BP&G - The Mad Wizard

[joegoda]

I figured it was time I got back to see what Pockets was up to. I'd been avoiding it, I know, because I had another project in the works (two actually), and I just didn't want that saga to end. Pockets, on the other hand, sees it differently. He doesn't see the end of things, he just sees the next big adventure. And so, without further ado
The brothers sat on the front porch and rocked. They didn't say much to each other. They had been together for so long, they didn't have to. It was to the point where one would complete the thought of the other. They had been together so long they had seen wars come and go, countries born and die, kings declare war, march into battle and win or retreat. They had seen the birth of their world, or so they claimed.

Zeb tapped Zack on the arm, stopping his rocking. He gestured down the dirt road in the direction of the wood. Zack nodded, and muttered, "Bout time."

Pockets drug himself down the road, dirty, tired, hungry and more than just a little angry. During his trek through the wood, he had hid from a stalking wolf, gotten sprayed by a skunk, fallen more than once into the stream, and he had just about had it with nature.

Grumbling, he walked up to the steps of the old pub in Newton. He glared at the two brothers and growled at them.

"Nice to see you too, Pockets," said Zeb.

"Got any chocolate?" Pockets rumbled.

Zack stood slowly, reached into his front pocket and pulled out a slim brown wafer. He walked carefully over to Pockets and said, "It's carob, more or less. A little bit of sugar thrown in. It'll boost you back up."

Pockets took the wafer, sniffed it, licked it, bit it, and swallowed. "It tastes like old chickpeas with sugar on it." He complained. "But thanks."

"Zack and I lived on 'em when we were lost in the jungle on the southern continent bout... what?" Zeb looked at Zack, "A hundred, hundred fifty years ago?"

Zack nodded. "Sounds bout right. Might be three hundred. Who knows?" He handed a mug, wet with condensation to Pockets. "Here, bud. Wet your whistle." He took his place in the chair next to Zeb and continued rocking.

Pockets took the mug gratefully and drained it. He smacked his lips noisily and said "Sarsaparilla! Been too long since I had that."

He dropped heavily onto the steps, placed his arms on his knees and looked back the way he came. He sighed, heavily. "You fellows know why I'm here, don'tcha?"

Solemnly, the two brothers nodded. "You're not the same lad that left here, Pockets."

"Hell, I'm not the same man I was a week ago!" Pockets knuckled his eyes with one fist and waved the empty mug with the other. "Any more of this stuff around?"

Zeb waved an empty hand towards the open door. "In there, you know the way."

Pockets painfully hoisted himself up and went through the door into Jinx's. He looked around, remembering the few times he had been here before. With Bags. Always with Bags. Pockets sighed. "Won't be with Bags anymore," he thought.

He went round behind the bar, found a keg marked 'Sprilla' and tapped it, filling the mug with brown foamy liquid. He sipped it and let the sweet bitter flow down his throat. He pulled a bit of hardtack from a jar on the counter and chewed on it as he walked through the empty room, feeling the ghosts of long ago and far away flit their echos through him. Emotions he didn't know he had, emotions that weren't exactly his filled him up and overflowed through his eyes. He filled his mug again and went to join the men on the porch.

"You aren't lying, are you?" He said, sitting on an old barrel. "You really are that old, aren't you?"

Neither brother said a word. They just sat there, rocking, rocking. Pockets turned and gazed at the mountain in the distance, its top ringed with mist.

"I don't know if I want to go there." He said, biting another piece of hardtack. "But I know I have to go there. I'm gonna have to take over, aren't I?"

The wind pushed treeless leaves in circles down the empty road.

"I found this place because of your lights, you know." Pockets chewed softly, quietly while the words tumbled from his mouth, from his heart. "Not the lights of Jinx's, I mean the lights you two shine with."

He turned to the brothers, who were just sitting and rocking and letting him go. "Did you know that the two of you shine with one light? I can see it if I close my eyes. It shines with a rainbow, a pretty rainbow of all shimmers of the spectrum." He turned back to inspect the mountain mist again and sighed. "I can see all the lights, if I look hard enough with my eyes closed. I can even hear the lights, if I listen hard enough."

"All through the wood, I kept asking myself why me, why me? I'm just a simple genius, so why did I have to be the one to be given this gift, this... thing which certainly isn't a gift, because a gift is a thing that comes when you expect it, and you pretend to be surprised by it, and generally it tends to make you laugh and smile and feel loved." His shoulders slumped a bit. "This just makes me feel... heavy."

"Would you believe," he said to nobody in particular, "that just a year ago I was wandering the desert? Me, Bags and Griz, happy as a child, not knowing anything other than the random thoughts that popped into my head?"

"Would you believe that I was just fine and dandy, doing petty thievery and little mechanical miracles and that was all it took to make me happy?" He shook his head sadly. "And then he called me. He brought it all back. All the memories, all of them." He smiled bitterly. "Hell, I could probably read again, now. Lucky me."

Zeb stopped rocking, reached down and picked up an acorn where it had fallen near him. Where it had fallen was anybody's guess, because there were no acorn trees nearby. He gently tossed it in his hand, as if weighing in, and then, not even gently, he pinged it off the top of Pockets' head.

"Are you whining to us, boy?" he asked. "Cuz if you are, you better think about it again. You're whining ain't gonna make the situation any better, you know."

"We've all got a job to do, you know," Zack chimed in. "You, me, Zeb, even old Charlie, if he ain't dead yet."

"And there ain't nothing to it, my son," Zeb said, "but to do it." He looked over at his brother, who nodded. "We all know that Overhill died a long time ago. It's time for you to take his place. We probably shouldn't have taken you out of there when we did, but it was for Bags we did it." He scratched the stubble on his chin. "But then again, perhaps it was the best thing for it. I don't think you were ready. You were too wet, and too soft."

"Like uncooked dough." Zack said. "You needed to get out into the world, see what was out there. Get cooked a couple of times."

Pockets laughed. "Yeah, I know." He stood up, and made a half-hearted and unsuccessful attempt at wiping the dirt from his trousers. He shrugged and it seemed that the shrug carried the whole of the world in it. "I know."

He turned to the old men and put his hands on his hips. "Well, I certainly got cooked a couple of times. Went crazy once or twice. Was dead at least once. I reckon that was to just get me prepared."

He stuck out his hand. "You two do know what will happen when I sit in that chair again, don't you?"

Zeb reached out and shook Pockets' hand. He smiled then, a warm summer's day of a smile, and said, "Not one bit. I reckon you don't either, son."

Zack took Pockets' hand and said, "This old world was starting to go sour, Pockets. Things are starting to break down. That's why he called you." A tear formed in the corner of the old man's eye. "Damn good to see you again, son."

Pockets smiled gently. "Did you two really go to the southern continent? Did you really fight a sea serpent and win the hand of the beautiful princess?"

Zeb chuckled, and the young man he once was, full of vinegar, shone through the smile. "Lemme tell you something, Pockets. Never, ever, ever, make a God mad."

Zack placed a hand on the young man's shoulder. "She wasn't all the beautiful compared to some others, and as for being a princess..." He smirked. "We came back here. And what does that tell you?"

"It tells me," Pockets said with a smile, "that you knew that you had other things to do. Just like me." The smile faded a bit and he softly repeated, "Just like me."

"Aw, but lad!" Zeb said. "It's a beautiful, wondrous day! The sun is out, the wind is light, and there's just the tad bit of a nip in the air! A perfect day for an adventure, wouldn't you say?"

Very little of it, of course, was true. It was a dreary day, and the wind was bringing a damp chill with it. However, Pockets straightened his shirt, grinned broadly and nodded savagely.

"Absolutely!" He stepped forward and hugged each of the brothers where they sat. "And you know how I love adventures." He stepped off the porch, turned this way and that and frowned. "Which way am I supposed to go, again?"

"Pockets..." Zack started.

"Just kidding!" Pockets said. "I'm just kidding." He waved and set off down the road again, still tired, but not hungry, and feeling much better than he had in a number of days. His head seemed clearer, and he felt as if he was doing what he was supposed to be doing. He was on an adventure. A really, truly scary adventure. He still felt the weight of the world, but it was, indeed, lighter on his shoulders. Not much, but a bit. The old men had cheered him just enough.

"Pockets!" yelled a voice from behind him. It was Zeb.

Pockets turned just in time to see a water skin hit the ground at his feet. "Uh?" he asked.

"It's 'sprilla!" Zeb called out. "You might not get any where you're going."

"Oh!" Pockets picked up the skin where it had landed, bladder like, on the ground. "Thanks!" He stashed the 'sprilla filled water skin in his pack, and then he started on his way, again. He was smiling, and almost laughed aloud. "How bad can it possibly be?" He asked. Of course, he also knew that was the worse thing to ask.

He strode down the dirt road until he came, again, to the stream. This time, instead of it looking like a wet and soggy enemy, waiting to pull his feet out from under him, it seemed a friendly adversary, pointing the way.

"Bastard," Pockets called the stream, as he hopped over it to the path that led into the wood. "Can't trip me up over here, can you?" And he stuck his tongue out at it.

As he walked the path, he felt the scared, negative thoughts creeping in, but he fought back thinking of all that he had done in his life. All the travels he and Bags had gone on, all of the bar maids he had wooed, though unsuccessful. It wasn't the win that mattered, not the conquest, it was the adventure! It was the striving, that counted in the end.

He laughed out loud, his old Pockets laugh. And then he laughed again. "Where have you been, you silly thing?" He asked himself. "It feels like years since I laughed like that."

He thought about Capitani, and how incredibly brave she was, how soft, how sensitive. Knowing that her time may be short, but continuing on, full bore, loving life. A warmth opened in his heart and beat back the darkness in his soul.

He thought about Journiey, Goddess of the Wood, and her fight to just exist, to continue to survive in a world where people quit believing in the old Gods and Goddesses. And Chum, sitting in the same spot for hundreds of years, knowing that his love would come back. Surviving just because he didn't want to miss love's arrival. Surviving because he made a promise and kept it.

His mind turned to Bags, of course, always. And to Griz, and he smiled stretched until his cheeks ached. And they were going to have a baby! A daughter! What wonders awaited them both! What joy, what fear?

A tear, happy for the release, leaked down his cheek and rolled onto the mossy earth beneath his feet. "In all those times you saved my bacon, Bags, I never thought I would ever be doing something this... incredibly adventurous and quite frankly, stupid, without you." He drug a sleeve across sniffly nose. "Guess the lil orphan bookworm has grown up a bit, huh?"

And there it was. Though the clearing of the trees, the cave. Dark, forbidding, open. A shiver ran down his back, and for a brief moment the thought of 'Turn around, turn around' danced like a demon afire through his head.

Pockets shook that thought away, replacing it with bunny rabbits. "I bet there are tons of 'em in that cave!" He started towards the large opening when a thought struck him. "Simon!" He reached into his pack and shoved his hand in deep, reaching around and down.

Triumphantly, and with a whoop of joy, he pulled a brown ball from his pack. Gently, and with loving reverence, he placed the little stuffed monkey in the top of his pack, so that the brown head with the crooked smile could also see where they were going.

"What do you think, Simon?" Pockets asked. "Shall we go a-calling?"

The conversation between man and stuffed animal was soundless, but the result was that Pockets picked up his feet, moved them towards the entrance of the cave and when he walked under the large opening, he stopped and took it all in, letting memories flow.

It was as he remembered it. Very cave-like; big, dark, dripping with water from countless stalactites. That is, until you got past the gates. As he continued in, he said to Simon, "Keep your eyes out for bats, okay, Simon? The little suckers just love to come swooping down on helpless monkeys. And Pocketses too."

Into the cave the two went, down and down into utter darkness. Pockets wasn't bothered by the darkness. The changes he had gone through had caused him to develop a form of sight he had not had before. He could see the shining of the different minerals in the earth. There were streaks of silver, that shone white, and iron, that glowed a dark red. Quartz gave off sparks like captured lightning, and calcium everywhere, shining with a royal purple.

Down and down, for miles they trekked. Pockets kept up a constant chatter with Simon, who wisely and simply listened as only a stuffed monkey can. If Simon could think, he would have known that this was how Pockets dealt with fear, that rather than letting the fear stop him, immobilize him, Pockets would find something, anything to talk about and keep the fear in the tiny closet of his mind where it belonged.

An hour and half a skin of 'sprilla later, the gates appeared. They were, as remembered, tall, and dark, and standing half open. Pockets and Simon entered the gates as if they owned the joint.

"Honey!" Pockets called out. "I'm home!"

A soft pop off to the left of Pockets caused him to start. The figure of M. Fletcher, the Mad Wizard shimmered into view.

"Hiya, Fletch. Long time no see." Pockets false bravado called out.

"Come back, have you?" demanded Fletcher. "Come crawling back to your destiny, like a whipped pup?"

"Knock it off, bub." Pockets said. "This place gives me the creeps and I'd rather be anywhere but here. Besides, you called me, remember? The emergency?"

The figure of Fletcher winked out and then faded back in. "Yes, well... old programming is hard to give up," he said.

"Yeah, well... stow it," Pockets said. "I know what the emergency is, and it's why I'm here."

"Oh?"

Pockets walked up to Fletcher and placed his hand on the brown robe the other wore. He held it there for a few moments until the hand passed through the cloth. "Yeah. The gravitonic matrix is weakening and you can't hold it together." He stepped back and said, "Not surprising, since you aren't more than coherent light yourself."

The flickering Fletcher folded his arms and asked, "And what are you prepared to do about it?"

Pockets drained the rest of the 'sprilla, and tossed the water skin to the side. Then he smiled, belched and said, "I understand I have a reservation? For one?"

Comments

[capi.livejournal.com]

Pockets grows up??

Whoa. I'm going to need more tea to face this..... brb

[capi.livejournal.com]

*crying, standing, applauding*

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

Thank you, ma'am. Hope the flu has not gotten you too badly. Love you as always. But please hold your applause until the play is finished.

[capi.livejournal.com]

the flu, she is bad

and don't EVEN try to tell me i can't applaud yet! *sticks out her tongue*

I adore you.

[joegoda.livejournal.com]

The adoration is mutual, I assure you. You can clap and applaud all you want, whenever you want. I just wanted you to know it ain't done yet.

I'm sorry you and yours is going through it, because I remember days of having to stay in bed, head a-whirlin and dizzy, feeling like a wrung out dishrag. Not a thing I would wish on any loved one. I don't think I've had the flu for years, and I'm grateful, Powers be praised.

You get better, dear Capitani, and I know you will. >>>Hugs<<< and Love and Light fill your days.

[capi.livejournal.com]

There are up sides to the flu, y'know!

I have always (yeah, i'm strange) liked sneezing. *heh*

And this is the only way i can sing bass - you would not recognize me on the phone just now. *L*

Add in a little congestion, and i'm somebody entirely else!!

And of course, this is a great weight-loss program. Last time i had flu (years and years ago!) i lost ten pounds. I'm hoping!!

All the rest... well, we always go into winter with a hefty supply of tissues and cough drops, eh? *grin* We'll get thru 'er!

(((((( anti-germ HUGS )))))))

[shackrlu.livejournal.com]

Now you've done it..*sniff* hand me a kleenex will ya.. Griz is not going to take this lightly.. it's gonna break her heart.

[journiey.livejournal.com]

O_O Eyes Wide And Eagerly, But Worridly Waiting For Fullness.