Our family D&D game picked back up not long ago. Our grup of “dumb farmers from Kansas: (that’s pronounced Can-saw, by the by) were walking along, minding their own … you know, I think I’ll just let Chloe tell it in her own style.

This is from the vey personal writin’ of Miss Chloe Burnbutt Staghollow:

Been a while

My bad.

After Shiney Butt I didn’t much feel like chronicling the Days of My Life.

The gang’s still all here. Been doing the same-old, same-old. As one does.

Mack’s still acting like my Mama and Papa rolled into one. It’s okay, I’m getting used to it by now. That swear jars probably over half full. (snicker) I make him pay into it too. Gander, meet Goose.

And, butter my boots and call me wrong—I sho’nuff jinxed myself with that “over the river and through the woods” nonsense. I said it once like a fool hummin’ sleigh bells, and now here we are: blowed clean outta Kansas, if not in body then certainly in route and sanity.

We was just walkin’—minding our own—when the chill set in. That slow, sticky kind that crawls under your collar and whispers about regrets. Fire wouldn’t hold a flame worth beans. The night was quiet in the wrong kind of way. And then came the mist. Not your regular swamp-born fog, neither. This stuff had intent. It curled around our camp like it was listenin’. By mornin’, it was thicker’n Mama’s chili and cold as regret in a tin bucket.

Trees looked different, too. Not just “I forgot where we pitched” different—more like Dorothy Gale different. You know, when she got blowed clean outta Kansas and into that rainbow bit of mess with grabby trees and witches with aviation issues. She once told me them trees knew your name and your sins, and I believe her. These looked the same. All knot and claw and lean.

We packed quick. Ate a few sorry bites and kept movin’. At some point, we came upon a sign—half-rotted, smudged to the sky—but Mack squinted and reckoned it said “Latvia.” That was good enough for us. Ain’t no force in this world or the next that can correct a Kansas-born decision once it’s been made with fog and certainty. That place is Latvia now, and heaven help the soul who argues otherwise.

That’s about the time the gates showed up—tall stone buttresses stretchin’ like the bones of the world, flanked by two statues what’d lost their heads but still looked mighty judgmental. Gates swung open for us with a groan and a welcome that felt more like a dare. We stepped through. They shut behind us with a clang that settled in my teeth.

The village we came to—Barovia, so they say—looked like it forgot how to smile. Gray rooftops, weary eyes peekin’ through shutters, and not a casserole dish in sight. We found the tavern—Blood on the Vine—where the wine tastes of dust and the mood’s worse.

That’s where we met Ismark. Good kid. Sad eyes. Told us his daddy—the Burger Master—had died three days past and nobody’d lifted a finger to help with buryin’ him. No casseroles. No pies. Not even a ham biscuit or some deviled eggs. I ask you, what kind of town lets grieving children build their own daddy’s casket?

Back home, you couldn’t sneeze without someone showin’ up with a hot dish and a hug. But here? Silence. Empty plates. Full grief.

We told ‘em we’d help, of course. That’s what we do.

And somewhere in that moment, cider in my hand, mist crawlin’ just outside the window, Mack looked over and quietly took the drink from me. Didn’t say much. Just gave me that steady look of his—like I’d sung one verse too long in a song that already knew the ending.

I didn’t argue.

Let the mug go quiet in his hands.

Chloe, no smartass words this time

That was just over a year ago

We’re still wandering around in Barovia. We did finally figure out what it really was called. People are strange there. Chloe’s ready to pack it all in and go back home. But, as she says, “We’re Farmers Insurance, we help people” so we gotta stick around and do what we said we’d do.
I need to ask Em for a decent party artwork of the bunch of us.