2022-05-17 - Stories

Despite the less-than-perfect weather (at least it's not currently raining), the docks have been a hive of activity this morning: tourist season is underway, and the boats both big and small are in and out on a regular basis. After a week of recovery, Mikaere is back on deck (pun absolutely intended) to help the harbourmaster, though as afternoon heads on towards evening there's enough of a lull for him to take a proper break. That's where he is now: a tall figure sitting with half of his back leaning upon a mooring post, his legs swinging out over the water below. He's got sandwiches, albeit uninspiring ones, apparently uninspiring enough that the seagulls are getting most of the bread.

"Careful. Don't sink the seagulls." Ravn's footfalls are, as always, silent. The man moves through life largely unseen and unheard, at least when he himself has any say in the matter.

He plonks himself down next to the other man. "Nice morning, though. I'm going to sink the Grand Olympic Casino and the island it's on. Are you in?"

He probably doesn't mean it, even if his voice does sound like he's been drinking too hard all night.

Mikaere doesn't jump-- doesn't even really so much as twitch-- at the sound of Ravn's voice; he just turns his head sidelong to acknowledge the other man, chin dropped into a greeting. "They'll abandon me for someone with fries any minute, I'm pretty sure," he says. "Probably a small child not paying attention. It's inevitable. What's your beef with the Casino, aside from the obvious?"

A beat. "Well, I mean, the obvious is probably plenty. I'm in. Let's take it down. Robin Hood the proceeds."

Ravn rummages in his jacket for a cigarette. "They are hosting a masked ball. A fund raiser for some charity. I have no quarrel with this. I have a quarrel with the fact that I'll be expected to attend. And then somebody had to say they expected me to be breaking all the hearts and now I'm just, I'm going wearing a fat suit and smelling of cheap beer."

"... oh. Well, shit."

Mikaere's answer is a knowing one, and comes with a wince, too: penguin suits and fancy dress, hurray for everyone.

"Will your girl be all into it? You could just make an appearance and then bugger off and have a better time somewhere else."

"I think she'll be all into fancy dress and music and dancing. And I have no quarrel with that. I'll happily be her arm candy while she conquers the town." Ravn flicks his zippo open and lights the cigarette. "It's just that last time I went to the casino and there happened to be a fundraiser going, I was randomly photographed by the Gazette's photographer. Suddenly I was dating Cassidy Bennet and the president of the HOPE foundation international. I hate attention. I'm perfectly content to be some guy Ariadne is dragging around and no one looks at me twice."

He blows a smoke ring. "Women who sniff out you're not as confident as you look -- they always try to encourage you by telling you that you'll break every heart, that you'll be the darling of the party. What I want is the exact opposite."

Mikaere makes a face, not quite dubious but absolutely uncertain about those whole thing with the Gazette. "Fuck the press," is what he ultimately goes with, shaking his head.

"I don't get that either, the whole heart breaking thing. Who wants to break hearts? What's even the point of that? No. Women can be-- some of them have some weird ideas, I guess."

Ravn tucks the lighter back in his pocket and then hitches a shoulder. "It's the romantic ideal, I guess? To be that somebody who silences a room when they step in. The one in the spotlight, the one in the headlines. The important, the rich, the elegant. It's the narrative we keep pushing in fiction and movies -- how many TV-shows do they make about Robin? All Batman."

He adjust his seat to lean on the hand that's not holding the cigarette, and watches the seagulls compete for sandwich bits. "When a woman hurries to mention she has no date for it, it means she wants one, right? I pretended to not notice, and I think she had her eye on another woman in the room but. You know. Time to keep real quiet."

Yeah. That look on Mikaere's face? It's a grimace, no question about that. "I got into politics to do good," he says. "Not to be seen to do good. Not that I did much good anyway. Just-- pass. Thank you, no. I know some people live for it, and that's well and good for them, but... no thank you."

The rest of the sandwich gets tossed out-- there's not much of it, by this stage, and very little of it actually hits the water. "Generally that's exactly what she means, yes. Sorry to tell you, Ravn, but you're tall and probably pretty handsome to women who lean that way. Definitely time to keep quiet. No one ever needs an excuse not to offer, when it comes to that kind of hinting, but... it can't hurt to know you're unavailable anyway."

"I am pretty sure it wasn't me she was hoping for." Ravn offers a small, wry grin. "But, I don't generally keep secrets like that? I mean, I haven't taken out an announcement in said Gazette but I'm not exactly sneaking around, either. Maybe I need to drop Ariadne's name once or twice at the start of every public conversation, signal loud and clear that I'm not a person of interest in this regard. Just feels kind of, well -- it's kind of presumptuous, assuming that I'm the target always."

He watches two seagulls hang on to separate ends of a pickle. "I'm a very monogamous bloke. And to be honest, not a very romantic one, either. This is my second relationship, and I'm almost thirty-two. Not exactly a player, me. You going? And if you are, do you have a date?"

From his grin, he's not asking Mikaere to be his, no.

"I didn't know," points out the tall Kiwi, though the shadow that briefly crosses his expression suggests it's bringing up less than happy memories, ones he's not inclined to draw into the conversation. "Until this past week. But then, we're not really gossips, are we... aside from that question you've just asked me now, huh."

At least that brings the grin back. "Since I hadn't been aware of the thing until now, that's an outstanding question, I'm afraid, in the 'yet to be determined' definition of outstanding and not the more colloquial one. To be confirmed."

"So somebody you want to ask, and whether names are revealed depends on whether they say yes." Ravn nods his approval. His way of doing things as well. Don't shine a light at people until you're certain they want their name on the same page as yours. "Here's hoping they're on board with the idea."

He looks up and ponders. "I think we're actually gossipy as all hell but it's another kind of gossip. This town you become -- you learn to look for the manure before it hits the fan. It's not so important who's dating who as whose nightmare monster is eating your neighbours alive."

"More..." Mikaere pauses, trying to put it into words. "Someone I would be willing to take, if she were that way inclined. If we're honest, I'd rather make a donation-- such as it is, given these days, the cash flow is limited-- and avoid the whole thing."

He considers the rest more thoughtfully, wiping crumbs off of his hands with even strokes against the sturdy canvas of his shorts. "There's that," he agrees. "Though I think that's less gossip and more just... information. 'Gossip', to me, seems more about collecting information for the sake of knowing, not so much because it may be actually useful and important."

"That's a fair point. We talk about people because in this town, it's part of keeping an eye on them. Need to know who's in trouble." Ravn nods. "All right. Gossip is when you talk about people because they're your soap opera."

He looks down at the water; the pickle is long gone, and one seagull floats on the surface, grooming its wing and looking content. "Suggest you ask the somebody, then. Let her decide. If she's sitting and hoping you'll invite her and you then don't -- unnecessary disappointment. In my -- admittedly very limited -- experience, women love these things. The dressing up, the planning, the make-up, the hair. It's their big occasion to shine."

"Precisely." And then Mikaere laughs, too. "Which means we can absolutely tell the women in our lives, with a straight face, that no, men don't gossip, don't be silly." He's at least mostly teasing, with that.

"Mm," he says, of the rest. "You're probably right. I'll give her the option. Either she'll want to go with me, or she'll want to go with her friends and I'll back off, or-- maybe she won't want to go at all, and that's equally fine. Ball in her court. You said it was a whole masquerade thing?"

"Yeah." Ravn looks out at the glittering hotel on its artificial island out there in the Bay. "I'm guessing it's because we're coming up on Pride month? Always a lot of social goodwill to harvest around those things. People with a bit of money, getting to take selfies that they can use to demonstrate how woke they are to their followers."

He looks at the seagull again. It looks back. It's a momentary stand-off. Then the bird ruffles her feathers and takes off.

"I don't like crowds. I don't like fancy dress. I don't like attention. But if Ariadne will enjoy the day? I'll carry her through it on my hands like she's a bloody princess. As long as it's not me everyone's looking at."

Mikaere's not shy in making his feelings clear about that kind of performative wokeness: it's there in his expression, and in the way he spits at the water, as if he needs to get the bad taste out of his mouth. "I hope the queer people of Gray Harbor get their chance to celebrate properly, come June. I mean, I'm sure they will."

He turns his head, grinning directly at Ravn. "In my experience, once there's a beautiful woman in a dress, feeling a million bucks, no one'll notice you. Men in suits are visually interchangeable. Women, though? Not at all."

"Here's to hoping you're right." Ravn grins slightly. "I certainly don't begrudge her stealing everyone's eye."

He glances back at the hotel out there, its lights brilliant even in the day. "So, somebody asked me the other day -- how many straight, allosexual, heterosexual men do you know? And I'm counting -- well, you said she so, one." A small lopsided grin. "I think the queer people of Gray Harbor will be doing just fine. And while I don't consider myself one of them, I have every intention of going to their parties if they let me, because frankly? I feel more comfortable around them than I do around that glittery lot who consider themselves good, upstanding citizens. I don't want to get to know them."

That count makes Mikaere laugh outright, though he pauses to consider-- and ultimately shakes his head. "Admittedly," he says, "I know more women than men around here. Pure coincidence, mind, not any attempt to ingratiate myself with the women. And equally, I could well be bi-- except, as far as I'm aware, I'm not. I guess that's the thing, though: it's not always obvious."

He grins, and adds, "I hear you, though. I'd prefer the gay glitter than the glitterati type. The honest celebrations rather than the performative ones."

"Eh, never say never. Haven't met every man in the world and all that." Ravn cracks a small grin. "But, yeah. That's the thing, isn't it? Queer or straight, doesn't matter. Making it a problem for you matters. And people making donations and posing for the cameras are making it a problem for me if I have to be there with them."

He glances back at the other man. "So you were a politician back home in Kiwia. Big deal?"

"Exactly," agrees Mikaere, evenly.

"Mmm-- not really. Local government, for a while. And then I did a national campaign and flamed out pretty spectacularly. It turns out I can't hold my temper around pompous white conservatives. Not," he adds after a moment, "that I had any chance of winning, anyway. But it was supposed to be a springboard."

"I grew up among pompous white conservatives. They're my people. I don't blame you in the slightest, man." Ravn can't help a small laugh. "Bloody awful, on the whole. The entitlement is insane -- even at their best, they still need to get seen. Have to have the selfie, the press, the lapel pin -- how's anyone going to know what they did, without it?"

Ravn's laugh is echoed by one of Mikaere's, and the Kiwi shakes his head. "Exactly," he agrees. "And the way they talked down to people. They didn't want to listen; they just wanted to be heard. To be seen, exactly. I wanted to get in and make a difference, and even my own party... I mean, even they wanted to use me for photo ops, to a point. At least in local government you're just supposed to listen to people and make small change at a local level. Less press; less mess."

"My parents were disappointed that I wouldn't go into politics. Finances, preferably, but politics would be acceptable. A lot of old Danish families are in politics now. You can strip the gentry of their privileges -- and we did, in 1849 -- but you can't take the gentry out of government." Ravn draws on the cigarette, and then finishes it. He pockets the butt, rather than throw it in the ocean. "So I struck them a deal. I'd go to university but I'd study the humanities. That, or I called the local plumber's shop for an apprenticeship."

Mikaere lets out a little snort, timed to just after Ravn's mention of becoming a plumber. "I bet that went down well," he says, grinning. "Humanities, suddenly much less of a bad thing. My dad would've preferred I join the police, like my brother did, like he did, but at least ma was a professor, so it wasn't so unexpected that I might want to study something. Business was mostly out of lack of any particular idea what I wanted, at that point, though. I just wanted to play rugby, drink beer, and sail."

"History interests me. Stories interest me. I grew up surrounded by metric buttloads of my own family's history." Ravn nods. "It's socially acceptable enough -- it was more, they felt it was too . . . dull? Dusty book worm sitting in his house writing. When I could be out there, being Somebody in the world of money or politics. Somebody influential."

He shakes his head. "I didn't even know that I wanted that much. I just wanted them to leave me alone. And moving to Copenhagen let me get away. Even if my mother nearly died at the idea of me living in a normal student dorm when she could buy me a nice apartment somewhere."

"My ma's stories-- I grow up with them. I was too busy being self important to pay attention to them for a long time, but when I did? It felt like coming home again. Like I'd remembered part of myself I'd forgotten. Which is a roundabout way to say that I think I get the appeal, even if your parents didn't so much."

He grips the edge of the dock with the fingers of one big hand, gaze out over the bay. "Getting away is important, too. Letting go of things. And now, all those stories, all that reading; it has a purpose, doesn't it."

"Yeah. Makes me feel like coming here was the whole point, sometimes." Ravn lets his gaze follow Mikaere's, out there. "And this place will do a number to keep us, won't it? Every time I think seriously about leaving, somehow, I form another tie. I've got more solid roots here than I do back home. I belong here."

He pauses. "Well, that got . . . deep. I guess what I meant to say is, I'm mildly freaked out about the idea of going to that masquerade but it's actually the idea that somebody might hoping I'll ask them for a date that freaks me out a bit. Which is silly because all I need to do is drop the 'my girlfriend' line a few times at the right people and I'll be as invisible to them as I'd ever want."

Mikaere turns his gaze back towards Ravn, though he makes no move to comment until the other man's finished. "In my experience," he says, thoughtfully, "happy people tend to attract more attention from the opposite-- or the same, I guess, depending-- gender. New relationships make people incredibly attractive, not because people want to butt in on them, but because it subtly changes you."

Beat. "Or maybe I'm full of shit, who can tell. I hear you, though, on the roots. I had no intention of hanging around, but... I'm invested, now. It'll be Haggleford, in the short term, and eventually it'll be something else, too, and before I know it I'll be applying for citizenship and pledging my... allegiance, is that the thing? I don't know. Whole nationalistic propaganda thing freaks me out."

"Yeah, that's where I draw the line. I have no desire to become a US citizen." Ravn nods slightly. "I'll take your word for it on the relationship thing. I mean, I haven't noticed. But then, it's nothing something I pay a lot of attention to on the whole, because it doesn't make sense to me -- world full of single blokes, why would anyone go for the ones who aren't, that sort of thing. And, the whole idea that you have to sleep with somebody to care for them, makes no sense either."

He shrugs. "I've never been one to fend off women with a stick. Most of them find me far too oblivious, far too non-romantic, far too -- preoccupied. Ariadne seems to be all right with this. That I'm often distracted and that my mind goes to a lot of places. Maybe it helps that she's just as preoccupied with marine biology. Heaven knows I don't want to be in one of those couples where you can't do anything apart. I've tried that, I don't care for a repeat."

Mikaere shakes his head; shrugs his shoulders, too. He doesn't necessarily get it, himself.

"Finding the right one definitely makes a difference. With the right person... your personal idiosyncrasies are what make you you, and therefore the right person in return. Or so I'm told. My ex wife was clearly not the right person, and-- right now, I'm not especially seeking to be tied down as such. The whole joined-at-the-hip thing is-- yeah. No. Pass."

"I don't object to being exclusive, not that we've talked about it." Ravn takes out his lighter again -- not to light another cigarette but to let it dance around his knuckles; some people have busy hands. "But unable to do things separately? No. I've been there. My fiancee followed me half way around the planet after she died. Because she wouldn't let go of me, even after she died. I have promised myself, I'll never compromise again. I'm cool with the idea that a partner might not want to share every experience of mine. But they have to be willing to let me go and do what I do. Just as I am willing to let them do what they do."

"That's the key, isn't it? To be able to deal with both the together and the separate. To see how your lives layer together-- the bits that crossover, and the bits that don't." Mikaere's slow nod acknowledges all of this.

"I like to hope it's something we get better with as we get older, because we're more aware of ourselves, and who we are as individuals; what we want. I don't need to be defined by who I'm seeing, or if I am."

"God, no." Ravn can't help laughing -- it sneaks up on him and escapes before he manages to bite back on it. "Her sister. We met her accidentally in Seattle, and what does she do? She Googles me. And rapid-fire texts Ariadne all morning about what she found. I'm trying to be all casual about it but bloody hell, talk about being defined by perception, yeah?"

The laughter, and the story it pertains to? It makes Mikaere grin, exhaling out the tiniest laugh of his own. "Yeah, that happened for me, too. Del--"

Pause. Okay, that was a name, or part of one.

"Google's the worst for that, absolutely. No secrets left. I hope Ariadne knew all the information being thrown her way, at least."

"Yeah. I think so, or at least anything that matters." Ravn hitches a shoulder and flicks the lighter to his other hand; it continues to dance from one knuckle to the next. "I don't know a whole lot about her background. I have very pointedly not Googled, not asked. Because on some level -- I only want to know what she wants to tell me. What is this town, if not somewhere to start anew? The longer we stay here, the more irrelevant we become to the rest of the world. All but forgotten. It's the perfect place to go and leave your troubles in Poughkeepsie."

Beat. "Or Seattle. She's from Seattle."

"Poughkeepsie," says Mikaere, with a bit of a smirk, though it's not as if his country isn't full of placenames that are just as silly, don't think we haven't forgotten you 'Waipu' and 'Whakapapa-the-wh-is-an-f-sound'.

"That's a good approach, though. If it's important, she'll tell you herself, in her own time. Anything else... it doesn't matter. This town's good like that. It's freeing, to just get to be ourselves, and not whatever the world has decided of us. I could join the mayor's staff, here, maybe go back to doing small amounts of local good, and I wouldn't be That Guy Who. I like that."

"As long as you'd be willing to kiss Addington ass and pretend you don't know that Felix Monaghan runs most of the money around here." Ravn shrugs. "But then, how's that different from any other town? There's always some family that's the old money, and some businessman who's the new money. This place isn't even bad in this regard, at least most of whatever it is they're doing happens out on that casino and doesn't bother anyone here. The town certainly needs the tourist money."

Does Mikaere seem overjoyed at the prospect of kissing ass and ignoring corruption? No. Does that seem to have put him off this idea as a whole? Also no.

"That's pretty much it," he agrees. "It's always going to be that way, and you have to... I won't say I like it, but it turns out I'm more flexible than I thought I was in that regard. Point is, it may not be sexy, but roads and sewers and schools and rubbish collection? It keeps the town running. Add in a few parks and community programmes, and it's about right."

Beat. "I'm considering it, anyway. Behind the scenes. If the opportunity arises. For now... I have a summer of remembering what it's like to put up with rich white men and their status symbols." He gestures, idly, towards the docks around them.

"Yeah." Ravn can't not smirk. His status symbol is right there, bobbing on the water, cat napping in the aft. "Yeah, I know what you mean. Obvious jokes aside. And I know that I can't. It's the world I was born in, but I can't fucking stand it, and I'd rather 'waste my life' volunteering for a community centre and living in a house I share with a room mate because what the hell would I do with all that space."

"Yeah," agrees Mikaere in return. No smirk, though there's that twitch of a smile. "Life's been busy reminding me what's important, and the big house, fancy car, whatever else? That's not it. Mind you, don't ask me to give up my boat, because I refuse. A man's got to have one luxury in his life."

"Not giving up the boat, the cat, or the whiskey. I will fight for the motorcycle. The rest? Fuck it." Ravn pockets the lighter again and looks at a yacht struggling to make its way to the pier; not because there's anything wrong with the yacht but because its pilot clearly isn't accustomed to its size. "I guess that makes four luxuries. Decadence embodied, me."

"Four! That's it, I'm voting you off simplicity island." Mikaere lets the tease hang in the air for a moment, then finds his gaze wandering back towards that yacht.

"You know, half the time I don't think they even enjoy it. They're not interested in in the water, the boat. They just want the lifestyle. And I guess that's their choice, and I shouldn't judge, but... I do judge."

Beat. "I mean, what does a man need with a boat that size anyway?"

"Beats me. I guess that if you've got your wife and a number of kids then you need more space than when it's just one man and a cat. But still. Most of those big things have an entire kitchen, and separate bedrooms. Complete bathing facilities. They're floating houses. And I'd be worried about the weather a lot more because most of them aren't sea worthy for shit, either." Ravn looks at the yacht. At least it's not one of those with a hot tub on the front deck. Or worse, a pool.

"You know what I want out of life? Simplicity, indeed. I want to feel like I belong. You don't feel like you belong when you constantly need to keep track of what your peers are doing or buying so you don't fall behind. It's that simple."

"My girl has a shower, and that's a luxury I won't pretend I don't enjoy, except... it's not much use on a longer trip, when there's only so much water on board in the first place. It's still not a real shower, though. I can't imagine..."

Those super yachts? No. No way.

"Exactly," he adds, instead. "Simplicity. Belonging. It's not hard, in the end, not really. The people matter more than the things. They always should."

"I wouldn't have minded if Vagabond had one but she doesn't. I could look into building something -- a water tank instead of a bit of a seating space, something something, kitchen sink. I can't be bothered -- I mean, I live here, I have a shower on Oak Avenue, how often am I going to be at sea so long that sponge baths won't do?" Ravn nods and glances back at the King's Cruiser 33. "She wasn't built for long ocean voyages -- though she must have crossed the Atlantic and then gone through the Panama Canal and up the coast. The idea of those boats is to spend a day or two between islands. Not to be out for weeks."

"It was harder than I expected, getting this far," agrees Mikaere. He's not glancing off in the direction of his boat, but there's something about his gaze that suggests he's definitely thinking about her. "I knew it wouldn't be easy, but-- ocean sailing's not for the faint hearted. I can't believe there have been kids, teenagers, doing the whole 'sail around the world alone' bit. But it helped, knowing it was possible to sluice down properly, when I needed to, not that there was anyone to smell me."

He shakes his head. "Hard to imagine my people, migrating via canoe, a few hundred years back."

"Pretty amazing, isn't it? Galapagos Islands, blows my mind." Ravn nods. "And what the hell were my ancestors thinking -- hey, let's set sail west, see if we hit anything, why hello, Lindisfarne. And oh look, that's a rock, let's call it Iceland. Greenland! Vinland! Woohoo!"

He shakes his head. "They knew a hell of a lot more than we give them credit for, of course. I don't know much about the Polynesians, but the Norsemen had magnetic loadestones for compasses, they knew how to navigate from the stars, and what's probably very important, they knew a thing or two about birds. Sailing west without having some kind of expectation of finding something would be ridiculous."

He ponders. "They knew England was there, somewhere. Beyond that? There must have been reason to believe in the other Atlantic settlements. Cloud formations give the Faroes away from a long distance, for example."

"Amazing," Mikaere agrees, without hesitation.

"I wish I knew more about what they did know. We have the stories, we have some archaeological evidence, but-- we don't even know where, exactly, our ancestors came from, and that's only a few hundred years ago. But it's enough to know that it did happen, somehow, and I can be in awe of that even without knowing all the details. That's a big part of why I sailed the way I did, just to try and imagine."

There's a smile in that, both audibly in what he says and across his mouth, too. "Your people and mine. Opposite sides of the planet, but both masters of the waves in different ways."

"I read somewhere that at least Australia traded with the rest of the world, through Malaysia and island hopping, long before Captain Cook." Ravn throws one last glance back at his boat and then looks at the yacht over there that finally managed to moor. To no one's surprise ever, the pilot turns out to be a middle-aged white man in a white captain's cap that looks brand new. "I don't know if New Zealand did, but the thought is not ridiculous -- the Maori were great sailors, and it's not that far -- follow the ocean current west in spring, I think, and back east in autumn, or maybe it's the other way around."

"I can tell you the name of the canoe my ancestors arrived in Aotearoa aboard, but the specifics of much beyond that?" Mikaere shakes his head. "Cultural memory is a trip, and we're lucky that all the tribes effectively spoke the same language. You talk about Australia, and you have to remember there were hundreds of languages, hundreds of completely different ways of life. If there was trade beyond the immediate vicinities, we've no record of it. It's fascinating: travelling all that way, and then... stopping. As far as we can tell."

Beat. "Arguably, I suppose, they found what they were looking for. Bit like me here, eh? I stopped too."

"Maybe they didn't see any seabirds flight patterns telling them to keep going south. They didn't stop entirely. Tasmania? But after that. Yeah. Next stop, Antarctica." Ravn nods.

He looks up at the blue sky. "I was reading a book last night -- indigenous American legends. The introduction talked about how oral history is hard to piece together because nothing is really remembered as fact. Every teller twists it to his purpose. It made me laugh."

He grins. "I know the name of a girl who drowned six thousand years ago. Oral history passed that story down in one town in Denmark for six thousand freaking years. Her name was Gerd. She drowned in the oak wood when the ocean broke through. Only, the town is nowhere near the ocean, at the bottom of a very long fjord system, and there is no oak wood, has not been an oak wood in recorded history."

Ravn smiles lightly. "That story was recorded in the 1880s. Sometime in the 1970s or 80s construction in the area revealed buried, petrified oak forest, deep down under a layer that bore traces of sea water incursion. Gerd really did drown when the ocean broke through, six thousand years ago. And her name was remembered for all that time. For no reason. There's no caution to the tale. The ocean never came back. But she was remembered, so screw oral history is useless."

"Aotearoa was probably cold enough, if they arrived in winter," says Mikaere, with a wry laugh, though it stills quickly: he's listening to Ravn's story, his expression one that isn't immediately decipherable, except that it's thoughtful and wistful all at once, combined with something else as well. "That's a pretty great story," he says, at the end of it. "It doesn't matter if her story was a cautionary one, in the end, or whether it served any purpose at all. She was remembered, and that's what oral history is all about."

Though: "Six thousand years? I can't even get my head around that. Whoever said words were fleeting? They're immortal. Collective human memory is at the heart of everything."

"What blows my mind is that we remember her name." Ravn nods. "Usually, a tale is remembered because it has a purpose. Warn you away from something, explain the existence of something. And often, the main character gets renamed to match, or the story gets re-attributed to some culture hero -- like Raven or Coyote, to stick to this continent, you know? But Gerd's story is just a footnote in history. By the way, a long time ago a girl named Gerd drowned in the oak forest here, she was a shepherdess. There's no warning because there's no oak forest and the ocean never returned. There's no 'because she did' -- Gerd wasn't punished by the gods or trickster entities. She was just lost."

He shrugs. "It blows the mind to keep in mind, this story is older than Egypt."

"Gerd," murmurs Mikaere. "Gerd, in the oak forest, drowned by the sea. And now I get to carry that story with me too, and so she continues to live on, day by day, for no particular reason except... she lived and she died and people remembered."

This seems to satisfy him somehow. "I know we have graffiti and what-have-you from truly ancient civilisations to remind us of individuals there. 'So-and-so is a cheater and a thief'. But it's something again to have nothing concrete and yet still remember a person. Fuck."

"And all this, not even remember how important stories are to this town, and everything that happens here."

"And most of that graffiti happened before Gerd. There were towns in the Middle East -- but nothing we recognise as the early proper cities. It's absolutely mind blowing to think of. It must have felt the same way to dig in Turkey." Ravn looks up. "Imagine that you've read The Iliad and you've heard the local folks in Turkey claim that yep, that all is true, it happened right over there. So you dig a bit. And there it is, there is bloody Troy."

He grins. "In about 1200 BCE, Troy. Meaning, Gerd lived three thousand years earlier."

Mikaere's answer comes in the form of a long, slow shake of his head. "I can't even," he says. It doesn't stop him from grinning back, though.

"I love that. That we have these stories, they've survived this long, and then... then we find out that, no, it really did happen. This isn't just a story. Not that anything is 'just' a story, I suppose. They're enough on their own, but it's satisfying to have the physical evidence, too."

"It's what I love about my field. The stories -- and how they are part of us, how they are our species' memory. Writing is all good but it's also very new. Even 18th century depictions are still symbolic -- people can't read so every detail in a picture must convey the right narrative. Even if it means it's unrealistic. Because realism is not the point." Ravn nods.

"It also means... the stories get to live. There's no one true way of telling a story in my culture: you can make it suit your purposes, spin it a hundred different ways. Every storyteller is different. The core stays the same, because that's the thing that really matters."

He glances back. "Realism should never be the point. What's the fun in that?"

"We have that for tall tales," Ravn agrees. "Stories that happily have the main characters replaced or the location, or whatever. Everyone knows. It doesn't matter. A lot of them are mocking stories or riddles. Like, how do you save President Biden from drowning? You remove your foot from his head. Except, the oldest recorded variety of that one was about Otto Bismarck."

Mikaere's little snort of laughter is a merry one. "Recycled, again and again. I like that too. If it worked well once, it can absolutely work well a second time, and a third. A good line should never be fully retired."

Beat. "I guess I should find one of those good lines to see if that girl wants to go to the ball thing with me. She could probably use the smile." It's his cue to start to stand, to move.

"And I should go chant 'you can do it' at a mirror a few times because The Girl absolutely does want to go with me." Ravn gets up as well. "Reckon we'll run into each other around here pretty often. Come over for a cold one sometime -- or bring me out for one on yours."

"You can do it," Mikaere promises. "And so can I. But yeah-- absolutely. I know where to find you, and... let's face it, I'm here most of the time these days too. Don't be a stranger."