THE CUCKOO: EPILOGUE
Completed August 1, 2021 (♌︎)
It was winter, and Alazlam Durai had demanded his housekeeper hide his pens in addition to the most recent copy of The Bervenian. He had been over hasty with his last round of rebuttals, and his agent had implored him most desperately to go about the next batch with a cool head if he couldn't be convinced to enjoy the pleasures of a dignified silence.
He made the best effort of it he could. He smoked a pipe. He went for a walk down Mesa's Row. He ate several sandwiches filled with yesterday's roast, read two sordid chapters of an Ordallian sensation novel, and vented his frustrations to Ifrit, the tortoiseshell cat whom he was occasionally accused of owning. It was all a wasted effort. When he finally broke down and made a hard plea for the return of his belongings, Mrs. Maver was heartless. She was an honest and simple woman with no understanding of or care for the wrongs against history K. Katasto was perpetrating, and she told him that he should have his things the next morning with breakfast—just as he'd asked for them.
Thus thwarted, he retreated to his study for another pipe, whistling for Ifrit to come after him. The cat listened very sympathetically as it was given the last scraps of roast and told of K. Katasto's crimes.
"An invention! He called the battle at Igros an invention. It's original—I suppose—no credit left to be had in hounding me over that funeral account. But still: three knights' statements as authenticated by the city magistrate, the full account rendered to Delita I in the 1274 survey, and the Report's timeline and commentary. Does that seem like an invention to you?"
Ifrit mewed in what he took to be the negative.
"Does he think the Beoulves simply poofed themselves into graves on opposite sides of the country? That accounts of the 'bones of a vast byast, fire yn their marrowes' was just an over-flowery coroner?"
"What a terrible fool," the cat seemed to say as it wrapped itself around his legs. Alazlam moved the roast plate, still shimmering with drippings, to the floor.
He paced towards his desk and the great mass of papers, tomes, pamphlets, napkins and cracker tins that overlaid its surface. Sighing, he located and picked up a small leather codex, its cover marred by both time and a few unfortunate accidents. He winced to look at the cigar burn on the spine.
"Look at this," he said, showing the volume to Ifrit. "If I'd wanted to 'invent' something, don't you think I'd have started here?"
He set it down to wipe his fingers with a handkerchief. When he opened it he did so very gently, tensing when he heard the vellum creak a little too loudly.
"I didn't "invent" anything of course because he didn't. When it came to a real mystery he wasn't going to embellish—the man loved the truth more than he loved his own hide."
Ifrit looked up from the platter, eyes shining with a green cast as the sky moved from gold to red.
"If we'd wanted to invent something." His voice grew quieter. "Wouldn't we have done more?"
Alazlam removed the bookmark that corresponded to the leaf he'd long contemplated, and saw in the dimming sunlight those words he'd never known quite how to decipher. The notes—the "key" as he sometimes romantically called them—made little sense before Mullonde had opened their archives. It was a blessing that House Durai had held onto them for so long before they found their purpose.
"You see here," he said warmly, "I barely cover Ruvelia Atkascha beyond what's written in Ronble's Chronicle. It's because I wasn't going to speculate about this." He set the book on the table again. "He set down her name there just as he did everyone else's. Methodical. The same reference system even—save that all we really have are the dates."
Ifrit hopped onto an ottoman as if to better compose herself to listen.
"April 31, 1265 — Account from Igros. Confirmed false; July 17, 1265 — Sighting at Warjilis. No evidence; September 29, 1268 — Letter from Romanda. Determined forgery."
He scratched behind the cat's ears.
"June 3, 1270 — Capricorn," he said with an added emphasis. "Isn't that a romantic mystery, Ifrit? Only a month before the pyre and he was still looking for her in addition to all his other truths. He was looking for her and heaven knows but he thought he found something. If I were half as good a humbug as they claim me to be, don't you think I would have made a pretty chapter out of it? Don't you think I might have invented a little history there?"
Ifrit offered no initial commentary, but after a moment she gingerly approached the four-century old volume to inspect it. Alazlam thought her attitude a very reverent one at first, fitted to his own sense of sentiment.
She suddenly made a lunge past the book to seize its bookmark and to thereafter topple with it onto the floor.
Alazlam winced again. In his effort to take better care of the diary, he'd quite forgotten that the bookmark—a folded length of some sort of ribbon—was of the same provenance and age. He looked on dolorously as the cat wound it about its paws and face, the red light of the sun bringing out the slightest hint of purple where time hadn't yet bleached away its color.
Author's Notes: As with my other names throughout this piece "K. Katasto" and "Maver" are lifted from side quest NPCs, although neither of them have much to do with the characters as they manifest in my vision of nineteenth-century-esque Ivalice. Ronble, on the other hand, is an actual historian near Goland. Mesa's Row is additionally named for the mythical king whose airship adventures comprise one of the game's sound novels. The dates are probably inaccurate to some scrap of Ivalice lore or another (XII--which I haven't gotten too far in--may well contradict them).
On that note, Alazlam is a nineteenth-century-esque loser because he is writing 400 years after Ivalice's version of a fifteenth-century civil war and also because I am a Victorianist when I'm not writing fanfiction. If there is some dreadful Ultimania or something to contradict me, please don't let me know. You can pry the reality of Ordallian sensation novels from my cold, dead fingers.
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