I lay twisting and turning in bed, the absurdity of past events still seared fresh in memories. When I might fall asleep, the events always rushed like the sea, crashing that the shore might be sprayed, retreating, and crashing once again, a series of lunges and dodges that kept me awake still in the dark.
Drowsily, I flicked open the lightbulb and stood up. How rich must Crawford have been to own electricity in such a decrepit City—and an even decrepit sector of it?
The bedroom came into view, and I could not help but once again remark that it was quite affluent of the owner to own such a place. As the rest of the house I had explored had been, it was of a beige white, plain and simple but not to the point of dullness. Its simplicity was charming enough. Hung on the walls were draped windows and paintings of rabbits still—under one of it, the bed. An intricate mahogany with fine white silk that I would have dozed on had it been any other day. A bedside table stood beside it, and a wooden desk across it.
I took to the wooden desk, drifting on the hardwood floor, and removed the dark wooden hatbox from storage in my coat. It had almost been sighted by Crawford during our accidental meeting in the streets of Central Yarim before I swiftly hid it once again. A streak of ornate white ran across it, and the text across the front held my gaze once more. Yarim's Legion. The first band of Hunters; Virgil, Rosalia and Crawford were once part of it.
My heart picked up speed. I remembered the lost string, and a pang of guilt rushed but if people here were insistent on keeping secrets, I will search for the answers myself. Before I had picked up one of the letters, it struck me that Crawford might discover me still awake and usher me to bed. Though I heard moans from the halls, which I will save time by not describing, it is perhaps more thoughtful to be safe and turn off the lights. So I did, and took only to using a gas lamp, and lit it beside the hatbox.
I looked at the grandfather clock. Ten past eleven o'clock; there is time still.
So I took to browsing the papers, fumbling about the stash. Many were dated from the early years 1860, during the time the scholars first visited Yarim. Some of them were violent writings full of childish insults and curses strung on ink and paper, and a random sampling revealed Rosalia to be pious when she was of a young age ("With a tender heart and soul, this colleen prays for the City of Yarim; those irreverent and sacrilegious so-named scholars of the Outsiders will pay for corrupting the minds of the citizens, the Goddess Tintyx will wreak havoc upon them and their children, and their children's children.")
In one, she'd called the scholars a 'gathering of bitches who threatened the gods' goodwill towards Yarim.'
Over time, her writings grew amiable and less frequent. By the years of 1870 the slander had ceased. Perhaps it might have been moored to Crawford's arrival. The letter read as follows:
'A pulchritudinous lad turned up with the scholars a few weeks ago. He was caustic and a facetious fellow, humor as quick as the crackle of lightning; when he grinned, and his eyes did too, I would know he was up to something mischievous and rather troublesome but I would ally with him still, often scolded and berated by my parents when I came home muddy and greasy; a lady has to be prim and proper, they reproached again and again as I came home again and again sticky with sweat and mud.'
An abrupt end of papers dating 1870 came, and the rest were remnants of doodles made by a person with the legibility of a dodo bird, and with the mental capacity the same as one too for the most profound of the passages I (managed to) read was: 'that perhaps eating dogshit may turn you into dogshit for you are what you ate.'
Nothing of import came about save for a single poem that was stacked beneath the countless papers, the last sheet of paper I hoped would be more beneficent than the ones that had come before, but the single ray of hope was shattered as the poem did not seem to be connected anyway to the circumstances. "The eternal light of Yarim's day shines; its rays will strike open the gates of ebony and ivory, and the truth will be bared."
I sighed, defeated and dismayed at what I had discovered, or lack thereof, meaningless findings upon this pillaging of Ms. Rosalia's articles. Bitter, I collected the papers strewn about in winding directions and gathered them back into the hatbox, wondering what Rosalia might say if I returned the hatbox back to her.
I extinguished the light and trailed morosely back to the bed, the floor cold underneath my feet. I felt heavy now, like reality was settling all at once, burdening me; it might not have been the weight of the world but it was the weight of an entire city that rested on my shoulders. I stared at one of the windows, no moonlight allowed inside, as was the case for the rest of the house, and remembered the sun. I yearn for it now as I yearn for the presence of Alice, both shining and radiant though both were out of reach. For now, I tried comforting myself but I know it is deception—I will not see the sun until I free Yarim and Alice will never be mine for her heart belonged to someone else. A dead man. Virgil.
Exasperation came from my lips and I descended once again into that abyss before death, which threatened my not coming back to the waking world. But these thoughts did not linger as my consciousness ebbed slowly. I slept.