Harmless

Harmless

Postby Glenn » Thu Dec 29, 2016 4:51 pm

It had been not quite a year. More than 11 months, though. Just not quite a year. That was a problem. It showed a lack of resolve. It showed a weakness that neither he nor anyone could afford. Part of the problem was that the response, not quite a year before, had been so very unsatisfying. Most of it, as he well knew, was that he was writing. This was an outstretch of that. Unfortunately, side effects were never nice and neat things.

Aloisius,

the letter began,

We corresponded eleven months hence. I sent a letter. You responded to it. I never responded back. This, I imagine, did not surprise you. I asked questions. You provided answers of the most mundane sort. And perhaps a wonderful winter tradition was born. I send a letter every year. You respond back. I am heartened to hear you healthy and hale, most of all still alive. I provide scant information about my own situation which suits you well as you are far more inclined to talk about yourself anyway. You provide me with absolutely no reason to return back to Myrken Wood. I do not return. I exacerbate absolutely absolutely no perilous situations with my well-meaning cleverness. Peace reigns. Huzzah and hurray.

This is why you are the only one safe for me to write to, you see. Is it not normal for Glenn Burnie, mapmaker, inquisitor, mayor, to play politics down south? Is it not normal for one such as I to have traversed to a far larger, far grander chessboard, to attempt to make my name, my wealth, my career, my life? Oh, of course you had not followed quite the same path but not all of us can start on the stage, Aloisius. Be happy, then, that even in the face of quite confusing tragedy, the sort that you couldn't well untangle if given the chance at this very moment, your younger friend, now perhaps not quite as young as he once was, is off doing exactly what one would expect him to do. Isn't that what you would want most out of life at your age? Regularity. Predictability. Normalcy. Blessed normalcy.

I am comforted in knowing you are comforted, and doubly so in knowing that were I to send note that I am currently on fire, you would send a very firm note to some person in authority, would perhaps send some sweets just in case, and then would sit by your own fire, confident that you had done the appropriate maximum. To be able to send letters to you is, in fact, one of the few joyful options left to me when it comes to Myrken Wood. You are ever the embodiment of peace, Aloisius. If nothing else, be comforted that I am not currently on fire. At least, then, one of us will be.

Your friend,
Glenn Burnie
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Re: Harmless

Postby Treadwell » Wed Jan 04, 2017 1:37 pm

It takes a few days, but, soon enough, a letter goes out to Glenn Burnie at the address given on the prior piece. As always, the hand is a bit sloppy and smudgy, the letters heavy and dark.

= = = = =

Glenn,

Since you brought it up, I am, at this moment, still alive and well, myself. For the most part, life is, as you so put it, normal; one of my sons is learning toy making from me, I have taken on a new cook at home, and I am still large and old.

However, dreadful times have come to Myrken for me as of very recent, and they are the reason I have been delayed in sending this letter a few days. I found a newborn babe, apparently sacrificed, dead in my bird bath a few days past, and because of the snow the constables could do nothing about it. Also, men claiming to be Tubbians were seen at the Broken Dagger but a day after your letter arrived. They were singing of Tubbius, but their praise meant nothing to Him. No, no! They were false! They were--well, I do not know who they were or what they were doing, but they are not from my church! They brought a rain of fat and meat down on the place! I aim to root them out, Glenn, and to find out just who has these wretched designs on me.

It is also terrible and cold and snowy here. At least the children are able to make ample snowmen and the like.

I should hope, dear fellow, that all is as well with you as you make things sound. I do hope you have managed to settle in to a normal sort of court life and that you are finding yourself with more than enough to eat and drink and less than enough to do.

Your friend, in some amount of distress,
Aloisius
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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Re: Harmless

Postby Glenn » Mon Jan 09, 2017 8:48 am

Some men could ignore anything. Some men had the resolve to abstain. For some men, temperance was simply a choice, not a struggle.

Others received a letter from a fat madman many leagues away.

Others were fool enough to send a letter in the first place.

Eventually, a reply came.

Aloisius,

There are questions I could ask. That could be the way of this. I would ask a question. You would provide an answer. We would, between us, create a framework that would constrain my questions, would eliminate possibilities, would allow you to give me answers that would show you, yourself, what you need know. I am afraid, however, that such things have costs. The primary cost, the one firstmost in my mind, is a shameful thing. You see, Aloisius. There are questions, simple, basic questions, that I do not wish to know the answers to.

It's easy enough for you to reason them out. Look at what I did not ask you instead of what I did. Look at which pots I had fingers in before I left. Note that I've asked of none them. A few simple pieces of supposition, instead. Either things are raucous, wild, or they are not. If they are, your events are unrelated but will eventually dovetail. One threat will crash into the other. That is the way of Myrken. If they are not, then most certainly things are connected. You are targeted. Put the pieces together. Could the sacrifice have powered the ritual at the Dagger? Might the latter have been some sort of hallucination? Was there evidence left behind? Is it a lean winter, early as it might be? Could such a thing have simply been staged out of basic stock? What of the usual signs? Does She haunt your dreams? Do the speak of eyes and Belief? I worry, Aloisius, that you are the opposite of Helstone. You block out the recurrent threats while he obsessed upon them.

I don't dream anymore Aloisius. Sometimes I hope that I might dream of Rhaena, that she might be there, lurking around my mind, traces, that if I squint just so, I might catch her out of the corner of my eye. There's nothing though. Just that emptiness. I hunger in ways even you could not imagine. I envy you that, Aloisius. Why do you play with magic and power? Why do you play with belief? Don't you see how much better all of this would have been for you if you were just a normal man? Just a tax-collector, believing in nothing but what was before you? Oh, you'd be in peril now and again for you dealt with what people covet most, but it would be a normal peril. No sacrifices. Nothing preternatural. Thieves can be dealt with. The unnatural, though? You could have just been a good man and that alone would have made you better than almost all of us.

Solve this Aloisius. I am afraid I can no longer do it for you.

Glenn Burnie
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