The dust had settled on the country road. Poxig was ambling down the road and thinking of his boyhood on these streets. Mom had long since passed away. But the mere approach of these prerequisite to glory irked him somewhat. He could no longer return to the past. Why should he try to become a child again? What was the point?

There was something in the child Gabriel that he had lost. What was Sir Binural talking about? Wasn’t it that sense of wonder? When we become adults, we no longer have awe at the mysteries of life. We think that science and philosophy explain it all. Poxig actually no longer believed in childish things, but more than that, he didn’t believe that the adventure was an end in itself.

To remember what it was like to be a child, that was the difficulty in itself. To not trivialize the struggles of the child to accept his parents’ authority, that was truly difficult. And so Poxig returned to Excelsior with trepidation, he truly did not know what to think. But in time, he would be able to seize upon his goal: to become worthy of the title of “light warrior.”

He found his childhood home to be abandoned, and the area desolate and depopulated. He tried to imagine what it might have looked like in his memory, but could not recall those pleasant hours he spent as a boy going to and fro the nearby creek. There was nothing to recommend this place, whoever had once lived there was gone. He found out the difficult truth that it is all but impossible to return to your youth.

If anything could be gleaned from this, it was that the child’s wonder must become his own. He too must allow for the adventure of his circumstances to become greater than the irrecoverable past. He would wait on the King’s reply: therein, he would find the key to the ineffable Latin phrase ” Puer magnum est.”

Now that he had left the Gorgola woods, Poxig was nearing the border of Marginalia. He had little to his name, having bartered it all away for food to a certain little gnome. But just when he thought he was out of the woods, he saw a familiar face.

“Hiyo!” said the gnome.

He knew instantly that it was Sir Binural, who had somehow found him in  his predicament. Sir Binural had a way of doing that to his general chagrin.

“Did you see the boy?” asked the gnome.

“I did,” replied Poxig.

“I see. And the boy?” asked Sir Binural.

“We seem to have connected on a basic level. But the boy led me out of the woods in the forest of Gorgola. I actually have no idea where he went, but I assume he went home.”

“Now that you’re nearing home, do you think that there is room for childlike love in your heart?” asked Sir Binural.

“What do you mean by that?” asked Poxig.

“You have to return to Excelsior, where you will remember what it was like to be a boy,” he said, sniffing loudly. “Then, the king of Marginalia will bestow on you the quest that you are searching for.”

“I am here to restore the orbs and find the source of the earth’s rot,” said Poxig.

“I know, but only King Charles can help you. You possess only one of these sacred orbs,” returned Sir Binural.

“Simply show me the way to castle Marginalia, and I will fulfill the destiny of my god Releven.”

“But you must first return home…” said the gnome.