council opens a new quest.
OBJECTIVE:
Acquire relic.
LOCATION:
Zoo.
PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS:
Concerning.
Because children,
think about where these bone tags usually appear.
Beach stalls?
Excellent hunting ground.
Tourist markets?
Very promising.
North India?
Every fucking where.
Walk three metres,
blink,
somebody will sell you an Om carved into bone.
The council nods.
But zoo?
Hmm.
A zoo gift shop might sell
stuffed tiger.
Plastic snake.
Animal keychain.
Magnet.
Postcard.
Maybe pencil with giraffe on top.
Bone tag?
Educated guess:
unlikely.
Still.
Hope.
A foolish substance.
Particularly powerful when desperation enters the chemistry.
I turned to Bro.
Explained.
Not everything.
Enough.
I told her I needed a relic.
Something physical from each Wandering.
Something that represented the place and the memory.
A piece I could keep.
The council nods.
Did you say “bone tag”?
No.
Important.
I explained what a relic meant.
Not the exact object I was hunting.
Because at that moment,
I wasn’t giving her a procurement specification.
I was explaining the ritual.
The memory.
The idea.
Then
quest.
Find gift shop.
Pray.
The council activates navigation.
And suddenly the zoo changed again.
Children.
Remember snake navigation?
Painfully slow.
Every enclosure required investigation.
Is snake?
Not snake?
Branch pretending to be snake?
Lion quest?
Faster.
Big cat recognition required minimal deduction.
But relic quest?
No animal mattered.
Monkey enclosure?
Not selling bone tags.
Bird habitat?
Probably no cashier.
Deer?
Unhelpful.
Elephant?
Magnificent perhaps,
but unless it had developed retail operations,
not our target.
The council nods.
We needed
architecture.
Civilisation.
Shop.
So we moved.
Fast.
Not running.
We had dignity.
Power walking.
Children.
Two stoned adults suddenly marching through a zoo with the urgency of people whose tour bus leaves in six minutes.
Enclosure.
Ignore.
Animal.
Ignore.
Interesting sound.
Not retail.
Continue.
Bro came with me.
Still no formal invitation required.
Of course.
She was Bro.
The temporary party remained active.
And eventually
gift shop.
The council hears heavenly music.
There.
Near the entrance.
Of course near the entrance.
Because apparently sensible zoo designers put shops where people enter and leave
instead of hiding them beside the crocodiles.
The council nods.
We approached.
I entered.
And
trinkets.
Silence.
Children.
Hope rose.
Little objects.
Souvenirs.
The natural habitat of the Crow.
My eyes scanned.
This.
That.
Necklaces?
Maybe.
Pendant?
Perhaps.
Bone?
Come on.
The council becomes invested despite itself.
I searched.
Nothing.
Search again.
Nothing.
Maybe tucked somewhere.
Maybe behind other jewellery.
Maybe one random tag had somehow migrated here through divine supply chain intervention.
Nothing.
So
shopkeeper.
Now language?
Not important enough to survive.
Communication happened.
I showed him my bracelet.
The council grows quiet.
The bracelet with its earlier tags.
The little collection of places already hanging from it.
I pointed.
Explained enough.
Looking for one of these.
Something like this.
Tag.
The shopkeeper looked.
Understood.
Perhaps checked.
Perhaps simply knew the inventory.
Then
the solemn verdict.
No.
The council lowers its head.
TAG:
UNDISCOVERED.
Children.
Quest failure.
Not catastrophic.
I knew the odds.
A zoo was never prime bone tag territory.
Maybe I could find one later elsewhere in Trivandrum.
Maybe the relic did not have to come from inside the zoo itself.
But still
slight disappointment.
Because it is nicer when the object arrives from the Wandering.
Not purchased from elsewhere because administration demanded closure.
I left the shop.
Bro waiting.
And she had seen something.
Children.
Remember.
I had never told her:
bone tag.
I had explained relic.
Memory.
Meaning.
But inside the shop,
I had shown the shopkeeper my bracelet.
And Bro
detective.
She saw.
The shape.
The material.
The kind of thing I was actually searching for.
The council watches her.
I walked back toward her.
Probably with the expression of:
Nope.
No relic.
Then Bro reached toward her neck.
Pause.
Took off her necklace.
And held it out to me.
Children.
Bone tag.
Silence.
The council rises.
A bone tag.
Not something vaguely similar.
Not:
here, use this keychain instead.
The actual thing.
The object category.
The relic form already woven through the Wanderings.
Hanging around the neck of the random woman I had met because I decided dessert should come before the main course.
My eyes widened.
I looked at the tag.
Then at Bro.
Then tag.
Bro smiled.
Gently.
And said:
“I went to Himachal recently.
I bought a ton of these.”
The council becomes very still.
Children.
I am not usually one to scream:
DESTINY.
We have seen enough coincidences in the Archive to know that humans are excellent at attaching cosmic significance after the fact.
But this?
Come on.
The council reluctantly admits dramatic timing.
It felt prophetic.
Destiny like.
Not proof of cosmic orchestration.
But absolutely the sort of thing that makes you look upward at the universe and say:
Really?
Because trace the path.
One tiny decision.
At the zoo entrance.
Sign says left.
Aquarium sits right.
I think:
Dessert first.
That’s all.
Had I gone left,
perhaps I never meet Bro.
Or perhaps I do later.
Who knows.
Alternate timelines remain unavailable.
But this timeline?
Right.
Aquarium.
Fish.
Mesmerized.
“Bro, you high too?”
“Uh huh.”
Fish philosophy.
Evolution.
Snakes.
Crocodiles.
Tortoise.
Dragon.
Snake house.
King Cobra.
Lion.
Cheetah or leopard.
White Tiger Pro Max.
Roar.
King.
Then
“I like wandering with you.”
Wandering.
Recognition.
Relic quest.
Gift shop.
Failure.
And then
Bro,
the person created by that first right turn,
happens to be wearing
the exact kind of object I needed.
The council exhales.
Children.
Cinema.
Absolute cinema.
And better
she had acquired it in Himachal.
A place already deeply entangled with the Archive through other Wanderings.
Again.
Not prophecy.
Not divine proof.
Just
delightfully ridiculous coincidence.
And I love delightfully ridiculous coincidence.
I accepted it.
Carefully.
Genuinely.
No:
Haha free necklace.
Not this time.
Children.
I knew what it meant immediately.
This one entered the system already understanding its job.
Not a trinket that would become a relic years later.
A relic
at acquisition.
The Fourteenth Wandering’s tag.
Trivandrum Zoo.
From Bro.
The council updates the Archive.
RELIC:
ACQUIRED.
SOURCE:
BRO.
ORIGIN OF BRO:
AQUARIUM.
ORIGIN OF AQUARIUM:
DESSERT FIRST.
CAUSE AND EFFECT CHAIN:
ABSURDLY SATISFYING.
Exactly.
I thanked her.
Genuinely.
Not the casual thanks you give when someone passes a lighter.
This mattered.
She understood that much now.
Maybe not fourteen Wanderings’ worth of lore.
Maybe not every road hanging from that bracelet.
But enough to know:
This object is important to him.
And she smiled.
That gentle little smile again.
No dramatic speech.
No:
May this relic guide your future travels.
Children.
She was Bro.
Thank fuck.
Just
gift.
Accepted.
And then I looked around.
We were near the entrance.
More precisely
the exit was there too.
The Wandering had naturally circled us back.
No map.
No plan.
No attempt to complete the entire zoo.
We had begun here.
Wandered somewhere into fish and reptiles and royalty.
And eventually emerged here again.
Relic in hand.
The council looks at the quest log.
Zoo?
Experienced.
Not completed.
Important distinction.
Relic?
Acquired.
Bro?
Still present.
Fun?
Maximum.
Anything else?
No.
We were satisfied.
Both of us.
And because there was no final quest marker,
no unfinished animal demanding pilgrimage,
no sudden urge to turn around
we chose to end it.
Simple.
Exit.
Children.
We stepped out of Trivandrum Zoo.
Civilisation again.
The same city.
The same roads.
Still barely ten minutes from home.
And suddenly the woman who had existed beside me for the entire afternoon
had reached the boundary of the story.
We stood there.
Looked at each other.
The council grows quiet.
No sadness exactly.
This had never been built to last.
No numbers exchanged.
No:
We should hang out next week.
No attempt to force permanence onto something that had been lovely precisely as it was.
Temporary friendship.
Expiry date reached.
And that was okay.
Children.
Not every person must become recurring cast.
Some people belong perfectly to one chapter.
They enter.
Walk beside you.
Make the day better.
Then leave.
No tragedy required.
I stepped forward.
Hug.
Not Stitch hug.
Not the tight embrace of years of friendship
and a university ending in three days.
But also
not stranger hug anymore.
We had gone well past strangers.
Somewhere in the middle.
Warm.
Real.
Enough.
Bro hugged back.
Same.
Then we separated.
“See ya around.”
She said.
Not:
goodbye forever.
Not:
I’ll never see you again.
See ya around.
Maybe we will.
Maybe we won’t.
Children.
The Archive has learned not to challenge the universe with declarations.
I answered:
“Travel safe.”
Which amused me later.
Because where was she going?
No idea.
Home perhaps.
Elsewhere.
Different bus.
Different part of Trivandrum.
Different city.
Children.
Government information remained successfully excluded until the very end.
We had spent hours together
and I knew almost nothing that could help locate her.
Name?
Bro.
Occupation?
Potentially anything.
Address?
Absolutely not.
Phone number?
Nope.
Academic qualifications?
Entirely theoretical.
But I knew
she likes fish.
She likes snakes.
She ps ps pses large predators.
White tigers apparently respond.
She thinks my Lion King scholarship is cute.
She carries joints inside cigarette boxes.
She had recently been to Himachal.
She buys bone tags in bulk.
And when she understood that one of those tags mattered to a stranger she had spent an afternoon wandering with
she gave him one.
Children.
That was enough biography.
More than enough.
Bro went her way.
Nuo went his.
Party dissolved.
No dramatic music.
No looking back through rain.
Just
done.
The council marks:
TEMPORARY FRIENDSHIP:
COMPLETE.
And I walked toward the bus.
Ten minute pilgrimage home.
Perhaps twelve if traffic.
The sheer scale of adventure.
The council laughs.
Bus arrived.
I boarded.
Familiar roads.
Trivandrum passing outside.
The zoo shrinking behind me.
And in my possession
new tag.
One bus ride later
home.
Children.
No overnight train.
No Fast Travel.
No airport.
No hostel.
No luggage to unpack.
I had left my room
and returned to it within the same little slice of the day.
Mom asked:
“How was the zoo?”
Pause.
There are answers I could have given.
I could have explained:
I think I saw approximately twenty percent of it.
I ignored most animals while searching for snakes.
I met a woman named Bro whose actual name remains unknown.
We debated crocodilian monarchy.
A tortoise survived the Jurassic era in our personal canon.
Komodo dragons may have lost fire breathing through evolution.
White Tiger Pro Max responded to ps ps ps.
I cited The Lion King as evidence of lion social hierarchy.
And the random stranger I met at the aquarium happened to possess the exact bone tag I needed once I realized the afternoon had become a Wandering.
The council imagines Mother’s face.
Instead
“It was good.”
Children.
Truth.
Entirely.
It was good.
Very good.
And here’s the thing.
I probably missed
what?
Eighty percent?
The council checks.
Unverified statistic.
Obviously.
But a lot.
Many enclosures passed us without serious inspection.
Entire sections perhaps.
Animals I could not name because my brain had labelled them:
NOT SNAKE.
Then:
NOT LION.
I did not optimize my ticket.
Did not extract maximum zoological value per rupee.
Did not complete the route.
Did not see everything.
And children
I would not change it.
Not one bit.
Because I had not gone there to complete a zoo.
I went there to enjoy one.
And I did.
The aquarium interested me.
So I went right.
Fish interested me.
So I stared.
Bro appeared.
So we talked.
Snakes sounded fun.
So we hunted snakes.
Reptiles distracted us.
So we let them.
Lion sounded fun.
So we hunted lion.
Tiger stopped us.
So we stopped.
Nothing interested us for a while.
So we wandered.
Then the Wandering itself revealed its name.
And when I needed a relic
the day somehow handed me one.
The council smiles.
There is no score at the exit.
No employee checks your ticket and says:
Sorry, sir.
You observed only seventeen percent of available fauna.
Visit invalid.
Children.
Fun is not completion percentage.
There is no right way to have it.
I had said that at the beginning.
Aquarium first.
Dessert first.
And by the end?
The day had proven the point far more thoroughly than I ever intended.
I did not follow the zoo.
I followed interest.
That was all.
And somehow
that became another Wandering.
The Fourteenth.
No state crossed.
No city left.
Ten minute bus ride.
A place I had passed for years.
An afternoon.
Children.
That counts.
Not because I need to loosen the definition until every grocery run becomes mythological.
The council nods approvingly.
Please don’t.
But because somewhere inside that ordinary afternoon,
I recognized the feeling.
The thing I had eventually learned to call wandering.
Attention untethered.
Curiosity choosing direction.
No need to see everything.
No need to go far.
Just
where do I want to go next?
Right.
Fish.
Snakes.
Lion.
There.
The council closes the final quest log.
TRIVANDRUM ZOO.
MAIN OBJECTIVE:
See zoo.
RESULT:
Some of zoo.
FISH:
Seen.
BRO:
Acquired.
SNAKES:
Found through biological navigation.
GIANT TORTOISE:
Mythologised.
KOMODO ISH DRAGON:
Fire breathing ancestry theorised.
WHITE TIGER PRO MAX:
Successfully ps ps psed.
LION:
Wawwwwwww.
WANDERING:
Recognized.
RELIC:
Gifted.
GOVERNMENT NAMES:
Successfully avoided.
SATISFACTION:
Complete.
Children.
Perfect score.
Not according to the zoo map.
According to me.
And mine was the only score that mattered.
The new bone tag would join the others.
Another little object hanging from the growing Archive.
Except this one carried something the older tags did not.
It had entered knowing.
The system already existed.
I already understood what I was doing.
And somehow,
I still did not have to force it.
The Wandering came first.
Recognition came later.
The relic arrived last.
As if the day had assembled itself in the correct order without consulting me.
The council looks at the tag.
Prophecy?
No.
Destiny?
I won’t claim it.
But destiny like?
Children.
Absolutely.
One tiny decision:
Aquarium first.
And from that
Bro.
From Bro
the word Wandering.
From the word
recognition.
From recognition
the need for a relic.
And from Bro again
the relic itself.
The council nods.
Sometimes coincidence writes with suspiciously neat handwriting.
I like that sentence.
Keep it.
Done.
And so ends
the Fourteenth Wandering of the Unbegun.
Trivandrum Zoo.
The Ten Minute Pilgrimage.
The Aquarium Before The Main Course.
The Fish Cinematic Universe.
Bro.
The Evolutionary Disaster That Eventually Produced Taxes.
The Snake Quest.
The Crocodile Trail.
The Ancient Armoured Tortoise.
The Fireless Dragon.
The Promised Land.
The King Cobra.
The Lion Quest.
The Mystery Spotted Cat.
White Tiger Pro Max.
Ps Ps Ps.
The Roar.
The King.
The Word
Wandering.
The Gift Shop.
The Failed Relic Hunt.
And the bone tag
already hanging around Bro’s neck.
Children.
We met because I walked right instead of left.
We parted at the same entrance hours later.
No numbers.
No government names.
No promises.
Just:
“See ya around.”
“Travel safe.”
A little hug.
Then separate roads.
Ten minutes later,
I was home.
Mom asked:
“How was the zoo?”
And I answered:
“It was good.”
Perhaps I missed eighty percent of it.
Didn’t matter.
I saw exactly as much as I wanted to see.
And honestly?
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
A good day.
A good Wandering.
Thus concludes Chapter Twelve.
And thus concludes
the Fourteenth Wandering of the Unbegun.
Trivandrum Zoo.
Children.
Sometimes the world does not need to be far away
to be somewhere you have never been.
