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“Busy day today?”
Paracelsus follows Alidoro’s line of sight to the umbrella hooked on the edge of the table next to him. He doesn’t see the connection, and he frowns. “Hm?”
“You live in one of the apartments here, don’t you?” Alidoro asks. “At Lorenzini Arcade.”
“A-a-above the bookstore just across the street, yes.” It’s still not connecting.
Paracelsus always thought that Alidoro seemed patient and steady, from what little he knew of him. Kind, even, it’s possible. Rare traits for a fellow Alchemist. And Alidoro is patient and even kind now. “All of the shops and apartments here are indoors,” he says. “You brought an umbrella. Are you going somewhere else after this?”
“Oh!” Paracelsus laughs. “No, no, I-I-I just.” He has to give it a little thought, but he thinks he can share this with Alidoro. He might understand. He doesn’t fit the Alchemists’ image of having a perfect body either. “It’s a cane.” He looks down at the table, then looks up at Alidoro with a tight smile. “Appearances. In a city like this, i-it can cost something to look weak. Me? I-I’m just. Prepared in case it rains.”
“Oh,” Alidoro says.
Paracelsus looks back down at the table and laughs ruefully. “Shocking revelation, me being weak, I know… there’s n-not a lot I can do about the rest of me. But, um…”
“No, no, it’s smart to think that way.” Alidoro sounds so genuinely empathetic that Paracelsus looks up again, almost sharply.
“I apologize,” Alidoro continues. “I was only trying to make conversation. I didn’t mean to call attention to that.”
“Got all my fingers,” Paracelsus jabs back, only to regret it immediately. He isn’t used to kindness, especially from Alchemists. Most conversations he has about personal weakness end up being exchanges of cruelties. “…I-I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”
Alidoro has a tight smile of his own. “I’m happy to look like somebody who takes risks and makes sacrifices to help other people. If I’m understanding the rumors correctly, your illness is connected to why you haven’t seemed to age since you landed in Krat with Valentinus. I hope you find happiness through your own priorities as well.”
“Fair!” Paracelsus says. “Fair, fair, fair.”
A puppet waitress brings them coffee and tiramisu. Paracelsus watches Alidoro look up at her as if she were a person. Alidoro doesn’t go so far as to thank her, but he nods to her.
Alidoro notices Paracelsus noticing him and says, “I don’t want to get out of the habit. The world is bigger than Krat.”
Paracelsus nods emphatically. “The world is bigger than Krat! N-not a lot of people think that way. It’s refreshing.”
“I try to be careful because some puppets are awakened, too,” Alidoro says as he adds sugar to his coffee.
Paracelsus laughs. “A-a puppet at a bakery? Wouldn’t she kill us?”
Alidoro still looks serious as he stirs the sugar into his coffee. “I think that violent awakened puppets react with anger because they were treated like they’re not human. There are other reactions to feeling unwelcome and unsafe. Like hiding. Like with your umbrella. I’d guess that the majority of awakened puppets live and die in misery and obscurity.”
Paracelsus was going to get around to adding cream and sugar to his coffee later. Melampo’s bakery has the best tiramisu in the city! With that in front of him, the coffee can wait. He does pause for Alidoro’s comment, though, with his fork halfway to his mouth.
How is this person an Alchemist? Paracelsus has always thought of himself as a misfit in the Order for being too empathetic and sensitive. Now, he’s gotten to meet a real empathetic and sensitive Alchemist. And he feels like an asshole.
Paracelsus doesn’t know what to say, so he makes a bad joke. “Ha ha. Are you a puppet?”
Alidoro looks disappointed that Paracelsus won’t meet him where he’s trying to take them with the conversation. He just forces a smile and shakes his head.
“Good!” Paracelsus says. “I really wanted to show you the tiramisu they have here! I-it’s the best in the city.”
“It sounds really good,” Alidoro says distractedly, taking a drink of coffee.
“I’m beginning to think you had more on your mind than delicious food when y-you said you wanted to meet with me,” Paracelsus says, feigning disappointment.
Alidoro sighs. He’s been quietly tense since he got here, and now he looks haunted. “Yes. Yes, you could say that. I’ve heard that you’ve… well, that sometimes you’ve… ‘tampered’ with other Alchemists’ experiments.” He looks around the bakery. They sat near the back, and there aren’t a lot of other people here. “To do a… a kindness… to people… people who are involved.”
Paracelsus looks around the bakery too. “I’ve heard that you’re from the Country of the Morning,” he says carefully. Continuing in that language, “I’ve traveled there. I speak the language only a little now, but I remember some! And I understand more than I can say.”
Alidoro looks surprised. Then he nods slowly. In his native language, “The coin that you wear around your neck. It’s from your travels.”
Paracelsus nods. “Yes, that’s right.”
With a chance to speak freely, Alidoro doesn’t hold back. “Mercy killing experiment victims,” he says. “You keep getting in trouble for it. But I admire it. There’s something dreadful on my mind, and… I feel out of my depth. I’m looking for someone to talk to about it.”
Paracelsus frowns. “I-I’m not a good person.”
Alidoro looks deeply troubled. “I don’t know who to turn to. I’m not trying to get you involved with something you aren’t comfortable with. I just wanted to. …You won’t tell the leader of the Alchemists that we met, will you?” He's trying to be discrete, and he won't mention Valentinus Monad by name.
“Why would I tell him?”
“You’re close. Well, I don’t know if close is the right word. You…”
Paracelsus has been attacking the tiramisu as they’ve been talking, and he swallows the last of it. Switching back to the ‘Krattalian’ dialect of Italian that they speak in Krat, dryly, “I’m a brown-noser.”
Alidoro laughs. “I wasn’t going to say it like that, but yes.”
Paracelsus shrugs. “I mercy killed those experiment victims because I felt bad,” he says, going back to Alidoro’s native language. “The Alchemist leader would…”
He’s really quite pettily hurt that Alidoro doesn’t care about the tiramisu, so he continues that thought by reaching over to slice off a corner of Alidoro’s serving for himself. Chop!
“…Goodbye Alidoro. So, no. I would feel bad.” He eats his stolen prize. “But don’t tell me anything that is bad for you. If I don’t know, I can’t hurt you.”
It’s not what Alidoro wanted to hear. “You’re saying you won’t make trouble for me just for meeting with you. But you’re also saying I should go right back out the door.”
“Well, n-not without trying the tiramisu,” Paracelsus says. Back to Krattalian.
“Are there no people of character in Krat?” Alidoro asks bitterly.
“I’m not familiar with that phrase,” Paracelsus says, not parsing ‘people of character’ in a second language.
“No. No, it sounds like you are not,” Alidoro snorts.
The sudden sound of a man slapping the window of the bakery from outside startles both of them, Paracelsus more than Alidoro. Paracelsus scrambles to his feet, grabs his umbrella, and scurries back a few steps.
Victor the wrestler is pressing his face and hands to the window and grinning. When Paracelsus makes eye contact with him, he waves enthusiastically.
Paracelsus sighs and relaxes, but not fully. Victor hurries into the bakery and comes right to their table. He reaches out and gives Paracelsus a handshake that shakes the rest of him, too. “Little Alchemist! It’s good to see you!”
“Victor!” Paracelsus says weakly, putting his hand on a nearby table to steady himself. It is raining outside, as it often does in Krat, and Victor’s hand was wet. It’s not a good handshake feel. “I-i-it’s good to see you too…!”
“Melampo’s bakery,” Victor says approvingly, looking around the room. “They have the best tiramisu in the city.”
Paracelsus can’t stop himself from making brief eye contact with Alidoro. “Oh, they sure do!”
“I can’t stay and talk, but I wanted to give you this. Look! Cake!” He gives Paracelsus a lumpy loaf wrapped in thin paper.
Paracelsus holds it up and admires it openly. He sniffs it and says it smells delicious. Victor is delighted. “I made it without puppets!”
“That’s incredible, Victor. I do hope you m-made some for yourself as well?”
“Maybe the next one,” Victor says. “This first one, I had to give to you!”
“W-wow, that’s, t-that’s so generous! R-really? For me? Thank you!”
One of the other people in the bakery is thrilled to see Victor and wants to talk to him. “I have to go!” Victor says. “Goodbye, Little Alchemist!” He nods to Paracelsus and then Alidoro. “You Alchemists do good work! Make a better world for us all!”
Paracelsus and Alidoro watch as Victor has a short, enthusiastic conversation with his fan, then rushes back out the door.
“You know Victor?” Alidoro says, looking at the lumpy cake.
Paracelsus laughs nervously as he hooks his umbrella back onto the table and sits back down. “I-I-I was trying to run errands in the city on a day I felt really very ill. Victor helped me get home. I-I don’t have puppets because. Y-you know, I-I-I just worry I’d get the one puppet out of a thousand who comes alive a-and, and kills me. Victor had never made food before, a-and he wanted to help me out, so I walked him through something simple. I-I-I didn’t realize he’d, that i-it would leave an impression like that.”
Alidoro nods thoughtfully.
“I-it’s like you said,” Paracelsus says. “People don’t always, d-don’t always think of the world like it’s bigger than Krat. I’m happy for him.” He frowns. “I-I don’t suppose you want a cake…?”
Alidoro stares. “He made that for you.”
Paracelsus looks all around the room. “Y-yeah, but… y-yeah I don’t trust this at all. I-I-I’m not going to eat it.”
Alidoro is frowning pretty deeply, but then he just sighs. “I suppose if your health is a little delicate, you’d have to be careful about what you eat.”
Paracelsus laughs awkwardly. “O-oh! Right! That too.”
Alidoro looks really put out by what he’s hearing.
Paracelsus didn’t really want to defend himself, but he hates the silence, and a defense comes out anyway. “He doesn’t respect me. Not really. H-he’s obsessed with himself and with strength. He helped me because it validates him to feel like a hero for being strong. He calls me ‘L-little Alchemist,’ a-and I don’t know if he even knows my name. He doesn’t know or care about my work or anything I’m good at, he just w-wants a little shadow to have around who’s friendly to him. He makes rude comments about how I look and l-laughs it off like, l-like it’s a joke. He thinks I’m weak and girly. That’s hilarious to him. H-he goes to Alchemists he actually respects to buy elixirs to make himself stronger, a-and he completely buys into their human evolution line because he looks like what they value. I-I’ve been warned too many times for…”
He switches to Alidoro’s native language, proceeds as well as he can with less of a vocabulary available to him. “…Mercy killing and making other Alchemists’ experiments not run good. So I can’t tell Victor that A-alchemists plan to kill him to make him alive again so he will feel that there is a debt and be a soldier for Alchemists.”
He shrugs. Back to Krattalian. “You can tell him if you want. Y-you didn’t hear it from me, though.”
“…He took care of you when you were sick,” Alidoro says. “He made cake for you.”
Paracelsus shrugs. “If you don’t want the cake, I’m going to throw it out. And if you don’t want the tiramisu, I’m going to eat it.”
Alidoro gets up and puts on his coat. His own umbrella is leaning against the wall behind him, and he picks it up. He looks down and doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then he says, “I just wanted one person of character. One person of character in a city of thousands.”
Paracelsus shrugs as he takes Alidoro’s plate and gets right to work separating out a piece of tiramisu with his fork. “Sensitivity isn’t moral fiber, I guess. I suppose I’m righteous enough to get the check.”
Alidoro looks at him for a moment with an expression that contains too many things to be readable. Then he picks up Victor’s lumpy cake. In his native language, “I’m going to find someone I can actually talk to about what’s weighing on me. And I’m going to save Victor.”
Paracelsus laughs unkindly. “He’ll be thrilled to have another defective prop to compare his greatness to, Nines.” Using the cruel nickname he’s heard other Alchemists call Alidoro.
Alidoro considers him coldly. “People call you Phillipa, no?”
Paracelsus laughs again, that same harsh laugh, and with more energy. Phillipa like Philippus, his first name. “They do indeed.”
He takes another bite of the tiramisu that Alidoro didn’t want. With his mouth full, “Someone came up with Parasol Suspicious last time we had that big meeting at Arche Abbey, isn’t that incredible?”
Alidoro is not amused. “You’re not thriving either, living like that. The day you’re lost and scared and alone, I hope you find real help more quickly than me.”
Paracelsus stops laughing, raises his eyebrows. “When I'm lost and scared and alone, I won’t. And I know I won’t. That’s why I have to laugh. …Well, good luck with things. If I don’t see you again after this, it’s been good to know you.”
Alidoro frowns, seems to wilt a little. “I suppose you might not see me again after this. It’s been… good to know you too, I suppose. I am grateful to feel I can trust you enough to tell you this much.”
“You should come back to Melampo’s Bakery sometime to try the tiramisu,” Paracelsus says. “Especially if you think you might take a risk that’ll give that mortal coil a good shake. It really is incredible.”
Alidoro pauses. “Well… I suppose I could try a little.”
First, Paracelsus looks mildly alarmed, then he just looks guilty. He takes another bite from the plate that was Alidoro’s. “…Nnno… ha ha. No.”
----
Geppetto’s Puppet looks blank. Paracelsus has come to suspect that he may be feeling the most deeply when he looks the most blank.
“A wrestling champion came back to life because of Alchemists,” the puppet says. “I fought him. Then Alchemists killed him.”
“…I see,” Paracelsus says. “S-something’s on your mind about that?”
The puppet thinks. Then he says, “He wasn’t very nice and believed in what the Alchemists believed. But they also didn’t care about him and only brought him back to life to use him.”
The puppet furrows his brow slightly. Paracelsus has seen him emote with his face more than this, even. It seems that he can, he just doesn’t always go to the effort. Maybe his facial expressions aren't nearly automatic, like how it is for typical humans. Maybe he has to be a lot more deliberate.
“So… I don’t get it,” the puppet says. “Was it right to fight him, or should I have helped him.”
“Ah,” Paracelsus says. “That situation s-sounds very complicated.”
The puppet stares. “So what’s the answer?”
“It… i-i-it doesn’t sound like there was much of, m-much of an opportunity to help him,” Paracelsus says carefully. “People, people make their own choices. E-e-even when that’s a choice that hurts them. Even when they could have made a better choice if they’d thought it through. Y-you don’t have to. I-it’s not your responsibility to, to make sure people don’t suffer from their o-own choices. I-if he’s working for Alchemists, a-and he’s ready to fight you for opposing them, y-you owe it to, to your own goals to fight back.”
The puppet nods slowly. “Okay. But that’s not satisfying. I should stop the Alchemists and help people who get tricked by them too.”
Paracelsus laughs. “Then you just might be a person of character.”
“What’s that?”
“W-well, someone who doesn’t just accept everything that’s unsatisfying. Someone who believes things can be different and better, e-even if they can’t always figure out how to make it so. Someone who pays attention when something feels wrong and uses, u-uses that as a guide for what to do.”
“Oh.” The puppet thinks. “Are you a person of character?”
Paracelsus laughs again, with more energy. “I’m a person who’s alive,” he says. “Y-you have to be a person who’s alive before you can be a person who’s anything else.”
“Oh.” The puppet tilts his head slightly. “What else is there to listen to as a guide for what to do? Besides what feels right inside?”
Paracelsus shrugs. “What feels good or fun. W-what makes other people like you more. What gets you more money. What’s familiar.” He shrugs again. “W-what you feel like.”
The puppet looks a little horrified. “People really care about that stuff more instead?”
Paracelsus laughs again. “Victor did.”
“I didn’t say his name was Victor.”
Paracelsus frowns sharply, then sighs. “Knowing about someone doesn’t make them your problem.
“You’re my problem.” The puppet hasn’t maybe encountered that phrase, being someone’s problem, as a negative before. “I help you get gold coin fruit and sneak you food.”
“T-the gold coin fruit is. T-that’s a business transaction!”
“I don’t need cubes or whatever. I buy them so you get what you need. That’s pride, right? When you can’t ask for help?”
Paracelsus sighs a mighty extended sigh. “Well, I know foolishness is buying things you don’t need.”
The puppet only stares determinedly. “There's a disaster in the city. You’re lost and scared and alone, so you need help, so I’m helping you.”
“Why?” It comes out before Paracelsus really thinks about it. In a smaller, more fragile voice, too.
“It’s like you said. I want to be a. A person of character.”
Paracelsus sighs and bows his head. “Well, then. I suppose that would make you pretty special.”
“Why?”
Paracelsus shakes his head as grief fills him, even as he didn’t want to feel it. “I-it’s just that it’s. I-it’s hard to find. Hard to find one person of character in a city of thousands.”