“I’m sorry for speaking of it,” he said as he held the door ajar for me to exit.
“It is quite alright; it was years ago, it does not matter so much to me as it used to.” I faced the entrance to his home, now standing at the top of the stairs that descended down to the butcher’s shop. “It is not just a faint memory: no more, no less.”
With a short nod I was sent on my way, notes in my hand, and I waved off the butcher upon my exit. Into the streets of Iyesgarth I went, once again easily assimilated into the constant motion upon the smooth stone. There was no need for me to stay in Iyesgarth any longer, so I left the city via the same route that I had come. When I arrived at the engine station I bought a return ticket, and in less than an hour my engine arrived and I boarded. Unlike many of the engines that I had been on once before, this one was most definitely of higher quality; I came to discover that it was owned by the West-Engine Company, of which Beau worked for. Beau was commissioned on multiple occasions by the companies to aid in the design of specific models of engines, so one could assume that the one that I was riding on could have partially been designed by Beau.
The majority of engines that traveled across the vast plains of Farenzo were never carpeted, nor were any of their benches gilded with gold, but of course the more likely outcome was that they were painted to look gold like many of the other things through Farenzo. It was interesting to see the floors covered in ornate green carpet, the sort of carpet that one might say in a state building, possibly at the capital.
I took my seat at a four-person table. There were only three other people in the room with me, but I paid not much attention to them. Instead, upon the table I layed out my newly retrieved notes, pouring my current free-time and total focus into them; though the edges were frayed and somewhat torn, the information that they contained had not diminished in value at all. They spoke of the principals, of things that I already knew. However, their major focus was upon the concept of manipulation of material, a core belief of alchemy. A chemist knows that material can not be made, and equally nor can it be destroyed, yet an alchemist persists that one material can easily be transformed into another without the use of elixirs and energies. To me, this was simply preposterous. That did not stop me from falling into the deep spiral that is the dogma of alchemy, though, as I had once before when I was in my adolescence. The ability to change tin or lead into something as valuable as gold and silver were a siren’s call, something that quite literally would endure any man who learned of it.
As the engine went along its track flashing colors of green, white, golden yellow, and blue passed by me on my right. We were travelling through the backside of Farenzo, where rolling hills of green and flaxen high-grass grew wild. There was not much of those lands that had been touched by the industrialization and engineering that had gone on in cities like Iyesgarth, but even though Iyesgarth had seen the touch of soot that did not mean that it lacked the beautiful skies that persisted throughout almost all of Farenzo. Littered throughout its countryside were small farming homes, some instituting wheat fields.
Though I thoroughly understood and enjoyed the scrawlings on the notes, I believed it to be nonsense. The transformation of one material to another without any outside force but the willpower of a human being was, quite frankly, ridiculous, and I had no reason for even the slightest of moments to believe in it. When I was to arrive at Limmere and begin my studies I hoped to further disprove this idea and in turn, broaden the span of chemistry in such a way that we would be able to understand the world around us. Fantastical propositions such as alchemy was something that was only to be kept within a fairytale, along with anything else of the same nature.
I stepped off of the steps of the engine and onto the stone platform around the hour of one. Then, I entered my home at half the hour, to which I saw Izabella sitting within my mother’s room. Mother layed upon the bed, without a motion, just as she always had. The feeling in the room, though, was somber and silent. Upon my entrance to mother’s quarters Izabella instantly stood to her feet, folded her hands, turned in my direction, and bowed her head. She made no sound, said no words, but simply avoided peering upon my expression. Still with me I held the notes from Beau, which I then dropped from my left hand, scattering them about the hardwood floor.
Tinseling light poured in from the window, with the white, thin, flower-patterned curtains drawn. I saw the dust particles, light as feathers, bouncing floating about, suspended in the air without a human care. I saw the smoothly layed covers, the glass with crystal-clear water sat on the bedside table, and the aged photo of my father, mother, and I, standing in front of our countryside home, away from all of the short lived bustle of Lowestoft. I said no words, thought no words, only mere emotions that spun webs throughout my mind.
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“I’m sorry.”
Izabella’s two words split a headache through my mind. Hurriedly, I picked up the mess of papers that I had made on the floor, then departed from the room and to the front stoop of the home. The streets of Lowestoft were abandoned, as they often were during noontide. Behind me were the faint steps of Izabella as she approached me. “It happened this morning, not too long after you left. I would have dialed, but I didn’t know where you had gone, and I didn’t know if they had something to dial in the first place—."
From within my metal and flesh hands I replied, face covered: “No matter. It was bound to happen one day. God chose for it to be today of all days.” No bird sang, nor did the wind blow, nor did a carriage ride past with a whinnying horse. I could have sworn that I heard the sounds of my tears as they hit the oaken stoop. “Do you think that God wished for her to go, or his hand was forced to take her away?”
At that moment, I knew not as to why I had asked Izabella such a question; barely did I know her, and soon after I had fully absorbed the situation I would have to do away with her.
“Mr. Larkin, I don’t have an answer.”
My hands shifted away from my face and went to my sides. “I did not expect you to.”
The morning thereafter I had already sent Izabella home, and in a short amount of time I would be off to Limmere. Because of this, I would have no one that would be able to look after the home unless I wished to pay someone to do so; I decided upon leaving the home in the state that it had been since the death of my mother. It would not be abandoned, as I hoped to often return to it on the times that I had breaks from my learning and when it was most convenient for me, and knowing Lowestoft it would be unlikely if anyone were to even think of entering the home illegally. And as for the remainder of my time in Lowestoft, I retreated to my study, much like how I did when I was young, according to Beau. There I arched myself over writings and manuscripts, absorbing as much knowledge as I could, scribing and rescribing the things that I read, in the hopes that I would be able to retain the knowledge at the beginning of my learning. At night, all I could think of was college, as though it were my love. In simplicity, I had become obsessed. Not a moment went by that I did not think of the potential halls I would be walking down, the libraries of infinite knowledge that would be at my disposal, and the resources that I could use to discover reality.
No one came to my home other than the coroner, whose visit was maddeningly short. I asked for her to be buried, and I was the only one to attend the funeral other than those who orchestrated it. After that, I had become a full hermit, leaving the house only if I was forced against my will; and of course, that sort of instance never came. Days of beauty and warmth went on in the surrounding country, but I continued to scrawl and read by candlelight. Oftentimes, as I sat in my darkness, I felt the anchoring-plate of my arm ache. I avoided any sort of acknowledgement of it however. If I did not pay heed to it, it would go away on its own. It was more or less the feeling of an irritation, an itch within the flesh that I could only cure with something of the likes of a needle, so I did not take to doing so. The only needles that my mother once carried within our house were those for sewing, not for anything medical related.
In the quiet hours of the night I could find no slumber. My eyes were pried open by some unseen force, for whenever they would close for but a moment I would find them burning from the open air as I stared above into the plaster ceiling. Darkness knew I, and I knew darkness. Because of this, I would leave from my bed and enter, once again, into my study, as though I had not been there in the sun-filled hours of the day. My body required being there at all times, and when I did not give it what it needed, I would be forced to listen to the prattlings of my eternally-stretching mind. To me, the sunlight was a sickness, and shutting it away was the cure. And if I held the ability to go back and change what I had done with my fleeting days within Lowestoft, I would do so.
Once the month had passed, an engine in Lowestoft’s station was soon to meet me. I had dialed the West-Engine Company in order to bargain upon a deal for a ticket to Harthwaite. Since Limmere was within a relatively small city, there was no station within a considerable distance. Therefore, I was forced to buy a ticket to Harthwaite, north of Limmere, and from there I would take a carriage ride to the city that Limmere nested itself within, Ascott. A hostess on the other end of my dial to the West-Engine Company allowed me to purchase my long-distance ticket for half of the price after much discussion interlaced with desperate convincing. By that time, the money that the state paid my mother for my father’s service had been cut. I no longer had a steady inflow of money, thus forcing me to use up much of the money that I had saved years before. I could not bear to spend a great deal of money on such a ticket, as the farther the distance of an engine-trip went, the greater the price compounded.
On the day that I had gone to the station the weather was bleak; much of the anticipation that I had for the past month or so about going to Limmere had turned into fear. Even with the prospect of gaining knowledge during my stay there, I had no other plans for what I was to do when I left years later. The fear manifested itself gradually, and it blossomed into its greatest form as I sat upon a wooden bench on the left side of the engine. How terrible I felt as I sat alone at the engine-window.