Chapter Text
-423: Twenty-Two Years Before 2023
When I think of who I’m going to be, I think of my mother, and my older sister.
My mother was always gifted at getting us to agree and get along in a way that never felt like scolding. She and my father let us know they loved us. I loved my father too, but… I never got to tell him how I didn’t want to be him.
And my sister, I suppose, was who I always wanted to be. Everything I wanted, she had. A sharp mind and sense of humor, and as many friends as she could want.
I don’t think I would have left them behind. But they were most all I had at home. Everybody offered me condolences, and every time they did I wanted to Achilleistically snap their heel tendons. I became the town object of pity.
Pity was never going to bring them back.
There’s a story I dwell on since having learned it. A very long story of a man and a woman, a husband and wife, who are apart for ten years of war and ten more years of the man’s journey home. And during all that time, the woman waits for him to return home, staying hopeful and resolved.
Where I’m going, a place I can uncover the secrets of the world, understand the truth of existence… I want to be committed to the cause. I want to be as dedicated to that place, to my teachers, to knowledge, as Penelope was to Odysseus.
And… my, her name is so beautiful. It feels like a wind on the sea.
It’s a name that feels like a promise of dedication.
So, as I leave Watchtower behind, call me Penelope.
I can’t wait for what lies ahead.
-420: Nineteen Years Before 2023
It’s odd. All the people I’ve met among the followers of Pythagoras, and my best friend in my three years abroad remains someone who wouldn’t join if I tried.
Philip says he likes meat and beans too much to join us. His diet still frightens me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him eat anything that isn’t meat or bread.
If he ever eats a vegetable, the sun must’ve started rising in the west.
He would like the studies we’ve been doing on music lately, though. He’s been making new syrinxes and he’s been trying to make them sound perfect, but they all look so… ugly. Imperfect. Mistaken. Wrong.
At least, that’s what my teachers would say. I try to see beauty in their strange waves and lengths.
I could help him. We learned today about the harmonic series – numbers that get smaller and smaller that create harmonious sounds. Or something. Philip would understand what they’d mean.
And I can’t tell him! I’m not to share symbols of knowledge with anybody outside the followers of Pythagoras!
It would be so much easier if he’d just join.
Okay. I did something foolish. But if all goes well, it will be worth it.
I told Philip that we could teach him how to make the syrinx he wanted if he’d join us. And… he cornered me into a second arrangement. If I showed him how to make that syrinx now, then he promised to join.
I… I wanted him to be a part of us. He could learn so much.
So I told him. I told him that his second reed should be half the length of the first, and the third should be a third of the first, and the fourth should be a fourth of the first, and so on.
It should take him a day more to make it. I look forward to seeing him join the followers of Pythagoras.
Unity, Power, Harmony, Cosmos.
NO.
NO.
NO.
I’m the stupidest person who’s ever lived.
Of course Philip couldn’t wait to share his new syrinx around. Of course he couldn’t keep a secret a secret. Of course he let loose to all of Croton that Penelope told him how to make it.
Of course it got to my teachers.
I’m… they all knew before I did. I’m excommunicated. I’m reduced to a gravestone in a field.
Why should I talk to Philip about it? What does he have to say that would make me feel better?
There’s a boat home to Iberia tonight. I’m taking it. I don’t want to see Philip or anyone else here ever again.
I don’t even care that I don’t have anybody at home. There’s nobody for me here anymore.
Three years of learning maths, and science, and wisdom, and it’s all evaporated before me in an instant.
I didn’t think twice before leaving on the boat for home. It was too easy to forget I had nobody at home either. Or that I got unused to rowing with the crew in my time abroad.
I have no plan for what’s next. I still find myself thinking about the years I would have continued to spend as a follower of Pythagoras, the teacher I would have become, the legacy I would have founded, the mark I would have left.
I have to remind myself I am completely alone. Because who am I supposed to be loyal to now? I failed.
I doubt my home ever got rebuilt. I wonder where I’ll find room to sleep.
NOTES:
He travels forward in time, experiencing only a few days every several years?
The tavern IS a vessel, it is timefaring like a boat is seafaring? And it travels around the entire world??
He is from three thousand years in the future??
It can only travel forward in time and almost never visits the same place twice. I would never see Watchtower again.
IS THIS WHAT I WANT?
Tonight has been the strangest evening of my life.
The boat arrived, after a journey of dozens of days, in Watchtower, and finally I was… well, out of the sea if nothing else. I thought I’d stop dwelling on the future that could’ve been. I haven’t.
I don’t know what I expected at home. Nothing had changed, from what I could tell. Or so I thought.
I was off the boat late in the afternoon. I went straight for where my home used to be, and not even the landslide rubble was left. No house, nothing.
Something blue caught my eye, though. I dug through the dirt and found… a shell, from what I believe must’ve been an oyster. Two pieces of one shell. It was blue and white, and broken. But it shone in the sunlight after I wiped the dust off it.
I’m looking at it now, and… the pieces fit together well.
So I wandered through the rest of town, seeing if I might find anywhere to stay, dodging questions about how life over the sea was. The sun had begun to set by then, and as the Fates would have it, I wasn’t going to be out in the cold or embarrassingly accepting charity from anyone else.
I turned down a shortcut of an alley my sister and I had traveled through hundreds of times as youths, and I found a tavern.
The tavern must’ve been built while I was gone, as it wasn’t there when I left. But I figured, oh, maybe I’ll be able to find some food, or warmth, or at least spend a couple of my last few coins on wine.
I did not expect the inside to look as… luxurious as it did. It was colorful, and the floor was made of polished wood, smooth against the soles of my sandals, and each chair was carved out of wood so flawlessly, and so comfortable, I’d have believed they were carved by a godlike talent. I’d have liked to sit in each one of them, but I was only able to try four before I noticed someone staring my way.
And I met his gaze, and I stood from the chair I was trying out.
“Welcome,” he called to me, and I walked over.
He looked about my age, though his hair seemed made of silver thread. It was long, and tied neatly at the nape of his neck. And though he was in the strangest, most intricate set of clothing I’ve ever seen…
He was rather handsome, I suppose.
“Ah, hello!” I replied. I walked over to him, though he was behind… a long, tall table lined with tall chairs. I sat in the one closest to him.
“Is there anything I can get you this evening?”
“Yes,” I said. “Have you anything to eat?”
“Certainly we do,” he replied, with a slight nod. “Any allergies?”
“Yes, um, bread doesn’t agree with me very much,” I told him. “Also… I try not to eat meat or beans. But if that’s what you have for food, that’s all right.”
“That is no problem! Would you like a kelp steak?”
And that confused me. “I don’t know what that is.”
“It is a meal made of seasoned kelp! Typically grown at the depths of the sea, but we grow it aboard here. By all accounts, it is quite good!”
It sounded quite intriguing, admittedly. “Okay, I’ll try one.”
The food was green, and slimy… but oddly delectable. It was salty, as I expected anything out of the sea to be, and it tasted like nothing else I’ve eaten before.
I ate, and he kept standing nearby. “I don’t recognize you,” I told him.
“Oh, I am a recent newcomer to Watchtower,” he said, a bit sheepishly.
“Well, welcome! I’ll say, it’s impressive that you’ve built such a luxurious tavern in… how long have you been here?”
“It has been sixteen days since I arrived.”
I didn’t believe him. Indeed, of those I’ve asked since then, nobody was able to verify the tavern had been there for any longer than that, if they knew about it at all.
All I let out at the time, though, was a stupid “oh!”.
And I quickly tried to change the subject to avoid continuing to look like an idiot. “So, stranger, might you have a name?”
“Yes,” he said. “I have a name.” I waited for him to tell me to no avail.
“I figured as much; what is it?”
“Dan. It is short for Danual.”
“Fascinating name. I’ve never heard it before, you must be from further than I’ve journeyed to.”
“Yes, you’re correct.”
“Well, it’s lovely to meet you, Danual.” I extended my hand. “My name is Penelope.”
“It is lovely to meet you too, Penelope.”
Then, as he took my hand to shake it, he… raised it a bit, like he might kiss it, though he didn’t. It felt strange and beautiful.
It made me feel… light, as if I might float above my stool because Dan was lifting me up, unknowingly filling me with some kind of ecstasy.
What are you thinking? I chided myself, and then that feeling went away, and in came more heaviness than I’d felt before.
“Are you all right?”
Dan had let go of my hand by then, and I didn’t realize how sunken-in my face felt until Dan asked. I wonder if I’d looked like that since my excommunication. I don’t think I let myself feel it.
“No,” I said. “I’m not.”
“If it would make you feel better, I can listen to you,” Dan told me.
And… it did make me feel better. I told him too much. How I hadn’t felt at home here in years since the landslide, without my family. How I believed so much in the mission among the Pythagoreans, and how they threw me away from one mistake.
It’s not just, not being able to feel the problems you’ve got until you let others see them. But the world isn’t just. It lets you believe that things shouldn’t be fixed because they’re normal.
“I chose my name because I wanted to be loyal. But now… I have nobody to be loyal to, because nobody was loyal to me. And that makes me nobody. If I’m not Penelope… I don’t know who I can be.”
The first thing Dan did when I finished telling him was ask if I wanted a beverage, one I hadn’t heard of before. “Tea”, he told me it was called as he mixed some honey into it. “Sip it slowly, it’s very hot,” he said.
It was filling, and surprisingly tasty, as unaccustomed to its heat as I was. My tongue still feels burnt. “Thank you,” I told him. “I take it you’re also a fan?”
“Oh, I have never tried it myself,” he said. “But by all accounts, it is very tasty.” I wanted to ask what he meant, but he continued.
“If I may, Penelope, I don’t agree. I do not understand the reasoning you’ve used.”
“It’s evident, Dan,” I told him. “I tried to be Penelope. I failed.”
“I do not see it that way. It is not fair to expect you to live up to some idealized version of yourself you read in a story once. Even if such a character is somebody you admire, you would never be them anyway. Penelope, your name belongs to you, and your personhood belongs to you. You don’t have to dedicate yourself to a cause that failed you. You exist, and you think, do you not? Therefore, you can be who you want to be.”
I could tell he meant what he said. I just couldn’t believe something as good as that. “Thank you,” I told him. “That helps so much.”
“I am glad to hear that,” he said. “I am relieved to know that I helped you feel better.”
I’m writing it all down now, because I can’t forget it. I found it all too hard to take in. But I hope I can believe it eventually.
How miraculous was it that I met somebody as kind as him, understanding without being pitying, willing to just… listen?
He’s incredibly strange, though. Even beyond the food, nobody I’ve known talks quite like he does. It was a mystery I couldn’t figure out, until he told me.
As I finished my tea, I asked him why I hadn’t seen him around before.
“I travel,” he told me. “I only arrived in Watchtower recently, probably while you were on your return journey here.”
“I see. It’s surprising you had enough time to build a tavern as magnificent as this, I’ll say.”
Dan paused for a solid few seconds. “Yes, I guess it is,” he said. “Though it will not stay here much longer.”
I was saddened to hear that. “Oh. Are you leaving too?”
“Yes. The tavern and I travel together, you might say. I am leaving Watchtower tomorrow night.”
No, I thought. I only just got to know you-
An idea struck me. “Could I come with you?”
“Pardon?”
Clearly, I’d caught Dan off guard. “Could I join you on your travels? As you know, I don’t have much of a home here anymore, and I’m already well-traveled. I can help with operating the tavern, too.”
“I don’t know, Penelope. I’m…”
Dan paused, and looked away from me, stared upward at the ceiling behind me. There wasn’t anything there; I turned around and followed his line of sight. But after a few seconds, he turned back to me.
“Actually, I think that yes, you can join me on my travels. I would like you to join me on my travels.”
“Dan… oh gods, thank you. Thank you for this, I-“
“But,” he continued, “I must explain to you exactly how my travel works. And I do not want you to commit to it before you have learned everything. Please know that as I explain, the option to stay here remains available.”
What Dan revealed to me… I don’t fully understand. It’s heavenly magic that should not be real, though he insisted it’s not magic, merely science.
The prospect of the unknown, though…
It does not frighten me. I want to see all of the world.
I’m ready to leave Watchtower, and the Pythagoreans, and the troubles life has brought me… all behind.
What will life bring me from here onwards? Only time will tell, I suppose.
-420: One Day Aboard, Nineteen Years Before 2023
I’ve been gifted my very own room aboard the tavern-vessel! And to think I thought the front lounge was magnificent. My room… is fit for a goddess. I’ve never felt a bed so soft, or textiles so smooth and colorful.
We leave tonight. Dan told me we’ll be spending three days isolated from the world while we travel seven years forward, and that he doesn’t know where we’ll land; he never does.
I’m apprehensive, but I regret nothing. I told a few taverngoers I knew from town that I’d be traveling, leaving town likely forever, and I told them to give Watchtower my best. Otherwise… I have nothing to leave behind, and centuries of time to explore with Dan.
I wonder where we’ll stop first.