A chat with a peculiar Uncle of yours

[UncleAsriel]

So, you wanna know about me, huh? Well, I don’t know quite what to say. I’m a guy. That kinda helps. It’s always good to know that, especially when the universe tends to avoid ideas like universal indicators of gender. I’m wearing rugged old hiking clothes – woollen pants, a comfortable t-shirt, those same darned hiking boots that seem to survive practically anything thrown at them. I’ve also got this wide-brimmed hat that keeps me from dying of heat stroke, and keeps my white-guy skin from cremating. Along with my scraggly chinstrap beard – which is kinda reddish, which is weird because my hair is brown- I’ve got a big of a Torgo look going for me. But hey, you can see that.
What else do I have here? Well, since I got lost hiking, I’ve got a bunch of stuff somewhere in TreeSprite’s Grove- which is kinda useless, really, since Blackstar Dojo isn’t the Grove. Oh well. I’ve got a Zippo lighter in my left pocket and my Swiss army knife in my right. Speaking of Swiss army, I’ve also go this cool watch my grandma bought me once: complete with glow-in-the-dark numerals and a month/day setting. Completely analogue, none of that digital crap. Good times.
I’ve also got a medical kit in my backpack, complete with antihistamines, pain killers, bandages, pile of other stuff like sinus medication and its ilk, and a few packages of a bug repellent / sunscreen glop that somehow works quite well. I carry a towel in my backpack, Douglas Adams style, along with a few books – wilderness survival stuff, mostly. To keep true to my outdoorsy nature, I’ve got a compass and one of those magnesium brick things that they use in road flares- you know, in case I ever lose my way. I can safely say I can survive out here in the woods.
Where did I come from? You really want to know? Well, my life wasn’t particularly exciting before I found myself roving the universes. Grew up on a plane I call Earth, lived as an only child. I’m gifted apparently – some legal documentation confirming that I’m smart. Nothing special. I’d just graduated school, and was going camping with my Dad when I found myself literally out-of-this-world. We’d gone to this conservation area way out in the back woods in Northern Ontario –North enough that you need a shotgun to deal with the mosquitoes, where Métis people call it ‘the sticks’. We’d just set up camp, when I had to go into the forest to relieve myself. Out of nowhere, as major storm whipped up, and I took cover. After I got up out of the fallen bracken, I found my campsite had disappeared, as had my Dad. Calling out to him, TreeSprite the Nymph found me out in the woods. Knowing a good bit about folklore, I called myself a false name: Asriel. I eventually got to know TreeSprite and her family, and became a bit of a wayward ‘uncle.’ It kind of stuck, so now I’m everyone’s Uncle Azzy. Anyway, a lot of stuff happened in the Grove (I won’t recount it here since I don’t have a few weeks to sing the saga from beginning to end), and eventually I began to wander around a bit. Just my luck, I fell through a hole in the ground, and went though some tubes. I land hard on the wooden floor of what looked like a Japanese dojo of Martial Arts. Who shows up but The Dark Psycho himself, Dark Prince of Psychotopia and all round loony guy. Apparently, he’d become a god, and had created this lovely little place as a bit of a lark. He told me I couldn’t leave easily, but offered me a nice home here in compensation. Since there’s some weird theory-of-relativity thing going on (I’m in different parts of the multiverse, apparently, and that kind of does it for you), if and when I return home, my mind will find itself in the same body that just walked off into the woods to take a leak. So, I don’t need to worry about returning back from fairyland, and finding everyone I knew dead for 100 years or something. So, I’m spending some time here, being a curator for the Wilds. Pretty cool, really.
Anything else you wanna ask? I’m about to hunt down something to eat, so I’m going to sod off in a moment. Is there anything else you need to know?