Title: Dice
Character(s): The Green Man/Pan
Pantheon(s): Welsh/Greek
Rating: PG
Summary: Pan and the Green Man are overseen, playing dice, by a boy.



The boy had been wandering through the wood, with no clear indication of where he was going. So, when he happened across the scene, he was rather surprised. And now, he watched from behind some shrubbery, hiding, and barely daring to breath.

In the open space in front of him, sitting across a low table from each other, were two creatures he had never seen before, playing a game of dice. On his left was a man who appeared to be sprouting leaves and vines from his skin, and which wound around him. And what little the boy could see of the man's skin, it appeared to be the same shade of green as the vegetation that was growing out of him. On the boy's right was clearly a faun, a pan flute on the ground beside him.

Between them was a low table, which they could sit comfortably at, while sitting on the ground. Each of them had a hand on an overturned, wooden cup, and had various numbers of acorns, and what appeared to be tiny, live sheep, piled in front of them.

"The next time we play, Pan," said the man on the left, "don't bring these sheep. They're impossible to keep in one place, and they keep eating my leaves."

"It isn't all that bad Green Man," Pan said, leaning forward. "You can hardly tell that they've eaten anything at all."

"I can tell," Green Man said, picking at some of his leaves.

"You would, if you just sit there and stare."

"You don't think I can feel when my leaves are being torn apart?"

"When it is something that small doing the tearing, I don't see how it could possibly make a difference. And besides, it's not as though it doesn't grow back."

"Oh, then, I suppose you wouldn't mind if I started pulling out the hairs on your tail."

"You wouldn't!" Pan gasped.

"What's the big deal? They'd grow back."

"You're an awful man."

"I'm not really a man. You realize that, right?"

"You certainly complain like one."

"No! Bad faun. Bad faun."

"That depends entirely on who you ask. I'm sure if you ask Athena or Apollo, they’d probably agree with you. But if you asked anyone in Dionysus' crowd—"

"Are all fauns as chatty as you, or are you the only one who is that in love with the sound of his own voice?"

Pan was about to say something in return, but they both stopped, and turned quickly in the direction of the boy's hiding place. In his attempt to get a better view, the boy had stepped on a twig, and the sound traveled farther than he might've thought.

"What do you think?" Pan asked, greedily. "Turn him into a stew?"

That was the last the boy ever heard or saw of them; no sooner where the words out of Pan's mouth, than the boy turn-tailed and ran.