Chapter 59: Day 58

Day 58,

I’m doing it.  Today I’m finally going to track down Theo and ask him about the (suspected) missing records.

 

I have failed to talk to Theo.

When I got into the Village today I quickly found a guardswoman on patrol and asked her where I could find Theo, saying that I wanted to talk to him about his time as interim co-archivist.  She directed me to the large (by Village standards) basilica style building that acted as a sort of shared headquarters for the guards and the mediators like Vernon.

Once I got to that mostly empty building however the couple of guards I found in a yard out back practicing at stabbing a quadrupedal dummy told me that the elder had just left to go make the rounds of checking on all the other guards around the Village, as he was wont to do from time to time.  Making sure that they're neither in need of assistance nor goofing off.  They directed me down to the docks where he usually went first.

Thus started an entire day of walking back and forth across the length and breadth of the Village being told that I’d just missed the old man, culminating in me returning to the guards’ basilica waiting for him to show back up.  As most of the guards filed back in to hang up their spears and breastplates for the day, I got to get to know a few of them as the ones who preferred to eat supper there among their fellows instead of returning home for it invited me to join them.  An hour after sundown and wondering if the old man had just hung onto his equipment and gone straight home, someone told me that Theo had volunteered for night patrol and already gone out an hour ago.

When I expressed surprise that someone his age would do something like that, especially after already being out and about all day, I was told you’d never guess how old Theo is just by looking at him.  “Old, yeah, but not ancient like Pat” they said, despite the two seeming to have been around for just as long.  Apparently he’s in good shape too, enough so that the newer volunteers (it struck me that they said “volunteers” and not “recruits”) often have trouble keeping up with him.  It seems that his age (no one knows a number) and how he stays in shape is a common topic for speculation among the guards.  A few think he’s got some artifact or combination of artifacts that keep him young(ish) but that’d be a lot more dramatic than anything they usually do.  Others say he periodically goes out to a secret spring on another island or up Cloud Tower to rejuvenate himself, but no one’s actually seen him do anything like that.

If I didn’t know better I’d think he was actively avoiding me.  But he shouldn’t have even known I was looking for him today.  Unless the first couple times really were coincidence and then he heard about me over the course of the day and then started actively avoiding?  Or some sort of artifact.  And despite all the other supernatural things around here, I’ve never heard of anyone actually “doing magic” or having powers, so that rules that possibility out.  Probably.

I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for now that today might have been a fluke.  If I can’t catch him tomorrow, then that will actually be suspicious.

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