Fic: In Recent Times
Title: In Recent Times
Author: Soujin
Characters/Pairings: Peredur, Galahad
Rating: G
Archive: Yes.
Disclaimer: Copyright has presumably expired.
Summary: Percy and Galahad fall into their respective roles.
“Percy.”
He stirred and rolled over. Leaves in his red hair. Forest dirt, mostly decayed plants that were almost earth but not quite, sticking to his face and his eyes and his clothes. A few gnats settled on his skin. Sun touching him a few places. Most of all, a hand that was on his back and now was on his shoulder.
“Percy,” again, and this time something else came to him, that the voice was shaking. This time he opened his eyes.
“Hey,” he said softly. Galahad’s cheeks were wet and he was still crying, his body shaking more than his voice. It wasn’t scared crying, or upset crying, and the shaking wasn’t that way, either. It was almost like he had an ague or a fever and it would have shaken him even if he weren’t crying. “What happened?” It took Peredur a minute to sit up and touch him back, with his hands as gentle and easy as they were when he quieted his horse, or, in the old days, the deer, the fox, the forest animals that trusted him because he was a forest animal too. He forgot that he was sick with hunger.
Galahad wiped his face with the back of his hand. It didn’t do any good. “I would die for everyone.”
“Hey,” Peredur repeated, cupping one of his cheeks.
“Like Christ our Lord at Calvary. I would die to make peace.”
Their eyes met, and in Galahad’s there was-there was something too big almost, too big for his slight self, the biggest sorrow Peredur had ever seen and the strangest fluttery peace, something certain and uncertain, knowing and lost for the knowledge. It took a little moment for him to ease his own self.
They’d quested together for a year now, leaving Camelot behind until it stopped seeming like a homeplace and felt more like a fabled city that they might some day also quest for, if they found no other place to be. Over the year they’d mended Galahad’s white tunic a hundred times, done their best to get the bloodstains out of it, brought it to peasant women who washed it with lye and sewed the holes with tiny stitches that were neater than Peredur’s wide, hurried sewing done only with horsehair and sharp splinters. They hadn’t ever worried about Peredur’s clothes; he only wore brown and it meant nothing, because there was nothing special about him. Galahad was different.
Peredur had known ever since Galahad first came to the court in his white clothes, his fair hair wreathed with a garland of ivy, his gentle eyes sure and steady as the old stones that have been part of a mountain so long it would be incomplete without them. He was different. Peredur loved him. He had taught Galahad any number of things, taught him about animals and how to call them, about the hardship of questing and how to love it, about how any place in the world could be a chapel because God was everywhere; but Galahad was different, and no matter how much he learned (and he learned while watching Peredur with love and adoration in his gentle eyes) he still knew more.
It was in his eyes now.
“Brave,” Peredur said, his hand steady, his voice proud. He couldn’t say anything else. The bigness of what Galahad knew was too much. “Hey. Don’t cry.”
“If-if I were called upon to give myself to pardon us all. If I were wanted. If I were needed. I know that I would give myself.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
“Because I would, I know that-I might be.” Nothing about Galahad was steady, except for a tiny something in his knowing eyes.
“Ohh, hey, it’s okay,” Peredur said soft, soft. Now holding Galahad to him. The forest dirt on Galahad’s white tunic. Galahad’s shaking body against his, warm and strange and familiar and not so different, not so different.
“I’m still afraid.” His tears came again. “I know that I might be called. Because I would, because I would give myself if I were needed, even if I am afraid-I might be asked. Someday I might.”
“I know.”
“It isn’t pure to be afraid-”
“Shh, no. No. Brave. It’s not something that matters. God knows. It’s okay. It’s okay. Don’t cry.”
Galahad touched his red hair, his hair long and ruffly where Galahad’s was short and straight and smooth. Their different hands. Galahad’s were calloused from practise and from fighting, but small and thin and pale even if they were strong. Galahad was always pale. In his white tunic he looked like an Angel, as though he weren’t meant to be here in the woods, as though he were surrounded by light and ought to have the gold crown of a halo. Peredur’s hands were rough and scarred, and the scars didn’t stop at his hands, they went up his arms and to his shoulders and then down his chest and back, over every part of him. Scars from the forests. Scars from the wolf pups he used to play with, from the briars he used to run wild through, from the tumbles from trees and then later from his own fights, his own quests. He had done this longer than Galahad, and still he was younger. Two years’ difference. Galahad was slender; he was lean. His hands and feet were too big for the rest of him. Nothing about them looked the same.
Sometimes people mistook them for brothers.
Peredur smiled a little bit, quirking his mouth-his eyes always smiled. “Pure as anything. I promise.”
“That’s not why I’m weeping.”
“What is it?”
“It’s too big for me.” His hand sought Peredur’s. For a little while they were silent. For a little while they almost understood one another exactly.
“For me, too,” Peredur said then, and Galahad seemed less afraid. “You know what you need, you need to eat.”
“Has it been a long time?”
“‘Bout a week, I’d guess.”
“It will be all right, won’t it?”
That ached his heart. Galahad knew more and was more and was so different, and older and had something holy about him always, and he looked to Peredur, Peredur who had grown up in the woods and only knew best how to listen to trees because they knew the way home. Galahad trusted to him for something, and Peredur always gave it, even though most of the time he didn’t know what it was.
“Be just fine.” He squeezed Galahad’s hand. They were both boys, sixteen and eighteen, made sure by each other, made strong by each other. “God’s lookin’.”
They rode like knights.
…
Some nights Peredur dreamed of a golden cup and a shining light. Some nights it was a wounded king. He never understood his dreams unless they were of his old home and his sister in the forest, her deerskin dress dirty and worn, her red-gold hair floaty around her head like her very own crown. Sometimes after he dreamed he was sick in his stomach as though he were hungry, and he knew he was hungry for home. His mother waited in a woods somewhere for word of him, and his sister did the hunting and the cooking and tended the garden in the clearing, brought water from the fast cold stream, everything they used to share and now she did alone, because her brother was somewhere far away.
The wounded king lay on a marble dais and waited for him as patiently as his mother did in the forest, his red-gold beard sometimes twitching a little as he clenched his jaw in pain, though he never cried out. The golden cup brimmed with light and was offered to Peredur to drink from, and he took it like a Communion chalice, and the light in it ran through him like the strongest wine. They called for him, they waited for him to seek them, they showed themselves while he was sleeping and knew he would try to follow when he woke. Then he felt the gnawing inside himself as terribly as before, and knew he was hungry for what was in his dreams.
He didn’t know which to seek.
…
“Percy.”
He shook himself lightly, like a dog. There was the hunger again in his belly. He hadn’t been asleep, only somehow dreaming while he rode, while their horses passed through the few trees and the tall grass of the field without trying petulantly to stop and nose and browse.
Galahad drew his horse sideways and touched Peredur’s arm as light as a mayfly landing. “There it is.”
They weren’t boys any longer. They had left Camelot four years ago for this quest, and while they travelled Galahad had grown a fair beard that made him look a little like the King. Peredur was twenty-seven, and already the troubles that came with middle-age had reached him; his teeth were poor and few, and sometimes his fingers ached at night. He’d lost an ear in a battle, but his ruffly red hair covered the place and it was hard to tell.
He limped, too, from a long sickle cut in his thigh.
Galahad had fared better, but he was all of thirty, and not as lithe and easy as he had been twelve years ago-and for all that, his smile still had wonder in it when he looked at things, he still looked like an Angel.
Now he was pointing at a tall silver castle that stood high, high over a silver lake. This was what they’d been looking for the last four years, this was what they’d lost to, this was why they had secrets now when before they were both open and as easy to read as the snow that showed everything that touched it. Peredur had never told Galahad about the faerie lady he’d fallen in love with. She was gone now. He had enough to remind him of her, something that sorrowed in him worse than his young self had ever known people could sorrow. Galahad’s knowing eyes grew too bright sometimes because they’d left Peredur’s sister floating downriver in a little wooden boat, with flowers in her hair, her blood all spilled to heal a nameless noblewoman. Before them now was a silver castle that promised the end.
Peredur looked away from it. His sister had come from the forest to Galahad with a girdle braided of her hair, and Galahad wore it now, his sword hung from it. For the last half-year Peredur had woken odd nights to Galahad crying for her, and he always came to him and held him close, soothing and whispering to him like a child, until it passed and they could sleep again. Their quest was for the cup and the king he’d been dreaming of so long, but his other dreams, his dreams of his sister, had been gained and lost, and he was afraid. He was afraid.
“We’ll ride in?” Even now, Galahad looked to him. It still ached him.
“Sure.” His eyes proud. Brave Galahad. Galahad who hadn’t stopped, who still sought, who still carried with him the knowledge that he would die for the world willingly, even in his fear. Galahad who had found it finally. Found the castle. Found the Grail and the Fisher King.
They rode to the door.
A stable-boy met them there and took the horses. He had bright sweet eyes and told them the king was waiting for them, and they should go in. Galahad led them. Peredur limped behind him.
There, then, in the room with the marble dais, the king looked at them both and seemed pleased; he fed them, and the hunger inside Peredur finally went. He told them that they were welcome, and gave them to drink, and Galahad held the cup. He didn’t move. His face creased gently into a frown, he sought for Peredur’s eyes, and for a moment they met, while Peredur sought to understand. The moment became long; and then Galahad’s expression cleared, he smiled, he leaned over and kissed Peredur’s cheek, and he offered the cup. Peredur took it in his hands and drank.
The light flooded through him at once.
It took him in every part and filled him, until he thought his fingers and feet were shining through the skin, until his heart was giddy and his head dizzy and he reached for Galahad. Galahad held him.
“Percy,” he said, soft as moonlight.
“What’s--what’s happenin’?”
“Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid--”
Galahad laughed. He turned his face to the king and laughed, closed his eyes, held Peredur against him and their hearts beat at the same time, only one heartbeat. Then he let Peredur go and walked to the king’s dais, and laid his hands upon him. His white tunic had been mended a hundred more times, a thousand more times, since they first met each other and went away together into the world, but now it shone and all the tiny stitches the peasant women had made, and all the wide stitches Peredur had sewn, were gone, and everything was as new.
The king let out a long, deep sigh and was healed.
The light from the wine in the cup finally stopped shining inside Peredur, but he only half-understood.
“Galahad. What’d you do?”
Galahad knelt between him and the king. He was taken with joy, clearer and brighter than anything ever. The knowing was still in his eyes, but the sorrow from the bigness of his knowing was gone. He seemed only a boy again.
“I have done well.”
“I know.”
“I have been called to do what I could do, and I did it.”
“What?” Peredur’s own eyes suddenly felt hot and wet.
“You drank from the Grail. You dishonoured it. See, Percy?” Galahad came to him. “You cannot be holy with it now. You could not heal the king. And now you will not die.”
“No, wait.”
“I knew it. I knew what it was.”
“Tell me what’s happenin’,” even though he knew.
“If you had not dishonoured it by drinking from it, you would have taken my place. It was your Quest, not mine. They were your dreams. You should have healed the king. He should have,” he said, looking to the king, who nodded. “But you would have died. It would have taken everything from you. My Quest was different. I am not the world. I listen to God and I hear Him, but I’m not like you. I do not know how to love like you do. I don’t know the earth and I don’t understand people the way you do. I love too purely. Do you understand? I love the way that is easiest to love. But you’re different. You are everyone’s brother and everyone’s son and everyone’s love. You are the world. You are the world. I have just given my life for you.”
“No! You’re the one who’s different. No, wait, you can’t-” He held Galahad like a child, as he had when he used to wake to Galahad’s tears, what seemed like years ago but only happened last night, and Galahad began to shake in his arms. “It ain’t me who’s different. It’s always you. I always knowed it was you.”
“Don’t be afraid. Don’t cry.”
“I’m not cryin’.”
“You’re brave.”
“I’m not brave! Come on, don’t--heyy, shh, come on, don’t let go, don’t get lost on me--” He couldn’t help doing it, even when Galahad didn’t need to be comforted. His knowing eyes were quiet. He smiled, and touched Peredur’s face.
“I’m not afraid,” he said. Then he died.
…
Peredur dreamed. He dreamed of the graves behind the little house where he lived now, one his sister’s and one Galahad’s. He dreamed of the forest, of the golden cup and the healed king. He dreamed of the faerie lady he had loved. He dreamed of the sickle cut on his thigh. He dreamed of everything he had lost and couldn’t have, and then he woke, and still there was no hunger inside him. There had been none since the king fed him.
And since his dreaming was done, he rose and began to plant the seeds he had found in his new house, because he was the world, and there was much to grow.
Author: Soujin
Characters/Pairings: Peredur, Galahad
Rating: G
Archive: Yes.
Disclaimer: Copyright has presumably expired.
Summary: Percy and Galahad fall into their respective roles.
“Percy.”
He stirred and rolled over. Leaves in his red hair. Forest dirt, mostly decayed plants that were almost earth but not quite, sticking to his face and his eyes and his clothes. A few gnats settled on his skin. Sun touching him a few places. Most of all, a hand that was on his back and now was on his shoulder.
“Percy,” again, and this time something else came to him, that the voice was shaking. This time he opened his eyes.
“Hey,” he said softly. Galahad’s cheeks were wet and he was still crying, his body shaking more than his voice. It wasn’t scared crying, or upset crying, and the shaking wasn’t that way, either. It was almost like he had an ague or a fever and it would have shaken him even if he weren’t crying. “What happened?” It took Peredur a minute to sit up and touch him back, with his hands as gentle and easy as they were when he quieted his horse, or, in the old days, the deer, the fox, the forest animals that trusted him because he was a forest animal too. He forgot that he was sick with hunger.
Galahad wiped his face with the back of his hand. It didn’t do any good. “I would die for everyone.”
“Hey,” Peredur repeated, cupping one of his cheeks.
“Like Christ our Lord at Calvary. I would die to make peace.”
Their eyes met, and in Galahad’s there was-there was something too big almost, too big for his slight self, the biggest sorrow Peredur had ever seen and the strangest fluttery peace, something certain and uncertain, knowing and lost for the knowledge. It took a little moment for him to ease his own self.
They’d quested together for a year now, leaving Camelot behind until it stopped seeming like a homeplace and felt more like a fabled city that they might some day also quest for, if they found no other place to be. Over the year they’d mended Galahad’s white tunic a hundred times, done their best to get the bloodstains out of it, brought it to peasant women who washed it with lye and sewed the holes with tiny stitches that were neater than Peredur’s wide, hurried sewing done only with horsehair and sharp splinters. They hadn’t ever worried about Peredur’s clothes; he only wore brown and it meant nothing, because there was nothing special about him. Galahad was different.
Peredur had known ever since Galahad first came to the court in his white clothes, his fair hair wreathed with a garland of ivy, his gentle eyes sure and steady as the old stones that have been part of a mountain so long it would be incomplete without them. He was different. Peredur loved him. He had taught Galahad any number of things, taught him about animals and how to call them, about the hardship of questing and how to love it, about how any place in the world could be a chapel because God was everywhere; but Galahad was different, and no matter how much he learned (and he learned while watching Peredur with love and adoration in his gentle eyes) he still knew more.
It was in his eyes now.
“Brave,” Peredur said, his hand steady, his voice proud. He couldn’t say anything else. The bigness of what Galahad knew was too much. “Hey. Don’t cry.”
“If-if I were called upon to give myself to pardon us all. If I were wanted. If I were needed. I know that I would give myself.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
“Because I would, I know that-I might be.” Nothing about Galahad was steady, except for a tiny something in his knowing eyes.
“Ohh, hey, it’s okay,” Peredur said soft, soft. Now holding Galahad to him. The forest dirt on Galahad’s white tunic. Galahad’s shaking body against his, warm and strange and familiar and not so different, not so different.
“I’m still afraid.” His tears came again. “I know that I might be called. Because I would, because I would give myself if I were needed, even if I am afraid-I might be asked. Someday I might.”
“I know.”
“It isn’t pure to be afraid-”
“Shh, no. No. Brave. It’s not something that matters. God knows. It’s okay. It’s okay. Don’t cry.”
Galahad touched his red hair, his hair long and ruffly where Galahad’s was short and straight and smooth. Their different hands. Galahad’s were calloused from practise and from fighting, but small and thin and pale even if they were strong. Galahad was always pale. In his white tunic he looked like an Angel, as though he weren’t meant to be here in the woods, as though he were surrounded by light and ought to have the gold crown of a halo. Peredur’s hands were rough and scarred, and the scars didn’t stop at his hands, they went up his arms and to his shoulders and then down his chest and back, over every part of him. Scars from the forests. Scars from the wolf pups he used to play with, from the briars he used to run wild through, from the tumbles from trees and then later from his own fights, his own quests. He had done this longer than Galahad, and still he was younger. Two years’ difference. Galahad was slender; he was lean. His hands and feet were too big for the rest of him. Nothing about them looked the same.
Sometimes people mistook them for brothers.
Peredur smiled a little bit, quirking his mouth-his eyes always smiled. “Pure as anything. I promise.”
“That’s not why I’m weeping.”
“What is it?”
“It’s too big for me.” His hand sought Peredur’s. For a little while they were silent. For a little while they almost understood one another exactly.
“For me, too,” Peredur said then, and Galahad seemed less afraid. “You know what you need, you need to eat.”
“Has it been a long time?”
“‘Bout a week, I’d guess.”
“It will be all right, won’t it?”
That ached his heart. Galahad knew more and was more and was so different, and older and had something holy about him always, and he looked to Peredur, Peredur who had grown up in the woods and only knew best how to listen to trees because they knew the way home. Galahad trusted to him for something, and Peredur always gave it, even though most of the time he didn’t know what it was.
“Be just fine.” He squeezed Galahad’s hand. They were both boys, sixteen and eighteen, made sure by each other, made strong by each other. “God’s lookin’.”
They rode like knights.
…
Some nights Peredur dreamed of a golden cup and a shining light. Some nights it was a wounded king. He never understood his dreams unless they were of his old home and his sister in the forest, her deerskin dress dirty and worn, her red-gold hair floaty around her head like her very own crown. Sometimes after he dreamed he was sick in his stomach as though he were hungry, and he knew he was hungry for home. His mother waited in a woods somewhere for word of him, and his sister did the hunting and the cooking and tended the garden in the clearing, brought water from the fast cold stream, everything they used to share and now she did alone, because her brother was somewhere far away.
The wounded king lay on a marble dais and waited for him as patiently as his mother did in the forest, his red-gold beard sometimes twitching a little as he clenched his jaw in pain, though he never cried out. The golden cup brimmed with light and was offered to Peredur to drink from, and he took it like a Communion chalice, and the light in it ran through him like the strongest wine. They called for him, they waited for him to seek them, they showed themselves while he was sleeping and knew he would try to follow when he woke. Then he felt the gnawing inside himself as terribly as before, and knew he was hungry for what was in his dreams.
He didn’t know which to seek.
…
“Percy.”
He shook himself lightly, like a dog. There was the hunger again in his belly. He hadn’t been asleep, only somehow dreaming while he rode, while their horses passed through the few trees and the tall grass of the field without trying petulantly to stop and nose and browse.
Galahad drew his horse sideways and touched Peredur’s arm as light as a mayfly landing. “There it is.”
They weren’t boys any longer. They had left Camelot four years ago for this quest, and while they travelled Galahad had grown a fair beard that made him look a little like the King. Peredur was twenty-seven, and already the troubles that came with middle-age had reached him; his teeth were poor and few, and sometimes his fingers ached at night. He’d lost an ear in a battle, but his ruffly red hair covered the place and it was hard to tell.
He limped, too, from a long sickle cut in his thigh.
Galahad had fared better, but he was all of thirty, and not as lithe and easy as he had been twelve years ago-and for all that, his smile still had wonder in it when he looked at things, he still looked like an Angel.
Now he was pointing at a tall silver castle that stood high, high over a silver lake. This was what they’d been looking for the last four years, this was what they’d lost to, this was why they had secrets now when before they were both open and as easy to read as the snow that showed everything that touched it. Peredur had never told Galahad about the faerie lady he’d fallen in love with. She was gone now. He had enough to remind him of her, something that sorrowed in him worse than his young self had ever known people could sorrow. Galahad’s knowing eyes grew too bright sometimes because they’d left Peredur’s sister floating downriver in a little wooden boat, with flowers in her hair, her blood all spilled to heal a nameless noblewoman. Before them now was a silver castle that promised the end.
Peredur looked away from it. His sister had come from the forest to Galahad with a girdle braided of her hair, and Galahad wore it now, his sword hung from it. For the last half-year Peredur had woken odd nights to Galahad crying for her, and he always came to him and held him close, soothing and whispering to him like a child, until it passed and they could sleep again. Their quest was for the cup and the king he’d been dreaming of so long, but his other dreams, his dreams of his sister, had been gained and lost, and he was afraid. He was afraid.
“We’ll ride in?” Even now, Galahad looked to him. It still ached him.
“Sure.” His eyes proud. Brave Galahad. Galahad who hadn’t stopped, who still sought, who still carried with him the knowledge that he would die for the world willingly, even in his fear. Galahad who had found it finally. Found the castle. Found the Grail and the Fisher King.
They rode to the door.
A stable-boy met them there and took the horses. He had bright sweet eyes and told them the king was waiting for them, and they should go in. Galahad led them. Peredur limped behind him.
There, then, in the room with the marble dais, the king looked at them both and seemed pleased; he fed them, and the hunger inside Peredur finally went. He told them that they were welcome, and gave them to drink, and Galahad held the cup. He didn’t move. His face creased gently into a frown, he sought for Peredur’s eyes, and for a moment they met, while Peredur sought to understand. The moment became long; and then Galahad’s expression cleared, he smiled, he leaned over and kissed Peredur’s cheek, and he offered the cup. Peredur took it in his hands and drank.
The light flooded through him at once.
It took him in every part and filled him, until he thought his fingers and feet were shining through the skin, until his heart was giddy and his head dizzy and he reached for Galahad. Galahad held him.
“Percy,” he said, soft as moonlight.
“What’s--what’s happenin’?”
“Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid--”
Galahad laughed. He turned his face to the king and laughed, closed his eyes, held Peredur against him and their hearts beat at the same time, only one heartbeat. Then he let Peredur go and walked to the king’s dais, and laid his hands upon him. His white tunic had been mended a hundred more times, a thousand more times, since they first met each other and went away together into the world, but now it shone and all the tiny stitches the peasant women had made, and all the wide stitches Peredur had sewn, were gone, and everything was as new.
The king let out a long, deep sigh and was healed.
The light from the wine in the cup finally stopped shining inside Peredur, but he only half-understood.
“Galahad. What’d you do?”
Galahad knelt between him and the king. He was taken with joy, clearer and brighter than anything ever. The knowing was still in his eyes, but the sorrow from the bigness of his knowing was gone. He seemed only a boy again.
“I have done well.”
“I know.”
“I have been called to do what I could do, and I did it.”
“What?” Peredur’s own eyes suddenly felt hot and wet.
“You drank from the Grail. You dishonoured it. See, Percy?” Galahad came to him. “You cannot be holy with it now. You could not heal the king. And now you will not die.”
“No, wait.”
“I knew it. I knew what it was.”
“Tell me what’s happenin’,” even though he knew.
“If you had not dishonoured it by drinking from it, you would have taken my place. It was your Quest, not mine. They were your dreams. You should have healed the king. He should have,” he said, looking to the king, who nodded. “But you would have died. It would have taken everything from you. My Quest was different. I am not the world. I listen to God and I hear Him, but I’m not like you. I do not know how to love like you do. I don’t know the earth and I don’t understand people the way you do. I love too purely. Do you understand? I love the way that is easiest to love. But you’re different. You are everyone’s brother and everyone’s son and everyone’s love. You are the world. You are the world. I have just given my life for you.”
“No! You’re the one who’s different. No, wait, you can’t-” He held Galahad like a child, as he had when he used to wake to Galahad’s tears, what seemed like years ago but only happened last night, and Galahad began to shake in his arms. “It ain’t me who’s different. It’s always you. I always knowed it was you.”
“Don’t be afraid. Don’t cry.”
“I’m not cryin’.”
“You’re brave.”
“I’m not brave! Come on, don’t--heyy, shh, come on, don’t let go, don’t get lost on me--” He couldn’t help doing it, even when Galahad didn’t need to be comforted. His knowing eyes were quiet. He smiled, and touched Peredur’s face.
“I’m not afraid,” he said. Then he died.
…
Peredur dreamed. He dreamed of the graves behind the little house where he lived now, one his sister’s and one Galahad’s. He dreamed of the forest, of the golden cup and the healed king. He dreamed of the faerie lady he had loved. He dreamed of the sickle cut on his thigh. He dreamed of everything he had lost and couldn’t have, and then he woke, and still there was no hunger inside him. There had been none since the king fed him.
And since his dreaming was done, he rose and began to plant the seeds he had found in his new house, because he was the world, and there was much to grow.