“Ya see, Dusty got sep’rated from the rest of us. He never was too good with directions.” Old Seph coughed a chuckle, his eyes closing for a moment in memory. There was a slight chance he might fall asleep at this particular juncture of the story.

But he continued, “Dusty always claimed his light kept fading in and out, and I ain’t one to argue the point. But that was his excuse for gettin lost, ya see. In any case, by all our reckonin’ he was the first to find…someone.” He sighed. “It weren’t a girl.”

“Later, once he’d stopped screamin like a little girl, he told us it was a little man, an angry little man, which I know sounds kinda funny. I don’t mean odd-funny, ya see, I mean little people are funny when they get all worked up.” He raised his bushy eyebrows, and we obliged with the expected ripple of giggles. It’s politically incorrect, but Old Seph won’t finish the story unless you do it.

“But it wasn’t funny.” He glared at us dramatically with a pause. “Cause trolls ain’t funny.”