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He had heard stories of life beyond the desert of monsters, demons, heretics. Heard them all his life, like a boogie man to scare children into behaving. “Be good, little Fiyanggu," Mother used to say, "or we'll send you beyond and into the land of monsters!” Now that he was here however, it wasn't so bad. Cold, yes, and there was weird short green fur on the ground, but no monsters to spe-
“MOOOOOO!”
He froze on the dirt path. That sound, he had never heard its like. Eyes darting about, he quickly observed his surroundings; where had that come from? Bridge where a couple of men in armour stood, leaning against the stone, no. Nothing behind him, nor to the left...on the right, just off the path, a giant white creature with brown spot patterns was pulling up some of the green ground fur and chewing heartily upon it. It paused in its eating to fix the small human with a large brown eye.
“MOOOO!”
Fiyanggu gave a little yelp and jumped back, pulling out a small dagger and pointing it at the spotted creature.
"Monster! Bad monster!” Maybe, maybe mother had been right all along! There were monsters! Big spotty ones that eat ground fur! He should never have left, never!
Laughter erupted beside him, snapping him out of his thoughts – the two men on the bridge were doubled over and hollering with laughter.
“What is so funny about a monster?” Fiyanggu was angry, weren't these men guards? Why weren't they doing their job?
“Monster?” The guard was trying to restrain his bouts of laughter while speaking but was failing miserably, “That isn't a monster, that's a cow!” A cow? Fiyanggu turned back to the animal, lowering his weapon. He was confused.
“What is a cow?”
So it came to be that the day would be spent with one of the guards sitting with Fiyanggu on the rocks beside the bridge, explaining to the bewildered young adventurer what is a cow, that the stuff it eats is a form of short green coloured grasses and not fur, and that though life beyond the Pass might have a good number of monsters a cow is not one of them.