While he pranced down one of the longest and most expertly decorated parts of Tark-Sho, Martin decided he was in a very happy mood. He hadn’t been this happy since breakfast. That morning, Martin had eaten a boiled egg, three rounds of toast, two sausages and a piece of bacon. It was divine. But that had been around about four hours ago, and he knew that not too far in the foreseeable future he would have to try and find somewhere else to eat.
    Martin was a wizard.
    Since graduating from the Men of Magic university in Tark two years ago, Martin travelled the length and breadth of all the known cities of the Great Kingdom, and was glad to find himself once again down the long winding streets of Tark-Sho, the Kingdom’s capital. 
    Though Martin thoroughly enjoyed his life, travelling the known world and seeing what it had to offer in terms of nibbles, the world seemed to have a bit of a problem with him. Wherever he went, he seemed to get himself wrapped up in dangerous sets of goings on, most of the time things that needn’t concern him or have nothing to do with him. Wars, quests for treasure, badminton tournaments, anything really. Martin didn’t let it get him down though. In fact, there were very few things that made Martin angry and lose his cool head. Certain death wasn’t one of them.
    Although Martin had seen and experienced more than some of the world’s most prolific adventurers, he never really thought of himself as an adventurer himself. Nope, he was a wizard, through and through. Of course, he laced the cowardice and faint-heartedness usually associated with his kind, but he still felt that he had the heart of the wizard, and not, as his wizard brethren believed, the heart of an insane, oafish otter.
    As the bells attached to his wizards hat jingled merrily, and glistened in the afternoon sun, Martin cavorted onwards. He eventually came to a magical mirror shop, where he checked his reflection. He liked checking his reflection, but he didn’t find it anywhere near as pleasurable as eating, which he spent the majority of his time concentrating on.
    His clothes bugged him.
    He wore a long red robe covered in misshapen stars, a black, worn belt, a sack of water, a lot of jewellery, and a pipe poked out of his top robe pocket. His attire was never something he admired, but it was standard Men of Magic clothing. He often wondered if many other wizards thought their clothes were silly, but decided to not think about it at length, incase he forgot to keep looking for a place to eat.
    What with his love of food, many people would be forgiven for expecting him to have the not-so-chiselled features of a pregnant rhino after feeding time, but much to the surprise of all who knew him, Martin was always in peak physical condition. His teachers at university had always said that it was some sort of witchcraft as opposed to anything a wizard could conjure, and found his thinness very unsettling, right up until the point he graduated two years ago. It never bothered Martin though, he was far too worried about his clothes, his food and his spells to care about little things like what other people thought of him.
    As Martin grew out of breath from all the prancing, he decided he needed to know the time. Wizards never thought about things, they just decided to do things and think about them later. Martin believed it saved a lot of time. He stopped by a rather upstanding sort of chap sitting down on an upturned water barrel.
    “I say, young chap, could you tell me the time please?”
    Martin looked at the young man intently for a few seconds, but he didn’t seem to have heard him.
    “Excuse me, lad?” he asked once more, but the man didn’t look up from his little daydream, as he stared intently at the passers by as they went about their business. Martin didn’t really know what was wrong with him, or with himself, to provoke this. He decided to try one more time before moving on further into town to find a good eatery.
    “Hello? Are you alright?” he asked once more. The young man didn’t take any notice of him again.
    Martin decided to ask someone else, before changing his mind as the young man gave a huge sigh and said something interesting.
    “What on earth am I supposed to do with myself if my brain is living in the past?” he said. Martin walked back to him, staring at him intently for a few seconds. He cautiously waved a hand in front of the person’s eyes. There was no trace of recognition on the boy’s face at all.
    Martin considered what he had said.
    “That sounds like science talk to me, absolute rubbish. Sounds like you’ve been dumped or something,” Martin said, but once again could not be heard. The young man just sighed once more, and patted a horse in the stables nose with love and care.
    “You’ll be okay, but a word of advice, don’t go back to the Men of Science, no idea what they are talking about. Here, I will give you my card.” Martin rummaged in one of his robes many pockets and pulled out a thin piece of card, and carefully put it in the young person’s top pocket.
    As he did so, the young man stood up, untied his horse, and began to walk down the road in the opposite direction. Martin watched the young man with wonder as he slowly walked off, leading his horse behind him.
    “Poor guy. He’ll get over it. Everyone does.”

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* A comic fantasy novel. A more or less complete first draft has been written, here is just some of it.
* The tone is immature and frivolous, most of Glaps came from combating boredom rather than trying to write good fantasy. Tolkien it ain't.

updated Sep 17 by splintersteve