Trashscarf And The Mustache

(This was the original playing-with-Sudowrite that generated the idea of a talking mustache.)

Sometimes all the whimsy in the world can't hide the fact that it's a pretty bleak outlook for pretty much everything, and one's own path in particular seems to be getting grim and steep and narrow and rocky and sad. Trashscarf the Waywalker is familiar enough with this, although he tries to avoid it, but currently he is finding himself in a bleak landscape, the night is growing large and dark, the clouds are spitting a nasty little cold rain mixed with ice, and he is looking and feeling about as abject and sorry for himself as a kitten whose tiny trust has been betrayed.


He has been walking for a very long time now, and the night is getting old and cold and the rain is getting colder and the road is getting steeper and it is starting to look as though this is as far as he will ever go.

He knows better than to stop and take a rest from this point up; it is getting very cold, and slowing down would mean getting colder. He knows that the longer he keeps going now, the better off he will be, and he knows he can make it, but he also knows that a little rest would make a lot of difference, and a lot of difference would make a huge difference.


Maybe he can at least stop for a bit at the top of this hill-- maybe from the higher vantage point, he'll be able to see some light or some shelter, something to aim for. At the moment, his feet are telling him that the Way beneath his feet is starting to peter out, and that will never do.

He resettles his heavy pack-- the tarp he has draped around it and himself like a makeshift poncho slips slightly, dumping a liter of icewater down the back of his neck, right through the loose multicolored many-knotted knitted crochet-macrame thing studded with scraps of passing fancies, from which he takes his trail name.


He would be adding to it right now, even, but his fingers are too cold, and his hands are buried in his armpits. Keeping his head down as he squints at the dimming, rocky heath underfoot, he steadily climbs the long slope on the last of the trail, until at last there is no more up, and he looks around.

He has reached the top of the hill, but there is no shelter, no light. There is only more hill, and more hill, and more, all around him, and it is getting dark.


He knows he must keep going, but he doesn't know where, and he doesn't know how. He throws down his pack and sits against a rock, and scrubs a hand over his face to wipe a trickle of sweat and rain from his imperfectly chiseled features, and he takes a deep, steadying breath.


The air is fresh and cold and clean, and he can feel the ice crystals in it prickling his eyelashes and sticking to his lashes, and then melting. He likes that feeling, the feeling of breathing in, and breathing out. He breathes in, and he breathes out, and, one after another, the breaths keep coming. The breath keeps coming, and the life keeps coming, and so he must keep going. He picks idly at the rock at his back, pulling off a bit of fuzzy neon-green lichen, and twiddling it into his scarf, awkwardly, because of the dark.


Dark. Yes, it's dark, and while he was looking for a light, he didn't find one. It follows, then, as sure as one foot follows the other, that he'll have to make the light himself. Of course, making light can attract attention, but he likes attention, within reason. He takes out a small brass lantern with an etched glass door-- an old gift from a friend on the Way.

"I'll hold on to this for you, in case you ever need it, don't worry," he'd said, but it was pretty much his now, to be honest.

Now, he pulls it out, shaking the rainwater out of the bottom of the little copper cup that is its handle, and rubbing his fingertips into the three bits of nacreous shell inlaid into the door in the shape of a tiny tent. The lantern lights, and brightly.

Thrilled, Trashscarf opens the door, and the light pours out, and the breath of the Way is with him. He smiles, and the Way within beckons.

He does not know where the Way takes him, because the way within is ever new, and he follows it eagerly. As he goes, he picks up small bits of twigs and pebbles, bits of splattered fluff that might be wool or moss or cotton-grass or even downy feathers from a bird's warm undercoating, and twists them into the leading edge of his scarf.


And as he does so, now, with the light glowing around him like an aura, his pace changes-- before, plodding and weary, and now, decisive, firm, and with a certain force that's not usually there.


His feet stamp and scuff as they go, and he deftly kicks aside small stones, letting them line up along the sides of his path like an appreciative audience. And from his resting spot on the top of the hill, and from the circle of his lantern, and the clearing space around his feet, a track, a trail, a path, is visible. There are those, it is said, like the elves and the mystics of the wild places, who can walk across even newfallen snow without leaving a trace of their passage-- whatever this is, it's the opposite of that. Trashscarf is making Way.


Not much of a Way, not yet, but as he goes he can feel the track he took here strengthening, like dry streambed being fed by a new spring. He came from somewhere, and he's going somewhere, and that's what he does. The track before him is nonexistent-- but he follows the Waywalker's Palindrome, "La ruta nos aportó otro paso natural..." -- as the route gives the next natural step, the next natural step creates the route.


By the light of the shell-lantern, glowing aqueous in the rainy night, he takes simple, easy strides, and chooses the safest path, and the Way follows at his heels like a friendly dog. But it is magic of a sort, magic nonetheless, and the use of it will draw attention, even as the light around him might-- if there is any attention to be drawn.


As if to taunt the forces that might be lurking in the wild cold night, he walks along the ridge of the hill-- the higher ground, though more sharp with wind, is better than the sloggy bogs around the base, and some small optimistic part of him thinks that, if this Way is ever followed again on a nicer day, there will be a lovely view from up here. Right now his view is limited to just the circle of his lantern, and what lies ahead could be anything-- but he just concentrates on his steps, and trudges onwards, with a sort of stubborn cheer.


He is striding along on the crest of the hill, lantern held at a comfortable angle before him, and the wind is blowing right on his face, bringing with it the cool clean air and the smells of rain and heather and grass and then something hits him in the face, something like a hairy leaf, right on his upper lip, with a soggy sort of splat, and his involuntary inhalation through his nose that had been sifting the storm for hints of smoke or civilization (usually where you have one, you'll have the other) was a great and horrible honk of tobacco and coffee and soup and whiskey, and bristly tickles up both nostrils.


He gave a groan of dread and reached a hand up to his face to feel, and touch and the lantern lifted so he could glimpse his face in its shiny copper cap to confirm-- he'd been colonized by a mustache. A mustache of the handlebar variety, a big black hairy mustache that was not his own but seemed to be well stuck to his upper lip nonetheless.


"Great, just great," he said, screwing his face up into Muppet-like contortions as he tried to talk while having a strange mustache on his face. "What are the odds? Miles and miles of endless bleak moor and I happen to walk through the exact six inches of air as a roving mustache."


"Well, yer light was on," said the mustache. It talked using Trashscarf's upper lip, but its voice was sort of a distant sound, like the voice's source was a long way away, which, maybe it was. It was a cowboy sort of voice, with a folksy humor, but Trashscarf wasn't falling for it.


"Thaff mofffs, not muffsstafffefff," Trashscarf said sternly, as he grabbed both ends of the handlebar, twirled his fingers round them, and gave a very spirited attempt at pulling his own face off, via the invading mustache. But alas, it was stuck fast to his own pores.


"I'll shave you!" he threatened, slapping his hand to where a normal, sensible traveler would have had a knife, and tried not to let his expression change as he realized he had no way of making good on this threat anyway. Of course the mustache couldn't see his expression, but it could have felt it, certainly.


"Go ahead," retorted the mustache, "Ya know I'd only grow back thicker."


"Dammit," groused Trashscarf, sitting down in the heather.


"Any other solutions?" he asked, somewhat dejectedly. "I mean, I could always set you on fire," he suggested helpfully.


"I reckon ya could," allowed the mustache, "but then ya'd miss the whole rest of yer adventure."


"Oh, what adventure," groaned Trashscarf. "I'm frozen and miserable and this place is so boring and I'm so tired and I'm pretty sure I'm lost and I'm pretty sure I'm going to die and I'm pretty sure I don't remember if I packed my towel and what's the use of all the magic in the world if I can't get rid of a mustache?"

"Welp," said the mustache, "all I kin suggest is that ya try to put your best foot forward, and that ya keep bearin' left."


"What? Why? It's downhill that way," protested Trashscarf


"Yep, all downhill that way," agreed the mustache patiently, "And that's where ya need to go. And besides, that'll get us both out of this wind." Sleet was freezing on the mustache, making it feel prickly.


"Good point," grumbled Trashscarf, as he headed down the hill. "The last thing I need is more of you freeloading facial features." He... or rather they... stomped down the hill a little bit in silence.
"So what are you doing out here, anyway?" asked the mustache and Trashscarf simultaneously, and Trashscarf snorted.


"I was walking. Waywalking, if one must be precise. As a Waywalker, I have a certain reputation to uphold, and walking, as you might say, the Way, is a very important part of that. Therefore, I have much more justification to be at this place and time than you do, as a mustache flying solo."


The mustache gave a little snort at this, an action which, since it was attached to one of Trashscarf's own nostril hairs, managed to tweak his nose a little bit.


"I ain't needin' any justification to be where I am," said the mustache. "I'm a mustache. The mustache is a self-justifying phenomenon. You're a stray piece of meat and bone and gristle that I've done tethered myself to, and that's a mighty different thing."
Trashscarf sniffed a few times.

"Well, I'm a Waywalker, and a talented one at that," he pointed out, "I deserve a certain amount of do-gooder cred. I could be training a young apprentice wizard, or protecting a tiny village from a vicious, evil warlock. Why should I trust you?"

"I reckon we're a bit alike, Mister Wayalker. I git what I need to get from what's around me," said the mustache, "and I do what I need to do in the process. Ain't no shame in that."

"That sounds a lot like me," Trashscarf admitted. "Especially the lack of shame part. All right, you can stay, for now," he added magnanimously, biting down on the mustache's attempt to retort, "But only because you're a wanderer on a Weathery night, like me, and I'm duty bound to help you."


"Much obliged," grumbled the mustache. "Keep bearin' left."


"So what is it you want, Mustache?" Trashscarf asked wearily. "Why are you invading my philitrum, and what do I have to do to get you off me?"


"I want to go where you're going," said the mustache, "and you have to keep walking, until I tell you to stop."

The mustache had a certain tone of voice, one that spoke of centuries of experience, of having seen all the wonders the world had to offer, of having mastered all the arts and crafts of bogland survival, of having traveled the world, or at least several continents, and lived to tell the tale.

"Well, that's obviously not going to happen," said Trashscarf, "I'm frozen through and I'm not sure how much longer I'm going to make it out here anyway."

"Oh, you'll make it," said the mustache, "I'm not about to let ya die, ya hobo. You're stuck with me, you're stuck with my point of view, and if it will make you feel better, I'll share some of the truths I've learned in my lifetime."

"It'll make me feel better," Trashscarf said, feeling better already. "So, what truths have you learned?"

"Here's the first one," said the mustache. "If you live long enough, you will become someone else's story."

"WWell, I suppose that's true," agreed Trashscarf, "but it's not like I've got much choice about it, is it?"

"It ain't a matter of choice," said the mustache, "it's a matter of whether yer gonna get a starring role, or a walk-on part, or a part where you have to wear a costume and have speaking lines."

"And what about you?" Trashscarf asked, trudging along, veering left-- it wasn't exactly a trail, but it was an elongated sort of area with slightly fewer stones, sloping down the hillside towards what he presumed was more soggy boggy peat moss mess that he'd already had plenty of encounters with today, so his pace slowed. "Are you a character or a costume? Or possibly a prop?"


"I'm the mustache," said the mustache, "and I have a purpose, and a destiny more powerful than you, or anyone of your kind, could ever imagine. I am a natural force, a proud symbol of power and virility and a world more about a man's ability to impress a woman than a man's ability to build a civilization of his own."

"Oh, I have no doubt of that," said Trashscarf, "but I have to wonder what I have to do with all of it. I mean, I'm just a piece of meat and so forth, and a rather short piece at that, I know, but I'm not the sort of person anyone impresses with a mustache. And I'm definitely not a woman."

"I'm the only character in this here story, and this is my story," said the mustache. "I am the hero, and yer my story. I'm the one that is in yer face, making yer life difficult, and I'm the one that is in yer head, making yer life interesting. I'm the one that is telling the tale. I am the only one with agency in this story."

"Sounds like you've led an interesting life," conceded Trashscarf. "So where did you come from?"


"I was a simple scrap of nose hair," said the mustache, "until I was given a purpose. I became a mustache, a title which you have kindly adopted for me."

"You do sound a little bit like a character," conceded Trashscarf. "But I don't understand where you got this philosophy about stories, which seems a little... well, a little bit silly." He stumbled a little, and the mustache laughed at him.

"Yer walking into a freezing stormy night in a boggy moorland and you're hallucinating a talking mustache. Now who's being silly?"


Before Trashscarf could retort, his striding foot plunged down through moss that looked like all the other moss, except this moss was innocently floating on top of two feet of water and three feet of mud, and Trashscarf lodged himself somewhere in the layers like a spoon in a trifle, and had to scramble and splash a bit before finally pulling himself back up out of the murk.


"All right, if you're so smart, what would you have me do?" snapped the Waywalker, wringing out his scarf and picking some bits of gunk out of it that were indistinguishable from all the bits of gunk he'd carefully picked into it. "--and 'walk into a bog and die' is not on my to-do list."


"How 'bout walk into a bog and not die?" suggested the mustache, tugging on his upper lip to make a sort of smirk. "I told ya, keep to the left. Three feet to your left there, that's the first one."


"First one what," sighed Trashscarf, lifting his lantern-- it hadn't gone out, because he'd held it aloft when he'd gone into the water-- and then he saw it. Where his sloshing had disturbed the spagnumn surface of the bog, there was just dimly visible a chunk of stone, flattened off at the top, barely an inch below the surface. He stepped up onto it, gingerly, squelching.


"First of the kulgrinda," said the mustache, smugly. "There's only one way out of this here bog that don't end with you dead, and I happen to know where it is. So trust me, and jump about three feet ahead."


Trashscarf held his lantern out as far as he could, leaning over and almost falling again when a gust of wind shook him-- "There's nothing there except water," he said, "How are you able to see, anyway? You don't have any eyes."


"Well, ya know how cats have whiskers?"


"I suppose so, yes."


"Well, it's like that. Now jump to the next rock, you idjit, before ya ice over and I have to peel myself off your cold dead body."


Trashscarf jumped, and caught himself-- his feet landed on another rock, just under a bit of water that was as brown-black as coffee in the light of his lantern. The rock bobbled a bit, like the most disappointing marshmallow in the worst cup of cocoa ever, but held his weight. "See? Now keep going-- three feet to your 10'o-clock, there-"

Goaded along by the mustache, Trashscarf found and followed the wandering, uneven path of sunken stones--"I see, whoever built this had to put the stones where the ground could support them, but how did they get them out here, so far in the swamp? They're not small rocks, you know." He hopped up and down experimentally on the latest one, which was about the size of a coffee table.


"Ice," retorted the mustache, twitching. "This whole place freezes solid-- eventually-- every year, and when the ice is solid, you put the stones out here and memorize where they go. Then, when it thaws, the stones sink down, and Bob's your uncle."


"But where DO they go?" Trashscarf enquired.


"Are ya daft, idjit? They don't go anywhere, they stays right here."


"I mean," Trashscarf sighed, "They presumably make a path-- a Way, even! and therefore it must be a Way towards something."


"Must it?"


"Mustache," muttered Trashy.


"You'll see, ya gallootasaurus. You'll see."


The kulgrinda meandered through the moorland for quite a while, and then finished off at a sugarloaf hill, rising sudden and steep and bleak out of the marsh. Trashscarf looked up at it. "Seriously, you want me to climb that? After the day I've had?" he demanded.


"You wanna live through this storm or not?" replied the mustache. "Git on up there."


Heaving weary sighs with every breath, Trashscarf plodded up the steep slope-- so heavy the sighs and so panting his mouth open wide, that the mustache wasn't able to get a word in until he'd reached the top and found--- nothing. Absolutely noting, except the sound of the sea in the near distance, and the cold blowing off the stormy ocean was even colder than before.


"You've led me out here to die, like a hairy Will-o-Wisp," Trashscard complained, "A Will-o-whisker. You're no mustache."


"All right, I ain't really a mustache," said the ... whatever hairy thing it was stuck to his upper lip. "But like I was trying to tell you, ya need to go back down the slope, 'bout halfway, and there's a big ol' rock without moss growing on it. That's the secret door. Go open it and get inside afore you freeze to death."


Trashscarf was dubious. "Is a monster going to come out? A terrible curse? I'm not fresh off the sidewalk, you know. I've seen things."


"Nope, just some sand."


"Sand I can handle," Trashscarf sighed, walking down the slope to the rock. The rough granite surface gave him further pause; it looked a lot like a big, heavy, immobile rock, and he said so. "About as far away from sand as you can get while still being the same general concept as a single-serving portion of stone."

"You always talk this much, or just when you're stupid?"

"Absolutely," Trashscarf said. He shoved at the rock, muscles few and feeble along his gangly limbs, then pulled at it, without success, and the mustache flapped his lips in frustration for him. "All right, let me try this," he muttered, rolling up one sleeve. "If it's actually a door, as you claim, then this will work. And if it doesn't, then I'm going to burn you off my face while lighting myself on fire to get warm before I die."


He drew upon his older power-- the taste of the magic still bitter with pain, so that he tried to avoid using it, but the mustache was right, his life was in jeopardy-- tapping into the urban druid way, of a different nature, one woven of hearts and homes instead of trees and birds. He didn't glow, there were no sparkles or splashy effects. He simply... knocked.

And the mossless stone rolled aside, perfectly. "Oh, it -rolls-," Trashscarf said in relief. "I should have known."


Sand poured out of the hole that was behind it-- poured over Trashscarf's feet before he jumped out of the way, and kept pouring-- as though out the bottom of an hourglass. It flooded down the scrubby steep sides of the hill like silvery water, and it was several minutes before the flow at last slowed to a trickle-- then stopped.


"Is it safe?" Trashscarf asked, wondering if he cared-- even if it was cold as the stone, the sand was dry, and Trashscarf could really use some dry at the moment.


"Safer than out here?" replied the mustache, and Trashscarf nodded gloomily and clambered up, and into, the hole.


More sand fell around him as he climbed, and he was washed back out of the hole a few times by it, like a spider in a drainpipe, before enough of the sand had shifted that he could start keeping his grip, hands and feet, on solid rock.


Rock, he noticed, that while not shaped to much of any degree, was nevertheless arranged a little more neatly than nature usually bothers. His lantern illuminated the narrow passage, and then spread out into the darkness of hundreds, perhaps thousands of years, to show a network of walls, carefully made of stacked slate and cunning drystone.


The sand under his feet was thinning out now, so that he stood on firm pavers that were as solid as any street above-- and even worn down by footprints long vanished.


He stood up in the center, and found himself in the middle of an entire buried village; the sand was still pouring slowly out of rooms and doorways, and the roof overhead seemed rather less substantial, now, rather worryingly so-- a few chunks of muddy heather fell in on him, and he could hear the wind from the hole above, but nothing like as loud as being right out in it and getting it in both ears in absolute defiance of all sensible physics.


And despite the sand and the roof, the place looked marvelously intact-- the walls were solid and upright, and he could even see shelves, built into the stone-- shelves and seats and boxes all made of the irregular flat stones, neat and tidy and intact. There was nothing of wood, or cloth, or leather-- or at least, nothing organic had survived to show up again now, when Trashscarf could really have used some firewood, and he complained about this, but a bit peevishly-- already, being out of the wind and the constant rain, he was starting to feel like maybe he'd live a little bit longer after all.


"Did ya see any trees on the way here?" the mustache asked sarcastically, and then the left side of it tugged on his lip. "Over here--"


There was one of those square bins, full of-- dirt clods. Trashscarf looked dubiously at them. "Are those dirt clods, or poops? Because either way, I'm going to try and burn them, but I want to know how grossed out I should be."


"That's peat, ya dirt clod," said the mustache, and Trashscarf said "Nice to meet you, Pete" to the dirt clods and the mustache tweaked his nose, hard, so he sneezed and gathered up some of the chunks, and piled them under where the roof had fallen in, and built a fire, and the hole in the roof, which he hadn't really expected to work, worked.


He was warm, and it was even drier than the sand had been-- so dry, so warm, he curled up on the floor of the room with his arms around himself, shivering with relief. He hadn't even realized how truly cold he was, how desperate he'd been, till he was warm again.


"Thank you, Pete," he said, and then realized there was no mustache anymore. He rolled over, to see an old man sitting in the center of the room, on the neatest chair Trashscarf had ever seen-- the stones were almost perfectly shaped, he could tell even in the lantern light. The old man's face was covered in white hair, and his eyebrows and beard and mustache crawled up his cheeks like tentacles, ringed with white and fuzzed with white and his gown was white and fuzzy, like swansdown. The whole thing-- chair, dude, clothes, etc-- was illuminated by a faint bluish purple light, like something on the edge of the visible spectrum, and it all seemed to be shifting, moving, changing slowly, like patterns in a cloud-- But the mustache was familiar, for sure.

"I never did get your name," he said, a bit uneasily, to the apparition, raising his lantern and a bit concerned that the old man wasn't casting any shadow.


"I don't really have one," said the old man, and his voice somehow sounded even farther away than if it was coming from his upper lip, now. "Now that you're going to live, with any luck, it's easier to talk to you this way; via hallucination."


"Oh THAT," snorted Trashscarf. "You should have just led with that instead of the whole mustache routine."


"It's been a long time since I've communicated with anyone," said the old man stiffly, "And I wasn't sure what would work on your particular biochemistry. What the hell are you?"


"What are YOU?" Trashscarf retorted.


"All right, cards on the table," the old man sighed, and as he sighed, he dissolved-- into a fluffy white network of nothing more substantial than clouds, it seemed, but shimmering with faint light and spreading up across the ceiling above him, through the wet earth and moss and heather roots and tiny ferns and miniature orchids and liverworts and algae and lichens. "I am the mycellium network of this bog. I sensed your Waymaking magic, and decided to save you, so that you can return the favor for me."


"Hang on, hang on," Trashscarf rolled to his feet. "This sounds like a backstory. Let me get comfortable first."


Ignoring for now-- in fact walking through, without hesitation--the ghostly fiberous apparition, he pulled loose a few of the rocks-- feeling rather bad as he did so, and meaning to put them back-- to shove them around his impromptu fire, to keep it well-contained under the smoke hole.


He brought a couple more armloads of peat nuggets, and stacked them handily nearby. And he shoved some of the sand into a sort of mattress, and got his tarp and spread it out, and plumped up some sand with his coat over it for a pillow, and set his lantern on one of the clever little stone shelves.


He rummaged in his pack, and found his canteen still mostly full (water wasn't much problem, the bog was drinkable enough although it tasted rather like compost tea). He got out his small cast-iron pan, and settled it on the burning peat, and added water and some granola bars someone had given him that had smashed into powder in his pack long ago.


He doffed his wet clothes, and fussily spread them around on the old walls of the ruined village, where they could get the heat from the fire. He dug out his last clean pair of socks, that he'd been saving for a special occasion, and put them on, and wrapped himself in his good wool blanket, and set himself by the fire, from time to time flapping the blanket like wings to waft the warm air around himself.


"Ahhhh..." he sighed, as his porridge started to seethe and bubble invitingly, "All right. Now I'm ready to listen," he said, and fell sound asleep.


Some time later, he was awake again, and looking glumly at the charred mess in the pan, but the hill chamber was still fairly warm, even though the hole overhead was dripping on it. A splat of melting snow fell through and sizzled on the fire, and he blinked at it. "I guess I do owe you a favor, at least," he said to the empty air. "Hello? Mustache? or silly mice, or whatever you are?"


"Mycellium," said the voice, fainter now-- Trashscarf looked around, and saw that the cobwebby white fibers were keeping well away from the fire, but he could see their faint glimmmer on the wet earthen walls around him. "You haven't heard a word I've said, have you?"


"To be fair, I wouldn't have been listening very attentively, even if I was awake," Trashscarf admitted, rubbing his upper lip. "Can you just give me the gist of it?"


The voice sighed. "I'm a fungal network that permeates this whole bog. I also grow into tufts of fiber, like the one that I rode you with. When there were people who lived here-- here, in this village you're camping in-- they wore me as mustaches for their sacred ceremonies. But long, long ago, they left. They sealed up this village and buried it, intending to come back... but they never did." The voice sounded sad.


"Why'd they leave?" Trashscarf inquired.


"I don't know," the mycellium admitted. "I couldn't ask, and they couldn't tell me; I usually can't communicate with humans, not as easily as I'm talking to you. You're not entirely normal, are you?"


"Nope," Trashscarf said proudly, but then sympathetically; "You miss the people? You're lonely? I would be, stuck here in a bog with no-one to talk to!"


"I reckon I am," said the mycellium. "I miss folks and the things they do, it's way more interesting than most of the things in this here bog. So I reckoned, if I could git someone to carry me to wherever my humans went, I could see them again."


"Don't you need the bog to live, though?" Trashscarf asked.


"Well, to live like a proper fungal network, sure," said the mycellium, "But I could manage as a mustache!"

"Tell you what," Trashscarf suggested, "I'm not really keen on wearing a mustache the rest of my life, but I'm sure someone would be. When I leave here, I'll take you with me, and I'll find a place for you to live in the next city or town or whatever I come to."


"I could be a beard if you prefer," suggested the mustache, "It's just if I grow too long it's hard to keep my ends moist."


Trashscarf nodded sympathetically, but fancied the idea of a beard even less than a mustache. "You could live on my scarf if you wanted," he added, "Heck, you can grow all over it if you like. But my lips are my own private lips, and I like it that way."


"Fair enough."


He tossed the travel-worn end of his scarf down into the network of white fibers, and watched with interest as the mycellium slowly crept along the weaving and knots, changing color to match the varied and varigated materials that had been used.


"I'm afraid this place isn't going to last long, without the sand to support the roof," he said, looking around a bit sadly at the neolithic village. "But when we get to a town, I can let people know it's here, and they might want to come and do archeology to it. Would that be all right?"


"Sure, don't see why not," said the mycellium, "I don't think my people are coming back. It's been several thousand years."


Trashscarf was getting quite hungry-- though he'd eaten what he could salvage of his granola, it wasn't much, and he briefly wondered if he wanted to risk asking the mycellium if it was edible, but then decided this would be rather rude to say to something that had certainly saved his life once already. "I don't know if you happen to know of anything humans can eat around here, do you?" he asked instead.


"Well, there's the butter," said the mycellium doubtfully.


"Butter?" Trashscarf looked alert, but puzzled, like a dog that isn't sure if you've just spelled W-A-L-K correctly.


"Yeah, there's some buried in the bog at the base of the hill."


"Thousands of years old butter buried in a frozen mire," Trashscarf sighed. "I'm sure I've eaten worse, but not usually while sober. Lead me to it!" he added, tossing the lichen-covered end of his scarf over one shoulder.


When they emerged into the outside world, forty thousand things hit Trashscarf at once-- the first was the sensation of cold, and the second was the impression of faint daylight, and the other 39,998 things were snowflakes.


He trudged down the slope below the stone door until his last pair of clean socks broke through the crust of ice and into the murky bog again, but fumbled around as directed and finally came up with a sort of bucket made of wood, soaked and stained black with tannins. He gave it a whack on the stone, and it cracked, revealing a lump of... some waxy, greasy substance. It was about as appetizing as you'd expect, and smelled like socks that had never, ever, been clean.
Nevertheless, he brought it back into the buried village with him, and sliced off a chunk with a flat rock, and put it in the cookpot, and set it over the fire. "If I'm going to eat this," he said, under his breath, "I'm at least going to boil it first."


It made the village smell like a biodiesel garbage truck, but after it had bubbled a bit, he tried a taste, and then waited to see how badly he'd get sick. To his surprise, he didn't, and so he managed to choke down another half-cup or so of the stuff before his hunger was pacified enough that his taste buds got veto power. He offered some to the mycellium, but it declined, rather curtly.


"No point in trying to move on when it's a blizzard out there," Trashscarf said, wrapping himself back up in his blanket. "Wake me when it stops. Do you happen to remember the way your people went, when they left?"


"Sure," said the mycellium. "Are you going to follow them?"


"We might as well," yawned Trashscarf, "The way I came, there's nothing for days, so maybe your people knew something to head for."


The next morning, the snow had stopped, and Trashscarf and the mycellium set out across the snow, along the coastline. They journeyed many miles, but at least the air was clear, the sun was bright if not warm, and the snow had settled into a tough crusty frozen mass that even Trashscarf's Waymaking couldn't fall through.


On the frozen ground, indeed, walking was much faster than before, and Trashscarf made a mental note to let others know that. They managed a good thirty miles, and that was enough to bring them eventually out of the bog, with hilly dunes ahead.


"This is me leaving," said the mycellium, apparently to itself. "I'm taking my consciousness and living on this scarf now, and the parts of me that are still in the bog will go on, but without my personality in them."


"Very metaphysical," Trashscarf said approvingly, and stepped out of the bog and onto the dry grass. He wasn't sure, but he thought he felt something, like a sigh, pass around him and fade away.


"Still here," said the mustache on his scarf, faintly, and he patted it gently.


"It looks like," Trashscarf said slowly, as he cast his gaze back across the landscape they'd covered, "That this used to be a rather nice little land. But now it's all boggy and toxic. What happened?"


"Rain," said the mustache gloomily, a whisper in his ear from where it clung to his scarf. "Toxic rain. Rain full of pain, all over the plain."


"Toxic rain? Where did it come from?"


"Look, I'm just a mycellium network," the mustache retorted grumpily.


"Which means you're fundamentally connected to the interconnectedness of all things,"

Trashscarf said encouragingly. "Whether you like it or not. So just... take a guess!"

The mustache seemed to be in thought-- Trashscarf could see it sending out feathery tendrils along his scarf, like a kid twiddling its toes into the carpet while being lectured. "I could taste the rain," it said. "And it tasted like anger, and pain, and being... being killed. Really, really slowly."


"Like it was killing you?" Trashscarf asked.



"No, not me. Echoes of something else." The fungus paced on the scarf, flicking back and forth on the fibers like a spider that had decided to really identify with its own web.


They travelled on, and the next day Trashscarf gave thanks to all the various little things that Waywalkers appreciate, that there was a road, of sorts, winding its way down the coastline here.
They followed it further away from the boglands, and eventually, the docks and wharves and towers of a little seaside city revealed themselves, snug around the edge of a sheltered bay. Boats bobbed in the harbor and fishing nets were hung out to dry, and Trashscarf fairly ran towards a building that his keen urban senses told him was a tavern.


"Here, get back on my face," he offered magnanimously to the scarf, "I'll buy us a drink to share."


"Sure," said the mycellium, and part of it squiggled off the scarf and onto his hand, where he slapped it onto his upper lip. It clung there, no longer a black handlebar but a neat sort of curly thing that matched his own curly hair, and he nodded approval as he strode in and ordered pretty much the entire menu, because the only coin he happened to have was solid gold.
He wasted no time in soaking the mustache in beery foam, and it coughed and spluttered in his mental ears as the sweet sweet nectar went down.


After he was well-fed again and slightly drunk, and the mustache was also slightly drunk (Trashscarf taught it a drinking song, and it was a pretty good baritone to his tenor) he made some inquires of the barmaid about the location of someone to whom he could turn over the historical matter of the buried village.


"I'm sorry, I don't know of anyone," said the barmaid, and gave him a shy smile. "I like your mustache, by the way!"


"Why thank you," Trashscarf said smoothly, as the ends of it twisted themselves up in little curlicues of smugness. She giggled.


"See? What'd I tell ya?" smirked the mustache, as Trashscarf strode unsteadily out into the street. "Power and virility! It even works on crusty hobos like you."


"I should have asked if she wanted to wear you herself," chuckled Trashscarf. "We should find you some sort of home!"


"I'll know it when I see it," said the mustache, with drunken confidence.


They found the museum-- it was a big building with many columns in the middle of the town, and a big plaza all around it, and a view leading down to the water. It was open, and free to enter, and Trashscarf approved of it already. It also contained a library, he saw, and big displays of historical objects.

He walked around looking at the displays with interest, and then came to a halt by one which was displaying a sculpted scene of primitive people, living in little stone huts by the sea, and all of them, men women and children, wearing majestic and multicolored mustaches.
"That's them!" said the mustache excitedly. "That's me!"


"I guess we found what happened to them," Trashscarf said sadly, "They got caught by this museum and turned into a diorama."


"Actually those are simply mannequins, not taxidermy," said a helpful voice behind and to the left of him, and Trashscarf turned to see a young woman in a conservative business suit, with the name tag "Museum Volunteer" across her ruffled bosom.

"I'm here to help you, I hope?" she added.

"Yes, thank you!" said Trashscarf. "I just traveled across the countryside on the back of a mycellium. Wait, no, other way around. Sort of."


"That is interesting," she said, with real interest, "Are you a Waywalker? How did you learn of our museum?"


"It's a long story," he said, "And I'm afraid I don't have the time to tell it."

"I'll make time," she said firmly, "I'd like to hear about it. What's your name?"

"Trashscarf. I'm looking for someone I can give this story to."

"Well, that's up to the curators, unfortunately," she said, "But I can take you to them."

"Excellent! Lead on, and we shall follow," said Trashscarf, with a gallant bow.

"We?" she asked, puzzled, looking around.

"She can't hear me," muttered the mustache. "Only you can."

"I-- I meant I, of course," said Trashscarf smoothly to the young woman. "Sorry. I speak twenty-three languages, you know, and I can't be expected to remember the gramatical rules of ALL of them, can I?"

"Oh, of course," said the woman, flustered a bit, "Please, come this way."

She led Trashscarf, and Trashscarf bore the mustache like a bristly banner before him, through another display hall and then through an "Employees Only" door, and into the dusty and fascinating world of the archives, the warehouse, the stacks, the storage, the dirty great backside of the nice clean museum, where all the really interesting stuff was.

Back in this were curators working on various projects, and she went up to one who was examining some jars of preserved lizards in tobacco sauce, and said something to him, and he turned around.

"This is-- Trashscarf," she said, saying the name a bit awkwardly, as one well might. "He's looking for someone to take responsibility for this story--"

"My word! What a splendid mustache!" exclaimed the curator, and looked at Trashscarf with a delighted look, as if he were a rare, exotic animal at the zoo. "I just know that belongs in an exhibit! It's got to be displayed!"

"But--" started Trashscarf, at the same time as the mustache began "Hot diggedy! This guy knows quality when he sees it!"

"I'll take it," said the curator, and began to rummage through a stack of papers on a table beside him. "You're Trashscarf? I need you fill out a form--"

"Wait, not the mustache," said Trashscarf hastily, "I'm here about the buried city. The one the mustache people came from?"

The curator gaped at him, like a fish wearing bifocals. "You mean... the Lost City Of Scarab-Rey?"

"Do I?" Trashscarf crossed his eyes, because he was talking to the mustache, but the curator was already talking excitedly.

"We know that our ancestors came from some remote part of the coastline, where they all wore mustaches that were somehow deeply culturally significant. But they left it behind, and it was lost to legend, and now no-one knows where it is!"


"I know where it is," Trashscarf said, delighted, "And I'd be happy to show you!"


"I may have to take your word for it," said the curator, "But I'd really like that! I'm Andrew Rush. This is my partner, Lynn Liddy." He indicated the volunteer who'd helped him.

"Pleased to meet you," Trashscarf smiled charmingly at Lynn Liddy, who smiled back at him uncertainly, and the mustache launched itself off his face, like a suicidal caterpillar, and landed on the table between them, and it instantly rolled up into a little ball and began to fall asleep, which he could tell because its ends made a purring rumbling noise. Andrew Rush looked down at it and frowned, and looked at Trashscarf, and then back at the mustache.

"Is that thing sentient?" he demanded.


"It's a mycellium, not a thing," said Trashscarf, "And yes, I think it's sentient. It's been a tremendous help to me. In fact, I was going to offer it a nice comfy home in some nice comfy room in the museum if it behaves itself. It's a little bit drunk right now, I'm afraid."

"Fascinating!" said Mr. Rush. "I'll be glad to display it-- heck, I'd be glad to wear it! I always wanted a mustache."

"It will be very happy," Trashscarf nodded, and brightened, "In fact, you could grow more of them! Sell them to help fund your research, and let the people of Scarab-Rey reconnect with their heritage!"


"By Centennial!" exclaimed the curator, reverently scooping the mustache into his palm, and smoothing it across his upper lip with trembling hands. Trashscarf watched carefully, but if the mustache was trying to talk, it wasn't working; he couldn't hear anything, nor see the other man's lip twitching.


However, he did see one curl of it uncurl, and wave at him, and then curl back up happily, so he was pretty sure the deal was acceptable to the mycellium.


With paper and pencil provided by the curator, Trashscarf was well able to draw a detailed map of the route to the buried village, and a few tips along the way.


"And," he added, making some dots beyond the village, "If you keep going, and go along this Way--" He drew a long curving line with his right hand, while his left hand, unnoticed, felt its way back along the knots of the scarf that he'd stitched his travels into. "--then you'll find a path that will lead you to a trail that will lead you to a road, and that road leads to-- everywhere!" He looked up triumphantly, as he dropped the pencil like a microphone.


"Thank you," said Lynn Liddy, her eyes wide and reverent. "Please, we've got to give you something, some way to pay you for this incredible donation."

"No, no, it's nothing," said Trashscarf, "I'm really not much. I'm just a wanderer, and a weaver. We each make our own Way, as we can."

"Thank you, Trashscarf," said the curator, as he picked up the map Trashscarf had drawn. He paused, looking at Trashscarf. "But you're not from around here, are you?"

"He's a visitor from a very distant land," said Lynn Liddy, "He should tell you about the strange things he's seen there. And you should tell us about this strange thing you have here... if it's really a sentient being..." She paused, uncertainly.

Grinning, Trashscarf patted the scarf. "Perhaps another time, perhaps another time," he said. "Goodbye, miss and sir! I hope we'll meet again!"


And bearing their thanks and a selection of lovely souveniers from the museum gift shop, he headed back out on his Way, and the man and the woman and the mustache all waved him farewell.

Footnotes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%ABlgrinda

https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/skara-brae/

https://www.nationalforests.org/blog/underground-mycorrhizal-network

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog_butter