A Tremulous Test

Chapter Five

It was a whole day before anything happened. A cold day and dark, cold night. Isolation and the frigid environment deeply affected Fürgůïn's spirits.* He glanced at his own shoulder - bare and cold. It hadn't been his finest moment. But what was a freezing renling to do? Eat his own clothes? Niggit hadn't been happy recently anyway, terrified by all that bedlam, then stuck inside a stuffy pocket. He'd miss him.

Later, Fürgůïn spotted two figures approaching from the direction of the bridge. As they drew closer he could recognise Razzles and what looked like an elbh. Their advance was slow, reluctant. Razzles' face looked for all the world like bad news, strangely pale.

When they finally stood before Fürgůïn's makeshift tree-shelter, the pair were silent and solemn-looking. "Want to come in?" Fürgůïn indicated a small space of snow. Knohm and elbh ducked under the sparse twigs and huddled side by side, hesitating to sit directly on the icy ground.

* Fürgůïn recalled the well-known stories of the wars of old: knohms and renlings embroiled in conflicts from which many a beloved beard never regrew, or if it did, it was never quite the same. Post-war society saw many an ear on the streets twisted beyond all recognition or irretrievably poked inside its own hole. Tales of the stables of Groll drifted into Fürgůïn's lonely thoughts, desperate times, desperate measures. What he wouldn't give now for some tibmibling cheese or a basket.

"Well, I suppose we might as well get right to it," Razzles began, pulling a piece of parchment and a quill from a pocket and pursing his very red lips. "It's been a difficult time in there." He paused and sighed. Fürgůïn waited, noticing how snow absorbed sound and how its moisture eventually permeated almost everything.

Razzles still had a distant look in his eyes, melancholy and a little vacant. The reason for his peculiar pallor was evident now at close quarters: a dense plastering of foundation. He had evidently succumbed to negative knomic tendencies and embellished himself with a theatricality utterly unrestrained.

"We've gotten together and made a decision," Razzles went on, now looking at his parchment for the details, "Ah... Yes, er... We've decided that we can't approve of you coming back to the bridge."
Fürgůïn was about to point out that he didn't want to - he wanted to get on with the quest, but instead, he simply said, "May I ask why?" Knohm and elbh exchanged a glance. The elbh shrugged, Razzles tapped his quill on his parchment, frowning with artificially arched eyebrows. The whole situation had a surreal air about it.

"Did you call Norris a fat, squalid trollop and refuse to help Ebore with the dishes?" Razzles enquired,
lacking any real commitment as if he had been fed the question. It didn't really require an answer. After an uncomfortable few moments, the elbh suggested, "Perhaps we'll go back and discuss this some more."
He frowned, swayed slightly as if experiencing some inner struggle. Fürgůïn noted flecks of red on his sleeve.
"By chance, did you eat any of those pieces of toast with Norris' jam on them?" the renling grimly enquired.
"Yes, I ate two I think," Razzles replied.
"Ate two Razzles? Ate two?" Fürgůïn enigmatically responded.

The renling stared for a while at the backs of the departing messengers as they trudged through the snow back in the direction of the bridge. He didn't know whether to wait for the inevitable or perhaps just set off northward on his own. Give them a while and they'd be back again, likely with some jam-inspired explanation of how he'd unreasonably wedged a bottle up Norris' fat hooter or that he hadn't believed poor old Ebore or something like that. He hunched deeper into the pathetically insufficient dip in the ground and brooded. The snow gathered on his hat.

It was another day before knohm and elbh stood again before the bare twigs of Fürgůïn's shelter. The dip in the ground below was empty apart from the snow that had blown in once left unattended. Fürgůïn was nowhere to be seen.