What typeface to use?

 

In my study I pored over invoice and troubled myself with worries of expense & income.  The two were at best on equal footing but that state was rarely achieved, far ore often the former outpaced the latter and on this occasion the disproportion was greatly in the favor of my creditors.  So distraught had I become over the nagging matte of money that I found my mind wandering unbidden, perhaps the trap within which I had hedged it had become too onerous to bear & in search of bare relief it abandoned my senses to go wandering in realms unseen. 

So insensible to the conditions of that night, or possibly day, and unmoored from the cruel anchor of the real I found my senses delighting instead to the wonderful realm accessible only through the unfettered imagination.  There, I found a wide grim stair, severe, with edged stairs dangerous seeming, cruel in a fall, treacherous in a climb.  These stairs are wide and coated in silt, as if a faint wind had blown over them for long days, driving drifts of fine gray sand over the sharp clad stone.  I arrive mid-climb, making my way, already up these dolorous stairs & ahead there is the painted steel door within the door.  A wide & tall portal of two carved bronze doors stood at the top of the stair, but time had worn their carving & the patina of them was only dimly colored.  Unused, this fabulous gate had within it, a small door cut, as an afterthought – ugly and plain – the door in the doors.  Where the faded glory of the fantastic had been badly used & disfigured by the merely practical.  From this ugly door came a sudden rush of soldiers.  Rail straight & grim faced, they glided down the treacherous stairs without effort & quickly braced me.  Surrounded I recognized the dour countenances of each of these militants.  Penury, Health, Remorse, Pain, Worry & Hunger – the principal adversaries of civilized men.  Their gray thin faces were wrinkled deeply with their permanent scowls & finding myself in their custody I felt a terrible anxiety overcome me.  Breath eluded me & I huffed in anguish as they guided me, too swiftly up the stair & through the ugly steel door in the gates of faded bronze. 

Beyond I found a world more fair than any I might have expected.  A garden of symmetrical trees – their trunks all wrapped in patterned silks all being spun by particolored spiders each as large as a dog & far more agreeable than any canine I’ve seen, by the size &charm of their eyes & the gentle exuberance of their weaving.  Banners fluttered overhead – streaming from trees – but these I could see, quite clearly, were moths, butterflies, wide-winged creatures of fantastic iridescence – they hovered in air, as a bird might in a strong wind, fluttering their wings to keep a formation like a scroll unfurling – and on this scroll I could read – by the light of the many-faceted sun glowing gently behind them – these word:  “Your cares bring you here.  Seek refuge in the queen of the Efrafathwë”  Those words I could read but not decipher, and little time I had to do so, for my jailers propelled me forward into the twilight garden, over a moving cobblestone path – the stones of which were each a snail-shell of different hue & size, each firm & steady but moving forward, accelerating our already speedy pace.  I trembled to think what they might be guiding me toward & puzzled at the thought of a queen of Efrafathwë.  But presently we found ourselves in her presence.

The queen is of what size & form she needs to be.  Her eyes are reflecting mirrors that shine the sun & the auroras in which you must stare, and in which you must see yourself stood upon your head, unfamiliar, overturned.  Har arm, huge, her hand monstrous, reaches out & overhead so that the delicate curve of her supple wrist is visible arcing overhead like the sky.  She snatches away Remorse, my jailer, and draws him to her small, insignificant like a toy, she regards him briefly with a glance & then consumes him in but a bite.  Her hands reach out & snatch away each of the imprisoning vexations each one diminishing as she does so, so that when she’s finished & has consumed Pain, it is as if she has merely taken a breath, so miniscule he had become, and so approachable had she.  In size diminished so that instead of looming overhead like a mountain, she merely towered like a giant.  In her presence there is wonder but never fear.  All harm consumed she is a presence of healing & calm.  My hand in hers she leads me deeper into her garden walking now at my own pace on the snail-shell path.  She leads me while I set the pace & soon we see a great, curved & lensed mirror which hangs suspended by no means discernable.  This bright mirror gives its own light & from it I can see my own distorted reflection shifting & becoming something else altogether but she – the queen o Efrafathwë remains visible, her gown of dragonflies & honeycombs sitting graciously upon her splendid frame.  She gestures & controls the image in the mirror, like a conductor driving the orchestra to crescendo. 

She explains as she performs.  “Here there is effect without cause & causes without consequence.  There is whatever has been.  Watch here – where I see your history.  Here is the history of the world, and here is the history of your species.”  These flash like visions like cards shuffled quickly giving only impressions.  “We began long before.  When the elements were in contention & made their war until but four remained with some of the others captured – like wood & metal being bound under earth & others destroyed utterly – like Ishe which is no more & to us, never was.  The elements in their equilibrium called forth the quintessence, the mind & thus we Efrafathwë came to be.  That is the nascence of my people.  We forever live now, above the restraint of time, which binds your people.  Look, I will show you how your world was made, so you can guess at what it really is & means.”

Her gestures cease, she simply pints straight ahead – her long straight finger ringed with jewels, tipped with the eagle’s talon.  In the mirror the image shifts & coalesces & the curve of the shimmering image surrounds me, so that it is as if I ere within the vision as I witnessed it.  Upon the mirror shown an unthinkable wasteland – a vast expanse of bare black stone and this view was all I could see for what seemed an aching eternity until in a sudden burst the landscape was split by a lance from the sky – This caused mountains to vault into the air, caused seas to erupt in the gaps & over all there flowed clouds of pyroclastic vigor that rained fire & turned the burning black stone into a steaming valley cut between the new, jagged mountains.  Now on this wide magmatic expanse, gouged throughout by blazing rifts of spurting lava there was a wide & circular plain. Smooth & regular in its size.  Now at its center this circle of unbroken land is marred – for out of it rises a spine of fiery rock which arcs upward like jagged lighting, and form it other rocks sprout, piercing the sky by smaller & smaller cuts until the whole explosion of blazing rock had formed into a regular dendritic pattern which could be nothing other than a tree – vast & circling, like a shell over the round plate of land  upon which it stood.  This bare tree then began to bloom, from it narrowest shoots sprang fiery petals, expanding into gleaming stone – like shards of agate molten & then still, rigid & shining like glass. 

“Now see, the genesis of your worlds old masters, see them bloom,” said the queen of Efrafathwë.  “Here in daydream, my queendom, I allow these visions of true and ancient things, to give to you no wisdom nor hope but something greater than these – a thing of wonder.”  She ceased her gesticulation, and looked down upon me with a caring face, kind. 

In the mirror the tree bloomed into a fantasia of swirling, brilliant color.  And its basaltic trunk & branches split, like bark, to let a flowing sap of liquid mama flow.  The drops of which formed into spheres & dropped away, blazing in the steam still rising from the valley floor.  Each drop burst, like a bubble of soap & from the blazing stone & the mingling of water & air coalesced into a winged shape, each of these fluttered among the branches of the fantastical tree like the tiniest of flycatchers, swift & slight as swallows but blazing fire & radiating smoke & steam.  The tiny birds grew larger in the vision, of the vision came to focus in upon them, closing in like the image was being brought closer to my eyes.  I saw the tiny birds for what they were.  Each a dragon – a thing of fire & stone & wind & storm.  Their backs a riddle of scales forming like the crust of shale upon the riverbank.  Their wings of flowing fire eschewing steam.  Their bodies serpentine & their motion in the sky like flowing water.  Each of these darted up from the tree, just as its opalescent leaves bean to wilt & to fall.  The jeweled leaves quickly buried themselves in the earth & where there were mountains there were now continents, for the valley was filling with water, and the seas were being formed.  The dragons each nestled upon the continents, sinuous & thrashing & where they lay upon the earth or burrowed down to retrieve the jewel-leaves there formed a river, or they became a river and each spit out the sea & and filled it.  Upon a dragon called Cerese I saw forming a village – here there were the communes of the primordial folk, the peaceable lands of scant plenty.  For clothed in leaves & furs alone these people did not want for either, and where their only possessions were stones & sticks – there was never any scarcity of either.  Their wants few, the world provided.  But among them are dreamers & to those dreamers come the different queens of Efrafathwë.  First is nightmare, who reminds each of the dreamers of the wolves at the edge of the firelight, the bears at the edge of autumn, the flood at the edge of spring.  Always at the threshold there is danger, she tells them.  Her face, her gestures-  her hands, I will not describe for I cannot bring myself to recollect her horror, the crystalized primeval terror that she embodies & is.  Next is dream, who inspires each of the sleepers with true visions of impossible things.  They awake & being to fashion homes, and to write words  and to speak languages.  They awaken, awoken & vigorous, they build & make the world.  And as they do so among their works are those who are wistful, who find themselves lost in the maze of roads & rules & obligations.  Among them drifts the third queen, Daydream, my own guide in her realm.  I see her pluck myself from out of my parlor on the banks of the Cerese & I see her snatch away my cares like I’d seen the ancient people pick fleas from one another.  Each of these drawn away I could see myself, growing grand & magnificent, gold & jewels flowing from out of my pockets, my every word command, my every requirement met without question.  I see myself, a king – consort to the queen of Daydream, queen of Efrafathwë the folk of mind out of time.

And there my story ends, for the maid is on hand to click her tongue at me, to comment on the cold coffee sitting upon the writing desk & the spilled ink soiling my rug.  “You’ll forget where you are if I didn’t come to see to you.  And mind, young master, you’re late with my wages once again!” 

My pockets no longer overflowing, I find in a cupboard a small sum of coins that satisfies her but say, with feigned despair, “You’re right, indeed Miss Eskker.  Without you I’d forget where I am.  Alas I am bereft of opportunities & must request that you refrain your visits for the moment, until I’ve means to compensate you more comfortably.”  Miss Eskker clicks her tongue at me again and withdraws after seeing to the dishes.  I again must pore over my expenses & my income & must again find myself in an anxious state.  I seek those jailers again, but find them unwilling to carry me back to the queen of Efrafathwë, I owe them, I’m told, for the services already rendered. 

Got it.