Back home at last, hooray. Turned in my old journal to Smythe, bought a new one. The first hearing is scheduled for Day 147. Didn't get a chance to see Milya, but I saw plenty of Stuart and Smythe. Answered a lot of 'informal' inquiries on my reports and messages (namely, "are you fucking crazy". I am not looking forward to the review of my short time in an Ismere asylum.)
Found an inn and crashed there for the night.
Day 146
Finally caught up with Milya. She's been well since the last recount, and thought my coded message to her was hilarious (both before and after decoding it). She delivered it all the same, but hasn't heard much about it since.
She's still friends with Art the book merchant but her fanaticism about dwarven long-form mining epics has cooled, especially since she learned they were really commentaries about the social injustices in dwarven society and not about the wild untamed frontier of caves.
Day 147
The first hearing of several, and I'm sick to the teeth of it already.
We spent an hour dissecting the first three sentences in my journal. One full hour. Apparently the glibness of my statements belied my apathy about the assignment. My portrayal of Stuart as a "finagler" was also studiously nitpicked. Attempts to explain about the vast world of humor went ignored.
This is going to be a long, long process.
Day 148
There was a note on my door when I came in last night. I don't recall telling many people where I was staying in the city, and damned if it doesn't relate to me. All it said was "I know where the crate came from" and it was signed '4C'. No address, no names, nothing. So, having nothing to do and every reason to do nothing else, I decided to track the bastard down. Innkeeper said he didn't see anybody come in that didn't lodge here, and asking the three other people here about the note left me with three sets of blank stares and one set of naked breasts. There are no female lodgers at the inn.
Feeling suddenly liberated of my appetite, I set about surveying the outside of the inn and found the subtle indentations over my window frame of a grappling hook. Or it would be subtle if it didn't still have the grappling hook in it. So the bastard broke into my room from the inside and left the note on the outside of the door. He's either very clever, or very dumb. Managed to dislodge the hook and ask about it with the nearest blacksmith. He said he may know a guy in the Thrums who makes things like it, and I'd have followed up on this if it wasn't getting on in the day. You don't piss about in the Thrums after dark. Tomorrow, though.
Day 149
Milya managed to track me down and ambush me this morning with a plot to wander around the Scoops. Apparently she wanted me to meet Art and be friends with him. So we went down to his shop, Mazong Books, and paid him a visit. I was polite, I was courteous, and he was a self-absorbed prick who couldn't shut up about books if one was lodged in his throat. We left his shop with two books, one for Milya and one for me; "The Definition of Evil" and "Religion and You: How and Why the Gods Talk to Us." I'm going to need something to read while Smythe blathers on about how lazily I cross my Ts, and it might as well be about how to get the other epic asshole off my back.
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