A good plot should have a strong middle and a spectacular end. But under no circumstances should it have a beginning.

There are only so many plots in the world. It's how they unfold that makes them interesting.

The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in the whole universe to be called -- in the local language -- Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the word Skund.

The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them. Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What? and, of course, Your Finger You Fool.

Rainclouds clustered around the bald heights of Mt. Oolskunrahod ('Who is this Fool who does Not Know what a Mountain is') and the Luggage settled itself more comfortably under a dripping tree, which tried unsuccessfully to strike up a conversation.

But I don't know how I'll ever get a college degree and rise in the world with no high school diploma and eyes like piss holes in the snow, as everyone tells me.

So you say, with your shiny hair and pouty lips - and those breasts - just wait till you start dropping whelps, they'll be at your ankles one day, big as they are - not the whelps, the breasts. The whelps will be in your hair - no, not the shiny hair on your head, well, yes, that hair, but only as a manner of speech.

It would be like The Rock versus Seth Green. Now, tell me who he is