Chapter 27.2: It Means Nothing

As Minkus settled himself to the floor, just beyond her bed, Penny pressed further into her chair. If she leaned a little to see around Wepp’s lump of a body, she could watch the top of Minkus’ head and ears peeking up above the bed. She quickly leaned back again, not needing to see what he was doing; that wasn't a question. He had been on about that damned tome all night. He was copying the magic-riddled nonsense inside it in his foolhardy efforts to save people who probably weren’t even in trouble, from a threat he had no certainty even existed. And if, by some chance, this mursaat stuff really was real, Minkus didn’t have the slightest clue whether or not the garbled mess of ancient information in that book would do anything about it or not. If it were real, all he was going to do was get himself killed. She harrumphed, staring back at the wall beside her. He really didn’t have a clue how the real world worked.

For longer than she would ever admit to him, Penny sat silently, listening to his quill scratch lightly against sheets of paper, her brow low and every muscle in her body half-tensed.

After some time, the sound of the quill slipped into a subtle rhythm, and Penny, exhausted by a day she’d rather forget, felt her eyelids become heavy. Her shoulders relaxed as sleep rested its gentle hands on her.

Penny forced her eyes back open and shot forward in the chair, glaring at Wepp on the bed. No, she wasn’t going to nod off and have that little rat scurry away while neither she nor Minkus was paying him mind.

Gracelessly, she stood, pulled him from the bed, and dropped him into the chair she’d just been sitting in.

“SP-1,” she demanded, “twine.”

The pack once again produced a sack that Penny snatched and opened, drawing out the remaining stretch of thin rope. As Wepp struggled against the gag still in his mouth, Penny tied him to the thick wooden rungs of the chair and gave the knot a final tug to ensure its security. Nodding, she wiped her hands, took a step, and fell into her bed.

The knot in her stomach wrenched tight, but she grinned sourly. At least she'd managed to get another night in her own bed. They couldn’t take that from her now. Not Wepp, not Skixx, not anyone.

She caught the rhythm of Minkus’ quill once more. Tiredness settled over her, pulling her into the mattress and gently drawing her eyelids shut. This time, she surrendered, and the world drifted into restful oblivion; the scratching quill, the shop, the city, even Penny herself melted into a painless, black nothing.

Moments without number passed, but like the rising glow of dawn, something eventually came into being. At first it was dim, hard to make out, but as it became brighter, it took a more concrete shape: a narrow archway, glowing as though revealing a light outside a doorway. No. She realized it was a light outside a doorway, and a distinctly human silhouette stepped into the illumined frame: male, tall, and narrow-shouldered.

Oh gods, Penny thought. Would this wretched nightmare never leave her alone?

The backlit figure stood for a moment in the doorway, as it always did. Except, Penny realized, he was different this time. He wasn’t armored. He didn’t wave, there was no hint of a smile at the edge of his face, and he didn’t disappear or into the daylight. In fact, his shape grew as he came nearer.

That was not how this dream went.

Anxiety suddenly pressing in on her, Penny inspected the rest of the space. She wasn’t in her bed, and this wasn’t the little one-room Divinity’s Reach apartment they’d rented. It was familiar, though. A pair of windows cast beams of light that revealed a bare stone floor, the walls had a similar stonework pattern, and there was a simple hearth to her right. There wasn't a single piece of furniture in sight.

Penny looked down at her hands, where she found no toys. She looked around for them, but all she saw was a large backpack beside her, not the little knapsack of thick, orange canvas, but a tattered, brown leather pack stuffed to the brim.

If she hadn’t had the nightmare of her father’s departure enough times in the years since he'd passed, she’d certainly made up for it over the last several days, seeing the man more times than she’d seen Minkus. But this, she was now certain, was not that dream.

A few steps closer now, the figure came forward her from the doorway. He gestured, but it wasn’t a wave goodbye. This was a summons; he was waving her toward him.

Armor or not, she knew the silhouette man. She’d know him anywhere. But what she didn’t understand was why the hell was he waving her to join...

Penny shivered, her eyes widening. This wasn’t the day that still scared her so badly she’d wake up in a pool of sweat. This was the other day, the one she hated. This was the day they left Claypool.

She was pleading before she even realized she’d opened her mouth. “No, we can’t. Papa, please, let’s stay. Can we? Can we please just stay? You don’t know what happens, but I do. I know what happens—”

He touched her shoulder. “Penelope.” In all these years, in all the nightmares, he’d never spoken to her. Not once. This was the first time in nearly twenty years she’d heard any semblance of her father’s voice, and it exhilerated her, terrified her, enraged her. “It’s time I gave you something better,” he said.

“But you won’t!” she screamed. She hadn’t meant to, but it came out before she knew what was happening. He reeled back a step, caught off-guard.

“You won’t,” she snapped again. “You think you’re doing something right, but you’re not, you selfish bastard. We lost mother, we lost grandmother, and now you made me lose you too, so you could be a ‘good man.’ You’re not here, and you’re not a good man. You’re dead!”

She stopped, looking around the empty room. “And this?” she said, gesturing at the home. “This is the day that you changed it all. I bought all your stories about a new life, because I was just a dumb kid. I didn’t know any better. What was your excuse?”

She paused, only for a second, then she opened her mouth to fire off another attack, but nothing came out. Instead, she folded forward on herself, elbows to knees and her fists balled tight. She sobbed. “Never mind. I know. You’re just a dumb son of a bitch.”

Penny held her eyes shut tight, unable to look at him. She didn’t want to see that place any longer. Perhaps more than anything, she prayed to the gods she’d never have to look at herself again.

Several moments passed, and she blinked her eyes open, finding herself back in her own bed, in a room bathed in lamplight and filled with the sound of a quill gently scratching across a page. If this was another dream, someone was going to get punched in the face.

She wiped away a salty, wet trail that ran down her cheek and listened to the quill. It felt like only minutes had passed since she’d faded to sleep, but to her right was Wepp, strapped to a chair asleep from his own exhaustion. In the minutes Penny watched him, he didn’t move a finger. To tolerate being tied to that chair for the night, he must have been more than just asleep; the lucky, little rat was dead to the world. She waved him off, decidedly uninterested in his good fortune, though she wished she too could sleep.

Or did she? Gods, did she really want to run the risk of that dream again? Hell, no. And yet, something in her, some part of her, always wanted them to go on longer, even this one.

She reached above her, feeling around the head of the bed for something she’d left there. Her fingers walked across the sheets to find that familiar worn canvas. And underneath that thick layer of fabric she could feel the hard edges of carved wood: two small objects twisted about each other, as the figures usually were inside the bag. She gripped gently and pulled it close. It was too dark to see much more than its shape, but she could call up that color in her mind’s eye without a second thought: that vibrant, tangerine orange. In truth, it hadn’t been that color in years, dulled and dirtied by time and life, but so often she found herself only seeing it the way it had once been. It was sentimental, she knew, but she couldn't stop herself.

Penny rolled over to face the staircase, the bag and its contents clutched to her chest. There, between her and the stairs, was Minkus. He sat on the floor a few feet away, facing the other direction and scribbling across his stack of paper in the light of a lamp that sat on the other side of his tome, turning him into a silhouette.

Penny shook her head and sniffed. Gods, she thought, how long has he been at this?

He finished scratching out his notes on the current sheet and examined it before placing it facedown on a pile beside him. That pile, she realized, was his stack of completed sheets, and it was getting tall. He’d begun with two inches of blank paper and was now easily halfway through that, already grabbing another blank sheet to begin his process again. He was really doing this. Gods only knew why, but he was really doing this, and he’d been at it for probably most of the night. He sure had a stubborn streak when he wanted to use it.

She tried once more to close her eyes and find sleep, but the knot in her stomach tightened again. The harder she fought it, trying to force it into submission, the more stubbornly it coiled, drawing still more of her concentration.

It was no use. She let her eyes slip open, thinking for a moment to get up and go downstairs to work a project—that was what she always did when she couldn’t sleep. Before she got an arm underneath herself, though, she stopped, gritting her teeth. She couldn't do that. Not only would she be visible through the front windows of the shop, but if she managed to put together anything interesting, it would just fall into the hands of Wepp and Skixx and their dumb employers come morning. She grimaced.

Skixx.

Penny hadn’t given him mind since Minkus had returned with that asuran tome, but that rat was still at the center of this mess, and the thought of him boiled her. He'd played her for a fool, more than anyone else in their party, and he’d probably done so from the very moment they’d met. She thought back to that day. It was somewhere in Gendarran, on that bridge, after he’d been shot by— pirates.

Her train of thought halted. For a moment, she lay there blinking, clutching the knapsack and now fuming.

Gods, the little ass had staged the whole thing, hadn’t he? There were no pirates; he’d shot himself just to get him in their graces. She gaped at the thought, but it was the only way the scene made any sense now. Gods. What kind of psycho did that?

She shrugged slightly. Actually, she’d known at least a few people who would shoot themselves for a good payday. They were bastards, every one. Skixx was no different.

Almost silently, she sighed, still scowling. None of it should surprise her; she knew better than that. It was perhaps the one piece of wisdom her father had unintentionally left her: you could be angry with the world for being the Grenth-green shithole it was, but that would never change the fact that the world was one. It would screw you over at every opportunity, and when you expected otherwise, it just screwed you all the harder. 

For some time Penny lay there, still listening to the gentle scratch of Minkus’ quill. Somehow it seemed to focus her thoughts away elsewhere. Where, she couldn’t say, and she honestly didn’t care, as long as it was beyond here, beyond the shop, beyond the city, and beyond whatever the hell came next when the sun finally rose.

She exhaled, long and hard, gripping her little knapsack so tightly it pressed creases into the age-worn straps, and she listened. The knot remained, but it had finally stopped tightening as she let go of the thoughts to listen to the rhythmic, swishing scratch.

For some time, she listened to it, lost in the consistency of Minkus’ writing, lulled by it.

That was, until it stopped.

Penny opened her eyes, expecting to see the oversized asura setting down his writing instrument and pluckily stacking a pile of notes to take to Rata Sum, or wherever he planned to go.

That wasn’t the scene, though. In fact, there was no scene. Minkus, she realized, had fallen asleep.

Still backlit by the lamp, his shadowy form was very clearly slumped forward over the open tome, dead asleep with the quill still perched between his fingers. Penny must have been right: he’d worked through so much of the night that he couldn’t even keep himself awake now. Stubbornness, it seemed, would only take the little man so far.

For several long moments, Penny lay there watching, as Minkus slowly toppled to his side, unconsciously laying down right where he sat. He didn’t look uncomfortable, really. She didn’t know how it was possible, but even in sleep, Minkus had a knack for being content with crap circumstances like crumpling over on a hard, wooden floor.

He wouldn’t be happy about this one in the morning, though. Dumb as it seemed, Minkus really had his heart set on getting this information copied and into asuran hands somewhere. When he finally woke up to find he’d failed— well, Penny could already see the look on his face: that painfully, innocently disappointed look.

But, no. This didn’t matter, and Penny knew it didn’t. What he was so desperate to accomplish didn't ultimately matter. He’d carry on fine after he got away to wherever he went next, with or without this text. They’d part ways, and he’d be fine.

She held tightly to her bag for a moment. Only a moment.

“Gods,” Penny groaned, slithering toward the edge of the bed. She set the knapsack aside, leaned out, and poked Minkus. He didn't move.

“Biggie,” she rasped, patting him harder. “Minkus, you fell asleep.”

He began to snore.

“Oh, come on.” She slid out of the bed altogether and got down beside him, shaking him a little more. “Minkus!” she insisted, but nothing happened.

Shaking her head—at him, at herself, at everything—Penny quietly pulled the blanket off the mattress and tucked it around him. “Of course,” she whispered. “Smash his head in with a hammer, and he’s up and going in no time. Run him past his bedtime, and he’s dead to the world.”

Her eyes moved to the tome and the stack of sheets beside it. She tried to fight it, but curiosity won, and she reached for the top couple of sheets on his completed stack.

She recognized some of the diagrams from her work on the smartpack, but much of it was new to her, irrelevant to what they’d been working on. Even at a cursory glance, though, it was clear what Minkus was doing. The pages were identical to those the tome was opened to, untranslated and unedited. Minkus wasn’t cherry-picking content; he was copying it all, verbatim.

She flipped a page in the tome, noting a slip of paper stuck between pages several further on, as well as one a couple dozen pages back. Those must have been his starting and ending points.

She carefully flipped back to where she’d found the tome opened, glanced once more at the sheets in her hand, and then let her gaze wander back to Minkus’ sleeping form, curled peacefully on the ground beside her. She fought it for a moment, but it was no use.

“Well, shit.”

She sighed and dropped to the floor beside her friend, sliding all his things closer and taking the quill from his fingers. She grabbed a clean sheet and lined it up alongside the next page he would have been copying.

Minkus would think this meant something. She knew that. But it didn’t, and she’d assure him of that. It didn’t mean anything. She just— well, she didn’t have anything better to do.