It was an unusual sight, had anyone passed by the trail that night. A lone Roamer wagon was parked at the side of the road, with a horse asleep next to it. A campfire's embers smoldered in front, and two figures sat with their backs to the coals. A closer look showed one to be a Jarzoni priest, the other to be an Aldin Rose Knight.
"Shay," said the priest at last, "does Aldis have the Tale of the Boy and the Troglodyte."
"What?" the knight asked.
"A boy lives near the Veran Marsh, and one day he finds a troglodyte caught in a trap. The troglodyte speaks his language, and asks the boy to free him The boy is afraid -- understandably so, since troglodytes kill people in the marsh -- but the troglodyte promises that he would not harm the boy once he is free. The boy takes him at his word, and frees the troglodyte."
"Yeah, I remember that one." The knight nodded. "The boy frees the troglodyte and they go their separate ways. Later on, the boy grows into a man, and is sent on an urgent mission across the Marsh by the Sovereign. He's waylaid there, his horse scared off and is about to be killed by a band of troglodytes when the leader calls off the band. He was the same troglodyte that the boy helped, and he remembered his kind deed many years before."
"That's not the same story as the one I meant, Shay. In the Jarzoni version, the boy frees the troglodyte, and the troglodyte, once free, rakes his claws across the boy's chest. As the boy is bleeding to death, he asks the troglodyte why he did that. The troglodyte replies that the boy knew what he was when he stopped to help."
"That's not a very nice story at all," the knight said.
The priest smiled. "Not nice, but true. That's better than nice."
"I still like our version better."
"You would, Shay."