[Alphiore West Side]
"So, what do you think about this place?" Eve thought.
The three wanderers find themselves at the center of Alphiore's city, watching as inventions expand unbounded by anything. Houses are everywhere, and none of them can tell what's inside by the looks of the outside.
"Terrible. But at least fate gave me a chance to live..." Cyrus commented.
"No, I think I just bring myself here willingly. Look at all these metals!" Charger excites.
The metals are spreading everywhere, walking and acting like a human. One could say this was Tin Man's home, but he still finds it short of a touch of freedom—his freedom. Mysteries are waiting from the unknown for the three to open like a present.
Alphiore is festive, but not as the one the librarian remembers in Gold Creek. It's like a new, refined town to live in. Lamps are not as simple as electrical, engines don't soar with grunts, and propellers stand on top of the buildings only to spin endlessly.
"What is that?" Eve pauses. The funny propeller is spinning on the roof.
"Someone must have an obsession with the wind so much." Cyrus commented. The two of them were staring into the house's propellers.
"You don't know what's that? That's a wind-powered propeller to charge up electricity." Charger steps in.
Their eyes are opened by the discovery before them. The librarian never thought of a machine powered by wind, and the cleric finds it gullible. A huge propeller that can create electricity by only rowing its blade like a windmill grinds grain and pumps water. But electricity? It's almost nonsense. Yet it was there standing still and mightly without a smoke. The two wanderers had never seen a miracle like this.
"What? Nonsense! Perhaps windmills, but how would the wind be turned into electricity when such force is not exist?" Eve denies it with doubt.
"Magic." Cyrus squints in disbelief.
"No, not really. Have you ever thought that moving things creates a spark? You can power up anything as long as you can make them move..."
"No? That's absurd...! I didn't know that!" Eve yelled.
"Well, now you know." Charger walked away.
The wind-powering invention sounds ridiculous and baseless. But the librarian finds it intriguing to hear, as if someone may have control over the wind. As the curious girl she has always been, she set her ears and eyes closed for the Tin Man's words. But that wisdom lasts only once.
Now the librarian wanted to know more. These gaps are a hunger for her that can only be satiated by the voice of a distant wisdom. Soon, the wanderers felt her hunger expanding through their stomachs. And as they went far in this unknown world, their needs hadn't been fulfilled yet.
"Ugh, those fishes don't do much on me! I'm not eating seafood again..." Cyrus's stomach grunts, telling him to eat something else.
"Well, why don't we eat something? Can't go with these hungry stomaches, aren't we?" Charger tucked Eve's metal boots.
"Well, who's to say we couldn't have a taste of terrible truth?" Eve irked.
So, the three wanderers head for a refreshment in their stomachs. Into the eatery, where men and women set their metal plates clean by the edge of their tables. Those who yearned for satiation could eat as freely as they wanted, but only if they were willing to claim the cost.
The eatery is a large place, and the three wanderers just had an empty seat for a chunk of grilled meat in the kitchen. They can smell the fire from the counter, with the smouldering chicken on the other side and eggs in the pan.
"Well, well, well...look what do we have here? Hope the Engine cracks open your skull with some freedom."
The cook in the kitchen glares at the librarian in disgust for her wise mind, like many who can't accept the truth and only live in the future. Yet this cook has so little to share with the librarian other than what's behind the kitchen for them.
"You mean to teach us some lesson?" Eve grabs the book menu. The metal sheets were heavy on her grip, but at least there were lots of contents inside.
"Eugh! Has your head numb as rock? Better be a smooth one, then..."
"Because that's not how you speak here. Now what can I get for you?"
The cook is a talking metal whom the librarian can't ignore because of his abhorrent look. Like many citizens, his metals made him a shining knight, but he was more of a king in this castle of his. Yet what she finds more unappealing to look at is his hat.
"Now, shall I remind you that these books served you nothing? Such design of food written there merely is on the kitchen."
"So how do we know what to eat, then?" Cyrus argues.
"With your head definitely! In this town, you must think big and imagine the world where you can make anything! Think of a beauty you wanted to see, the fragrance you wanted to smell, the sugar you wanted to taste, and the melody you wanted to hear!"
"And the puff you wanted to touch?" Charger pokes in.
"YES! Now think of an order like you are a king!"
His hat—a terrible cook hat—is the hat that stands tall as the roof, covering the view behind the kitchen for her to see. The cook stands taller than a human, with limbs like spiders, but nothing new for the librarian. But the hat? The hat stands so differently and is terrible to look at. It was a tall hat.
"I'll have...uhm...sunny-side eggs bearing the life of a sun...? One sun that grows only from the ground and is nurtured to be the essence of devotion...? Bring me life and glisten it with faith!" Cyrus guesses.
"Sounds good. But still not good..."
"I'll have one tower of waffles with sets of dark nights, where everything fall in desperation and only the blood of the innocents painted over the wall." Charger taps the table.
"Not bad, Charger...What about you, young lady?"
"I'll...uh...have spicy muttons with Black pepper." Her eyes still glanced into that hat. It's hard to focus when the huge hat covers the lightful truth.
"I'm sorry, did I misheard you? Was that a design?"
"Oh, uhm...I mean..." Eve snaps out.
"Give me a flesh of an indifferent one and buried it in a black winter—a terrible winter. Add me the dare of a red—not blood, but a coat of those who find pride hurting others in their freedom. Grant me desperation..."
"Slow but steady, huh? I guess as the designated truth, everyone needed a progress to learn."
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The cook—and his terrible hat—is in the kitchen with smokes and steam on his grill. The wanderers—without a hat—await at the table with a red-stripped cover near the wall, sniffing salt and oil in the air. His terrible hat is still seen from a distance, with a bell on top that keeps ringing as he moves.
The wanderers couldn't care less with a hungry stomach as they waited for him to serve their orders. Yet doubt still lingers for the librarian with his hat, as if she was worrying about what the cook may have set on their foods.
"Eve, are you okay? Can you stop looking at that guy's hat now?" Cyrus pulled her out.
"No, I can't. It looks horrible, I had to judge him for that." Eve keeps her glare.
"It's only a hat, friend. What else do you expect everyone here to wear?" Charger commented, holding a bunch of scraps in his arms again.
"Something thicker and safer from the cold and deadly days, not some metals out of imaginary lines of fate."
Yet the people here only make it difficult to linger in the eatery for a long. Their feeding lips are munching on the cook's outlandish fare, one that won't be found in the land of Gold Creek. It only makes them even more desperate. While their stomachs rumble, others are filled.
Desperation, the librarian's fundamental of truth. Every being in the world is desperate, but how desperate are they to be like her? The answer is scarcity—but they are not scarce. The truth was craven by desperation, not just an encounter. But here? Desperation was an alienated word because everyone is in a dream.
"Have you noticed how less terrible people are here? No such thoughts of struggle?" Eve commented, writing in her book.
"Yeah, whatever happened to freedom here? Everyone seems eating as they like!" Charger grabbed a salt bottle.
The metal-adorning humans who eat here do not look low on themselves, only adoring the contentment and enjoying what they have in the world. They eat so they can continue in their indifferent journey to the unknown fate, fearing not even a flaw and failure for as long as they can savour themselves.
"Why don't we talked something way more important about these propellers? Charger, you know more than I do! Tell me about it." Eve interrogates.
"Why should I? It's not like it was important to know..." Charger tinkers with the condiments.
"Well, it is important! Right now, I need to know more about this so-called wind magic. It can be a magic for sure!"
The librarian was desperate to know the answer, so the Tin Man was forced to compel his truth. Only by her despondence does he realize her struggle. The Tin Man couldn't pretend his indifference, and the wise librarian's curiosity soon became starvation. But it was still silent among the metal-bearers.
"Are you really this desperate, friend?" Charger blinks in confusion.
"Yes, I am. Because that's what being a truth-seeker is. Always desperate..."
"Really? I thought it's just not being a believer." Cyrus intervenes.
The wanderers are at a curiosity again. This time, they feel the need so big that they cannot imagine more than the need. The hunger, the gap of the contentment, and the hopelessness within a dead end. The three wanderers discover desperation in a world of bliss. No one but them is desperate because they have nothing to be happy about here.
"Augh, I cannot live without the truth, Cyrus. Don't you know how difficult it was to wander outside of Frayfoil where everyone is coated with lies?" Eve lay on the chair, displeased.
"You mean faith?" Cyrus stares sharply—unhappy.
"No, I mean lies—Lies of comforts and shortness of motivation to set things moved."
Desperation is a feeling that empowers the truth. The librarian believed that in a world of physical, a desire—not just a happy desire, but a terrible desire—drives people to become honest and true. The librarian sat on the chair, thinking of all the times she wasn't desperate, and it hurt her with silence and growing lies.
"I know desperation...I am as desperate as you once, friend. I often struggle to live alone and wait for time to take me as it does with home..."
"I was a thief—still a thief, now. I made life by taking what's mine whenever I could to survive against the terrible fate. I made house, foods, and clothes myself in metals—except for food, I feed myself organic, of course..."
"I encounter so many things beyond your knowledge, Eve. I knew more than you in my quest filled with hopelessness in my path. But the truth belongs to nobody if they cannot be as desperate as I am."
"But I am desperate because I know that the truth is, I am not held by fate to make something big, nor was I noticed. Thus, this little thief must make himself desperate to live by going shadow to shadow everyday to paint himself huge."
"Are you huge now? You're a Tin Man before us..." Cyrus peeked on him.
"No. Never will be..."
"But you, friend? You are not desperate. Your house is not made with desperation, but realization. You did not look upon struggle of a man, only the findings of a carver."
"How can you say yourself desperate? Your house is a wood and concrete, not made of tins and rust. Your coat is made of cloth, not metals and rust."
The Tin Man's words are indifferent but logically irrefutable. The librarian sat in disbelief but was awestruck by another of his wisdom. For each second that he wasn't desperate, a truth was out of his mouth. The Tin Man is a petty thief of truth, stealing only one that he finds valuable and sharing it with others who are desperate.
"How could you? I am desperate! Hunger and tired, my body is on the verge of dying and I only have you two as my sole friends. Truth is promised before me, and I must claim it so that I am not left within!"
"For I am not a dweller in the wooden house of a hill, but a convict of a world of indifference and forever to never return. The Tophats—the red, gold-driven bastard of the sea—ruled upon me and robbed me of my life."
"I lost my school, my house, and my family from the day I found a gap in the wall and escape from the grip of these crooks a year ago. I am free, but not truly free alone..."
"I've lost my mother, my father is nowhere, and I have only a library to sustain the remains of my life financially. If I am not desperate, I wouldn't find you on the coast and guided you back into my town just to be judged about no struggle."
"My coat? My coat is the cover of a bigger book—me. I am the book that tries not to be burn so I can remain true. Even if it was adorned without a struggle, who's to say that the one weaving it do not?"
"I am all alone, but I knew my vision didn't lie to me. I would've killed myself for the sake of the death I watched alongside, but I couldn't die until I knew why was I chosen here?"
"The world above will answer me, and I will do anything to gave them a snap of terrible realization of my wiseness. I am irrefutable, and I cannot be denied."
"I am desperate, and I am going to make them, too."
"Is that so? Then, perhaps you are desperate." Charger grabs a piece of paper and adds flour to it. He smoked one out.
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The librarian was desperate, and in her desperation, so came a fruition. But before she could hear the Tin Man's words, the cook arrived with their orders in his arms. Plates of an unknown delicacy await on the table as they are drawn in their imagination.
"Here, you go! One hopeful life for the faithful one in a rebirth of a new faith..." The cook handed the cleric's order. A sunny-side egg with oil leaking on top of it, with a smell so endearing and appetizing—One bite can make him hopeful in this journey again. As his fork pokes through the yolk, all the bland white but savoury parts of the egg are now covered in the yolk, making them enjoyable to eat.
"That's me!" Cyrus grabs the plate and fork.
"One tower of storm and ruin awaits in the sweet taste of innocent blood for the indifferent one..." The cook handed the Tin Man's order—one towering pile of waffles with strawberry jam and sugar dust on a tower. While the tower looked ready to fall anytime, the Tin Man knew that he could eat it again for as long as the sugar dust spread across each waffle. But the strawberry jam is waiting below, eaten on the last waffle. He will clean this tower down and leave with only one waffle standing.
"Aww, yeah!" Charger grabs his fork.
"One sacrificial flesh for the desperate one whose wisdom awaits only through the black winter and scorch." The cook handed the librarian's order—one cooked mutton with black pepper on top and chilli sauce on the smaller plate. The librarian wanted only the taste of trial and frantic pain so that she could be reminded of the truth. In fact, she finds this treat more enjoyable than savouring in mild.
"I'm ready. I am desperate...for spiciness..." Eve grabs her fork.