OOM: Letting Urquhart go

[ostro_goth]

The day before yesterday, Teja had found Urquhart lying on his cot, wild masses of blond hair covering back and shoulder, breathing quietly, but not answering to anything Teja said. Teja had left the coffee and gone.

Yesterday, Teja had found Urquhart still lying on his cot, hiding in his hair, with the coffee sitting untouched just inside the barrier in the place where things could be passed through. Teja had exchanged the cold coffee for nice fresh hot coffee, and left.

Today, Teja finds Urquhart still on his cot, unmoving, yesterday's coffee again cold and untouched. He takes away the cold coffee, then opens the barrier and walks inside with the hot coffee in his hands. He puts it down among the mess of books, finds a place to sit beside the cot, pushes his fingers deep into the wild blond hair, shoving it out of the way and taking hold, ungently, to lift up the man's head and force him to turn and face him. "So you are, indeed, still alive," he says, disdainfully.

Comments

[ostro_goth]

"Guppy is not wimpy," Teja says. "You only scared him out of his mind. I have seen him heal my beloved of a mortal wound, much like the one that I actually died of. Guppy is anything but wimpy."

Pause.

"But you understood the principle; any misstep shall forthwith be your own fault entirely. And Demeter shall turn you into a tree if you displease her. Tread more softly, big wolf!"

Another pause.

"Pick up your books."

[scots_wolf]

"Why?"

[ostro_goth]

"I am letting you go," Teja says. "As I said, you are not getting any saner here. And I would not have you here, like a great caged beast, tortured by the narrow walls, with no weather or seasons. Even my ruthlessness knows bounds. You know no pity: - but I do, and I must take pity upon you!"

[scots_wolf]

Urquhart starts gathering up his books.

[wheatencrown]

Demeter emerges from around the corner to take Teja's arm and watch Urquhart.

[ostro_goth]

"She encouraged me to let you go, saying I should not make myself cruel for your sake," Teja says. "So do not offend the goddess again."

[scots_wolf]

"The barrier was open all the time," Urquhart says, looking up at them both, arms full of books.

"You knew you would let me go. You knew that I would say what you wished, so you might do that."

Beat.

"I need a wheelbarrow for all these."

[wheatencrown]

Demeter sighs and pulls from her sleeves a sturdy canvas sack that still has soil clinging to it,

"Use that."

[scots_wolf]

Urquhart reaches out, nods, takes the sack and starts piling his books in there.

"If I annoy you," he says, "why did you tell the Goth to let me go?"

[ostro_goth]

"We have names," Teja says, "and you should begin using them."

Pause.

"Angus."

[wheatencrown]

"You've had your punishment and are a smart enough man to not find your way in here again. Also to remind you that if you anger me, I won't simply lock you in a cell."

[scots_wolf]

"Don't call me by that name," Urquhart says. "It's forgotten. I left all that behind me. As far as my family knows, I died in the Holy Land. And now I'm really dead, anyway."

He keeps piling books into the canvas sack.

[ostro_goth]

"Then start calling those that wish it by their names," Teja says. "While you shall ever be Urquhart only, with no first name and no home given, if you wish that."

Pause.

"Ask Ramon Salazar what Demeter can do. As you will be speaking with him anyway."

[wheatencrown]

"Come now, Teja. We're not worthy of his respect. Let him pick up his books and his after life again."

[ostro_goth]

Teja shakes his head. "He understood what I explained to him, about this place," he says. "One hopes that Urquhart will pick up his afterlife with more caution than before. None of those here are 'sheeple' to be terrorised without resistance or punishment."

[scots_wolf]

Urquhart gives a little scoffing grunt. "I know who I will terrorise, with resistance or not, but you won't see it," he says.

He lifts up the sack. Even he, tall and strong as he is, can barely lift it. There were lots of books in those two months.

[wheatencrown]

"Be careful of hubris for the price here will be greater than even you expect."

[scots_wolf]

"I had my head bitten off by a monster," Urquhart says. "At least I think I might remember that. Or it might be a metaphor."

He looks Demeter in the eye. His own eyes are even colder and deader than usual.

"I won't be cowed or scared," he says, "but I will remember what Teja said. It's actually helpful, you know."

[ostro_goth]

"If I had known that all it took to make you listen would be a reference to Plato..." Teja says, shaking his head.

[wheatencrown]

"That man talked to much and never really learned as much as he might have from Socrates."

Demeter looks Urquhart in the eye, she has seen far worse than him.

[scots_wolf]

"You knew Plato?" Urquhart says, with actual interest.

He is medieval scholar enough to be impressed by the auctoritates. No matter how much he stopped believing in what he was taught as a child or a young man.

[ostro_goth]

"I told you, she is the goddess Demeter," Teja says, with both exasperation and dripping sarcasm. "She knew everybody."

[wheatencrown]

Demeter shifts to Greek, a very old dialect,

"Yes, child, I knew him. Socrates was nicer."

[scots_wolf]

"But we only know about him from Plato himself, and from Xenophon," Urquhart says, his own accent about 1,700 years younger. At least.

He had spoken it in Constantinople, and the north of Greece, on his way back from the orient. Urquhart takes to languages very easily.

[ostro_goth]

"Now we know of him through her, who knew him, in person," Teja says. His own accent is early Byzantine, and from the Greek islands -- which only the initiate will recognise.

"I would not put it beyond this place to bring Socrates himself, one day."

He smiles a little, imaging how much Urquhart would fanboy fawn upon the man.