Quoted By:
>[Gil didn't like that...]
Away from you! The nerve! You try to call him back, but find yourself unfairly tongue-tied. Maybe he'll stop halfway down and reconsider? Or come back? If you wait here? Oh. Or he could— or he could, um, use his stupid god blessing to turn into beetles, then fly away from you. Right across to the other hill. He could do that too.
...
But what are <span class="mu-i">you</span> supposed to do now? Leave? He wins if you do that. Sit here? He double-wins if you do that. Follow him? You can't fly. You could run, you suppose, down one hill and then up the other one, but even then you couldn't possibly catch up. You could walk.
Yes, you could walk! Which would thwart Gil's evil scheme to make you leave, show subtle defiance by making him wait for you to show up, and additionally preserve your dignity. It's a win-win-win, the best kind of win. You hike up your slacks and begin immediately.
Things you learn immediately: Gil's hill is unconscionably steep, and its grass is thick and slippery, and the dirt path laid into it takes maybe the least direct route geometrically possible. But it does improve on the 'steep' and 'slippery' aspects. This all means you have some time to think, or rather not to think, as would be your preference. Isn't the sky such a charming periwinkle? Isn't the grass so real-smelling? Isn't this path just <span class="mu-i">laden</span> with little kickable pebbles?
Wasn't Gil's expression terrible? It really was like he'd fallen off a ladder. Or not like that. Like you'd kicked the ladder out from under him. Like he'd climbed all the way to the top of this skinny rickety too-tall ladder and started bragging about how high up he was, and you knew he was going to break a rib, falling off it, that there was no future in which this ladder didn't collapse under him, so you chose to kick it yourself. Hard. To sort of prove a point. And then it collapsed, and he fell, and he broke a rib, like you predicted. It was more similar to that.
If you think about it that way, you start to feel funny, because it makes it sound like the obvious move was to help Gil <span class="mu-i">off</span> the stupid ladder. (Even if it wasn't your fault he got up there in the first place.) You could've heroically saved him from the stupid evil rib-eating ladder, and he could've been all happy and grateful, and he could've hugged you, metaphorically. Or literally. Either way. Instead he's un-happy and un-grateful and ignoring his retainerly obligations, and it's... your fault?
>[-1 ID: 9/14]
(1/4?)
