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May. 21st, 2008 12:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
uquars_gadgetIt has been days since the door closed, and Helen is still thinking over it. She is very upset, because she left books in her room, but she doesn’t know what to do about that — and they were books that there were extra copies of, so no one has noticed (yet).
She is sitting, and glowering at her notebook, hair half-hanging over her face, when there is a knocking on the door to her room and she stands from her chair to get it.
“Ah, hello, Haras-uquara,” Pani says, “I hope I’ve not interrupted your studies. Hand Corat asks that you would come see him in his office.”
Helen has started to dread when Pani comes to give her messages. Usually the Hand who wanted to speak to her would, themselves, come to see her — or send one of their acolytes. If Pani is sent instead it usually means they think she will be angry (which makes her angrier. What do they expect her to have done now?), because they’ve realized that she probably won’t actually verbally abuse Pani (usually).
So it is very grouchily that Helen nods, and thanks him, and walks with a fast pace to the Honored Hand Corat’s office. She arrives, instead, to find him having a late lunch with Hand Raqen. They are laughing and eating, and she cannot stop her fists clenching as she turns away outside. To think so little of her time as that! To call for her when he is still busy!
Helen has time now, though, and she wanders into one of the hallways near Hand Corat’s office — this is a part of the House she does not go to so often, a very old part, but everywhere in the House there are these seemingly random tunnels.
There are old rooms of worship and secret knowledge scattered throughout the House — you know the feel of them, if you’ve lived there as long as Helen. It goes from a quiet to a warm silence, where the walls are purposefully smoothed out, and the niches are spaced for books and torches so that study can be carried out.
As she walks along the hallways she finds what appears to be a large white portion of the wall, except it’s all covered over like a misty mirror. As the mist parts, here and there, she can see beyond it into a room of tall black-robed figures and — machines?
She parts her hair and tucks it behind her ears, pressing her nose against the cold surface of the wall (though it doesn’t smudge like glass), watching Them. After several minutes They seem to catch sight of her, and turn to look at her through the window—but she doesn’t care. She can see what They’re working on—a big playing board with her whole world spread on it. Some of the seven or eight were considering the board, some where considering her in the deep blackness of Their hoods, and some were entering numbers into Their machines.
And Helen suddenly realizes what They are doing. They have people out as counters over the whole of the board, and They are playing a game with them. She is very, very angry. How dare They do this to her world? How dare They dare to interfere? And she realizes, suddenly, that They must be the root of the dinosaurs and the weather, that They must be those who put away Uquar--
--but They would not dare live in the House of Their enemy, if he truly existed. And how would her god be brought down by these creatures?
And she is very, very angry. And she curls up her Hand as her hair falls in her face, and she points at Them and tells Them exactly what she thinks of Their duplicity. Of convincing her people to believe in a god that never, ever existed.
She is sitting, and glowering at her notebook, hair half-hanging over her face, when there is a knocking on the door to her room and she stands from her chair to get it.
“Ah, hello, Haras-uquara,” Pani says, “I hope I’ve not interrupted your studies. Hand Corat asks that you would come see him in his office.”
Helen has started to dread when Pani comes to give her messages. Usually the Hand who wanted to speak to her would, themselves, come to see her — or send one of their acolytes. If Pani is sent instead it usually means they think she will be angry (which makes her angrier. What do they expect her to have done now?), because they’ve realized that she probably won’t actually verbally abuse Pani (usually).
So it is very grouchily that Helen nods, and thanks him, and walks with a fast pace to the Honored Hand Corat’s office. She arrives, instead, to find him having a late lunch with Hand Raqen. They are laughing and eating, and she cannot stop her fists clenching as she turns away outside. To think so little of her time as that! To call for her when he is still busy!
Helen has time now, though, and she wanders into one of the hallways near Hand Corat’s office — this is a part of the House she does not go to so often, a very old part, but everywhere in the House there are these seemingly random tunnels.
There are old rooms of worship and secret knowledge scattered throughout the House — you know the feel of them, if you’ve lived there as long as Helen. It goes from a quiet to a warm silence, where the walls are purposefully smoothed out, and the niches are spaced for books and torches so that study can be carried out.
As she walks along the hallways she finds what appears to be a large white portion of the wall, except it’s all covered over like a misty mirror. As the mist parts, here and there, she can see beyond it into a room of tall black-robed figures and — machines?
She parts her hair and tucks it behind her ears, pressing her nose against the cold surface of the wall (though it doesn’t smudge like glass), watching Them. After several minutes They seem to catch sight of her, and turn to look at her through the window—but she doesn’t care. She can see what They’re working on—a big playing board with her whole world spread on it. Some of the seven or eight were considering the board, some where considering her in the deep blackness of Their hoods, and some were entering numbers into Their machines.
And Helen suddenly realizes what They are doing. They have people out as counters over the whole of the board, and They are playing a game with them. She is very, very angry. How dare They do this to her world? How dare They dare to interfere? And she realizes, suddenly, that They must be the root of the dinosaurs and the weather, that They must be those who put away Uquar--
--but They would not dare live in the House of Their enemy, if he truly existed. And how would her god be brought down by these creatures?
And she is very, very angry. And she curls up her Hand as her hair falls in her face, and she points at Them and tells Them exactly what she thinks of Their duplicity. Of convincing her people to believe in a god that never, ever existed.
