Giants, Sleeping and Otherwise

Giants, Sleeping and Otherwise

Postby Glenn » Thu Feb 12, 2015 9:21 am

Dear Allie,

As a former denizen of the theatrical arts, you'll appreciate the following: In order to properly provide you with your comeuppance, I wanted it to be at a suitable moment, some time where I could satisfyingly snatch victory out of your hands, perhaps with a dramatic entrance and a cape, for myself, not for you; too much fabric for you.

I find, months after the fact, that I'm bored waiting. I hope that you peeked over your flabullient (a new portmanteau!) shoulder at the recent meeting, wondering if I might walk into the room, but frankly, I doubt your current frame provides you with the ability to foresee anything further away than the nearest finger that you are sucking some globule of treacle off of.

The sad truth of the matter is that if you are given enough time, you will cause your own crater of a downfall. It's just not worth the effort of pushing past my own tragedy-induced sloth to act upon it.

Still, I would like to meet with you, for old times' sake, and either to make amends or to tie your beard to your eyelids. Let me know a time and place.

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Re: Giants, Sleeping and Otherwise

Postby Treadwell » Thu Feb 12, 2015 9:35 am

Glenn,

As always, you're quite welcome at my home on any given evening to join me for supper, should you care to do so. If you should not care for such, then I'm certainly available at my toy shop or in the meetinghouse in my office there during the day--the places where I've always been available, you see. I should think we ought to meet somewhere, yes, and hope to enjoy one another's company, free of threats or dangers or frustrations. Might I suggest some place and time quiet and private? Tomorrow some time between breakfast and lunch? The former Church of Tubbius is quite empty save for the furniture should you merely want a social visit where we can talk; there aren't any other folks who would be around, and we wouldn't risk being interrupted by customers such as at the toy shop or by flustered merchants as at the meetinghouse. Or might you have a better place in mind?

Aloisius

Postscript: Also, good sir, I don't fancy I am so prone to my own ruination and downfall as some others might think I am. I might not be native born of Myrken Wood, but I should think I can handle living here well enough. It's quite restful being in a town where I haven't twenty-some other men just like me trying to stick a blade in my back or a poisoned sprinkling in my drink.
"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: Giants, Sleeping and Otherwise

Postby Glenn » Thu Feb 12, 2015 9:40 am

Allie,

Let's meet at the toystore. I refuse to believe that any time exists between breakfast and lunch at your church. Who knows? Maybe we'll generate a crowd and I'll bring business to you. As for the rest, if we only had to deal with blades and malignant powders, we'd be far better off than we are, and you well know it. It's not the blades of others we have to deal with but the decisions that weigh down our own spirits. In Myrken, your greatest enemy is yourself. If you have been immune to this so far, it is only do to a unique piggish sense of self-interest. I am no great hero from a tale, but that sort of castle is one that I am well-versed at sieging.

Prepare your boiling oil for I come tomorrow.

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Re: Giants, Sleeping and Otherwise

Postby Treadwell » Thu Feb 12, 2015 9:50 am

Tready's Toys.

Myrkentown's market square, by the gallows deck, currently slushed over in snow and icy sludge.

Morning.


Glenn Burnie might just be right about one thing: there is no such time as between breakfast and lunch when the clock involves Aloisius Treadwell. The toymaker stands by his fireplace in the toy shop, back to the front door, bending forward a little as he watches a kettle of tea begin to wheeeeee. Hands gleefully clap together, and, by way of a short poker, tea pot is retrieved and set on a table between the two nearby Treadwellian rocking chairs with their cushions and their stout frames. Two mugs already await the freshly heated drink, as does a spread of carefully sliced pieces of cheese and bread.

In all honesty, though, even with the merry clapping of pudgy hands and the happy singing of tea, Treadwell is drained and weighted down with cold and sore throat. Yet another day of sniffling and snuffling has begun, prompting the old gent to have dressed very simply, for once, only taking time to throw on brown coveralls over his yellow pajama jumper. Poker is exchanged for cane as Aloisius straightens his back with squeaks, a pop, and a vocalized groan.

"Well, Aloisius! He ought to be here right soon enough, mmph mmph!"
"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: Giants, Sleeping and Otherwise

Postby Glenn » Fri Feb 13, 2015 4:48 am

A knock and then an entrance. That was one good thing about a place of business. The door was rarely locked. There were levels of hospitality and need that Burnie would accept for this meeting. The warm mugs, the fireplace, warmer still. Those things were fine. They were tokens of Treadwell's comfort, but they were no power that had sway over Glenn Burnie, not after what he had gone through, not given the reason that he was now here.

So he knocked and he entered, well under his own power, for that mattered. This former governor was still in earth-tones, dressed smartly, looking healthy though perhaps not as healthy as he once had. "Allie." His tone was friendly enough; perhaps it was only truly civil but the bar was moved, ever so slightly, by the exact name he decided to use. it was a dual-edged sword, though, for while it carried with it a measure of warmth and familiarity, it also completely lacked respect. Still, maybe that was a trade-off worth having.

"I chose to meet you here, in truth not to bolster your business (for the last thing you need is more of anything), but because I have a fond memory or two of here. You possess a specific sort of kindness, of largess, we should say. So long as you need for nothing, you share all you have. Feel that fire. It's warmth has no end that affects you, so you shall share it. You have food aplenty, so you share it. Your couch is not something you can always use, so you share it. That is not a worthless thing, Allie," he moved to sit, even as he spoke, his coat shed but no handshakes offered. "Though that is a testament more to the rest of humanity than to yourself. It is the bare minimum and you offer it graciously. You offered it to me when I arrived in Myrken. I don't forget that. No, the problem Allie," and he said this with a sigh, finally, slowly reaching for that drink, "is when you don't have what you feel is enough of something."

He sipped slowly, and if the fat man had wished to poison him, there was his chance. There was trust here, though, but some of that was a trust of one's own knowledge. "I know you, Allie. It's one of two things. You've acted as you did because you don't have faith in me. Or you acted as you did in spite of your faith in me. It's one or the other and I'd know which."
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Re: Giants, Sleeping and Otherwise

Postby Treadwell » Fri Feb 13, 2015 9:30 am

Nothing other than decent, plain tea filled Burnie's cup. Meanwhile, as he talked, Aloisius reached for his own mug and gave it a reasonable slurp as he settled into his own rocking chair.

"So, you come here taking me to task regarding my, mmph, acquisition of the Lord Stewardship and your replacement, Glenn?"

Shlurrrrp.

"It had to come sooner or later, I suppose. The truth is quite simple, though; it's nothing to do with you at all. It is everything to do with the continuation, mmph, of this province as a largely free and independent entity. At the time of the changing of the guard, so to speak, there were really only a few possibilities."

A pause here to whonnnnk a shnozz into a handkerchief.

"You, mmph, being the standing governor, were inevitably going to be the scapegoat in the eyes of the Crown and, mmph, potentially the people, especially with your unfortunate absence in Golben and, mmph, connection with Rhaena. Out of the four others on the Council--"

Shlurrrp.

"I was the only one present with any regularity who was visibly staying on my duties. I was also the longest seated Councilor at the time, for what that's worth, if anything. Hm hm. Whether the Crown representatives truly felt me fit to succeed you or not, I was really the only, mmph, choice if one of Myrken's own was to stay in power--what limited power they've since allowed. This supposed equal partnership of Lord Steward and Lady Warden?"

A throat-puffing grunt beneath the floofy beard.

"Hardly equal, especially with her interruption at the Council meeting recently. Glenn, hm hm, I know what is required to manage a sizable ruling council and, in doing so, to see those under that council to prosperity and success. I knew it instinctively over forty years ago in Westenford, when I unseated then-Chief Magistrate Taask during my first afternoon on the bench. That town has since thrived, hm hm, growing to be a notable port of some influence. As for Myrken Wood?"

Shlurrrp.

"What I need is trust and room to maneuver. I haven't either at the moment from my alleged partner in all of this. It feels as though our dear Lady Warden is doing her best to keep me stymied."

A shrug of shoulders as he sank a little into his rocking chair.

"It was nothing to do with you, Glenn, naught at all, hm hm. In all honesty, you would likely be the better figure leading at the moment, not I; I require people, resources, connections, of which I haven't any regarding Razasan and the royal court, mmph. You?"

Brief chuckle.

"You always seemed to do quite well enough, mmph, with next to nothing."
"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: Giants, Sleeping and Otherwise

Postby Glenn » Sat Feb 14, 2015 3:44 am

Treadwell spoke and Burnie listened, sipping the tea that would not, in fact, poison him. He was patient. Truly, this was why he was here, after all, and it only made sense to allow the fat man to answer his question. Either it was asked in good faith and the former governor wanted to know the answer, or it was some sort of trap and it was meant to give Treadwell the rope to hang himself.

By the end, though, he looked as if he was walking that terribly thin line of two letters: between bemused and amused. "First and foremost, Allie, that was a very nice, quite detailed speech. Why, there was nowhere in there for me to even get a word in edgewise. It reminded one of what it must be like to have to speak with me. Poor bastards." And that was about all the "a" he had in him. It was time for the "be", as it was.

"I gave you a choice, a simple choice, this or that. You spoke up and down, around in circles, voicing frustrations that I certainly didn't ask to hear about, whether I appreciate or not and whether you even have anyone else who might possibly be able to appreciate them," knowing both politics and the Lady Warden as well as he did, "but if I am to diffuse all of that into an answer, it would be this: you did what you did in spite of the faith you had in me, in that, as you said, it wasn't personal.

"It was opportunist." Had he a mug of something stout and formidable, he would have plonked it down on the table for emphasis. It was hard to do that with tea. More was the pity. "You say you need trust and room to maneuver. I needed time, time to find the pulse of the people again, time to find my own pulse, beating erratically as it was. Time to mourn, both my love and my failures. Time to right the ship and the captain both. Instead of helping me find that time, you squealed with your piggish glee when i was thrown overboard."

That he was able to say that and then sip tea, calmly, dispassionately, said quite a bit, none of it good. "You're right, though. I do require less than you, nothing, because that's so often what I was given. You were developed in the soft permissiveness of Westenford. I am Myrken-forged, hard-edged, jagged. The difference between us, Allie, is that if you get thrown overboard, you sink."
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Re: Giants, Sleeping and Otherwise

Postby Treadwell » Sat Feb 14, 2015 10:55 am

"I hardly squealed in glee at any of this, Mister Burnie. I hadn't the time to do anything, in truth--no time to plan, to scheme, hm, but time only to react and to accept, mmph."

Shlurrrrp.

"Would you have had me say to Surdemer, 'Why, no, sir! I think the King's a daft fool for electing me to this post in the absence of all others!' Myrken Wood would not be as it is at the moment, with but a troop of guards and the occasionally watchful glance of a visiting mistress, mmph. Instead, this province--this town in particular!--would be under the complete command of a man or woman from hundreds of miles distant who care not a thing, not a jot, hm hm, for anyone who lives here."

Ta-ta-thump of pudgy fingers on chair armrest.

"In these few years I have been here, sir, you have only been able to see but one side of me. My life in Westenford was hardly soft and permissive. Oh! To see me and the other magistrates on the surface, hrm hrm, begs to differ, yes, but I tell you, my good man, I ruined many of my peers in my younger days and middle age, mmph, through treachery, theft, fire, and worse. If any place at all, dear Glenn, has made me soft, has made me care about the folks around me as being more than tax coffers and constituents, mmph?"

Treadwell snorted, snuffed. Push of feet set rocker in motion.

"That would be Myrken Wood. Now, I cannot begin to think I know how I might convince you otherwise. Do tell me, hm hm? You and I both have our share of time, now, to mourn, to think, to talk, to plan, or what-have-you, mmph. It might better be served, hm, if we can agree that we are supposedly working together in this."
"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: Giants, Sleeping and Otherwise

Postby Glenn » Sat Feb 14, 2015 12:25 pm

Sometimes, in life, you just had to dare. In this case, Glenn gingerly slammed the cup down, causing tea to fly up. It was ginger enough that nothing was damaged. In truth, it wasn't particularly effective at all. There was a pleasant tingling sound, the sort of percussive accent that might come from a triangle or something equally formidable (see: not at all). He did it with such gusto that it almost worked despite that. "What I would have expected you to do, Allie, would be to come to me. Yes, the hand we were dealt was particularly bad but a united front at that point might have made some difference. More than that, showing some damned sympathy to me, looking in on me, any of that would have been appreciated. It's not as if I've never visited you during one of your stays at the Remedium." And that left the matter of his personal loss out of it. Some things went without saying. "Maybe you thought that you couldn't help Myrken nearly as well if you were associated with me, but I imagine you didn't think that at all, and if you did, it was not a weighty discussion, not compared to what you had for breakfast that day, at least."

"As for Egris, I've spent quite a bit of time with her, Allie, and my goal, more than influencing her or getting power for myself, has been to show her what Myrken has to offer. Everyone who comes here who is lost or lacking, and despite her bravado, she is a little bit of both, falls in love with the place. It's the nature of the beast. It takes the broken and gives them what they never even knew they needed. I did it for her as much as for us," not that Burnie had any real faith that Treadwell would either believe him or understand.

That brought it all back to the matter of the bulbous blowhard. "I do know you, Allie. I know you better than anyone here that's not of your family or your personal staff. At one time, I made it my life's work to know everyone who was anyone here, but you? You I know better than you know yourself. You've forgotten more about Aloisius Horatio Treadwell than I know, yes, but I know more than you yet remember. I wouldn't be nearly so offended by your behavior otherwise."
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Re: Giants, Sleeping and Otherwise

Postby Treadwell » Sat Feb 14, 2015 4:52 pm

Merry chuckling escaped, setting the round fellow a-quiver in his chair.

"I didn't think you wanted my company at all, at any time, hm hm. Otherwise, I'd have come to visit. Now, sir, what might you know about old Treadwell for certain, hmm? Dictate my actions, Glenn, mmph; elaborate upon my memories and recollections, then, because, to be quite honest, I haven't the faintest idea of what you're referencing, specifically."

A pause.

"Well? Do continue."
"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: Giants, Sleeping and Otherwise

Postby Glenn » Mon Feb 16, 2015 9:19 am

"It wasn't what I wanted so much as what I needed," and maybe it took a certain sort of gumption and cheek to fault someone for that, but when it came to the self-interested abandonment that Treadwell was so good at, Burnie felt warranted. "She died. She. Died. Go back a bit. Before that she, with the help of my bodyguard, stabbed me in the back and stuck me deep in a prison of my own devising where I starved for a month. (You think you'd at least feel sympathy there). Go forward a bit. The crowd turned against me and it was all I could do to keep Agnieszka from the gallows. Then I lost the position, truly the last thing I had left, altogether. Go back a bit more and Rhaena went mad in the first place because of about seven gambits of mine failing, gambits that I enacted due to a terribly damaged state of mind, one that stemmed from escaping an imprisonment underground a few years further back."

He raised his hands, showing them to the fat man. They were empty though, because what could fill the gap between the two. "The bare minimum is what you offered me in the face of all of that. And for years you served loyally, lost in your own inane business while I went through a dozen personal hells. When I finally dragged myself out of the last, it was to find the cost of the sum of them had been high enough to cost me everything."

The teacup was now empty but he still managed to pull it back, far further than prudent, in order to get that last drop to fall upon his tongue. He had chugged the drink as a symbol of his disgust; it was, unfortunately, not a particularly effective symbol of anything. "I could recite your entire life story, Treadwell. Birth to mishaps to now. I'm not going to because I think you don't well care about mine. When I became Governor I sat with you and I asked for your support, and promised a few concessions and that was all of it. That was when I needed your help. You had been here from my beginning. It was obvious something was wrong. It was just easier for you not to poke at it. You were already getting what you wanted; what was the point of putting even one foot down to shake the boat. Ultimately, the failure was mine, but you are implicated in your neglect, and now, you act not to make amends, not for the sake of redemption, but for yourself, not for Myrken."
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Re: Giants, Sleeping and Otherwise

Postby Treadwell » Mon Feb 16, 2015 10:43 am

"What boat, dear Glenn, had I to shake? My own? Yours? That of the townsfolk? I have, generally, been a steadying, stable center, here, not some, mmph, do-nothing slug scheming for his own ends, sir. Just what have I ever neglected of this town or my duties to it? Glenn, hm hm, serving only myself, sir, would have meant getting out of Gad Phuri's business with the pit fights in the first place. It would have meant not approaching him about them afterward, and not having Ariane nearly gut me on his couch at his command, mmph, and not trying to keep this land from falling apart once his death was found out."

A snort.

"Sir, looking after myself would have meant leaving at any time, not staying through the Baie and the Flux and the thing eating children in the woods and being gutted in the street, mmph mmph! It would have meant leaving this whole town to drift along, mmph, quite dreamily in a haze of fancy and fortune, returning to a much safer, saner, family estate three streets left of the asylum in Westenford. Looking after myself, sir, hm hm, would have meant ordering the Tubbians to stay here, mmph, rather than to leave under potential persecution."

Another snort. A honk again of nose into handkerchief.

"It would have meant not trying to help a henpecked friend find a place to stash his own two hundred sovereigns at night, seeing him shot to death in the face by a crossbow, mmph, and having to write his wife the next morning to beg her to come at once."

A pause.

"Hang it all, Glenn Burnie! If I gave a damn about only myself, mmph mmph, I certainly wouldn't be here, floating in this morass of misery!"
"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: Giants, Sleeping and Otherwise

Postby Glenn » Thu Feb 19, 2015 4:13 am

Treadwell had a point.

Stranger things had happened, of course, even in this very room, but it was still something of note to see Aloisius Treadwell so directly make a point and place it right in the face of Glenn Burnie. It was momentous enough an event that the smaller of the two former Governors, would pause, letting it set in for all the world to hear.

Then, and only them, would he turn back upon the larger man with his words. "You're right." His left hand went up, palm inward but closed into a fist. "You're the only honest taxman in the entire world." One finger ticked up. "You've done your job here, better than anyone could expect." Another finger, the middle, went to match its pointing companion. "You have affection for Myrken, even if it is a scattered sort." His ring finger rose as well. "You've contributed more to Myrken's stability, or at least continuity, than its disruption." The pinky. "And you've known loss, Allie. You have. I will be the first to admit that. You've known loss like we all have." The thumb last, all five fingers lifted before he closed the fist once more.

"Do not, however, for a moment, think that altruism doesn't most often stem from self-interest. Yours does. Mine did. We are flawed men, men who had suffered, who have been through ordeals. We are imperfect. I wanted badly to make Myrken a better place, for its people, for its future, to give its children hope and to rise them up, and for my ego, my aggrandizement, my own image of what the world should be." Others had suggested such a thing but no one could put it quite as well as the perpetrator himself. "You are little better, less willing to do damage but also seeking far more conservative an ideal. It's instead about your comfort, your sloth, avoidance of conflict, the easy way out. By caring about Myrken, you care about yourself. By seeking power, you wish to ensure your way of life, damn the consequences, and you wish to feel just a hit of relevance again. You fight for the right to stay forever asleep, snoring through the ills of the world peacefully, even while you cling to the hope of a waking dream so that you might feel alive once more. I've found that very little damages Myrken more than a poorly-placed contradiction, Allie."
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Re: Giants, Sleeping and Otherwise

Postby Treadwell » Thu Feb 19, 2015 4:51 am

"Mmph."

A moment to calm down from a brief outburst, to let fingers lazily drum atop stomach, to breathe yet another pursy, deflating breath. A moment to flap the handkerchief loose again to dab at naturally wet eyes.

"Glenn, I grow very tired of this fuss and bother. You wrote me implying that we might come to terms with each other here, or that's how I understood it, hrm, after not seeing each other for some time, but you and I seem to be circling each other."

Final mash of handkerchief to eyes, and pulling away of cloth to rest on middle.

"So let me shush about all of that and simply state the facts as they are. Myrken Wood is in a mess. The Council isn't trusted to act independently without its whims being second guessed or restricted, and, mmph, likewise, I am not trusted to act independently without the Lady Warden's approval. Short of my taking some monumental leave of Myrken Wood to go, mmph, tether myself to Chedwry's court and grow close enough to make a formal complaint or request, I have no real option available to me--and neither does Myrken."

Another drum of fingers on gut, with left hand still loosely holding hankerchief.

"Yes, I enjoy a good day's sloth--a warm bed or rocking chair, mmph, a large meal, time with my wife and our children. However, this manner of sloth I cannot abide. We--all of Myrken, mmph--sit here stagnant and restrained, Glenn. It reminds me of my sow, Pinky. What she knows in life is birth, food, water, muddy slop, and the fence posts of her pen, mmph, and she is quite content, but her station in life, hm, will never change. Myrken Wood is like Pinky: charming and loving once you know her, mmph, and perfectly happy to exist as she is, mostly, but not getting anywhere, not truly doing much of note in her own little pen, and never, never being seen as anything other than a fat, lazy, fetid pig by outsiders, mmph. That must change. While you and I sit here bickering about past offenses and slights, though, nothing changes about Myrken Wood."

Faint wheeeee for breath.

"So, Mister Burnie, I am sad to admit that I haven't any idea of how to please you or to change your mind about me, and I haven't many more notions than that, hmph, on how to convince the powers that be to treat us much differently from what they're doing now. What I need to know, sir, is what you feel we ought to do about, ooooh, any of this--our relationship as friends and colleagues, or Myrken's place relative to the Crown. Hm hm? I put myself at your wisdom and your mercy. Do speak."
"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: Giants, Sleeping and Otherwise

Postby Glenn » Mon Feb 23, 2015 2:01 am

"This is why I never let anyone else get in a word edgewise," Burnie mused aloud as he stared at the large man sitting across from him. There was a slightly incredulous look upon his face, much of the anger and frustration he had channeled previously having dissipated in the face of what he had just heard. "They start to liken everything to a thrice-damned sow named Pinky."

His head fell backwards to the top of the chair, his gaze rising to the ceiling, searching, perhaps, for bits of food that had flown up there over the years in order to escape the horrific fate of being devoured by Treadwell. He half expected to spot an enterprising chicken leg from 208 that had created a colony up there, perhaps having just designed a flag. "Aloisius," he said, finally using the man's full name, still not looking at him though, "I spent years, years, of my life, trying to do that. I decided, again, in a fit, again, not myself, not that you seemed to have noticed it, that it would take generations to better Myrken, so I started to work towards that end, using whatever means I had available to me, and many that i had to created from scratch and from the blood and pain of people who may not have deserved to bleed and hurt."

And for what? What did this get him? What did it gain Myrken? "The blood welled under our feet. The pain blurred our senses. The consequences built upon themselves, and we slipped, and we fell, and some of us never will rise again. That's on my hands, Aloisius, because I tried to end the cycle and make Myrken better." Finally, after all that, he would look back to the toymaker-taxman, running a hand over his own forehead in a labored manner. "I don't know. I don't know what goes on out there. I don't know what I've missed. I don't know what I might have done better, and I especially don't know what to do now. I. Do. Not. Know. I needed more time, when I had my hand on the pulse of everything at the end. Maybe I couldn't feel it as strongly as I needed to, but I could still feel it. Now, it's lost to me. I need to find it again.

"It took years but Myrken Wood defeated me. I tried to change it, like others before me, and I failed, and it took its pound of flesh. Forty pounds. Maybe another hundred and fifteen on top of that." He shook his head, more exhausted than exasperated. "I won't quit because I don't know how to, but I'm not sure how we move forward in the face of this either."
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