> Critique is as welcome as Uriah
Uriah Goes Home
Uriah knocked on what he assumed was still the front door. It was opened by Perrin - she was all smiles and welcome. This faintly terrified him.
“Hatley!” He barely registered the incorrect name. “Do come in, let me show you round.”
“Round” turned out to be Uriah’s replacement. Uriah wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about this. On one hand, this finally meant Perrin was moving on after his departure. There would be no more (or perhaps simply less) unexpected midnight visits to “check on him”. But on the other hand, he had always been the filthy wretched raggis, lampreying off her estate. Seeing someone else proverbially claw at her proverbial skirts felt... wrong.
It didn’t help that Round was “morbid” Lee O’Bese, a hat that had been sentenced by Madam Two-Swords back when Uriah still lived here. A name change had been enough to fool all the three-star moons, apparently. But Uriah immediately recognised him, because he’d been in court for sticking Uriah’s head into a cactus that happened to be growing (it’s growing) at the bottom of a toilet.
Now the question was, should he say anything about it? Perhaps if this was an elaborate shit-test, staying quiet would be handing Perrin just the ammunition she needed to further pick at his sanity. But then, perhaps the upper class moons really were this dense, and trying to point it out would be opening himself up to ridicule.
Uriah felt almost clever for once. He didn’t like it.
“He’s staying with us for a little while, until the dogs go away.” Perrin’s saccharine dithering was almost mimsey. “It’s terrible having such bullies roam around the roads, you knooooow?”
“Yarr.” Uriah agreed. He knew. Round gave him a look of deep mistrust. He knew he knew.
Perrin finished shaking her head (?) with all the regret of a serial killer. “Well, I’ll leave you two to- get along, then.”
She closed the door and pressed her single eye to the keyhole. Only anticipation kept her from cackling.
Round stared almost reproachfully into Uriah’s empty eyesockets. He slowly lifted a faintly humming cheese to his mouth, and chewed. “How is your brain?” Uriah stirred. That was a phrase Madam Cheese had been fond of ambushing him with. “Euh, Two Hard Boiled Eggs.”
Come to think of it, Round (Uriah was strangely tempted to refer to him simply as “Fat”), shouldn’t have been concerned. With Uriah’s limited vocabulary, which in its entirety consisted of “No”, “Yar”, “Oh My Word”, and “Two Hard Boiled Eggs”, there was no conceivable way for him to articulate something as complex as “This man is an escaped convict who has deceived you under an assumed name”.
He squatted on the dusty floorboards, and watched Fat chew his cheese. This was going to be a long Barcday.
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