thoth
we spend all our time running for our lives, going nowhere

Thoth made a point of drowning the ruined curtains completely and then sealing them in a block of ice, just to make certain they were well and truly destroyed. Very little of the wrong shade of purple had survived, but a glimmer of it still winked at him through the ice. Thoth aimed a kick at it but changed his mind, deciding it wasn’t worth a broken toe. He followed Tristan obediently down the familiar but different staircase (the second from bottom step used to squeak and now didn’t, and the type of polish used on the banister had changed) and into a main hall where paintings glared at them from every wall.

“I don’t like this room,” Thoth grumbled mutinously as Tris hoisted the painting of the mountains off the wall. At his friend’s suggestion, he started pointing out everything that was wrong. “New, new, new,” he muttered, pointing them out. Tris pulled a few down himself but Thoth couldn’t reach, so he knocked them off the wall with a wall-aimed jet of water. “Reframed,” he pointed at another one. “Retouched. And that one,” he glared at a charming countryside scene, “never used to have a castle in it.”

The castle was barely noticeable, nestled into the background, but Thoth missed nothing. He wrinkled his nose as Tris tugged it down, getting a waft of the new wood polish which must have been used on the frame. That polish needed to be consigned to the dustbin. It smelled of disinfectant, like a too-clean hospital, instead of the faintly citrusy scent in the polish traditionally used by the castle staff.

There were enough paintings collected, of varying sizes, that carrying them was cumbersome. Noticing where Tris was dragging the original mountain scene, Thoth held out his hand, frowning. A strip of ice slithered across the floor towards the staircase. Taking the paintings one by one, Thoth slid them over to his friend, kicking them along the ice with a little more cheer than he’d had earlier. The growing sense of relief he’d been feeling as they pulled the offending pictures down spiked further then Tris shoved the mountain scene over the rails, causing it to splinter into a thousand pieces in the entrance hall below. Thoth selected a particularly strong-smelling image of one of the guardsmen and hoisted it over the banister, watching with satisfaction as it smashed to pieces on the hard stone floor below.

The prospect of observing different canvasses sinking into the lake piqued Thoth’s scientific curiosity. He didn’t even consider the ecosystem until Tris mentioned it.

“Should get a little carriage,” he suggested. “On wheels. Fill it with stuff and then throw it all in to see what takes the longest. Morv would get them out. She thinks you’re playing fetch every time you throw something away.” A slow grin started to spread across his face. “And we could throw some off the roof to see how quickly they fall.”