WIZBARD'S ENDLESS STORY

I met him some twenty years ago in a musty used bookstore in Seattle's Pioneer Square. He didn't look all that different from either you or me, but then, I've never seen you and for all you know I have one eye strategically placed in the center of my forehead. Suffice it to say that, with the exception of his decidedly misshapen ears, which immediately made me think of costumed Vulcan geeks at a Star Trek convention, and those piercing, ice blue eyes, which could dance through your entire soul in the time it took to blink them, he appeared otherwise human. Never judge a book by its cover.

He said his name was Aradur Telcontar and from his accent, which I took to be British (or maybe Welch), I naturally assumed he was just another of Her Majesty's subjects who had "crossed the pond" to America to have tea in the Colonies and wound up staying for dinner.

He was quite tall, at least six feet, fair-skinned, with dark hair that I can only describe as immaculate. It was neither long nor short, but there wasn't a fleck of grey and the uniformity of the cut bordered on amazing. I say this because my father had been a barber and I was raised, from an early age, to note such things. Had the Sixties not come as they did, I suppose I would have followed Dad into the family business. To this very day, I still remember Bob Dylan and the Beatles in my bedtime prayer.

Ari, as he later said I could call him, was standing in the Tolkien section, holding a copy of "The Silmarillion," muttering to himself and shaking his head. When he looked up and saw me staring at him, he smiled and said, "I've been expecting you."