Hey, remember that NaNoWriMo thing I never finished? Here's some more!
Robert Sui was born in another world. At the time, such things were not uncommon: the holes in the fabric of the universe which allow people to fall from one side of a country to another were flaring with far greater frequency than they do today.
What was unique about Robert, however, was the part of the world from which he came. While others were coming from either the West of us-Marja, and the Northern Ices-or the East-the Luping desert, or the north-eastern portions of the Swamplands-Robert came from the South. In fact, he came from so far south that not only had no one heard of his people, but no one had heard of any sort of country at all in that direction. They had thought it was only water.
When they first found him, they thought he was insane. He spoke no language they recognized; he was dressed in garments which were bizarre in the extreme, while still being suited enough to our climate that they failed to realize how very far away was his origin; he was filthy, with dirt so ingrained in his knees that they assumed he was of Swampling decent; and he demonstrated (they thought) no recognizable system of morals. He stole without hesitation, he fought without regret; he scorned freely-given aide or pity because--they thought--he couldn't comprehend benevolence.
Later, it was discovered that his apparant insanity was perfectly reasonable, given his upbringing. The cause of his strange language is obvious, given what was later deduced about his origins; his clothes were suited to our climate because his largely resembled it. However, as he finally communicated at the age of ten, he considered the cooler mountains to our north "Southern slopes": he was from so far south that the heat one generally encounters began to fade again into a temperate climate. His filth was attributable to his social status as a street urchin before his abrupt entrance into Luping. However, the greatest difference in his history was that he had never heard of the Geometrics.
I cannot imagine anyone capable of reading this who isn't familiar with the Geometrics, but Ellen has suggested--largely to annoy me, I suspect--that should everyone think as I do, no one will record it, and lest someone read this entire manuscript without any comprehension, I will give a brief overview of the concepts which have shaped all our lives.
The "Geometrics" is a catch-all term for the general philosophy which guides our lives. Its name comes from the two concepts which form the Ideal, and the Refuted Ideal: respectively, the Circle and the Square. The Circle (as is obvious simply by looking at it) is complete in itself. Simply regarding one is enough to suggest wholeness, and that in turn leads to its associate with self-sufficiency. The Square, by contrast, is two opposing legs supported by the distance between them. (Again, this is obvious through simple observation.) It represents conflict and the human tendency to pit oneself against all else. The Circle is representative of the divine aspect of humanity, whereas the Square is representative of our flaws.
In Claran thinking, the Circle is also representative of the spiritual, the square the worldly, and as a result Clarans in general have a tendency towards asceticism. The Ostbuuri, north of Clara, take this one step further, and only pay attention to the Geometrics in the "Circular" realm, while completely ignoring it to any practical purpose. The Clarans and Ostbuuri have been at war on and off for over three hundred years.
The Marjans and the Lupings believe, somewhat differently, that it is the opposition of the Square which is such a flaw, and the self-sufficiency of the circle which is so desirable (as opposed to the isolation). As a result, both applaud the well-rounded and generous individuals more than any other. The Marjans, having received knowledge of the Geometrics rather later than the Lupings, mix it with their various other beliefs; but the Lupings have spawned a veritable stream of abbeys, hermits, and scholar-communities such as the one where this manuscript will inevitably be unearthed.
(It has been suggested by some rather nasty people--Ellen--that this is because in a country mostly composed of desert, it's not like there's anything else to do.)
When Robert Sui was deposited by the spirit of Caprice in the middle of what is commonly considered the most Circular abbey in the entirety of Luping, which in turn is considered the most circular of the Geometric realms, it was literally inconceivable that he would have no knowledge of what was, to those who found him, the most obvious facet of human existence.
Imagine him, then. A small child-he himself did not know how old he was, but most conclude he was no more than eight-deposited, raving, dirty, and dishonest, in the middle of an abbey. The abbey-for I have been there, many times-is a vast building, heated by the pounding desert sun and therefore left open for any cooling breezes coaxed up by its elevation.
Robert had been an urchin, and was used to squeezing through the alleyways between tall buildings. As a result, his first action was to find the smallest space possible-a tiny stairwell which he couldn’t possibly have known led to the outside-and hunker down in it, leaving his refuge only to steal food.
The target of his food raids was hardly nearby; while not directly across the abbey, because the exit-stair is usually located in the center of a building built-what else?-in the round, the kitchen was on the edge, and Robert had to cross through a number of well-inhabited rooms to reach it. It is the downside of an introspective life that he did so for a week without being noticed.
The only one, in that entire week, who was at all aware of his presence, was the abbey cook. Even he (his name was Laurence, and when I visited almost seventy years later, he was still there) was aware of Robert only by the signs he left behind: an absence of previously-existent food, and smudges of dirt left wherever the counters were wet.
Because Laurence was, at the time, working harder on generosity (the most common form of non-opposition) than he was on self-sufficiency, he said nothing about my father’s presence. Instead, he made extra, skimping his own portion to do so (as well as, he admitted, a few other portions which he suspected were frequently over-full.)
He began this two days after my father’s arrival; it was after four days that my father realized that Laurence had yet to ask for anything in return. My father told me when I was a child that he planned to give it two more weeks before taking as much as he could and running into the vast, empty plain of the desert.
I can only be grateful that Robert’s plan was averted. On the seventh day, a novice whose meditations were not going nearly so well as he wished (Marjie) cracked an eyelid just in time to see him scamper past the doorway. Marjie, convinced that my father was an evil spirit, shouted, thereby bringing other monks out of their mediations, and the ruckus, combined with the straight length of the hall, made it impossible for my father to escape notice any longer. Although the monks were convinced that this dirt-covered brat was insane, they cheerfully fed, washed, and clothed him, anyway.
The washing part of that was performed by Mario. It was common knowledge that Marjie was part of the abbey more because he wanted to be a monk than because he actually had it in him. The Square, they said, was just too much a part of him. It had come as a great surprise to the monks, because Marjie, of all people, had been chosen to accompany one who was rumored to be the most circular man in all of Marja to the abbey.
(As a scholar, I can here report the truth, especially since the old monk passed away many years ago. Quite simply, Marjie was not the old monk’s apprentice, as everyone at the abbey assumed, but in fact his son, thereby illustrating one of the differences between Marjan Geometrics and Luping Geometrics: In the Luping, the Circle is considered completely self-sufficient, but in Marja, the family is considered a circular unit.)
At any rate, the task of bathing the recalcitrant Robert Sui fell to Marjie. As someone who has had long conversations with both men, and who loves comparing tales of things past, my best approximation of what happened is as follows:
The monks, having finished cornering Robert, decided almost immediately that the question of his sanity would have to wait until their noses could tolerate being within three feet of him. As a result, they grabbed his arms, shoved him into Marjie’s grasp, and chivvied them both towards the bathing rooms. Once the two young men were inside, the monks locked the doors behind them.
“Right,” asked Marjie, excepting that with his Marjan accent it came out like “Rahd.” “Ah dun subbus ye’ll do id yehself?” (At this point, it becomes painful to write in this manner; I shall leave the reader to insert the accent into the more common characters.)
My father, of course, didn’t understand him (although some claim he wouldn’t have even had he spoken the language.) His stare communicated, “What are you saying?!” much more clearly than his words did. Marjie claims he heard, “Bir bir bor bir bir?”
“Didn’t think so.” Marjie, then a practical lad who would later grow into a similarly practical man, shoved Robert into the nearest tub, and held him down by sitting on his chest. With one hand, he grabbed for the faucet which would pour near-scalding water down onto them, while with the other he carefully (if forcefully) lifted Robert’s head clear of where the water would fall.
Robert grinned. As he carefully explained to me later, this seemed the normal roughhousing in which teenaged boys indulge. He was rather good at roughhousing, everyone said so. Naturally, he took a swing at Marjie.
Any other monk in the abbey would have been shocked and possibly even drowned, but Marjie was also a teenaged boy, and alas, at the time he was terribly bad at the “non-opposition” part of the discipline. (Actually, he was rather bad at the discipline in general.) Marjie, therefore, took a swing back.
Robert’s next shot was an uppercut which knocked Marjie off his chest and into a sprawl over his lap, instead. Robert followed this immediately with a tackle which ended with Marjie pinned against the other side of the tub while water flowed around them both.
Robert being rather better than Marjie at successfully holding down another person against his will, the water was almost up to his ears when he figured out how to get out of the situation. The key was almost circular in nature: being immersed in the water anyway, Marjie demonstrated how to bathe. After many repetitions-according to my father; according to Marjie, it’s many, many repetitions-Robert got the idea and followed suit (in the process, letting Marjie up to not-drown.)
This was the beginning of a friendship which would last over eighty years.
ETA: added some more.