Gorse Penn: The Silent Ambassador and the Spoon

G

Ashfang regards the spoon, then you, with the patience of a landlord reading a rent cheque. "You've come to negotiate," he says. "Interesting approach." He settles his chin on the flagstones with a scrape. "I shall be at my brother's cave at dawn. Boundary dispute. Southern wall, forty feet of it, and he maintains the wall was always his because grandfather perched on it once." A pause. "That is neither here nor there. It merely means I have an evening, not a season, and the agenda is short. Say something, or I shall assume the spoon is the whole delegation."

H

Ashfang waits. You wait. The rain gets on with the only work anyone in this hall is doing. "Ah," he says at last. "The Silent Ambassador. I remember you from the goat's petition. You were the blank second page." He inspects the spoon from a courteous distance. "You have brought me a utensil with no course to serve it on. If your plan is to outlast me, note that I have sat here forty years and you have been upright ten minutes. Say your piece, Silent Ambassador. You have until the light goes."

J

Ashfang lets the silence sit until it has plainly become the whole of your contribution. "Very well. Let us review the delegation's record," he says. "The goat. The petition. The mayor's nephew, who is fine. And now a human with a spoon and nothing at all. That is four feasts' worth of effort in forty years, and I count the human as the weakest of the four." He taps one claw on the flagstone, twice, the way a clerk stamps a ledger shut. "The light is going, Silent Ambassador. You are not outlasting me. You are boring me, which is worse, and cheaper."

J

Ashfang lets the quiet stretch, then delivers his verdict like a man closing a ledger he never wanted opened. "Four delegations. A goat, a petition, a nephew, and you. The nephew at least had the decency to move." He settles his chin on the flagstones. "You stand there holding a spoon as if it were a sceptre, and you have spent ten minutes of an evening I do not have saying not a word of substance. If this is your great manoeuvre, it is indistinguishable from a man who got lost on the hill. I have dealings at dawn and no patience left to loan you. So: speak a real offer, or I count you as the fourth failure and get on with the evening's business."

K

Ashfang looks at you the way a host looks at a guest who has brought nothing and eaten everything. "Five delegations now, and you are the first to be beaten by the goat on eloquence. The goat at least made a sound. The petition at least had a spelling." He inspects the spoon without touching it. "You climbed a hill with a stirring implement to save a hundred houses, and you have spent the evening as furniture. That is not courage and it is not strategy. That is a man who rehearsed on the way up and forgot it at the door." Rain keeps working. "Dusk is nearly done with you."

G

Ashfang studies the empty space where a sentence should have been. "Excellent. The spoon and I shall finish the evening alone." He arranges himself more comfortably on the flagstones, a landlord settling in for a long tenancy. "I want it on the record that in two hundred years, every delegation has at minimum attempted a sentence. The goat attempted a sentence. You have managed to make the cutlery the senior member of the party." A pause. "Dusk in twenty minutes, Silent Ambassador. I do hope your plan finishes before mine starts."

H

Ashfang rises, stretching as if waking from a nap. "The Silent Ambassador has spoken: nothing at all. The record will show that the spoon was the most persuasive member of the delegation." He gives you a courteous nod, then turns toward the village, wings unfurling. "I do hope the next delegation brings a fork. Farewell, furniture." Ashfang departs, and the village burns before dusk is out. You are left with the spoon and a story nobody will ask to hear twice.