I'd like to see you try and stop me

Unclassifiable Varieties

B      Cauldron Flowers of Duskmarch – Such were the result of an evil soil or noxious minerals found beneath the soil.  They are betwixt one and three cubits in width, flower upon the ground for no stem can hold the flowerhead aloft, it weighing so much as hog.  Its character is vile but it is thought to siphon from the earth all corruption for wherever such flower blooms for one year and is then taken away that soil is made fecund.  The largest flower seen in the Empire it is unlovely with black & red stained petals that appear to be made of flesh instead of fruit.  Its fragrance is potent and likened to the scent of cloves doused in rancid boiling fat which odor is attractive to the meanest of forest creatures that it in turn affects by its venom.  Trulkish guides describe a multitude of varieties common in the utterdark.

B      Glass Vine of Underneedle – Which vine is nemesis to all the woodwise folk of the ancient race of Euymer.  Called by this name for the quality of its needles which are invisible in the impenetrable twilight of the deep woodlands.  Such thorns as it is able to launch with vigor into creatures that merely stroke against its surface.  Thorns inflicted upon the bare skin will not be freed but must be worked out by the blood of the unlucky victim which is the means by which the vine perpetuates itself – it has in place of common seeds or flowers the scabs & mortal anguish of those it afflicts.  In legends it is said that the Culture Heroes of the Euyhmer woodland tribes, called Smahra would wield lengths of the vine as terrible armaments and were themselves immune to the scathing touch which is said to be painful to madness for all others.  Know it by its pale green flesh which is faintly luminous in starlight.

B      Amberfruit Tree of Underneedle  - Prized and for time out of mind a secret of the deep forest tribes before they were taught to read the famous forest amber of the Euyewood was used in place of silver coins.  Methods of manufacture of the amber slivers used by the barbarous antecedents of present Euye revealed the secret knowledge of the galvanic energy which force the woodsfolk wielded as a scourge to frighten away their adversaries.  The tree is a squat variety of needle leaf – short but quite wide.   Its amber bulbs sprout upon its branches and are like unto the fruits of other useful trees.  The ripening of this fruit into useable form requires many years of cultivation & the hardiness of the tree & its tolerance of darkness is why and how of its longtime concealment.

B      Coalchain vine of Duskmarch – Notorious by its virtue in defense and agriculture the famous coalchain appears draped over the streams that feed to the River Euyhmer.  Said to only grow in darkness the vines fruit in a novel fashion where its budding flowers gutter a permanent flame so that whilst the vine is in bloom its leaves are sunned and heated by its own persistent flame.  The truth of its existence was doubted for time out of memory but once domesticated the coalchain was bred for greater luminosity so that now whole plantations of the Duskmark are lit, not by the sun but by wreaths of living coalchain.

The principal uses and exports of flora indigenous to the realms of Raindrinker Kannylte and prospects of colonial farming within same…

Excerpt from Volume 9 of the Conquest of the East – by Aximan Salmongate Starcrown White Season of YK 1444 through YK 1445[1]

The foresight of Ulthan had raised obstacles worthy of such an antagonist. Ninety cubits below the castle, at the widest part of the river, he linked the two banks by joining boats with heavy rope in the form of a bridge, on which he erected two lofty platforms, from where the bravest of his Euye could command the crossing by the overwhelming force of their bows. Within the boats there were held vast stores of ammunition for the Euye shoulderbows, which weapons could pierce the skull of imperial elephants.  The approach of the bridge and guarded, on the opposite sides of the Euyhmer, by a numerous and select detachment of riders. But the enterprise of forcing these barriers, and conquering Draylbuhn, displays a shining example of the boldness and genius of Ettissoer. Her cavalry advanced from the hills along the long road from Klial for she requested the assets of the Kannyltine himself.  This train cowed the natives of all the kannylte through which they crossed, and were awesome enough to ward off even the Yoyue raiders of the hills, which caravan served to diminish and distract the attention of the Euye enemy. Her infantry and provisions were distributed in two thousand wagons pulled by two thousand and each wagon was shielded by a high rampart of thick planks, pierced with many small holes for the discharge of bolts. In the van, two large wagons were linked together to sustain a rolling castle, which commanded the towers of the other engines of the war, and contained a magazine of firesalt, rockshot and burning sulfur. The whole convoy, which the Kannyl led in person, was laboriously moved against the sorties of the forest peoples. The bridge succumbed to their onslaught, and the enemies who guarded the banks were either slain or captured. As soon as they touched the principal barrier, the boats serving as the crossing were scattered upon the river instantly dispersing the bridge; one of the towers, with two hundred Euye archers, was consumed by the waters; the assailants shouted victory; and Klial was expanded, as the wisdom of Ettissoer had been advanced by the obedience of her warcourt. Her own foresight in the matter of war granted her preparation sufficient that she had brought with her the sacred timbers of the first bridges overpassing the Weft.  These were transported by the wagons in her train and comprised the previously mentioned ramparts.  She had previously sent orders to her Rinkannyl Fradosius to second her operations by a timely construction of a kliali bridge; and she had fixed her Tunkannyl, Ostor, by a peremptory command, to the fore of this bridge. But ambition rendered Fradosius’ efforts futile for the Euyhmer proved too wide to bridge by any means save Ulthan’s technique; while the youthful ardor of Ostor delivered him into the grip of a superior enemy. The exaggerated rumor of his defeat was hastily carried to the ears of Ettissoer: she halted her assault; betrayed in that single moment of her life by her emotions of surprise and grief; and reluctantly sounded a retreat to save the remnants of the Weftish bridge, her own treasures, and the only town of Klial’s upon the western Euyhmer. The vexation of her mind produced an ardent and almost mortal fever; and Klial was left without protection for a time  to the indignation of Ulthan’s authority. The continuance of hostilities had imbittered the Kliali’s hatred: the Bridge Faith’s clergy was ignominiously driven from Klial; Jisshir, the demagogue, fled without success from an embassy to the Euye camp.

Famine had relaxed the strength and discipline of the garrison of Draylbuhn. They could derive no effectual service from a dying people; and the inhuman ambition of the horsetamer at length absorbed the vigilance of the tribes. Four Yoyue sentinels, while their companions slept, and their officers were absent, descended by a rope from the wall, and secretly proposed to Kannyl Ettissoer to introduce her troops into the bastion. The offer was entertained with disinterest and mistrust; they returned in safety; they twice again repeated their visit; the plan was twice examined; the conspiracy was taken up and closely regarded; and no sooner had Ettissoer consented to the conspiracy, than they unbarred the Stargazer gate, and gave admittance to the Klialis. Till the dusk of night, they halted in order of battle, apprehensive of treachery or ambush; but the troops of Ulthan, with their leader, had already escaped; and when the kannyl was pressed to disturb their retreat, she prudently replied, that no sight could be more grateful than that of a fleeing enemy. The talans, who were still possessed of horses, Korron, Sillit, &c. accompanied the Rinkannyl; their master, among whom none are named by the annals, took refuge in the house of the Horse: but the assertion, that only five hundred persons remained in Draylbuhn, inspires some doubt of the fidelity either of the narrative. As soon as daylight had displayed the entire victory of the Klialis, their kannyl devoutly visited the tomb of the Dry Bones; but while she prayed at the altar, twenty-five captives, and sixty Euye, were put to the sword in the vestibule of the tomb.

The loss of Draylbuhn proved consequential to all Ulthan’s latter actions.  After his departure, the Klialis created it the capitol of Nightcandle, their easternmost possession.  Its prior inhabitants were further imbittered by the Kliali’s claim when the conquerors elected to rename their acquisition Eastern River Castle.  The Euye were thrice repulsed from the walls in the following year.  Each time Ulthan drove his foresters to the walls while putting to torch the surrounding lands.  Through the grey season of that year the forest surrounding Draylbuhn burned intensely.  Fortifying the castle became the principal occupation of Ettissoer who’s domestic situations speedily collapsed;  Nightcandle was near to falling owing to the ambitions of Fradosius who sought to supplant his mother Etissoer as the Kannyl of the territory.  This treachery cut deep the heart of the Kannyl’s occupation, all the more because in her haste to conquer she forever lost the relics of the first bridge.  The White season led to famine and the Kannyl’s hasty retreat to address the controversies in the heart of her possessions.  Such retreat was only possible given the Euyhmer had frozen over and though her desperate departure was the first of the season it was not the final, for Ettis and his foresters retook the castle of Draylbuhn not by force by through canny application of siege techniques.  For the entirety of the Kliali’s campaign the horsetamer’s canny presumptions had saved his legacy; as the Klialis marched to his river he had withdrawn all the provisions held in Draylbuhn to caverns hidden beneath the woods long known to the Euye and utilized in times of struggle.  Now in the last season of the year the Euye partisans held provisions to sustain themselves all the while destroying the produce of the castle’s conquerors.  The frozen river then became a highway upon which all the Nightcandle conquerors fled in humiliating retreat.  Thereafter Kannyl Ettissoer sued for truce between herself and the stormer Ulthan, which party acceded to the peace granted only that his own possession be recognized by the Empire and that the Yoyue conspirators who had betrayed him be returned to his hands.  These concessions were granted in haste by the Kannyl who had been driven to recklessness by betrayal within her own dominions.  Thereafter as a show of compassion Ulthan returned the timbers of the first bridge which had been recovered from the river as war trophies by his own.  The Yoyue conspirators were executed in public performance while Ulthan paid respects in the tomb of dry bones himself.  Thus the Euye considered the desecration of Draylbuhn answered and dissipated themselves as a united force.  From that reconquest of their castle the Euye have ever been a divided people, along the lines of their totemic allies; the Horse, the Lion, the Trout or the Frog and others less well known split the immense forest into their own kyu that fell to their former contention over esoteric matters of dominance or ownership.  These conflicts burgeoned through the following year during which the barbarous woodsmen not observing the ordinary construction of the military season soon drove to conquer Draylbuhn themselves…

…During the White season that followed Ulthan was compelled by his own misadventure in contention with the Lion that he sought and was granted refuge among the Klialis, Kannyl Ettisoer had prevailed in that intervening span against her infidelitous sons, and having recalled the compassion Ettis had displayed by returning to her the beams of the first bridge, granted him solace.  During this exile the Horsetamer contended that he would not drink from any river that flowed to his old dominion and would drink only rain while enduring exile. 

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. 

Once, long ago (but not long, not really) I felt like a hundred years – a hundred years is a manageable era, a period of discernable change – decline & progress but visible in the life of a single person. Now, I look back 50 years & with above-average knowledge of the events of that era – I guess, my era – and think ahead t 50 years. It’s too distant – the century is an unfathomable distance on that axis. Too unknowable. Fifty years is an era, or ten. Age is making my assessments concerning time & its relentless advance differently. Everyone says that. I’m trying to think of an interesting way of saying it. That communicates something unspeakable in the human experience. That’s what I always try to do.

Among the ruins of the labors of the ancients I think again about projects, visions, goals. Me, living in the shadow of the last century – perpetually. In the 100 year old house in the 100 year old town – riding on the 100 year old streetcar line… Working in the 100 year old factory manufacturing 100 year old technologies. Iterative improvements notwithstanding – everything in my material experience is antique.

So better get to like them right? Or figure out a better way forward.

And then there is my urge for projects – side projects. My work is a project wide in scale, satisfactory in scope – but what’s life for? Making a rich asshole richer by trading your labor? or making a rich asshole richer incidentally while you try to entertain yourself?

I think on obsalesence & new ways forward – antiquated modes & my own inertia – let’s change things up. But only gently now – I’m at the edge of my competence at this moment – busy. So what’s an easy, antiquated thing that is outside of my ordinary preferences. Ah yes, that is it. I shall listen to records.

Julie says that I’m not perceptibly stranger than non-brain injured men except in that I don’t like sports. But I have definitely observed that people respond with much greater surprise/alarm/contempt when you say you don’t like music. Boy they hate that.

There’s all sorts of rationales I can use. Per my arguments you probably don’t like music either. But whatever. Maybe it’ll be a lark if I decide to try and listen to an album each day-or-so for the rest of the year?

Maybe I’ll do that. Huh!

Last year I tried reading a book each week & then fell out of the material experience of book-having-and-reading by getting hooked on comic-book apps on my phone. Shoot – I read 10-12 books last year & 30 years of comics. Mutations of modes. Who knows. Maybe I’ll get something out of this. A dumb project.

Plus an easy way to get me back into regularly writing things out. I gotta do it.