Written By Elisha
Nov. 30, 2019, 10:40 p.m.(4/17/1012 AR)
Relationship Note on Vayne
This is a story from a long time hence (and my plea to the Blessed Vayne):
When the Mother of Furrows throws open Her earthen arms, the dead march across Arvum in raucous celebration. Spines rattle and bone timbrels shake with merriment.
However, the First Mirrormask and his sister the Voice of Death take fright, believing in nothing so much as Arvum's fragility. For eleven days and thirteen nights, the siblings bargain with the spirit of Arx Mountain. They offer pledges of cinnabar, horseradish, and fealty until the spirit submits, allowing them to hew a city from the great mountain's corpse.
The siblings weave stories of timidity and obedience into the city's foundations, shaping a grand necropolis to entrap the joyous dead.
Death is not pleased; She curses the First Mirrormask with longevity.
He lives for centuries, watching his children die, then his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, until his heart is too empty even for darkness. And so he turns to a queen of the Abyssal Court, and offers his allegiance in exchange for the queen's pledge to cast his soul back onto the wheel.
During the time of the First Mirrormask's demonic service, he wages war, punishes dissent, and preaches the primacy of obedience. Monsters kneel to him; even the Shards of the Abyss bow down.
Witnessing these horrors, the First Mirrormask's subjects betray him. In secret his freeborn son (known as the Gray Son, because he refuses both black and white) prepares to slay his own father. Not with a trap, not in a battle or as a punishment: those are what led his father astray, and the Gray Son knows that a sword cannot heal a stab wound, not matter how cunningly-wrought.
When the Gray Son walks into his father's twisted Hall, he wields no weapon save love. The very same weapon that drove his father and the Voice to pay such a terrible price for this city, for these catacombs, for this shattered peace.
Love breaks against love in that echoing Hall until the Gray Son returns his father's soul to rest.
The Gray Son's advisors beg him to seal the gates to the Hall, to lock the demon-tainted souls inside, but he refuses. The Gray Son knows that when his father locked his own fears into the catacombs, he became their slave.
Some say Gloria punished the Gray Son, for the sin of kinslaying, with longevity. Some say that he lives still, unaware of the deaths of his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Some say that one day he will wake upon his father's throne.
* * *
The Chosen Few gather,
wreathed in glory and skill,
and benediction,
to achieve the impossible.
All they ask
of the Great Many
is our silence.
When the Mother of Furrows throws open Her earthen arms, the dead march across Arvum in raucous celebration. Spines rattle and bone timbrels shake with merriment.
However, the First Mirrormask and his sister the Voice of Death take fright, believing in nothing so much as Arvum's fragility. For eleven days and thirteen nights, the siblings bargain with the spirit of Arx Mountain. They offer pledges of cinnabar, horseradish, and fealty until the spirit submits, allowing them to hew a city from the great mountain's corpse.
The siblings weave stories of timidity and obedience into the city's foundations, shaping a grand necropolis to entrap the joyous dead.
Death is not pleased; She curses the First Mirrormask with longevity.
He lives for centuries, watching his children die, then his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, until his heart is too empty even for darkness. And so he turns to a queen of the Abyssal Court, and offers his allegiance in exchange for the queen's pledge to cast his soul back onto the wheel.
During the time of the First Mirrormask's demonic service, he wages war, punishes dissent, and preaches the primacy of obedience. Monsters kneel to him; even the Shards of the Abyss bow down.
Witnessing these horrors, the First Mirrormask's subjects betray him. In secret his freeborn son (known as the Gray Son, because he refuses both black and white) prepares to slay his own father. Not with a trap, not in a battle or as a punishment: those are what led his father astray, and the Gray Son knows that a sword cannot heal a stab wound, not matter how cunningly-wrought.
When the Gray Son walks into his father's twisted Hall, he wields no weapon save love. The very same weapon that drove his father and the Voice to pay such a terrible price for this city, for these catacombs, for this shattered peace.
Love breaks against love in that echoing Hall until the Gray Son returns his father's soul to rest.
The Gray Son's advisors beg him to seal the gates to the Hall, to lock the demon-tainted souls inside, but he refuses. The Gray Son knows that when his father locked his own fears into the catacombs, he became their slave.
Some say Gloria punished the Gray Son, for the sin of kinslaying, with longevity. Some say that he lives still, unaware of the deaths of his children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Some say that one day he will wake upon his father's throne.
* * *
The Chosen Few gather,
wreathed in glory and skill,
and benediction,
to achieve the impossible.
All they ask
of the Great Many
is our silence.
Written By Elisha
Nov. 16, 2019, 9:41 p.m.(3/17/1012 AR)
Relationship Note on Orazio
I am a charlatan;
I know nothing and I am worth less.
I hereby disclaim poetry.
I deny fables, histories, and lullabies.
I beg forgiveness of all the gods save Tehom.
I beg forgiveness, too, of my beloved friends,
this soaring, heartbroken family
bound by tears and dreams,
and I am eager to learn
which subjects exist
at such a distance from the divine
that I may yet write upon them.
I know nothing and I am worth less.
I hereby disclaim poetry.
I deny fables, histories, and lullabies.
I beg forgiveness of all the gods save Tehom.
I beg forgiveness, too, of my beloved friends,
this soaring, heartbroken family
bound by tears and dreams,
and I am eager to learn
which subjects exist
at such a distance from the divine
that I may yet write upon them.
Written By Elisha
Nov. 11, 2019, 10:33 a.m.(3/6/1012 AR)
No castle is more secure in its rectitude than that of the blessed knight, chosen by the gods as an infant, who is everywhere praised for his prowess and authority. He knows with certitude that he is beloved of Death herself and so orders constructed, beneath his castle, an identical copy underground, that he might delight Her with his presence.
After breathing their last, the corpses of the knight's squires, and of his farriers and kitchen maids and thralls, exsanguinated and tanned, are carried down the final stairway to continue their former activities. Most of these good and obedient corpses are seated at pews or kneeling at altars, though some are tucked into chairs at laden tables or placed at game tables playing Sanctimony, or arranged in appropriate positions at the washing tub or chamber pot, or howling at the lashes cutting across their leathery backs.
However, the dead make innovations; not many, but often enough that soon the two castles diverge.
The blessed, chosen knight will not accept this willfulness and disruption; he orders his thralls to reconfigure his castle to match the one below, and so the corridors of the living begin to reflect those of the dead. He knows with certitude that his authority depends upon his castle being the original, and thus refuses to understand that it was the dead who built his home in the image of theirs; he is their creation, not their creator.
* * *
In her steaming malachite bath, Queen Alaric rejoices in the news that the Shrines once called Lost have been located with exactitude, and pinned to the map like butterflies in a collector's case.
After breathing their last, the corpses of the knight's squires, and of his farriers and kitchen maids and thralls, exsanguinated and tanned, are carried down the final stairway to continue their former activities. Most of these good and obedient corpses are seated at pews or kneeling at altars, though some are tucked into chairs at laden tables or placed at game tables playing Sanctimony, or arranged in appropriate positions at the washing tub or chamber pot, or howling at the lashes cutting across their leathery backs.
However, the dead make innovations; not many, but often enough that soon the two castles diverge.
The blessed, chosen knight will not accept this willfulness and disruption; he orders his thralls to reconfigure his castle to match the one below, and so the corridors of the living begin to reflect those of the dead. He knows with certitude that his authority depends upon his castle being the original, and thus refuses to understand that it was the dead who built his home in the image of theirs; he is their creation, not their creator.
* * *
In her steaming malachite bath, Queen Alaric rejoices in the news that the Shrines once called Lost have been located with exactitude, and pinned to the map like butterflies in a collector's case.
Written By Elisha
Nov. 10, 2019, 11:33 p.m.(3/5/1012 AR)
What makes the city of the Unter’alfar different from those above ground is that it has earth instead of air. The boulevards and alleyways, teahouses and marketplaces are filled every inch with dirt, clay packs all the rooms from floor to ceiling, and each stairway is in the grip of another stairway, an opposite and earthen stairway, pressing down from above. Over the white spires and lofty cathedrals hang layers of rock and shale like cloudy skies; even the stars are embedded in basalt.
We scholars do not yet know if the Unter’alfar widen the worm tunnels and root-crevices of their native city; we do not yet know if the dampness rots their skin; we do not yet know if they move about or are frozen in place like cracks in a diamond, like dying kings in forgotten tapestries, like hard facts in flowing dreams.
From the surface, nothing of the subterranean city is visible. The royals who share blood with the elves tell us, ‘The city of the Unter’alfar is directly beneath your feet,’ and we can only believe them.
At night, we put our ears to the ground and listen for the sound of doors slamming shut.
We scholars do not yet know if the Unter’alfar widen the worm tunnels and root-crevices of their native city; we do not yet know if the dampness rots their skin; we do not yet know if they move about or are frozen in place like cracks in a diamond, like dying kings in forgotten tapestries, like hard facts in flowing dreams.
From the surface, nothing of the subterranean city is visible. The royals who share blood with the elves tell us, ‘The city of the Unter’alfar is directly beneath your feet,’ and we can only believe them.
At night, we put our ears to the ground and listen for the sound of doors slamming shut.
Written By Elisha
Nov. 4, 2019, 12:56 a.m.(2/19/1012 AR)
Relationship Note on Vayne
His mantel is carved with these words:
Every tale,
every story,
every anecdote,
every riddle,
is another beat of Aion's heart.
You return to Marach's library after a period of imprisonment, to resume your search for forbidden lore. His manor is unchanged, you think, until the hearth cracks open and a different room appears--then vanishes before you've drawn a breath. Perhaps the secret lies in knowing what words to speak, what rituals to perform, in what order and rhythm, to reveal the hidden library? Or perhaps your confusion and surprise is enough; as you wonder, the room is transfigured again, the walls becoming as transparent as a dragonfly's wings.
You realize that Marach's manor always consisted of two manors, one of burlap and one of glass; perhaps both change with time, but their relationship never changes; the second is forever about to free itself from the first.
"Even dreams," you tell Marach, who is seated beside the hearth, "are subject to laws."
He lowers the stem of his pipe. "You believe the Kindly Voices punish kinslayers and violators of sanctuary, yet all humankind is kin and all Creation is sacred."
"Not my prison cell," you tell him. "The guards forbade me everything save the profane."
Your master bows his head. "Have you not spent decades pursuing forbidden lore?"
"Every tale," you hear yourself say, "every story, every anecdote, every riddle …"
"Yes," he says. "And who, after all, owns the beating of the Dreamer's heart?"
Every tale,
every story,
every anecdote,
every riddle,
is another beat of Aion's heart.
You return to Marach's library after a period of imprisonment, to resume your search for forbidden lore. His manor is unchanged, you think, until the hearth cracks open and a different room appears--then vanishes before you've drawn a breath. Perhaps the secret lies in knowing what words to speak, what rituals to perform, in what order and rhythm, to reveal the hidden library? Or perhaps your confusion and surprise is enough; as you wonder, the room is transfigured again, the walls becoming as transparent as a dragonfly's wings.
You realize that Marach's manor always consisted of two manors, one of burlap and one of glass; perhaps both change with time, but their relationship never changes; the second is forever about to free itself from the first.
"Even dreams," you tell Marach, who is seated beside the hearth, "are subject to laws."
He lowers the stem of his pipe. "You believe the Kindly Voices punish kinslayers and violators of sanctuary, yet all humankind is kin and all Creation is sacred."
"Not my prison cell," you tell him. "The guards forbade me everything save the profane."
Your master bows his head. "Have you not spent decades pursuing forbidden lore?"
"Every tale," you hear yourself say, "every story, every anecdote, every riddle …"
"Yes," he says. "And who, after all, owns the beating of the Dreamer's heart?"
Written By Elisha
Nov. 3, 2019, 11:12 p.m.(2/19/1012 AR)
Relationship Note on Alaric
We become nameless when making love;
signatures scrawled in the tattoo
of dirt in the folds of your elbow
and the wrinkles of crow's feet around your eyes.
Your voice roughens as you tell me,
A woman like you will put her heart into her lover's hand
like the imprint of a shadow of a leaf on the forest floor.
Weightless? I ask.
Holding your body, you say, is like returning to the village
under papery skies
and gathering, along the road, a basketful of berries
that later my father will simmer into jam.
From the beginning, you wrote fables on my skin
in dirt and wrinkles,
and signed your name with the shadows of leaves.
signatures scrawled in the tattoo
of dirt in the folds of your elbow
and the wrinkles of crow's feet around your eyes.
Your voice roughens as you tell me,
A woman like you will put her heart into her lover's hand
like the imprint of a shadow of a leaf on the forest floor.
Weightless? I ask.
Holding your body, you say, is like returning to the village
under papery skies
and gathering, along the road, a basketful of berries
that later my father will simmer into jam.
From the beginning, you wrote fables on my skin
in dirt and wrinkles,
and signed your name with the shadows of leaves.
Written By Elisha
Nov. 2, 2019, 11:16 p.m.(2/17/1012 AR)
For Willow, as promised, half-remembered phrases and misattributed quotes:
I died there,
in the Suthryn Wastes,
the flesh of my back parted by Cardian talons
and my corpse singed by Cardian flames
in a pyre along with my Thunderborn sisters.
Before he grew to adulthood,
and mastered the penance of flight,
Arumadin served as an admiral
and swept the ocean floor,
plucking at deep-rooted weeds.
Everything is white and deep,
my skylord,
seething and forever with moonlight,
with dead ships jeweled in barnacles,
as my body pulses,
in the Dream,
for you.
"A faith is built not merely
by principles which embody its highest values
but by the specification of an enemy
so vile
that its mere existence
requires the suspension of those principles."
The path of storms leads past
thirteen graves in the ancient cemetery,
nameless and unmarked,
save for the scent of daffodils
in fresh-fallen snow.
My mistress chains me to silence and confides:
"After I stole secrets from the Hungry One,
the Archfiend of Despair bowed low and without a sound—
without a tongue—
without a breath—
thanked me for standing, unasked, against Ignorance.
I am surrounded by snakes,
and I am crowned and
the Greatest Snake rises from the waves
and coils around me and hisses,
"You are not God-sworn, you are Gods-worn,
a garment for the divine; this crown is yours to wear."
In the ancient days,
when the Aetheris ruled in Caer'alfar,
Lagoma's followers answered to no Domina,
and every solstice anointed a new Archlectrix;
this Order of Seasons commanded all the tribes of elves,
but command, Lady Tribune, is no substitute for love.
I died there,
in the Suthryn Wastes,
the flesh of my back parted by Cardian talons
and my corpse singed by Cardian flames
in a pyre along with my Thunderborn sisters.
Before he grew to adulthood,
and mastered the penance of flight,
Arumadin served as an admiral
and swept the ocean floor,
plucking at deep-rooted weeds.
Everything is white and deep,
my skylord,
seething and forever with moonlight,
with dead ships jeweled in barnacles,
as my body pulses,
in the Dream,
for you.
"A faith is built not merely
by principles which embody its highest values
but by the specification of an enemy
so vile
that its mere existence
requires the suspension of those principles."
The path of storms leads past
thirteen graves in the ancient cemetery,
nameless and unmarked,
save for the scent of daffodils
in fresh-fallen snow.
My mistress chains me to silence and confides:
"After I stole secrets from the Hungry One,
the Archfiend of Despair bowed low and without a sound—
without a tongue—
without a breath—
thanked me for standing, unasked, against Ignorance.
I am surrounded by snakes,
and I am crowned and
the Greatest Snake rises from the waves
and coils around me and hisses,
"You are not God-sworn, you are Gods-worn,
a garment for the divine; this crown is yours to wear."
In the ancient days,
when the Aetheris ruled in Caer'alfar,
Lagoma's followers answered to no Domina,
and every solstice anointed a new Archlectrix;
this Order of Seasons commanded all the tribes of elves,
but command, Lady Tribune, is no substitute for love.
Written By Elisha
Oct. 23, 2019, 12:04 p.m.(1/24/1012 AR)
How does the
shepherd
find new pastures?
When the lambs
wander,
she calls the wolves.
(We know that
wolves, too,
require feeding.)
Serve first the
hunger
of predators.
shepherd
find new pastures?
When the lambs
wander,
she calls the wolves.
(We know that
wolves, too,
require feeding.)
Serve first the
hunger
of predators.
Written By Elisha
Oct. 21, 2019, 12:02 p.m.(1/20/1012 AR)
The weight of winter
lies upon rooftops
canted and peaked
and precarious
after a heavy snow.
An angled avalanche
awaits your daughter's laughter
or my mother's call
or the graceful flow
of a seraph's sleeve
beneath the weight of winter lies.
lies upon rooftops
canted and peaked
and precarious
after a heavy snow.
An angled avalanche
awaits your daughter's laughter
or my mother's call
or the graceful flow
of a seraph's sleeve
beneath the weight of winter lies.
Written By Elisha
Oct. 19, 2019, 10:12 p.m.(1/17/1012 AR)
Relationship Note on Shard
We cannot trace the routes of the swallows who cut the air over the roofs,
carving long invisible curves with their wings,
darting now to chase a mosquito,
spiraling now upward,
grazing a pinnacle,
alighting atop a marble crown.
When you travel this far north of the Compact, you arrive in a land where every face is a map, and every map a face: in the nameless capital city, you rejoice in observing all the bridges over the canals, each different from the others: cambered, covered, on pillars, on barges, suspended, with rusty balustrades. Mullioned windows overlook arcades and terraces, lancet windows rise above flagstone paths, windows surmounted by stained-glass roses spill lamplight into courtyards of blue and white tiles.
And yet, at every point in the city, your eyes cannot but be drawn to the statue of three kings on high marble platforms, each with a scarred face, each with the curve of swallows' wings describing invisible sigils above him.
The first king's face is a map of duty, glory, and victory, and his hand is a gleaming golden gauntlet. The second's king's face leads to vengeance, his map a labyrinth of intricate beauty and absolute control.
The third king stands above his brothers; when you kneel before him, he tells you that nobody can possess a map, and then he tells you why.
* * *
(You are correct, my tragic and solemn queen, that you can beat me if you choose, or even kill me. However, you are wrong in imagining that this makes you remarkable. There isn't a sullen thug or spoiled child in Arx who could not beat me, if they chose, or kill me. My life is the most tenuous of the invisible curves described by the swallow's wings--and you must bow to the statue of your choosing.)
carving long invisible curves with their wings,
darting now to chase a mosquito,
spiraling now upward,
grazing a pinnacle,
alighting atop a marble crown.
When you travel this far north of the Compact, you arrive in a land where every face is a map, and every map a face: in the nameless capital city, you rejoice in observing all the bridges over the canals, each different from the others: cambered, covered, on pillars, on barges, suspended, with rusty balustrades. Mullioned windows overlook arcades and terraces, lancet windows rise above flagstone paths, windows surmounted by stained-glass roses spill lamplight into courtyards of blue and white tiles.
And yet, at every point in the city, your eyes cannot but be drawn to the statue of three kings on high marble platforms, each with a scarred face, each with the curve of swallows' wings describing invisible sigils above him.
The first king's face is a map of duty, glory, and victory, and his hand is a gleaming golden gauntlet. The second's king's face leads to vengeance, his map a labyrinth of intricate beauty and absolute control.
The third king stands above his brothers; when you kneel before him, he tells you that nobody can possess a map, and then he tells you why.
* * *
(You are correct, my tragic and solemn queen, that you can beat me if you choose, or even kill me. However, you are wrong in imagining that this makes you remarkable. There isn't a sullen thug or spoiled child in Arx who could not beat me, if they chose, or kill me. My life is the most tenuous of the invisible curves described by the swallow's wings--and you must bow to the statue of your choosing.)
Written By Elisha
Oct. 19, 2019, 12:56 p.m.(1/16/1012 AR)
Relationship Note on Monique
When the Duchess of Thieves crept into the labyrinth
beneath the besieged city,
she stole treasures and wonders
but lost herself.
She forgot her own name, and the password that opened
the secret door of her family's house,
and the scent of the first lover whose throat she slit
during the act of love.
Her mothers demanded the help of seraphs and charlatans
in vain
until a blind pauper urged them to seek the White Library,
presided over by a holy scholar who knew with absolute certitude
the difference between truth and lies.
In the White Library, the scholar warned the mothers
that the price they'd pay for a cure was regret,
and they said, "That is precisely the same cost as not trying to heal
our beloved daughter."
So the holy scholar murdered the Duchess of Thieves
and blamed her mothers,
who blinded themselves and lived as paupers,
urging grieving parents to seek the White Library,
unshakable in their faith that
one day
a woman with a trembling voice and tearful eyes
would slay certainty
and release his prisoners.
beneath the besieged city,
she stole treasures and wonders
but lost herself.
She forgot her own name, and the password that opened
the secret door of her family's house,
and the scent of the first lover whose throat she slit
during the act of love.
Her mothers demanded the help of seraphs and charlatans
in vain
until a blind pauper urged them to seek the White Library,
presided over by a holy scholar who knew with absolute certitude
the difference between truth and lies.
In the White Library, the scholar warned the mothers
that the price they'd pay for a cure was regret,
and they said, "That is precisely the same cost as not trying to heal
our beloved daughter."
So the holy scholar murdered the Duchess of Thieves
and blamed her mothers,
who blinded themselves and lived as paupers,
urging grieving parents to seek the White Library,
unshakable in their faith that
one day
a woman with a trembling voice and tearful eyes
would slay certainty
and release his prisoners.
Written By Elisha
Oct. 12, 2019, 1:27 a.m.(1/1/1012 AR)
"I dreamed of a harbor facing south, in bright daylight," the Archlector of Death reports to her olive-skinned archscholar. "Gentle waves kiss the retaining walls; stone steps descend, warmed by the sun. Boats with tidy rigging sway beneath arriving passengers who rush laughing onto the quay to greet families weeping with relief and welcome."
"A blessed vision," the archscholar murmurs, her gray eyes downcast in obedience.
"Search the archives," the Archlector of Death commands, "until you find the place to which my dream corresponds."
"Forgive me, Voice of the Mother of Furrows," the archscholar replies. "But while there is no doubt that I could find the precise citation in the archives, I could not come back to share it with you."
"And why is that?" the Archlector of Death demands.
"Because the place of which you dreamed knows only arrivals, not departures," the archscholar says,
and the Archlector of Death sees in
her dew-touched web
that the harbor is a fallow field
where the waves dance not with water but with grain
and the warm stones enclose pasturage,
and the shapes swaying across the rolling hills are plows.
"What of the passengers," she asks, "rushing onto the quay?"
They smell of carbon and water,
ammonia and lime,
phosphorous and iron and salt.
"A blessed vision," the archscholar murmurs, her gray eyes downcast in obedience.
"Search the archives," the Archlector of Death commands, "until you find the place to which my dream corresponds."
"Forgive me, Voice of the Mother of Furrows," the archscholar replies. "But while there is no doubt that I could find the precise citation in the archives, I could not come back to share it with you."
"And why is that?" the Archlector of Death demands.
"Because the place of which you dreamed knows only arrivals, not departures," the archscholar says,
and the Archlector of Death sees in
her dew-touched web
that the harbor is a fallow field
where the waves dance not with water but with grain
and the warm stones enclose pasturage,
and the shapes swaying across the rolling hills are plows.
"What of the passengers," she asks, "rushing onto the quay?"
They smell of carbon and water,
ammonia and lime,
phosphorous and iron and salt.
Written By Elisha
Oct. 12, 2019, 12:54 a.m.(1/1/1012 AR)
Newly exiled, and quite ignorant of the languages of the shav'Arxani, the charlatan can express herself only by drawing objects from her steelsilk pack--tambourines, salted pike, necklaces of monkey's tails and bats' wings--and pointing to them with gestures, leaps, moans of pleasure, cries of horror, by imitating the squeak of the rat, the hoot of the owl.
The connections between one element of her story and another are not always obvious to the patrons in her storefront chapel; an empty sheath might indicate war or battle, a polite duel on a wide green lawn, or a woman who lost her man; a mirror might mean vanity or reflection or the place where mirrors are made. But what enhances for the patrons every tale shared by the inarticulate charlatan is the space that remains around it, the void bereft of words. The descriptions of the charlatan have this virtue, if none other:
However, time touches even shopfront chapels, eventually, and words begin to replace objects and gestures and cries. First the charlatan barks exhortations, then she makes herself understood with sentences. She will soon descend into metaphor and sermon and discourse. Still, no matter how eloquently she speaks, she will not know if the patrons have mastered her language, or if she has learned theirs.
* * *
(The strong build embassies in the capitals of the weak, with permission or without. What is that half-seen doorway on the leafy Upper street, between the perfumer's shop and the adulterer's window?)
The connections between one element of her story and another are not always obvious to the patrons in her storefront chapel; an empty sheath might indicate war or battle, a polite duel on a wide green lawn, or a woman who lost her man; a mirror might mean vanity or reflection or the place where mirrors are made. But what enhances for the patrons every tale shared by the inarticulate charlatan is the space that remains around it, the void bereft of words. The descriptions of the charlatan have this virtue, if none other:
However, time touches even shopfront chapels, eventually, and words begin to replace objects and gestures and cries. First the charlatan barks exhortations, then she makes herself understood with sentences. She will soon descend into metaphor and sermon and discourse. Still, no matter how eloquently she speaks, she will not know if the patrons have mastered her language, or if she has learned theirs.
* * *
(The strong build embassies in the capitals of the weak, with permission or without. What is that half-seen doorway on the leafy Upper street, between the perfumer's shop and the adulterer's window?)
Written By Elisha
Oct. 8, 2019, 12:05 p.m.(12/22/1011 AR)
Relationship Note on Aleksei
The explorer who is not yet certain of the Faith awaiting him along his route wonders what the palace will be like, the barracks, the mill, the prison, the bazaar.
In every shrine of the Compact, every room is different and set in a different order, but as soon as the explorer arrives at an unknown cathedral and his eye penetrates the pinecone of spires and lancets and arches, following the scrawl of canals, gardens, rubbish heaps, he immediately distinguishes which are the princesses' balconies, the seraphs' lecterns, the tavern, the hospice, the slum.
This confirms the certainty that the explorer bears in their mind a Faith made only of differences, a Faith without figures and without form, a Faith of perfect parts which each individual faith only dimly reflects.
This is not true of the charlatan's chapel.
In every point of this storefront shrine you can, in turn, sleep, beg, sing, steal, fuck, reign, sell, and question false oracles. Any one of its dingy windows might open to the midwife's chamber or the thrall's fighting pit. The explorer roams the dusty corners and has nothing but doubts: as they are unable to distinguish the features of the chapel, the features they keep distinct in their mind also mingle.
You ask yourself this: What line separates the inside from the outside, the rumble of snoring from the thrusting of swords?
(One approach contains what is accepted as necessary when it is not so; the others, what is imagined as possible when, a moment later, it is possible no longer.)
In every shrine of the Compact, every room is different and set in a different order, but as soon as the explorer arrives at an unknown cathedral and his eye penetrates the pinecone of spires and lancets and arches, following the scrawl of canals, gardens, rubbish heaps, he immediately distinguishes which are the princesses' balconies, the seraphs' lecterns, the tavern, the hospice, the slum.
This confirms the certainty that the explorer bears in their mind a Faith made only of differences, a Faith without figures and without form, a Faith of perfect parts which each individual faith only dimly reflects.
This is not true of the charlatan's chapel.
In every point of this storefront shrine you can, in turn, sleep, beg, sing, steal, fuck, reign, sell, and question false oracles. Any one of its dingy windows might open to the midwife's chamber or the thrall's fighting pit. The explorer roams the dusty corners and has nothing but doubts: as they are unable to distinguish the features of the chapel, the features they keep distinct in their mind also mingle.
You ask yourself this: What line separates the inside from the outside, the rumble of snoring from the thrusting of swords?
(One approach contains what is accepted as necessary when it is not so; the others, what is imagined as possible when, a moment later, it is possible no longer.)
Written By Elisha
Oct. 6, 2019, 6:51 p.m.(12/19/1011 AR)
For Skald (after a chance meeting in a midnight alley)
I am crushed
by your weight,
behind me and inside me.
My fingers curl into fists
around rough bearskin and your breath
scalds the back of my neck
when you whisper:
I defeated Destiny,
my hands
trembling around
her slender neck,
and in my wisdom,
I granted the powerful
the freedom
to choose
who to whip
and the wretched
the freedom
to choose
how to weep.
I am crushed
by your weight,
behind me and inside me.
My fingers curl into fists
around rough bearskin and your breath
scalds the back of my neck
when you whisper:
I defeated Destiny,
my hands
trembling around
her slender neck,
and in my wisdom,
I granted the powerful
the freedom
to choose
who to whip
and the wretched
the freedom
to choose
how to weep.
Written By Elisha
Oct. 2, 2019, 6:41 p.m.(12/11/1011 AR)
For Grigori
1) --interbred dragons and elves to create the Drac'alfar, who shift from humanoid forms into serpentine creatures capable of flight.
2) The Metallic Order meets in Uanna, nation of light, to suppress the Basepyre Heresy, which claims that the Great Many are superior to the Chosen Few.
3) The Cardian Betrayal: the sky dark with dragons: the Sutterlynds blasted into lifeless glass.
4) A woman cursed to immortality wakes on a beach, surrounded by charred bones and molten steel--and a wounded scout, whom she nurses to health, whom she loves.
5) Thirteen times, the woman bears a child with the scout, and thirteen times she cannot remember her labor.
6) She wakes to an unnatural quiet and discovers, tucked beside her, a skeleton with closely folded wings.
7) She fashions a lute from her lover's charred bones and plays a memorial of such joyful celebration that fields of dahlias unfurl through cracks in the glass-sheathed earth.
8) Some say she wanders the Wastes to this day, remembering her lover, singing to her children; some say her tears heal the tormented soil.
1) --interbred dragons and elves to create the Drac'alfar, who shift from humanoid forms into serpentine creatures capable of flight.
2) The Metallic Order meets in Uanna, nation of light, to suppress the Basepyre Heresy, which claims that the Great Many are superior to the Chosen Few.
3) The Cardian Betrayal: the sky dark with dragons: the Sutterlynds blasted into lifeless glass.
4) A woman cursed to immortality wakes on a beach, surrounded by charred bones and molten steel--and a wounded scout, whom she nurses to health, whom she loves.
5) Thirteen times, the woman bears a child with the scout, and thirteen times she cannot remember her labor.
6) She wakes to an unnatural quiet and discovers, tucked beside her, a skeleton with closely folded wings.
7) She fashions a lute from her lover's charred bones and plays a memorial of such joyful celebration that fields of dahlias unfurl through cracks in the glass-sheathed earth.
8) Some say she wanders the Wastes to this day, remembering her lover, singing to her children; some say her tears heal the tormented soil.
Written By Elisha
Sept. 29, 2019, 6:40 p.m.(12/5/1011 AR)
Relationship Note on Willow
Incense cedar, elderberry,
scattered chapels of willow trees.
Graygreen leaves tremble like
my beggar's palms
on the branches, waxing
resinous in sunlight,
lingering with warmth in plenty,
here, now, an afternoon
in folded grass and golden pyres,
of bracken under broken
granite, lucid sky. Stillness after
the ache of love and heave
of summer while you,
my lady,
dream within your chapel of willow.
scattered chapels of willow trees.
Graygreen leaves tremble like
my beggar's palms
on the branches, waxing
resinous in sunlight,
lingering with warmth in plenty,
here, now, an afternoon
in folded grass and golden pyres,
of bracken under broken
granite, lucid sky. Stillness after
the ache of love and heave
of summer while you,
my lady,
dream within your chapel of willow.
Written By Elisha
Sept. 29, 2019, 12:04 p.m.(12/4/1011 AR)
The season of sourgrass comes,
shy, lovely beside the carriageway.
My mistress gathers the stalks in her arms
like so many sheaves of daffodils
across her dark shoulder, green, gold.
I remember the alley beneath
my childhood window, rifted with sourgrass.
One by one I scraped their stems across my teeth
shivering with the delight of winter
along my tongue,
and with the dreamy expectation
of my master's carriage crushing them
beneath his heavy wheels.
shy, lovely beside the carriageway.
My mistress gathers the stalks in her arms
like so many sheaves of daffodils
across her dark shoulder, green, gold.
I remember the alley beneath
my childhood window, rifted with sourgrass.
One by one I scraped their stems across my teeth
shivering with the delight of winter
along my tongue,
and with the dreamy expectation
of my master's carriage crushing them
beneath his heavy wheels.
Written By Elisha
Sept. 27, 2019, 10:34 p.m.(12/1/1011 AR)
The old stories claim
that life is possible without death,
like mountains that rise to such a height
that they form no valleys.
Into this landscape, the old stories claim,
the first children of the Dream bore themselves
before even the gods breathed:
the First Children of Now and the First Children of Always.
The dragons soared the heavens,
and with slitted eyes observed the Dream spread beneath them,
among the silver streams and stands of moss-draped oak.
And yet, despite the keenness of their sight,
they grew dull with pride and power and
the dreary masturbation of magic.
The sirens surged within the seas,
and their autumn voices sang the fullness of the Dream,
past and present and future, so that even
the first among them knew,
at the moment of her birth,
that Choice and Death
would one day drive her sisters
mad with glory and chaos and beauty.
In dreaming the future, she conceived the future.
She is the mother of Choice and Death,
and the answer to the dragons' lonely weeping rage,
or so the old stories claim.
(Amid the roaring braggadocio of skylords, hear the silence of skyladies. The dragons abandoned their mates, the sirens, for magic and power and pride. A betrayal transformed them into monsters, but no betrayal is final: one day the dragons will shed their pride like snakeskin and surrender to the hopeless, helpless songs of their anguished lovers. Every valley shelters beneath a peak.)
that life is possible without death,
like mountains that rise to such a height
that they form no valleys.
Into this landscape, the old stories claim,
the first children of the Dream bore themselves
before even the gods breathed:
the First Children of Now and the First Children of Always.
The dragons soared the heavens,
and with slitted eyes observed the Dream spread beneath them,
among the silver streams and stands of moss-draped oak.
And yet, despite the keenness of their sight,
they grew dull with pride and power and
the dreary masturbation of magic.
The sirens surged within the seas,
and their autumn voices sang the fullness of the Dream,
past and present and future, so that even
the first among them knew,
at the moment of her birth,
that Choice and Death
would one day drive her sisters
mad with glory and chaos and beauty.
In dreaming the future, she conceived the future.
She is the mother of Choice and Death,
and the answer to the dragons' lonely weeping rage,
or so the old stories claim.
(Amid the roaring braggadocio of skylords, hear the silence of skyladies. The dragons abandoned their mates, the sirens, for magic and power and pride. A betrayal transformed them into monsters, but no betrayal is final: one day the dragons will shed their pride like snakeskin and surrender to the hopeless, helpless songs of their anguished lovers. Every valley shelters beneath a peak.)
Written By Elisha
Sept. 27, 2019, 11:47 a.m.(11/28/1011 AR)
In ancient days, the Lowers was a city of a thousand wells that rose over cold subterranean lake. Wherever the inhabitants dug deep holes, they drew clear clean water, as far as the city extended, and no farther. The Lowers's green border reflected the outline of the buried lake; the invisible landscape created the visible one; everything that moved in the sunlight was driven by a lapping wave enclosed beneath the rock's calcareous sky.
Consequently, two forms of religion exist in the Lowers.
The city's gods, according to some people, live in the depths, in the black lake that feeds the underground streams. However, according to others, the gods live in the buckets that rise, suspended from cables, as they appear over the edge of the wells, in the revolving pulleys, in the windlasses and the pump handles, in the blades of the windmills that draw the water up from the drillings, in the trestles that support the twisting probes, in the reservoirs perched on stilts over the roofs, in the slender arches of the aqueducts, in all the columns of water, the vertical pipes, the curved joints, the grates and drains, all the way up to the weathercocks that surmount the airy scaffoldings of the cathedral,
a city that moves entirely upward
and exhales finally
into the dream
of the shav'arxani.
Consequently, two forms of religion exist in the Lowers.
The city's gods, according to some people, live in the depths, in the black lake that feeds the underground streams. However, according to others, the gods live in the buckets that rise, suspended from cables, as they appear over the edge of the wells, in the revolving pulleys, in the windlasses and the pump handles, in the blades of the windmills that draw the water up from the drillings, in the trestles that support the twisting probes, in the reservoirs perched on stilts over the roofs, in the slender arches of the aqueducts, in all the columns of water, the vertical pipes, the curved joints, the grates and drains, all the way up to the weathercocks that surmount the airy scaffoldings of the cathedral,
a city that moves entirely upward
and exhales finally
into the dream
of the shav'arxani.
Please note that the scholars may take some time preparing your journal for others to read.