"Reputation"- urGoh, urSu
UrGoh is more perceptive than most give him credit for. He knows that the other urRu consider him something of an oddity. Still, however far he roams, he always returns to the familiarity of the valley, laden with treasures, stories, memories. Nothing the Skeksis would consider treasures, certainly- those hold no more interest for him than any of his kind- but gifts, made by affectionate hands, notes in letters he can barely read, painted bark, dried flowers. Today, a paste of herbs carefully mixed to heal the sore feet after a long day’s walk, and a little doll stitched from fabric scraps and stuffed with dry grass, pressed into his hands by a childling who had been sad to see him go. It had been a plea not to forget her, but he never does.
The days move slower in the valley than in the outside world, and in a way that is comforting. He slips back into the daily rituals easily, joins his voice and his hands with the others, allows himself to rest with the awareness that this visit, like all the others, will be finite. The others humor him kindly as he pours out his tales, but rarely stop their own work, and their eyes are always distant, any interest superficial at best. They are not their darker halves- they see value in life in the abstract- but have sunk too deep into their own self-reflection to appreciate it in the individual sense. He has long since given up on changing them, but he shares anyway.
UrSu takes him aside late one night, when the moons are high and the air is alive with the distant chirps and calls of the forest’s creatures. The restlessness has begun to set in already, the pull to walk among all that life and beauty again. The Master meets his eyes, mostly inscrutable, but with his ever-present, heavy air of sadness.
“You love the world too much,” he says, slow but pointed. “It is not our world. We merely linger in it while its true inhabitants pass through.” He pauses, long even for him, traces long fingers over urGoh’s knuckles. “To love them is to lose them.”
His motives are obvious- to spare pain to one of his own, to tempt him back to the valley’s gentle numbness. But UrGoh already knows this, perhaps better than any of them. Time is different within him than outside too, and all too often he has returned to a village, only to find its childlings from his last visit frail and withered, or returned already to Thra. They remain, their descendents tell him, in the ground and the rock and the trees, but urGoh is an outsider- if their voices can still be heard, he cannot hear them. Their time with him is merely a blink. But that does not make them insignificant. “That is….my choice.”
UrSu sighs, but nods.
The next morning, the Wanderer shoulders his pack and sets out again.