Chapter 97: Day 96

Day 96,

The water pressure in the house is starting to get low.  I think the cistern is running out.  I suppose that’s a worry at the tail end of the dry season.  I hadn’t been thinking of that for some reason, so I haven’t exactly been frugal with it.  I imagine most of the Villagers probably would have been more conservative with their water to avoid this.  Bathing in the stream until the rains come I guess.

 

I remember an archival record that I read not long after I first arrived about a woman thought dead who was found on an outlying island.  Digging back through the archive I managed to find it again and confirmed that the woman in question was indeed named Iole.  Judging by the dates, she’s been there over fifty years, with about forty since she last saw anyone else.  That’s a long time to be alone.  Did she always prefer to keep to herself like that?  Although after my own recent… experience… with the western siren song I can’t help but wonder if that island’s song encouraged her to stay and be okay with it.

 

Did some more digging, even cracked open that old yellowed notebook I found in the hidden room.  Looks like Iole is in her seventies.  That puts her as one of the older people in the Village, and possibly within the timeframe for when Priscilla made her last estimates of floating island circuit times.  I wonder if Iole remembers her.  Or would she have been born just after Priscilla disappeared?

Maybe I should ask around with some of the elders in the Village to see if any of them remember Iole.  Or Pat I guess.  How to do it without bringing up Maiko though?

Oh, wait, I could just see if the man who found Iole forty years ago is still around.  Tristan is his name.  He was a fisherman.

 

Asked around the docks about Tristan.  Turns out that when the Archivist says “I found an interesting old entry and wanted to know more about it” people don’t really ask questions.  Looks like he married and moved out to a farm in the outskirts years ago.  Maybe I’ll be able to find him during the Equinox festival.  At least he’s not dead.

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