You were the Chosen One!

"MASTER ADDAMMM!!!"

He came running at a speed Addam had never seen him reach, not even when racing madcap with and then again against Mikhail across the moor. His ears, somehow, appeared to be flung further akimbo than even his windmilling arms, and both his bootlaces and the ribbon making somewhat of an inelegant bolo tie about his collar had come partially undone.

Yes, this was young master Milton's unheralded entrance, and it wasn't exactly the first they'd all ever seen, so the overwhelming majority of the group kept about their business, collecting flora here and fauna there and remarking on a townsperson's writ that had called for just such a material. He approached from near the city gate, and Mikhail trotted awkwardly some langorious number of seconds after alongside...a goose?

Dirty gray, orange bill speckled with pocks of gold, crackly webbed feet...ah. Thinner neck, or rather one not thicker than would usually be expected, so this was a gander, and not a goose. No matter. The fury of men is not so storied, biting of the crowns of their mates' heads notwithstanding. Right?

Not so. The gander is louder, squawkier, more protective, more feral. Where one might expect that it is the female that guards the pack with veritable barks of threat and menace, it is in fact the man that keeps watch over the household. Both sit on the eggs, both help to feed...makes one stop and consider the enormous variety of gender roles in non-socialized and indeed non-observably-sentient races, doesn't it? But that's not what we're here for today.

Jin offered this identifying zoological information only briefly before turning back to his unofficial guardstanding position, looking toward the Gogols who had begun to creep out from the perimeter of the desert again to glare menacingly at Lora and Mythra where they were crouched inspecting a chest of trinkets (no, not arguing about the impending divvyment of the contents, of course not - why ever would you think so?). Remember, the Gogols who are again more colorful in order to attract the females of their race...?

So. To point. A herbivorous gander, for there was no lack of nibbleable grasses and devourable insects (and small rodents, if they were truly desperate) around, due to no ostensible threat Milton had made against his gaggle, had come waddling after the helpless catboy with all vim and vigor, and even now hadn't stopped as they continued the chase circuitously up and down the length of the Outrider's Forest Trail.

"Alright there, Milton?" Addam called, trying not to sound as mildly amused as the whole affair really had gotten him pinned. Hugo, stepping away from Aegaeon to join him, observed the situation and had to stifle a chuckle as well.

"Surely there are better ways to handle such an opponent?" he remarked idly, thumbs twiddling behind his back as if reaching for the familiar grip of his sword.

Meanwhile, Milton: "Of course I'm-" (huff) "-not-" (puff) "-alri-" and blow the whole house of his continued balance down, because his knees went suddenly up from underneath him and he fell flat on his back, evil goose still in determined tow.

As he scrambled to his feet once more to avoid losing absolutely any more of his pitiful advantage, he abandoned any missed consonants and let out a final wailing "They're chasing meeee--!" They? Dear boy, it's only the one, and I doubt your choice of pronoun was consciously neutral in that way.

By now, Mikhail had withdrawn from his reluctant roped-in pseudo-referee role and came to stand next to the men, one much taller and the other...not so much.

"Had you provoked them at all?" Addam inquired. Mikhail shook his head. "We were just watching the fish in the moat..." A fine hobby, indeed.

"Were you feeding the fish, perchance?" Hugo put in smartly, and to that, Mikhail's response was to blithely turn out his pockets to indicate the lack of any snacks with which to do so.

"Did you try to pet the geese?" he queried further.

Reasonably enough, a posteriori if not a priori, there were "None there to pet."

"None? Then this one...?"

"Came out of nowhere." Natural phenomena will do that sometimes, you know.

"So it's not as if he has a chick held mistakenly hostage in the bib of his overalls, for instance," concluded Addam. "But, here, what's that they say about dogs being able to smell fear?"

"There wouldn't have been any fear to smell before the chase had been set afoot, I should think," returned Hugo. "Does Milton harbor any particular fear of wild fowl?"

Wild...now, would that include species of Lasaria and Aletta, or would they be qualified as local sights, by this point? Would it be the resident creepies and crawlies of Gormott that would now register as foreign?

Regardless, "No, I don't think so. He'd always laughed at me whenever I got jumpy, snuck upon by a Quadwing in the woods, and he loves to talk to the Tirkins. He loves the colors of Puffots, and seems to feel the same about Rhoguls as he does Quadwings, anyway."

Cracked halfway between a frown and a smile, Mikhail fiddled with the braided hems of his sleeves. "So it's just geese?"

"'fraid so, Mik," Addam said with a sigh.

When next they looked over, the goose seemed to have wandered off, content with its senseless harassment complete, and Milton was pawing desperately at his fluffy dome, searching for the bald spot he could have sworn had suddenly and maliciously sprouted in between his thankfully unharmed ears.

"Tell me, Addam," Hugo mused. "Have you ever seen a goose in Torna?"

For a moment, their postures were mirrored, prince and emperor both with hand propped to chin. "That's a fair point, dear Hugo," Addam answered him. "I'd always thought they were indigenous to Mor Ardain."

No geese were to be found, after all, in far-too-temperate Gormott; it was never jungular, for all its balmy not-palmy tree cover, even with the environmental aftereffects of the flood that had brought Milton to fall in with the very beginnings of their merry band in the first place. Which brings us to Hugo's anticlimactic conclusion:

"And so here we are in Torna, watching a Gormotti boy being chased to within an inch of his life by his worst fear: an nigh-inexplicably riled Ardainian goose. Truly, he must be the chosen one."

But as Milton sat disgruntled in a yellowed patch of grass off to the wayside of the incipient dunes, picking feathers out of his hair with Mikhail's half-cautious half-curious help, he muttered softly, "Sure don't feel like it."