Exhibit 1: "Lucky"

Well, hey. I'm Fortune. Consider yourselves blessed.

Listen—I'm glad y'all are here, really. It's downright ridiculous to me that so many people are interested in a vanity project like this, but I ain't gonna look a gift horse in the ass.

I've got eighteen paintings for you—mostly paintings. Call 'em exhibits. I've got a script in my noggin here—I'll be damned if I stick to it—which I had Carmen help with because I suck at writing. It's something we've been doing for years now; I draw, she writes something to accompany it. Not fair at all if you ask me, but maybe tonight'll be the grand finale of that arrangement.

Another reason this ain't a book or poetry or anything else; I want you to interpret it your own way. I'm keepin' some things vaguer than others, because by the time we're done here and your asses are out of the seats, this'll be the new oral tradition. I want the chapters scattered to the winds with different folks, only pieced together in your minds and myth. I want it to grow and mutate until it's larger than life.

Yeah, go ahead and laugh—it's better you carry it. I've had it on my back too long.

Thanks to Imber for hosting tonight. Hope you don't wind up regretting it, 'cause it'll be rowdy by the end, I guarantee. We're gonna get this place jumpin', and I know exactly where to start!

My mother abandoned me at birth. Mama June says she staggered into the village looking like she swallowed a cannonball, and popped me out only a few days later. She wasn't doin' good—her skin was turning purple, especially around the temples. Even with that, after they took me into the next room to clean up, she'd gotten up and vanished. They never knew how she'd gotten away so fast, with no trace. I imagine it was the world's most conveniently timed wagon, leaving town right at that moment.

That ungodly quick wagon was the most important thing to ever happen to me, and it happened minutes after I was born. My life would've been entirely different if she'd taken me wherever she went—entirely worse, and entirely shorter.

So that's what I decided to do for this first painting. I went for a chalkier, more realistic sort of style. Don't mind the speed lines behind the wagon.

Thankfully that's not how it went. Miss June was my mama; me and about thirty others. Simplecreek Orphanage had just received its hottest commodity, and she knew it. She gave me my name, my home, and rubbed my little bald head so much nothin' ever sprouted there. That's what I think happened, anyway.

Oddly, the other kids didn't think it that way. Always got a scary vibe from me somehow, which never felt right to little me. I was calm, collected, didn't make a fuss like Thomas and them. Thoughtful little shit I was, I did my best work in the library.

Miss June is my old mom, and I had my nose in a book so often that Ian and Constance became my two extremely old dads. I clamored for adventure books and fairy tales and whatnot, and they always provided. Constance had his clerical corner in the back, and so I bugged him to teach me about the gods and shit—so much so that he actually kind of did, even if he was never happy about it. Both he and Ian taught me about magic and asked me to not tell the other, but Ian was the better teacher: I learned one singular spell. Even that was a lot.

Eventually, Ian put volume one of Lucky Trail in front of me, and I never went back. It's the single best piece of fiction ever written, and I fully stand by that. All epic poems should come with pictures—it's what made me learn to draw in the first place. That was the moment I knew I was an artist. I remember it so clearly: it was the moment I knew I wanted to move. Lucky is such a chaotic beast, and I imitated his wild movements and attacks in everything. He always fought corruption wherever he went, taking from the rich and feeding those without, even if it was an accident. I thought that would be a great next step, but the only "rich" people I knew were our old governor and his family. I never managed to get in their mansion when I was that young—Constance yelled at me to quit climbing on rooftops, but he was too rickety to get me down. I was still keeping to myself, but I was loud about it.

I have great parents—more than most people—but that never stopped me from wondering about my first ones. I was sure they were off on some grand journey, a quest to save the world, something. I wanted to go on my own to go find them, but I had to prepare first. I started scraping together every copper piece I could find; nicking a few from Gertrude's counter when she wasn't looking, following merchant wagons to see if anything would fall out, diggin' through the dust and dirt on the outer roads. All that excitement was awoken in me because of Lucky Trail.

Then it ended. Unfinished. I asked Ian where volume sixty was, and he said the author died before it was published. They've found scraps of further manuscripts, and even a complete version of volume ninety, but that is where the tale of Lucky and crew ends in a coherent form. Anything else isn't real.

That was what life felt like from that point on. The week I learned about death, eight years of clear, focused life ended. I knew what the stakes were, and I knew they were coming for me—coming for us all. I thought the story they told me about my mother was probably made up to protect me from what really happened. She'd just died. That was it. Nothing exciting.

But that couldn't have been true. Ma and Pa were off having wacky adventures, and that was supposed to be what I did. My lonesomeness wasn't sad, it was preparation. The way the other kids looked at me with fear, the way the shadows grew when I looked back—that wasn't a curse, it was a superpower they left me with to aid my quest!

Nah, it was horseshit. If they hadn't died, they'd just left. I knew that then.

But why had they left? What were they running from? Were they afraid of me too? Should I be afraid of me, or whatever it was inside me that glowed so darkly?

I was more scared than ever, trying to get those thoughts out of my head with all the stories that used to excite me so much, but I only saw death. There were moments in those childish books—heroes would get battered around and take grievous wounds and stand right back up to fight again. It used to get me fired up, but all I could think now was how that hit should've killed them, or how that maneuver wouldn't work in real life. This was fantasy land, plain and simple.

And if they should've died, what would happen to me? I wasn't anything special, I didn't have any skills to protect me—I was just blind lucky to not slip from a roof and crack my beautiful shiny dome on the cobblestones. Eventually, that became my defense: Constance always said we had greater things watching out for us, Elder Gods and Messenger Gods that steered our lives the way they were "supposed" to go. Basically, every time I was supposed to fall, something reached out and corrected my footing.

Sure, I thought. Why not.

That didn't comfort me in itself for long. I got more reckless, daring them to let me fall. Let me plummet and ruin your precious plan. Let some other nine-year-old worry and fret over when you'd take them in their sleep, or when your demon army would march through the village and flatten us because word hadn't gotten here in time, or when you'd fight each other and destroy us all, or when you'd up and leave as if you were never here, and we'd be truly alone.

Something like that couldn't be relied on, not one bit. Something you couldn't see or understand, that never talked to you. Something so big it wouldn't even notice if it stepped on you. And y'know what? I didn't want to think about it.

The first time I heard Mama June yell, I thought the same about her. When I saw Ian or Constance cry, I knew I couldn't ask to be read to anymore. There was no safety net, and there never had been—so what was the point in being cautious? Why would you rely on anyone when your own two legs are the only thing carrying you, and anything else would slow you down?

I was angry. I was sad. I was terrified, and it hurt.

I couldn't handle being by myself anymore. My fear of everything didn't extend to socializing, so I injected myself into the other kids' groups. I played with them and fought them, chased and ran from them, and even learned some of their names. Some of 'em are even in this room tonight—the important ones, anyway.

The days of Library Fortune weren't gone, per se, but the golden age had passed. I was drinkin' as soon as I was tall enough to reach the tap myself; Imber kept it pretty high. Those next years I was Sundown Fortune, or Party Fortune, or Fast Fortune—I guess I had some of the storybook left in me.

I found that stash of coppers again when I turned fifteen. I wasn't much bigger or stronger than when I'd started collecting it, but I still hucked it onto the nearest, fastest wagon I could see heading out of town. They'd need it more than me—I decided all I needed was my smart mouth, and when that failed, my true lifeline was my fast legs.

I knew I needed them, because something was coming. I'd know it when I saw it, I kept telling myself—it would come for us village folk first, and only touch the rich bastards in their high city when the rest of us were gone. That's what we see on the horizon, in the far background of this exhibit. I decided to show it as a dark, angry sea, with waves poised to strike any time.

I didn't know what it was, but it was big, and faster than me, so I needed to get good at runnin'.

GALLERY OF FORTUNE SIMPLECREEK—RECEIPT—9/18/1316

EXHIBIT #1: "LUCKY" SOLD TO MOTHER JUNAKIEL SIMPLECREEK (50 GP)