The Journal of Bashir Khatara

[Fabulous Secret Powers]

Maribeh 14th, IY 7788

These quiet days really leave me with too much time for rumination.

How many schemes have I been in the middle of, over the past year or so? Countless... Plenty of folk who need a naive idiot, whether for plausible deniability or something else. From the very first week... Hells, the first month had them lying to me about the baublium. You'd think that the lies would stop, at some point... but... proving yourself trustworthy here has a whole different meaning to it.

Admittedly my honesty is a curious sort... I did lie to get this job, yet the honesty, and doing this all by the book, it's been... honest. I don't know. I don't really have patience for fancy words, right now.

Makes me wonder how different things would've been if I had been crooked, instead. Probably would've ended up dead within the first month or two, really.

So... The reward for honesty is that you get to live, a little longer, really. You get hassled and threatened every single day, sure, but you get to live.

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I don't really understand their schemes, though. Most of them seem don't seem to pay off. The ones that do only offer temporary benefits... Then the schemers die in an embarassing fashion, and most folk forget about them. Then another jackass pops up, and folk flock around them, for some reason.

Only thing that seems to last here is the scheming itself.

Another odd thing is... People here seem genuinely confused to see me sad, or angry, or just uncomfortable in general. It's as if apathy is the expected norm. Especially with whimsical undertones. Because losi██ most of one's friends... and  being threatened, humiliated and lied to on a daily basis... are just utterly hilari███ things.

They ask why ██████ I don't trust them, then lie ██████ ███ to me as the very next ac█. They ask why I fear for my life, then stand ██████ ineffectually while ██████████ threatens me. They ask why I'm not smili██, all the while doing everything that they can to make my life miserable.

They ask a ██████████ of stupid shit. ████

[Fabulous Secret Powers]

Maribeh 15th, IY 7788

How long have we known each other for, Inky?

A HUNDRED AND NINETY TWO DAYS, FOUR HOURS, TWENTY ONE MINUTES, THIRTY THREE SECONDS, FOUR DECISECONDS, ONE CENTISECOND AND SEVEN MILLISECONDS. TO BE EXACT, AT THE TIME I FINISHED WRITING THE LAST LETTER OF THAT SENTENCE, INSIDE THE FRAMEWORK OF YOUR LIMITED UNDERSTANDING.

I don't even know what a "decisecond" is!

HOW HORRIFYING. HUNDRED AND NINETY TWO DAYS, THEN, WHEN FORMULATED WITHIN YOUR SEVERELY LIMITED UNDERSTANDING.

It's not that limited... Anyhow... I've been kind of focused on my own issues, lately, and I just kind of realized that I've never asked about your feelings... I don't think so, anyhow... So. How are you?

WHAT?

How are you? Doing, or feeling...?

I... I AM FINE.

What have you been up to...? Besides reading those books I got for you...?

THIS EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION IS MOST PECULIAR. IT IS LIGHTWEIGHT IN FORM, WITHOUT AN OBVIOUS PURPOSE. WHAT ARE YOU ENGAGING IN?

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I'm just curious, is all. I mean, we live together, yet we haven't talked that much, lately.

THE CURIOSITY OF PERSONAGES IS INSATIABLE AND DESULTORY. FINE. I HAVE BEEN ENGAGED IN THE FORMULATION OF WHAT I CALL "THE BODY-SOUL SENSITIVE TRADE-OFF HYPOTHESIS". ACCORDING TO MY HYPOTHESIS, PERSONAGES PREVIOUSLY POSSESSED MORE SENSES THAN THE LIMITED SIX THAT THEY HAVE NOW. THE ADDITIONAL SENSES WERE LOST WHEN THEIR SPIRITUAL FORMS WERE CONFINED IN MATERIAL VESSELS, SO THAT PERSONAGES COULD INTERACT WITH THE CORPOREAL WORLD IN A MORE SUBSTANTIAL CAPACITY. SUCH WAS FOOLISH, OF COURSE, AND MY SECONDARY GOAL WITH THIS HYPOTHESIS IS TO ALSO PROVE THAT PERSONAGES ARE THOROUGHLY FATUOUS.

I only have five senses...

WHAT.

Yeah.

SCHTUP! SO MUCH EXPLAINED IN AN INSTANT! IS THIS WHY YOU NEVER RESPOND TO MY THOUGHT PATTERNS?

What...? I can't read minds, Inky, if that is what you're insinuating...

MY VERY ████ BEING WEEPS FOR ██ █ YOU, BASHIR ██████████████ OF KHATARA. ████ WHAT A MISERABLE  ██ EXISTENCE.

Hey! Stop leaki██████ in██ all over the page█! ███

ONE MUST ████ MOURN ████████ WHEN CONFRONTED WITH ████ SUCH HARSH REALITIES. ██████████  ██████ ████

[Fabulous Secret Powers]

Maribeh 16th, IY 7788

The Builders had been clearing that rubble with the statue for a few weeks, now... And they got done with it at some point! I'm not sure when, exactly, but it's all gone now! Where they took the statue of the lady knight is a complete mystery to me, too... I think we have a statue storage down in the basement, but I don't want to go down there to take a look. Some of my colleagues are saying that the ghost of one of Domhnall's eels is haunting the place, now...

I know it's most likely bullshit, but I'm not taking any chances! A phantom eel sounds particularly slippery, as far as ghosts go, and I don't want to catch the eel curse!

Anyhow, that spot is so empty now... I want to decorate it, but I'm not sure what'd work. Signs are out of the question, because nobody reads those, anyhow... I've had folk yell at me about a lack of transparency or whatever, all the while they're standing next to the sign that has all the pertinent information that they're so mad about... It's so weird.

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I was considering some chairs and a coffee table, but there's already plenty of seating, and it isn't like there's ever a long queue to Ludwig's office, anyhow... But I guess folk might appreciate a nice desk to read at? I don't know. Again, people don't really read here. Much of anything, really. Myself, I subscribe to each and every newspaper that there is, even the raunchy ones, and boy, are the political cartoons in those something else!

The Twindari geomancers from Baz'eel are coming for a visit, today. They're going to add a mausoleum to the Maqam... with geomantick magickry! I want to see... But it's very likely that there'll be trouble, because there's an old tomb, under the Maqam! If I see mummies, zombies and spooky skeletons, I'm going to start running, immediately... I just really want to see the geomantick magickry.

Everyone knows geomantick magickry, except me... It isn't fair.