Who: Cuthbert and Roland What: Talk of important things! Where: Cuthbert and Roland's apartment When: Yesterday afternoon, after this conversation. Warnings: Will update if needed
He had delayed long enough. Roland wasn't, he knew, going to be suddenly more prepared to deal with any of this. It was time for a lengthy palaver, one to explain all that needed explaining, and wasn't that a fair sight more than Cuthbert had to go on when he'd first stumbled between worlds, or back into the time of the Old People before the cataclysm, or whatever else Madison Valley might possibly be.
That Roland was here was like a weight lifting, after the sorry state he'd been in after arriving in town for the second time. It was how things went, he supposed, when time passed for him and not for others, and it was true enough what he'd said to Molly, that he'd counted his friends prematurely and found them to be much fewer in number than expected. Valen he liked, but couldn't fully trust. Cesare had all but forgotten him since Lucrezia had turned up. Georgia was - Cuthbert wasn't entirely sure what that was, but it wasn't friendship, to be sure. And this time he'd come from home, from Gilead, not Hambry in the middle of its tensions, and that was different again.
Only now there was Roland, and despite the extra responsibility that gave him now, to make sure Roland knew enough, he was better off and happier than he'd been in a long while in Madison Valley, and he was sure that after all the difficult talk was had out and done it'd be better still. Cuthbert believed that ka had brought them here. Oh, he didn't believe it the way Roland might have, or Alain, but he would hardly deny the obvious. There was reason for all this and he was even willing to consider that if Roland said it was the Tower it might well be on account of the Tower.
Cuthbert didn't care to think about that too much. He'd settle for dealing with Farson and having Mid-World at peace; that was what their fathers were striving for, wasn't it? Besides he didn't want to have to talk too much about that poem, or about the corruption that lay beneath the surface here, or all the fallen worlds he'd heard tell of. Mayhap the Beams were weaker still, to bring folk between in such a way. It was equally as likely as any theory of Georgia's.
Only that talk could await another time. Cuthbert strode into the kitchen in their little apartment and set his bags of groceries on the table. 'Popkins in little packets of plasticks,' he announced. 'Popkins and fruit and beef and chicken, bread and rice and eggs, and a little chocolate and sugar water.' He grinned. Not that he'd ever develop a taste for the stuff, no matter how highly Georgia recommended it, but Roland might try it all the same. 'It's enough to be getting on with, I reckon.'