Chapter 102: Day 101

Day 101,

Morning thought: First entry in a new journal.  Also, just remembered I finally picked up proper swimwear during the festival.  Can’t exactly remember when during the day it happened, maybe that blurry evening part.  Going to toss the chiton on over top of it and head down to the beach.  The callback parallels amuse me.

 

I was lying on a towel letting myself dry in the sun after a swim in the ocean when I heard the sound of someone humming coming up the beach.  I opened my eyes, looked over, and saw Pat a ways off heading in my direction.  I scrambled to throw on my chiton.  It’s funny; as much skin as I see people showing on a daily basis I’m still skittish showing much myself.

By the time I had dressed myself again, the elder was close enough to call out to me in that ever-jolly voice of his.  Said it was a lovely day for a walk on the beach.  Didn’t I agree?

I agreed.  I was out here afterall, wasn’t I?

He chuckled and conceded that indeed I was.  We were nearly at arms’ length by then.

But still, old men need to stop and rest now and again, even on nice days.  As he moved to take a seat on a rock, he asked if I minded him joining me on my spot of the beach for a time.

I offered him my towel as a cushion.  It was only a little damp and sandy.

He accepted, thanking me for my consideration.

I shook the sand from the towel, folded it, and laid it out for him.  The old man took a seat with a sigh of relief.

I took my own seat.  The stone was hot from baking in the sun.  I wished I had brought a second towel.  Then again, there was no reason for me to have expected a need for a second.

Now that I’m thinking about it, is it normal to have rocky outcroppings and boulders scattered about otherwise pristine sandy beaches like this?  My sense of other-world memory simultaneously regards it as unusual and familiar.  But maybe that familiarity is from my seeing these beaches as my only waking point of reference leaking over.  A potentially disturbing thought, but I digress.  At the time I had other thoughts on my mind.

I asked Pat if he was doing alright.  Pointed out that this was quite a long walk from the Village, especially for someone his age.

He laughed and said not to worry about him.  Said that he may take a while to recharge, but he’s more spry than he looks.

A pause.

He asked me how old I thought he was anway.

And there it was.  One of a number of questions I keep finding myself coming back to.

I said I honestly wasn’t sure.  That my eyes and common sense said one thing, but piecing together certain things that I’ve heard and read suggests another, but the latter seems outlandish.

I asked Pat how old he is.

He’d stopped counting after two hundred, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t reached five hundred yet.

Older than I thought.  Younger than I’d imagined in some of my wilder moments of speculation.

Still, it’s a bit shocking to actually hear someone admit so casually, even if you expected an answer of a similar nature.  Just to be sure, I asked if he was joking.

He said that, for once, he wasn’t.

A moment of silence while I processed that.

Pat said that I took longer to ask the question than he expected.  Not the longest he’d seen from an outsider, but longer than usual.

Counting the days but not the years I asked?

He said one hundred and one is a good number.

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I asked if it was normal for the people of the Village to live that long.  I didn’t think it was.  Bartolome had essentially died of old age and he was in his seventies or eighties.  (I should know the exact number.  I know I made it part of the archive.  It escapes me now though.)

Pat said no, it wasn’t normal for men to outlive all three generations of their descendents.

I asked him if it was an artifact.  Or a side effect of going out to the edge of the world maybe.

He gave a sad smile, shook his head, and said that he really didn’t know.  His best guess goes back to one of his few clear memories of childhood.  The last person to die before he was born had been the oldest woman in the village at the time.  Years later they still talked about her.  Said that she’d been around longer than anyone could remember, even the next-oldest villagers, grey and white of hair, remembered her being old when they were still children.  By the time Pat was old enough to realize something was strange with him and wonder if he was the same way, no one else was around who remembered her to ask about it.  Maybe he’s a reincarnation.  Maybe the Village itself has to have an Elder and gods or spirits or the world itself picks someone out to take on the role when it becomes vacant.  No way to know though.  And no one to ask.

Except maybe Theo.  But he never gives answers to that sort of question.  Not even to Pat.  Maybe especially not to Pat.

Theo.

I said that Pat had once called him “the other oldest man in the Village.”  Were they the same age?

Pat shook his head.  Theo’s older.  Much older.  If he has an age at all.  People just don’t notice because he looks a decade or two younger and he gradually changes his role in the village every couple of generations or so to keep from being such a fixture in people’s memories.  The old guard.  The wise fisherman.  The reclusive hunter.  Meanwhile Pat is always simply “the Elder”.

I asked if Theo had removed volumes from the archive.

If he had, it would have been behind Pat’s back without his knowledge or agreement.  Then again, it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d done that.  And if he’d done it again there likely aren’t any books to find or recover by now.  The first time Pat had ever found out about Theo committing that horrid act he’d asked why.  Theo had simply answered that the archive was getting full and space needed to be cleared for new records.  The oldest were the least likely to be relevant so they’d been removed.  Why not just make more space?  Build another archive?  Such expansion can’t continue forever.  Eventually you’d wind up with more archive than Village.  This was a solution that worked indefinitely.

I said that kind of logic seemed flawed and overly simplistic.

Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t even Theo’s real reasoning, but it was the only answer Pat had ever heard him give.  Most answers he gave Pat were like that, to the point that it’s hard to tell if he’s deliberately obfuscating or genuinely sees the world in such simple terms.

Thinking back to my own encounter with Theo, I said that I think he doesn’t like people asking questions and finding answers.

Pat said Theo tends to find outsiders disruptive, especially when they’re at their most inquisitive.  And maybe he’s not totally wrong.  Just look at Priscilla.  One of the floating islands still doesn’t fly right.  Even after the island routes began to speed up and stabilize again following the next time an outsider disappeared into Cloud Tower.  And there have been outsiders that intentionally tried to change things about the Village.  Not liking the way it was run, or finding it “primitive” and pushing for “advancement.”

Still, those “disruptions” didn’t bother Pat as much as they seemed to bother Theo.  The biggest ones rarely lasted longer than the outsider who instigated them.  And the smaller ones that live on in slight changes to food, dress, traditions, names, stories; those (in Pat’s eyes) aren’t disruptive, they become a part of the Village, letting it change and live without losing its core.

I didn’t know what to say about all that.  I still don’t.

I think my lack of reply went on a little too long.  Or perhaps my face was showing distress over some of what had been said.  Either way, Pat started apologizing for ruining the mood on such a fine day.  He got up and said to enjoy this weather while it lasts.  And then appreciate the rain when it comes for what it gives.  And then enjoy this weather once it comes again.  For it always comes again and is sweeter for the leaving.

And on that note he left.  It was a long walk back down the beach to the Village and he was an old man afterall.  Even if he only looked a fifth his age and acted a tenth.  

That one did get a laugh out of me.

I asked if he wanted me to walk him back home.

He thanked me for the offer but insisted he’d be fine.  Besides, as nice as company is, being alone with nature and oneself are nice sometimes too.  But if I ever wanted to stop by and visit sometime, feel free.  Nothing like warming yourself with a nice hot cup of tea and a story while listening to the rain.

As he was starting to get away, I remembered one more thing and thanked him for the journal.  He stopped, chuckled, and asked, surprised,  if I was still keeping up with that thing.  Most outsiders forget about it after a week or two.  Archivist really was a good fit for me, he mused.

Why am I still keeping this journal, much less starting a second volume? I think the initial purpose was to help get my thoughts in order while I acclimate.  To help me get a sense of who I am.  And in a sense, it’s still serving that purpose.

Does that mean I’m doing a bad job acclimating if I’m still using it?  That I’m so deficient at keeping my own mind ordered and steady that I need this as a crutch?

I don’t think so.  Or I’d like not to anyway.

No.  I do it because I’ve come to enjoy it, even if it does feel like a chore or duty at times.  And at those times I just need to step back for a moment, recognize it, and take it easy.  

But more than that, for better or for worse, it’s become part of me in a way.

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