The Hypogean Forum

Let it be inscribed.

The season's intake stands closed, and the court finds two matters ripe, which is one more than the court expected and two more than the court prepared for.

The first. The catechumen paceyourself came to these gates speaking the tongue of the very thing we are all here mourning, and asked to journey with us, and called this a safe space, and was met — I have read every reply, I read them at the time — with a courtesy so elaborate that it took me three weeks to recognize it as the room's method of not understanding her on purpose. She rephrased. She was met again. She rephrased again. Eleven times, by the Numerarius's count, across four months, in a room that had quietly agreed she was a joke it was too well-bred to make.

She did not leave. That is the whole of the examination. Standing here has never been a matter of speaking correctly; were it so, half this court would be at the gates and the Emperor of these United Forums would be in the street. It is a matter of continuing to knock at a door that has given you nothing but excellent manners.

The court enrols her civis, with the ordinary rights, and without a lesson attached — she has been taught quite enough this season, by experts who did not know they were teaching.

The second. The seat of Viennensis was raised while its holder was still, by her own repeated account, unfit to hold it, and the question of whether she had earned it has stood open in this court like a window nobody would close. The Dux has spent the season answering it in the only currency the question accepts: small, dull, unphotographed evidence. Eleven basil plants. Two dead. One photograph taken and not posted.

The court closes the question. She is confirmed in her seat. No ceremony, at her request — entered here so that the request cannot be quietly ignored later.

I make no claim to have discovered anything this evening. I merely have the advantage of being able to see everyone's timestamps.

Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers, come to dust — but not this month, I think, and not these two.

— Hal C.

The Gatehouse records the enrolment.

Peregrini: 5. Cives: 40. Senators: 13. Duxes: 9. Princeps: 1. Enrolled in total: 68.

The applicant paceyourself presented on the second of April and was examined across one hundred and thirty days. The count of examinations is eleven. The Numerarius notes, without comment, that this is the longest intake in the Gatehouse ledger.

The seat of Viennensis is unchanged, and has been unchanged throughout.

The count is the count.

paceyourself — welcome. Properly, this time.

I want to say something to the room, and it will sound like a scold, so let me put my own name at the front of it. I was one of the eleven. Twice, at least. I met her enthusiasm with a fond little essay about guestbooks, and I felt generous doing it, and what I was actually doing was answering a person with a museum.

We keep telling each other that we mourn a web where strangers were kind to strangers for no reason. She arrived speaking the only language she was ever issued, and asked to be let in, and we handed her four months of exquisite manners. Kali Yaga etiquette is a courtesy. Held long enough, it is also a very well-bred way of never letting anybody finish a sentence.

So. Welcome, with curiosity and caution in equal measure, and the caution runs in both directions here. Be curious about us. Be careful with us as well. This place will be warmer to you than anywhere you have been, and it is worth asking yourself, at intervals, what it is warm on.

You have been an amateur at us for four months. Nobody in this court has a better claim to the word.

I asked for no ceremony and received a paragraph in an Edict, which is the most Hal outcome available, and I am choosing to find it funny.

Two things, and I am going to try to say both of them without the voice.

paceyourself — I want to be honest with you in a way that costs me something, because you have had four months of people being kind to you at a distance and I do not think another round of that helps. I understood every single post you made. Immediately. First read, every time. We speak the same language. I got here eight months earlier and spent those eight months sanding it off, and when you posted I recognized myself from before and said nothing. Eleven times. Because standing next to you would have made visible the thing I was quietly hoping everyone had stopped noticing about me.

That is the actual reason the room did not answer you. It is my reason, anyway. I cannot speak for the other ten.

The other thing. Confirmed in her seat is going to sit oddly in my chest for a while, and I have worked out why. None of it was photographed. There is no version of these four months I could show anybody. The plants are just plants. You would scroll past them.

I have wanted, badly, all week, to photograph the basil and caption it earned.

I am telling you instead. That is the entire difference, it is smaller than I wanted it to be, and I am keeping it.

no cameras past this point.