The Poems of Madam Albithurst: The Starkness

I am not ashamed to admit, I was crying when we left Lady Song.

I did not look to see if my companions too had been affected by her words; more fool me, I thought it polite. Of course, had I been born of another time and perhaps another place, I would likely have found it the height of callousness to allow them their thoughts alone.

Of course, that lovely part of me that embraces my Sensate nature was already crafting a poem — but now I found myself in conflict twice over. First because I could not find the words to express such an experience as Lady Song — an embarrassment in itself — and second because a portion of me did not want to craft a poem. It felt, in some macabre way, gauche. Barbaric, perhaps, which was a state of being that I had long decided I would never experience.

It is perhaps then fortunate that what happened next prevented me from needing to resolve this issue myself, for a great war struck the Sibilants.

I will not begrudge any who did not hear of this conflict, as news these days is a particularly complicated thing. I myself find my attention constantly grabbed by the news-sheet The Sphericon, which the more scholarly types may recognize as the archaic phrase used to describe the Myriad Worlds of the Velvet.

Archaic is indeed the proper word, for the views detailed on the thin pages of The Sphericon serve little more than to encourage my heart to beat faster, and my jaw to tighten quite uncontrollably at the scrawlings of sub-par writers and penny-pinching muckrakers.

Perhaps it is a professional disappointment. They strive to elicit, not to communicate. Indeed, the purpose of any Sensate’s efforts is to do more than simply cause an emotion. Such elicitations are simple enough, any simple words can do so. Sweet sugar. Rotten crusty. Gentle comfort. These words have affected you, somehow.

But a poem, a real poem writ by a master (which many have — I must admit in all humility — labeled me as such) is not merely a portrayal of sensation. It is more than a simple desire to cause someone else to feel something. It is a desire to connect.

Sharing an experience, how one views the Myriad Worlds and how such views have helped to shape and mold oneself, is a holy thing. There is nothing greater.

These, among others, were some of my thoughts as the sound of distant waves broke upon my shore, and I opened my eyes to find myself sitting in a waiting room.

Of course, I had no way of knowing for sure it was a waiting room, but we were, in fact, waiting in a room. The walls were close, but provided an atmosphere that was at least marginally comfortable. There were chairs of wide and broad shape, a couch of floral print and soft cushions. There was even a thick lump of a cushion for Image to rest xer body.

The light came from no particular place. It was a well lit room.

We all were sitting in our own seats, save for Sir Juhrooz and Mr. Porist, who shared the couch. Such a pair they looked, the large and fully armored knight sitting next to the small and humble clerk.

A clock hung on the wall. After a minute, it’s second hand ticked backwards.

We looked at each other, save for Image, who had discovered a thin stack of magazines on the small table, and was flipping through one with a curious, if slightly disinterested, air. For myself, I was more interested in the titles of said documents, rather than their specific contents. The person who had arranged the pamphlets, newsprints, and penny-pulps had chosen these specifically, after all, and it would be quite interesting to learn what I could about them.

I, myself, am not one who is particularly fond of reading. It is a perfectly respectable method of passing the time, of course, allowing one’s mind to travel to places unfamiliar and unknown, uncertain and unpredictable, but as I have stated many times before and will continue to state in the future: the illusory dreams of imagination are mere abandonments of the life we lead.

Therefore, I did not read any of the papers or prints that were scattered about the room on small tables and clean side-desks, even after reading their titles and bylines.

Nor did I speak with my Archonarchian, who too avoided the written word. While Image delved into the many pages, flipping with aimless dispassion, the rest of us simply sat. We did not look at each other, we did not speak to each other, we simply sat and embraced the still silence.

Could I have asked the question? Of course I could have. I didn’t know where we were, or how we got there. I knew we were not in the Sibilants any more, as the world seemed far more reasonable when compared to the oppressive environs of that horrible prison.

But surely one of us knew where we were and how we came to be there, or none of us did. If none of did, why bother asking? If one of us did, then they would soon explain.

Perhaps I should have been amazed, or at least confused, about our sudden placement in such an incongruous situation — incongruous, at least, when compared with our otherwise dark and foreboding future in the Sibilants. But I have found, especially in my long and wandering jaunts through the Myriad Worlds, that it is not uncommon to find oneself in a place heretofore unrecognized and unfamiliar with no sense of how one has arrived there.

Often times, this occurs due to external forces. A Queen or King makes their decision, and the world you wander in is made different. Perhaps you stumble, or misfortune hinders your path. You turn left when you wanted to turn right, or an unexpected friend decides to make your acquaintance. Life is peppered with these moments, the instants when we are urged, nudged, emboldened to look around, take stock, and ask ourselves how did we manage to end up here of all places?

It is a question I have never asked of myself. To ask is to suggest that I had some control over my life that I do not, in fact, have.

Instead, I focused myself on an uncomfortable and otherwise untenable emotion, one with which I have had any number of unpleasant encounters with, and had yet to fully conquer: Boredom.

Boredom is an odd sensation, one scarcely discussed among those of the Grandiose Guild. It is spoken of in the same manor as hunger must be discussed in the halls of great chefs, or ignorance to professors, knowledge to philosophers.

It is at once the antithesis of my work, and its enhancement. It is a shadow side of the same coin. Without boredom, there would be no drive to experience and explore the worlds in which we reside. Hunger, like boredom, can turn the meanest meal into a feast that plays upon the tongue in a dazzling display.

For myself, I find boredom a problematic sensation. Nature abhors a vacuum, it is said, and where there is no sensation, no excitement, no layers of delicate detail to bring a welcome spice to the moment; one’s mind can become detached. As with dreams, boredom can pull one’s life away piece by piece, forcing them to withdraw into the unreal spaces to keep the mind from atrophying.

To say that boredom is something to be avoided is at once a truth, and yet were boredom successfully avoided, there would be no need for me.

But I was bored, and so I decided to imprint myself on the world once more. Avoiding the obvious and therefore unimportant question, I asked the second most important question; “Is everyone alright?”

“I am quite well,” Image nodded, setting aside its reading material and grabbing a penny-pulp from the top of the stack. “I had no idea you soft-skins had such strange books as these. I daresay, I find myself quite amused.”

“I think I am fine,” Mr. Porist looked up, as if coming out of a trance, fingering his dangling extremities, “though my ears could use a trim, I’m afraid. Let me see if I have my scissors…”

“I am quite well, Madam,” Sir Juhrooz nodded, clearing his throat and standing up from his seat before immediately sitting down again. “By the Hollow, that was…I mean to say, I’ve never…”

The Archonarchian’s head dipped. “I em sorry.”

“Don’t be!” Sir Juhrooz let out a laugh, stretching his arms back and forth with a clank of harsh metal. “Have we really left the Sibilants? I thought once we had entered, we could never leave again!”

A poetic view of things, and I said as much. It was of course false that those who entered the Sibilants could never leave again — with some notable exceptions — but it was far truer to say that after having entered the Sibilants, we would never be the same again. This made the Sibilants the same as any other place, and therefore is only notable by custom.

Sir Juhrooz, for his part, returned his attention to the pilgrim. “Am I to take from your apology that you had something to do with our escape? Tell me, how did you do it? Some Archonarchian trick? Strange magic? Weird technology?”

The pilgrim did not answer at first, her head hanging only slightly lower. Had I not known of the layers that hung over her head and body, giving her the broad and flat bullet shape of her outfit, I would have thought I saw her sigh.

“Do you know,” Mr. Porist said, rubbing his balding forehead, “given the time to think, I don’t remember what happened. Instead, I only remember speaking with a particularly kindly woman of no clear age or inclination. Then we were here. Do you remember anything, Mx. Image?”

“I remember everything quite clearly,” Image clicked, setting aside the penny-pulp and clicking their mandibles together. “So much of what happened was clearly geared towards those of your soft-skin persuasion, and so I find myself quite content with the events that led us to this point…however…” Image rubbed their eyes with a faint hint of embarrassment, “by the same token I find myself unable to describe any of it. Perhaps I was not looking in the proper direction, but the selfsame words that prevented my befuddlement serve also to confound my communication. There is no translation in your languages for the words I use to comprehend our situation.”

“Can you tell us anything?” Mr. Porist asked.

Image clicked and shuddered in thought before saying; “The best I can do is to say that we all carefully, and with a particular gravitas, walked away.”

“And this was your doing?” I turned to my Archonarchian friend, only to see her shape contorted even further into a hunched position. In the silence that followed, I could only imagine what went through her mind.

Eventually, she spoke. “I denced.”

At her words, I remembered her sentiment after standing amidst gunfire, and cocked my head in confusion. “I must say, I have seen many dances in my life, to say nothing of dancing them myself, and I have never seen one that involved so little movement of the dancer, and yet so much movement of everyone else. Is this perhaps a euphemism of a kind?”

“Dencing moves the body,” she said, her mask glinting in the dim light. “Good dencing mekes others move theirs. I em e good dencer.”

“You must be,” Sir Juhrooz nodded, looking about the room. “I must say, I have never seen a place such as this before. Where have we danced to? By the Hewn,” his eyes opened wider still, “is this Through the Door?”

Oh! Such awe that struck upon hearing those words! Image let fall his magazine, Mr. Porist dropped his scissors, even I — I must admit — felt my jaw hang open at the suggestion that we five had, in fact, all been taken through the door to the Archonarchy. A land that few were allowed to enter.

If I had thought our Archonarchian friend had been ashamed before, there were no words for how she looked now. After a shuddering breath, she said: “No, we ere somewhere worse.”

“Worse?” I asked, astounded at the opportunity that lay in our adventurous grasp. “Where are we?”

Her mask turned to me then, darkness where her eyes should be. I remembered then — not before, the more fool me — the conversation we shared in the dark tunnels of the Sibilants’ filing room. What was a home to someone like that?

“This,” she said, at long last, “is the sterkness.”

“The starkness?” I had never heard of such a place before. “What is it?”

“E punishment,” she said, her head hanging low once more. “E plece where there is nothing but ourselves.”

“Small punishment, then,” Image chittered. “I am with myself every hour of every day. How will this be any different?”

“You do not understend,” the Archonarchian whispered.

Myself, I found this conversation to be heading in a direction I found most unpleasant, and so I decided to take action. Unfortunately, the room being what it was, the only action I could take was to stand up from my seat and begin wandering about the room, examining the nearby paraphernalia.

“Why dance us here, then,” I asked as I observed. “Surely a place of punishment is no better than the place we left?”

“I did not dence us here,” she shook her head with a rustle of stiff fabric. “They do not trust you, end I broke my vow.”

“What vow is that?” Mr. Porist asked, quite unnecessarily.

The Archonarchian did not answer, instead sighing quite piteously and shaking her head once more.

Any further conversation that might have occurred was silenced when the door opened. Though it certainly should have been a startling event, shaking us from our placid and stoic state, the opening passed without singular note from we patient recumbents, save a glance to see who had ingressed.

Through the door marched seven Ogres, their metallic arms glinting in the dim light. They strolled casually through the room, as though there was nothing interesting or otherwise unusual by our presence.

Without a word, each of the seven ogres fixed their glowing gazes upon a singular point in the room, on an object that had gripped their attention for some unknown reason. Separating from their steady line, they each approached their chosen item, gripped it with firm precision, and turned about again, marching out of the room with their items in hand. A lamp in one, a chair in another. Two carried a small couch that none of us was sitting in, while a fifth ogre gripped a simple picture frame.

No sooner had the ogres left then they returned again, hands empty and ready to grasp again, greedily, at whatever caught their eyes.

The magazines were taken, as was the phone. The plants were removed with remarkable speed. Plain white rugs were lifted from the floor and rolled like cigars, while the rest of the furniture vanished soon after. So singular was their purpose, that none of us dared disrupt what was obviously an important procedure with silly trivialities like questions.

When at last the room was bare, the ogres returned once more. For what, I wondered, for they had taken everything worth taking. But no, there was still the room itself. Reaching up, four of the ogres lifted the ceiling gently from its resting place. With only a bit of geometric maneuvering, they managed to slip the large plane through the door. Then they set about the walls, plucking the white plaster from their stoic poses, and slipping them outside with barely a scrape on the door-frame.

Then they took the floor, and lastly the door itself, which I can only say was no small feat, and it was quite amazing to watch the last ogres pull the door shut, after taking it through itself outside.

And there we stood, the five of us, in simple and unyielding void.

I had heard much of Ogres’ skill at both assembly and disassembly, but to experience such deftness was remarkable, especially in such a desolate and unexpected place as the Archonarchy. The Ogres had managed to move the seats and couches without disrupting my companion’s repose. They still sat, bemused and confused on the nothingness that surrounded us.

“What happens next?” I refuse to believe it was me who asked the question. It must have been Mr. Porist.

There was no answer. We looked at each other. We looked at ourselves. Alone in the void, we began walking.