Baker Bloch finds Karoz Blogger in the old lighthouse part of Castle Jack, staring toward the Sikkima sinkhole — another place we’ve had a town (New Pietmond, 2012/2013).
“They ran out of absinthe at the Blue Feather last night,” he says while still gazing at the sinkhole. I smashed my empty goblet in disgust. Baker Blinker had to walk me home.”
“Don’t you live in the same place now?” Baker offered. But Karoz didn’t answer. Instead he points toward the depression in the distance.
“The past-future is hard to erase, Baker Bloch. I try to blank it out. Yet bad men come into focus still. Bad things.”
“Oh don’t be that way, Karoz. What bad men? What bad things?”
“Wrestling,” he says. “Blood letting. Your father, for one. *My* father. Or maybe my mother. No, my uncle. Uncle Zorak. But, come to think of it, it wasn’t your father, it was your grandfather. Or, going back further, your grandfather’s father. ’26. Blue Feather. You’ve seen the collage.”
“I’ve seen the collage where Tom the Busker inexplicably plays at the Blue Feather in ’26, Karoz, the new one from our user.”
“*Your* user. I’m trying to become independent of all that. Baker Blinker is helping. The absinthe might be helping except we don’t have any. That wasn’t a problem in Norum. I could always hop down to Chilbo and pick up a new box of bottles.” He sighs. “Maybe I’m just homesick. I don’t really belong here, Baker Bloch. Despite Baker Blinker. It just doesn’t *feel* right.”
Baker Bloch was thinking that he doesn’t have this same problem. He likes Rubi. Perhaps even loves it — yes, he loves it. He loves sunrise in the Rubi Woods. He enjoys making the town rounds at dawn and dusk. He enjoys reading over at the library. Furry Karl’s follow up to “Blood Curdling Tells of the Rubi Woods” will be out soon. Baker’s broken the spine on the original, he’s read it so often. “The part about the Tinbaby, ooo,” he thinks, getting shivers. But he must return his attention to Karoz’s problem. The problem he doesn’t have, pretty obviously. Baker walks to Karoz’s side and likewise stares outward, thinking about comforting.
“How’d I get to be so much taller than you?” is all he could manage, though.
Sunklands 