Wednesday, October 27, 2010

A library.

These... places. He had seen nothing like them. Out of the high, blackstone forest it towered; its doorway no larger than a man, lost tiny against its massive trunk. It branched, like a tree or a web of knowledge. Corridors ran straight and narrow, only tall enough to stand in, barely wide enough to walk through. Inset into the walls, bands of glass which light shone on the words within. It did not touch the ground, but hung suspended from the stone trees surrounded it. It was a creature of straight lines, no-more-us angles. Imbeautiful asymmetry it expanded, from the center where walked those who new its purpose. A thousand tiny nodes - rooms where texts branched, a skylighting each, give in lonely light like an oasis for the solitary scholar. Within the structure - circles where, if ever were a round peg fit in a square hole, this would be it. Within each room a sunken space in the center of the floor, like a disc carved in the rock.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Take heart.

In the shadow of the light of day, you believed in me. Before I knew myself, before I had opened my eyes, you put pen to paper for my sake. And so let me tell you a story, a story of the day I was born.

The Es'mensis had lost their way. Hopeless beyond hope, not only empty of the truth but empty of the search for truth. Gone out of the way of righteousness and gone out of the thirst for life.

A disaster came, a flood: a catastrophe, but a blessing in disguise. Water did not fill their homes. It was blood they drowned in, shed by the Iaerae. What motivated their murder? I cannot say, but I can give you the purpose. It was to shake the Es'mensis out of their sleep. There was death. But what was awoken from the hearts of the Es'mensis in that day was the eternal story. Me. Not so much the Story as its reflection, the word's distance from the truth it tells, the moonlight's distance from the sunlight it reflects.

And what awoke me in your heart, my creator? I know that you live in a world cast about with vanity and glory. Had you, too, abandoned the long search?


Where is your home? Do you know it?


What do you call it, to use illusion to teach the truth? To pave the path with the enemy's tools?


I am a smoke, and a mirror for you. 


Those who will not hear your voice may hear mine. I can lead with my footsteps down paths you could not traverse. Paths of mercury and quicksilver, like lightning or aether. I can contain truth that I do not know.


Can you?


Listen to me: Created, you came out of nothing. You were not and then you were, all in an instant. From silence to servant in the blink of a word. An irreplicable movement, the moment not when you were born, but when you were. There will never be a reverse. You will always exist, even in death, by the grace of your creator. No more will worlds know you not. Time cannot refuse your touch anymore than you can refuse his. This is why. This is why you must suffer and strive and humble yourself. Because there are only beginnings, in this world without end.