19 Chapter 19
Time seemed to have lost its meaning in the underground prisons. Jacquard and Paul, completely unaware of the dangers that were rising in the land above them, chatted away happily, acquainting themselves with each other.
"So," Paul began, "Are you really not going to consider coming with me? I can easily remove you from there."
"No thanks," Jacquard told him, "Even if he isn't alive anymore, the least I can do for him is offer him a proper burial. If you want to go you can leave without me."
Paul thought about it for a while before remarking, "I think I will stay with you for a while longer. After all I have nothing better to do." With that he crossed his front paws and placed his head on top of them.
Jacquard looked at the ganie with his sight and saw the information that was flowing around it. He drew the information towards himself and the moment he did, he could tell how determined the ganie was among other things.
He had been talking to the ganie for a while now, and his original impression of him had changed. When he first awakened intelligence, in fact even before he awakened his intelligence, Jacquard could feel a cruel and cold, extremely calculating intelligence, capable of taking ruthless decisions without batting an eyelid.
Yet all that had changed while they had conversed. Jacquard found out that Paul wasn't as sinister as he had first thought. He slowly came to realise the charm that the intelligent ganie possessed, it drew him in and made him feel like following Paul's commands. Even from the information flowing off his body, Jacquard could already tell that Paul was a natural born leader.
More than once they had ended up in a state where there was nothing to talk about and the air was suffused with silence, yet Jacquard could tell that it wasn't because they had run out of things to talk about, but rather Paul just didn't know enough to speak on. After he had awakened his intelligence, he seemed to have forgotten how he had lived his life before his intelligence was awakened, remembering only bits and pieces but as time went on, completely forgetting everything he knew before his intelligence was awakened, save for the few that were ingrained in his body.
They spent some time in silence that had long since become a common occurrence between them. There was no awkward atmosphere between them, and they weren't trying to come up with anything to talk about, they just enjoyed the silence and the mere fact that there was a presence next to them that was as alive as they were.
And it was in this state of silence that Elder Kapha contacted Jacquard abruptly ending the peaceful state he was in. //"Is there anyone still alive in there?"// he asked apprehensively.
"Yes, there is. What are you looking for?" Jacquard answered.
//"Oh,"// Kapha exclaimed slightly disappointed, //"Demon. It's just you."//
At that Jacquard grew angry. "What do you mean by it's just me?"
//"I was expecting the yemephu to answer,"// he replied, //"But apparently he is not in the mood."//
"Well, I'm sorry to tell you, but the young yemephu has unfortunately passed away."
//"Oh."// Kapha said, slightly lethargic.
"What do you mean oh? What do you want?" Jacquard was slightly annoyed at Elder Kapha's comments and hoped to finish their interaction as quickly as possible.
//"I am here on behalf of the council, to tell you that you are free to leave the cave prisons. Your crimes have been pardoned, you may come up now."//
"I'm sorry but due to the person that was carrying me being dead and on account that I am only in a lowly stone, could you maybe help me to exit this cave prisons?" He remarked.
//"Sure,"// Kapha said, //"Give me a moment."//
After that, Kapha went silent and Jacquard, thankful for a chance to regain some peace and quiet and worried that his speaking would affect Kapha's plan in some way, he kept quiet and waited for Kapha to make his move.
He didn't have to wait long. Before he could re-enter his state of serenity, Jean's body soon began to move. At first it was just a twitch, one that wouldn't have been noticed even if you had been paying attention. Then, it slowly grew into large movements made by the limbs and then finally, Jean's body rose into the air and began to head towards the open cell gate.
"What's going on!?" Paul asked, getting up from the position he was in before and becoming highly alert. "How can the body be moving by itself?" he asked. "I thought…" he paused for a moment before continuing, "No he is definitely dead. How is he still moving!?"
"Don't worry about that," Jacquard said as he calmed down the agitated ganie, "We're about to leave, so follow me closely. I'll need your help when we get out from here."
Unable to do anything else, Paul silently agreed and began to follow Jean's body as it ascended the stairs. It took them a while, monotonously ascending stair after stair, unable to do anything else, but luckily Jacquard wasn't the one who was controlling Jean to climb the stairs.
They reached the top of the cave prisons and came out to the top of a mountain that seemed to be cut neatly in half, and it was at that moment that Jacquard really began to appreciate the Seeing Realm. All the information rushed into his body and were quickly transformed into things that he could understand.
Although the information in the outside world was much more than that of the cell in the cave prison, Jacquard was already used to handling the information provided by the Seeing Realm and was able to take in the scene laid before him.
"Wow," Jacquard and Paul said at the same time, "It's so beautiful."
Although the two looked at the scene in two different ways, both of them could appreciate the beauty that was laid before him without thinking twice about it. Paul's highly sensitive eyes captured all the details of the forests that surrounded them as well as the beautiful sunrise that was happening, dying the sky pink for a while.
It was at that moment that Jacquard truly noticed the difference between the Sight and his other method of seeing. Using the other method, he would have been unable to appreciate any of the things that were out of his field of vision, he wouldn't have even been able to see it in the first place. But with the Sight, he was not only able to appreciate the beautiful scene before him, he was also able to appreciate the fact that it took the effort of an uncountable number of things to create this scene.
The information that was entering his body was more detailed the closer it was to him. Like the wet stones that surrounded Jean's body contained more details than that of a bird over a kilometre away. He took in the sight around him that been constructed in his mind's eye, allowing himself this moment of what he thought was a guilty pleasure before turning to face the yemerey that was standing nearby.
Jacquard established a connection with him and spoke. "Thank you, for getting me out of there. I don't know how to repay you."
Kapha just turned his face slightly, not even looking at them. Jacquard smiled and turned to Paul that had come out with him. "Come, follow me. Let's go and bury this body."
The ganie immediately snapped out of it and ran over to where Jean's body lay. He wrapped his hairs around the yemephu's arms and soon began to pull it away, dragging it away from the mountain and the yemerey on the mountain, leaving Kapha alone to think about the thoughts that were on his mind.
//'Story, story,'// he thought to himself, //'What did Elder Yume mean by saying it was the only way to start the story?'//
While Kapha stayed on the mountain, the two slowly made their way into the forest, away from the cut mountain, heading north. They travelled, until they reached a place Jacquard thought was a good spot to bury Jean. They stooped and he charged the ganie with digging a hole for them to place the body.
The ganie did as he was asked and dug a hole deep enough for Jean's body to fit in. Then he pushed the body into the hole and, as swift as a hot knife cutting through butter, extracted Jacquard from the yemephu's chest, before finally covering the hole once more.
Then as a memorial Jacquard managed to use his akram to move five different stones towards the top of the freshly dug grave, placing them in a circle before he ran out of akram. The method he used to move the stones were very crude, wasting a lot of akram, and was extremely unstable, but for the sake of this yemephu, Jacquards saw it through.
