Tro'go followed the trail the hermit had shown him, but it seemed to wind about in the most peculiar way. Sometimes it doubled back on itself, sometimes it seemed to lead in circles. After what felt like hours of walking, he emerged from the forest to find himself... back at the village.

But that was impossible. The trail had definitely led away from the settlement, hadn't it?

Confused and feeling he hadn't accomplished anything heroic at all, Tro'go made his way back to the clearing. But when he arrived, he found the villagers in a very different mood than when he'd left.

"Water's flowing fresh and clean!" Marta announced as he approached. "And faster than before, too!"

The villagers crowded round him, slapping his back and praising his courage.

"How'd you do it, lad?" asked the man with tree-trunk arms. "Was it a fierce battle?"

Tro'go stared down at his feet. "I... I met a hermit. He was washing in the brook. We talked, and then he sent me back here."

"A hermit?" Marta frowned. "What sort of..."

"He was very nice," Tro'go interrupted quietly. "Just... having a wash. But I didn't do anything brave. I just talked to him and he gave me this pot."

Nobody seemed particularly concerned about the mysterious hermit. The water was clean, that's what mattered. And many of the villagers were quite taken with Tro'go's new helm.

"Proper knightly, that is," one of them said approvingly.

The villagers offered food and drink to him, fresh bread, roasted meat, clean spring water, but Tro'go found he wasn't hungry. He was too upset that his first quest had been such a complete failure. He'd done nothing brave or daring. He'd just... talked to someone.

As the afternoon celebration continued round him, Tro'go sat apart from the merriment, brooding over his inadequacy as a knight.  A young girl with dirt on her face and flowers in her hair approached him shyly, a pale blue shawl with a red flower embroidered on it wrapped around her shoulders. She studied him for a long moment, then pressed a small wildflower into his hand before running off, laughing.

Tro'go examined the flower; a delicate thing with white petals that trembled in the breeze. He watched it for a long time as the late afternoon turned to dusk.

As night fell, many of the villagers offered him a place to rest, but Tro'go politely declined and made himself comfortable in an empty barn. He propped himself up against a pile of logs and sat there in the darkness, frustrated by the day's events.

He touched the rim of his new helm, the hermit's pot. The man's strange words echoed in his mind: ‘Before it was a pot, it was just some iron in the ground... names of things are just our perception and that can change with deed and tale.’

Maybe the hermit was right about some things, but Tro'go still felt he'd failed. Real knights fought monsters and rescued people from terrible danger. They didn't just... have conversations with travellers having a wash.

Those thoughts filled his head as his heavy eyelids began to win their battle against his will to stay up and brood. His dreams were filled with heroic deeds and genuine bravery, the sort of adventures he was sure real knights had.

He slept well and long, never suspecting that he'd already had exactly the sort of adventure that real knights valued most: one where kindness triumphed over conflict, and everyone went home safe. The hermit's words about good things happening to those with good hearts would prove more prophetic than he could possibly imagine.

And somewhere in the forest, following a path that seemed to lead everywhere and nowhere at once, a mysterious hermit continued on his way, pausing for a moment to smile, knowing that the grand design was unfolding exactly as it should.