The report took Aldric three evenings to write, and he wasn't certain any of the extra time had improved it.
He sat at the table in the rented room above the Nail and Flagon, staring at what he'd written, and then he heard the knock at his door. He had been expecting it.
Seff (through door):
"It's me. I brought the good candles, not the tallow ones."
Aldric:
"Come in."
Seff had entered with two beeswax candles in tow and with an unmistakable look on her face telling him that she had made up her mind to have this conversation that he had been putting off. Seff set the two candles on the table, lit both from the tallow stub that he had just used, and sat down across the table from him.
["tallow stub" used to describe the dim lighting remaining from a nearly finished candle.]
Seff:
"You haven't answered my letters."
Aldric:
"I've been writing the report."
Seff:
"For three weeks?"
Aldric:
"It's a complicated report."
Seff looked at the pages spread across the table. She picked up the top one, read it, and then set it down.
Seff:
"Dynamically configured. That's what you're going with."
Aldric:
"It's accurate."
Seff:
"It's cowardly."
Aldric looked at her for a moment, then back at his report.
Aldric:
"What would you write?"
Seff:
"I will document my findings. The geometry of the passage is inconsistent with the geometry of naturally formed passages. The acoustics in the central chamber also deviate from geometry. I did the calculations, Aldric; they are not correct unless the stones were artificially arranged! Plus the warm wall temperature; did you touch the far wall at the end of the passage?"
Aldric:
"I felt a wall."
Seff:
"A warm one. Specifically warm at the point where we had to turn around."
Aldric:
"Geothermal activity is common in ..."
Seff:
"Localised to one spot? Moving between visits? Aldric."
He put down his quill. He looked at the candle.
Aldric:
"If I write what I think is actually happening, the Guild classifies me as dungeon-touched and sends someone else."
Seff:
"And if you write 'dynamically configured' they send a clearance party."
Aldric:
"Maybe."
Seff:
"Not maybe. You know the protocol. Failed extractions get clearance ordered. They'll clear it, Aldric. Everything in it."
Silence. The candles breathed. Outside, the tannery smell that Aldric had stopped noticing years ago made itself briefly present.
Aldric:
"There were goblins. Signs of them, at least. I didn't put that in the report either."
Seff:
"I know. I saw the middens."
Aldric:
"If I report goblins, they definitely send a clearance party."
Seff:
"So you're protecting them."
Aldric:
"I'm delaying a decision I don't know how to make."
Seff looked at him with the expression she wore when she was deciding whether to say the true thing. She decided to say it.
Seff:
"Something within that cave feels like it possesses a level of intelligence beyond that of other living beings, Aldric. This entity may have been aware of every visitor who has entered before us and it has deliberately allowed us to exit."
Aldric:
"That's not ---"
Seff:
"I know how it sounds."
Aldric:
"It sounds like dungeon-touch."
Seff:
"Does it feel wrong to you? When you put your hand on that warm wall, did it feel wrong?"
He didn't answer. That was its own answer.
Seff:
"There are things in this world we have no category for yet. The absence of a category isn't the same as the absence of the thing."
Aldric:
"Where did you hear that?"
Seff:
"I didn't. I thought it."
He glanced at her before picking up his quill and writing a note beneath the dynamically configured section of his report. The note was written in less prominent type, making it resemble a footnote below the main text; it was positioned away from the top of the page, close to the bottom.
Seff:
"What did you write?"
Aldric:
"Nothing for the Guild."
He ripped off the lower part of the page. Folded it into a little square. Held it for a sec, then set it down on the table on Seff's side.
Aldric:
"Seff! Look at this. Read it."
Then he had her open it. Then read it. Then read it again.
"Seff, there are some things in the world that we don't have a category for yet. Not having a category does not mean that those things do not exist."
She looked up at him.
Aldric:
"You said it first."
Seff:
"You wrote it down."
Aldric:
"Someone should."
Seff folded the piece of paper and put it into his notebook. Aldric completed his report (which was actually called dynamically configured) with a recommendation of projecting a 6 month moratorium. Aldric never mentions warm walls or goblins, and both of them were also aware it wasn't that report that needed to be written, nor did he yet know how he would write the report that needed to be written.
["moratorium" refers to a temporary suspension or delay of a specific activity or obligation.]
Remembrance:
This conversation would not be decoded by me until months later. When I finally had the vocabulary that permitted me an understanding of what either of them had said to one another in that rented room over the tannery, I also had enough vocabulary so that I could understand the significance of the fact that they said it at all.
They had been trying to find the words for me. Both of them, talking to one another both individually and as a couple were reaching for the same thought (there was a sentence that existed, but neither of them knew how to say where anybody would believe it) and the note that ended up in Seff's notebook (thoughts penned by her and physical words written by him) was the start of something. The end was still yet to be determined. But I kept it alongside the inventory of absences, in the record I was building that was not only of what was lost but of what was possible.