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 Posted: Sat May 14, 2016 10:19 pm
The log was revealing in its own way, monotonous in others. His folio of architectural sketches and watercolors of the Conservatory– no other word seemed to do– was now a catalog that could be leafed through. Like trying to number the stone thorns on the brambles near the camp site. He and Faust had made their discovery in November,
Nov 13 - Arrived, day cycle. No evidence of wind or weather between last visit and current. Temperature 52 °F, Dew Point 47 °F, Pressure, 29.87 in., Visibility...maybe five miles.
Nov 27 - Arrived, day cycle. No evidence of wind or weather between last visit and current. Temperature 52 °F, Dew Point 47 °F, Pressure, 29.87 in., Visibility...maybe five miles.
Dec 4 - Arrived, day cycle. No evidence of wind or weather between last visit and current. Temperature 52 °F, Dew Point 47 °F, Pressure, 29.87 in., Visibility...maybe five miles.
Dec 11 - Farcical. There’s no such thing as day and night cycle, so far. It’s all a middle twilight, however many hours pass. There’s no ‘sky’ of reflected blue, but there seems to be a breathable atmosphere. Similar gravity to Earth, if a little less. Not as pronounced as Moonwalking. Temp still 52 °F, Dew Point 47 °F, Pressure, 29.87 in., Visibility...maybe five miles.
Dec 18 - 52 °F, Dew Point 47 °F, Pressure, 29.87 in., Vis ~ 5
Jan 8 - 52 °F, Dew Point 47 °F, Pressure, 29.87 in., Vis ~ 5
Jan 15 - 52 °F, Dew Point 47 °F, Pressure, 29.87 in., Vis ~ 5
Jan 22 - 52 °F, Dew Point 47 °F, Pressure, 29.87 in., Vis ~ 5
Jan 29 - 52 °F, Dew Point 47 °F, Pressure, 29.87 in., Vis ~ 5
Feb 12 - as above
Feb 19 - as above
Feb 26 - “
March 4 - “
March 11 - “
Creepings of overly exaggerated, puffy cat doodles meandered the margins. A tad unprofessional. But then, so was using the ditto double prime instead of entering the log correctly. He’d been in academia long enough now to be certain that marginalia were tamer eccentricities to inflict on some far off reader in the shoals of time. Sometimes the great, black Mauvian came along to these later visitations, but of late it was less frequent, or he chose to stay at the campsite on the patio space. The Asteroid was of little interest and proving mostly just a frustration to him. This visit he was spending chuffing in various ‘U’ shapes on the heated sleeping bag
Progress entering the hidden, further rooms of the sub-fountain had petrified. Over the months, Thraen had brought down lamps to the place, his sketching equipment, basic soil and chemistry testing kits. He had drawings and paintings of every wall and piece of furniture, inset closets and especially the murals. He hadn’t started trying to draw conclusions yet, but there were consistencies even without leaps of reason. Measurements of the furniture bore out that the people who’d used the chamber, who were depicted in some fashion of the woodworking and painting, were likely as elongated as they seemed to be (rather than a trick of stylization). He would need to arrange with his cousin for a complete restoration kit to determine if the murals were oil, fresco, acrylic, and other media and whether they were created on plaster, canvas, metal, wood, or paper. Restoring and preserving them formally would help for study. All the surfaces were dim, like ancient oil paintings with rotted shellac. Often up on scaffolding, working a square inch at a time, it would take a dedication of months of straight work, and no time given to the Negaverse, the CatFe, graduate school. Far longer if still paying homage to those ‘distractions’.
Too little time and too little of me. A single archeologist on a whole world. How will any of us make any headway in time for it to be useful. Unless that is some purpose and help provided by the visions. Trying to assign purposes seems too vague and deliberate. Like trying to determine why any of us prove to have a starseed of a Senshi or Knight. We’re always asking why. Should it be some other question? down the stairs formed of the fountain, along the wall that sunk into the low chambers, the Fibonacci Sequence fanned out in leafed precious metals and inlaid stones as the petals of flowers, or leaves. At the bottom-most stair, stepped down onto the floor of the foyer chamber, he’d made out the inlaid symbol of a flower that followed the vine patterns which matched no particular analog of earth. It was like a mix of passiflora with a rose or peony. Pressing a part of the inlay affected the mechanism of the fountain, drawing up the stairs into a basin again. The darkness that attended this was as complete as that which reigned in caves toured throughout the Earth by rock formation enthusiasts. Eyes and mind tried to trick the awareness into believing that there were ghosts or dim shapes of a hand there, should one try waving it a few inches before now. It was lies of strain and discomfort at an instinctual level to something born to sight and which relied so heavily on it. Thraen refrained, instead making confident strides to where practice told him the table should be to turn on the brighter of the lanterns.
Click-swish- the sound of a step and cloth behind himself? Next to? Close, too close for actual comfort to war-razored nerves. His own boot echoed the sensation of the sound, heavy stone sole against marble and colorful train of material twisted and fanned behind himself as he turned. Nothing more followed. Minutes stretched out like a Mauvian in a beam of sunlight. He could hear his own heartbeat and breath with the volume of a megaphone set to the organs. Skin prickled as though his whole body was a whisker, reaching out to the complete lack of air currents in the chambers. “Just get on with it. Say what you’ll say. What do you want to show me?”
Who am I even talking to?
Himself? The past? Time? The Galaxy Cauldron? The asteroid beneath his feet and in his starseed? A growl bubbled through his teeth and past his lips, though the sound of it broke more airy through grimaced teeth. Demands internal or external were meaningless to the deaf Universe. The cosmological will had proven time and again to fall onto a scale of indifference or impotence that it was impossible to pinpoint to greater accuracy. So we use our own powers and hands and minds. Don’t give in to frustration. At last, at least, at limits and more there’s finally a hint of shadow again. Weeks on wanting for it, don’t be surprised and angry when it finally comes.
He stepped away from the table and the lanterns, and left the room dark. Fingers stretched out blind, but slow, and he stepped the paces to the inch-open door that had thwarted effort for so long. “Show me this. Please. I’ll stay here a while. Show me this. “
But you do know it. You immediately left the flowers.
Is this a conversation? What sort of answer is that? The words had sounded to be spoken aloud in his ears. They lacked what seemed like a requisite echo that should come with the hardness and emptiness of the rooms. There may have once been more fabrics around the place that time had preserved less long than the petrified woods and stone. He’d left no flowers in this place, silk and lifeless or otherwise. Not unless someone generations previous had enough agency and awareness to wax poetic about Alois in the ground, calling lovers by metaphors. The eternal felt the sudden cold of the wall or door, and followed it one side, then the other, until he’d found the slim opening that spoke to further chambers. He turned his back to it, pressing the chill against the flats of his shoulderblades, and used the surface to help stabilize him as he slide down to sit at the base.
Sit and breathe. Let the world and thoughts slip away into the pervading black tick by tick the way he let everything fall away during meditations on impermanence within the project he’d made with Alois. It was easier when open eyes saw as little as closed. The hardest to let fade away, lacking a sensory deprivation chamber, was the sense of touch. It had to be willful. The chill and solidity against his back, under his haunches and the bottoms of his boots, had to turn into the same nothing as didn’t flutter against his face or upturned hands. It had to take on the same meaning as time in that space, and by virtue of it, he wasn’t certain when the moment came. But everything lept from nothing and quiet into soft green and gold lights.
The room was glittering and alive, and there was a pair of beings moving around the table like adversaries of a fencing match lacking swords.
“Rain sapphires and blushed pearls to the tended berry bush, and keep the curves of the emerald vine along your arms.
Pour out all of the plenty within you, and provide it. Every day from dawn to next dawn. Hold it out as the Heart of Harvest.
You are together the center of this world. The gift of our peace and plenty, the flower of our books, the fruit of our boughs.
Though you should find all barren and laid waste, every grave is a plot of land. “
The one wearing a collar that looked to be made out of amber glass with dangling chain scowled. Paused and drummed long fingers along the back to one of the chairs. “So without choice, every hope of a life of any other sort is forfeit? And the only other option is to be called selfish? Saddled as a saint, feeding the world, or selfish murderer of thousands ? That’s it. That’s the sum total of fates laid out for this seed in my breast. Every other seed planted in the ground can be watered, blighted, trained on trellis, fed with blood meal or bone, made cuttings of….numerous fates and choices. But I get one.”
“Do you know what it means to be a senshi?”
“It means being a soldier. The princesses of the great worlds, they’re all soldiers. The captains of the Queen and the Princess. But we’re no part of that. Why is there a senshi here? This world is microscopic. Less than a city, I bet of Jupiter. Mars. Pluto. They’re worlds you know. There’s countless of them out there, beyond our skies. Even though we practically never send anyone out there, or receive travelers from those ships that sparkle in the dark between the stars. They have other books there. They have things we don’t know, and can’t learn just hibernating here like its perpetual winter. “ Flame eyes- the one with the collar had eyes that practically glowed with light inside. Maybe they really did, with an ambience that bounced off metallic flecks like freckles high on the crests of his? Her? Cheeks. It was the color that haunted more than the alien effect of phosphorescence. Eyes as mine. Is it significant? Our eyes are the same. Is that usual? Is there anything usual in the definitions of these reincarnations? Does Athene see someone with the same eyes as his?
The active thoughts seemed to interrupt it all. The light dimmed, what was golden going grey like projected static on a television. Or like a head-rush from standing up too fast after grading papers. The two voices, so clear before, became murmured as through the stone itself interposing between. Still talking, the conversation going on without him. Thraen tried to push down frustration and push away the ‘I’. Losing self to the scene wholly, full suspension of disbelief seemed to be the only way to approach the visions successfully. It took forever, garbles becoming incrementally clearer as awareness pushed back through to the painted, brilliant surface of the world kept by the stone tape of the asteroid. But the images were blurred, indistinct. Only their voices came clear.
“-do? Lifeblood of their worlds, and what are they doing? Are they flowers, ornamental, untrained and unready ? Fallow ground? “
“They can’t all be doing the same thing.”
“You’re subverting the point.”
All when dark as though he’d blinked. All was silence again.
He felt exhausted as shouldn’t be. Meditations were usually revitalizing. In the black, the worst temptation was to just lie over and go to sleep. Temptation itself was a flag of warning, and almost a guarantee he’d do anything but. Thraen pushed up and stumbled across the space in what he hoped approximated a line. It was close enough, and his feet and middle found the edge of a petrified chair. His hands found the table. Found the lantern and brought it glaring to life with a turned switch. It still turned on, so there was no general draining effect to any source of energy the way that specter-chasers and ghost hunters spoke to when supernatural elements came near electrical equipment. Maybe it wasn’t like that for senshi and their memories.
Even if it feels like haunting. And tiring. Why is that so? What is it trying to say by showing me this? If there is a message to any specific memory coming. Purpose is as assumptive. Alright..but regardless of that. Now I’M subverting points. I have had...a...vision. So what does it mean. What have I learned. He looked around at the walls and they felt caging. Close. No matter how wide the space, the implications of further and further chambers, it had become claustrophobic. Pulse was building with his breath to a gallop. There was no danger, but the panic was rising anyway. Would more come? How had it come?
None of it was reasonable, logical, predictable or controllable.
Thraen ran to the flower on the wall and smacked his palm to it. The stairs couldn’t descend, couldn’t grind their way down fast enough. He ran out from under the ribs of iron and broken glass, out from the Conservatory, where there was open space and stars, not even a seeming sky, to hem the space to a cage.
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Posted: Sun May 15, 2016 12:30 pm
Irrational, emotion-based bullshit ate up an entire hour. He crouched, knees to the stone slaps and dragging his fingers along the flags as though skin and blood could matter much to them. He didn’t scream. No water leaked while he panted and shivered and tried to dig for god knew what reason. It wasn’t purposeful to getting anywhere specific. Dark lines started painting from under and around his nails in Pollock streaks. Lifted his hands back and up behind himself, rampant as the useless wings and pressed he forehead against the bloody stone.
Stop.
Please stop.
Stone doesn’t race. Doesn’t feel. Doesn’t Panic.
Control your mind or it will control you.
Heart slowed, furlong to forearm to clockwork. Digging and burying was a place for the energy to go. Burying things finished them, kept them still and safe and away. Would that it worked that way really, in more than symbols of poetry. What was that about. I can’t go into the tent this way, stink sweat drying out of every damn pore. It’s cold. Stop it. If we’re done with all that, we can think. We. Me, myself, and I like a loonatic. Thraen and Quenton. Faust would think this was all nonsense. It is all nonsense.
Think.
Breathe.
Think.
Settle.
Quiet.
Breath up. Then breath out. Up again. Out this time.
Perfect.
Think. Find a hypothesis. Right hand clenched, unclenched. Left hand followed suit. Raw skin didn’t flinch fingers. He felt calmer. He could breath. He could uncurl and raise from hands to a kneel.
‘Pour out all of the plenty within you, and provide it.’ It was asking the impossible of any person the charge was laid on. Demanding someone to be a saint with language like ‘all’. It didn’t sit comfortably. It sounded like suicide and imprudence, and all the more on too much faith in anyone to do much worthwhile with boons given to them from any part of someone doing the pouring. The long and the short game were both rigged in the whole ordeal. Without the greater crystals, nothing can truly be accomplished against the Negaverse, Not in a lasting way. Not in a meaningful way. We are all just manning the wall. Trying to buy more time in the best way from that nightmare of the black column. Whatever that was, Still no answers. And what answers this? What am I pouring out? Blood? That seems a little too mass-media, misconceived druidism. Plausible from a standpoint of connected starseeds and life, if things worked that way, sympathetically. I haven’t come across any definitive proof contrary or supporting. My magic? That is something more direct with the starseed. I didn’t have magic until being given a henshin. But does that come from me or from this asteroid? Wouldn’t that be expending from the asteroid, rather than pouring out to it? Could be there’s no difference between to an alive, but unsentient space rock. As much use as the magic is for pouring out to any benefit of any person or thing.
Soporific flowers had little gains used for allies or for pouring out. The tactical situations for chain casting the stupid things, let alone around a lot of people, were limited. There was symbolic language to it, but it sounded literal in application from the tone of the delivery. Like the person had been intending something very specific. Or the argument had been specific in that point, but equally on the broad whole of being a senshi. The flame eyed youth was just mewling protests in the whole, and no use. What about the title sounding name? ‘Heart of Harvest’ could be a date or holiday, or a specific spell he hadn’t come across, or a place. Maybe it was that chamber beyond? Or it could be like Hyperborea’s little crystal? A specific thing or set of things?
The ‘it’ carried through in the grammar, however it was that his brain was interpreting the language into understandable concepts, was the ‘plenty’ Holding out the plenty to be poured. ‘As’ the Heart of Harvest, so the title was a stand in thing for the plenty/it. Or a substitution of use. There weren’t cornucopia painted or mosaiced on the walls, nor inlayed or carven in the surviving furniture. There was the distinct, flash-feel of energy leaving when he touched open the stairs, or closed them.
I don’t know how long I’ve been down there. I was so tired. Was? Am. Now the panic is gone. Getting up may as well have been returning to shore from days at sea while he made his way to the small camp set up and the instruments to the side of the tent itself. The clock and date confirmed eighteen hours. He’d need to make contact to Earth for arrangements of hours at the CatFé. Then what? Try casting all the magic he had inside the chambers? It was a pouring out. Repeat it for a handful of days and see if there was any appreciable effect in any of the surroundings? Was there anyone that could be called on for emergency evacuation in the case that it was a terrible idea? Faust was there, and could be there through an experiment, but a cat couldn’t drag a whole person up stairs if they were passed out or in trouble of some magical effect. The Mauvian had not so far shown any propensity toward bipedal form as Ash and ********* had demonstrated. There was the possibility of Athene and Liryn? It seemed in poor taste if they were still looking for Ida. There’d been no more news or sight of here, and this many months on pointed to similar fates as Alois or to Amphitrite. He’d not spoken to Penthesilea in months and more. Aegir shouldn’t be subjected to high stress or physical requirements.
There’s not enough defined threat to warrant making a great deal of this. Faust can open the stairs at least, if when he wakes I’m still hours gone and missing. He’ll be hungry and paw me awake.. The world wouldn’t gain from draining me completely…? If it is doing that. I may be misinterpreting the effect. Two weeks then, to get the arrangements made for the hours with Kirsten and Elliot. I can bring up more water as well. Make a stay of it. The sound of chuffing and stretching claws catching in sleeping bag nylon came from the tent shadows.
“We’re going back. Longer stay next time.”
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Posted: Wed May 25, 2016 10:32 pm
All the careful laid hopes could not manage any of April. It was a wash, flooded of finals for the undergraduates. Time sped away with meeting that demand in addition to his own thesis obligations to Dr. Hoenig. May, though, Kirsten could take on extra hours. She was eager for them, even. It would allow for an extended stay after the semester finished at a job that wasn’t waitressing in West Virginia. May opened its two eyes, then finally, unusually, on Tuesday the third he stood under the stars again with a five gallon camping dispenser full of water and thumbed the button to return to his asteroid.
The stillness and sameness of it on arrival felt like oppression. He didn’t bother with the camp, but went straight to the Conservatory. In to the fountain and touched the solution to the Fibonacci sequence, hissing as he felt the pinch and breathlessness that accompanied it. Down the stairs. He set the water on the table, less nervous than he should be of introducing any moisture directly into a location should any accidents or spills happen. The lanterns lit without trouble. It is only me, not the technology. Does it happen to Faust if he presses it? I should have asked. Well, that can be the next experiment, if this provides nothing.
Thraen moved away from the table, nearer to the sliver-opened passage in hopes to minimize any magical effects disrupting the water supply.
He cast his eternal magic, uncertain of the exact effects other than it’s strength must be comparable to his status. Briars inches long sprung out from roping vines, spanned from floor to ceiling, wall to wall and along the opening, enclosing him in verdant leaves and pale blooms. An egg of clear and breathable space remained around the eternal and where he stood. A pricked finger confirmed the sharpness of the thorns, and more disturbingly, that the touched vine leaned out and wrapped around his wrist. At least it went no further than that. He counted out the magic and waited, not risking to move or touch any more of the magical plants. “This magic seems no more wise than my regular sort to cast near allies. And….leaves no permanent mark of growing where it touches the walls, at least. Whether it does to people, or not. “
No telling if these flowers were as soporific as the others. Their shape was unique, like that of the decorations on the walls, instead of the panoply of colors and shapes of the lesser magic. Thraen put his back against the wall and tried the spell a second time, watching the dim shapes of the room for any hints of effect. Sight went sideways, dizzy, then he slide into the thorns edging around him. They caught and supported their senshi, without seeming sentience, for the seconds they survived. Then he lay on the floor while the room waltzed in barely slowing circles. I should have tested that magic sooner. Long ago. Pressed the boundaries of it sooner so that I would know what was usual and what was not. Using up all the other blooms has never done me in this badly before...but I don’t have a control on Earth. Maybe it’s usual for eternal magic to do this. Maybe it will get easier? Well. A second test could be of what I do have control of. Once the room stops and I can stand. I can use all of my lesser magic, the plain sleeping flowers. I’ve used those plenty in battle to know the size, duration and how much they wind me.
The room went dark despite the lamp.
* * *
The proverbial lights came on again to show the room exactly as before. The camp lamp, still bright and blue-hued, threw shadows from it’s perch on the table. Every limb felt cold and heavy, the sort that came with polar bearing in winter rivers for too long, like each extremity was being encased in larger and larger ice blocks. It was beyond shivering. There was no sign of Faust.
How long have I been out?
There was no immediate visual cue for that inside the chamber or out on the surface of the asteroid world. Thraen labored up onto his knees and looked over at the crack of the door.
His lungs stuck.
It was unmistakable. If he hadn’t been a sculptor, he wouldn’t have noticed the difference, but it was there— the opening of the door was a full centimeter wider. It wasn’t enough to fit Faust through, were the puff hard by. It wasn’t enough to do anything with. It was unmistakable, and it was encouraging. The feeling then. It must be the magic. Or my being here so long? Or...so many trips in succession? No, I don’t feel this wiped usually, even making the sketches and cataloging findings. And I’m not usually passed out for…..however long it was. After casting magic. Here by the door. The feeling is being energy drained. It must be.
It must be.
To what end? Just opening one door? But the feeling had startled him every time opening the fountain stair was the same. To power the mechanisms? But it hasn’t shown any matter how long I’m in uniform here- is the flow of energy not one way then? And not voluntary in this. Or is it supposed to be and there’s something that is unknown to me in the choice of it? Or a loop completed? Maybe it would feel less if the loop was completed more often to afford a battery or reservoir? Assuming containment exists for that. Too many assumptions and still not enough data.
Getting more information had a clear path. The larger sample was available through the passage, and the door required magic, or time, or both to power the opening.
So Thraen cast, and slept propped against the door. And waking, repeated the same over and over. At last the door stood fully half open, wide enough already by some exhaustions for him to have slipped bodily through, but he wanted it enough to make passage with equipment easier. Such as another lamp and one of the portable camp-chair tripods. And his sketch equipment. Discipline ruled over the impulse to run in and examine everything with hands. Touch with eyes, not with hands, make a record as pristine as possible with notation before disturbing the site. The room was oval, with woodwork and glass as elaborate as the last. Faust’s estimations were accurate, as far as his feline eyes had carried sight in the dim. The eternal senshi set it all down with estimations of size and space, repetitions of patterns. It took hours, another sleep, and more hours. Hunger finally panged with enough force to refuse being pushed aside.
And his heart, deep in his chest, stabbed with it. His eyes felt led to the strange, over wrought garden basket on it’s pedestal. ‘Pour out all of the plenty within you, and provide it.’
The choice was to heed the strange compulsion, or to let it fall to the ages between. He stood from the stool, set aside implements at hand and approached the thing. The whorls in form matched the setting well in organic grace. The wood of it, from look alone, was conspicuously unpetrified looking. A hesitant touch confirmed it- the wood had no dense, over-heavy airs like the chairs or the table. The touch, cautious, didn’t produce the same immediate drain to his senses. “So how and what do I pour in? Water from the camp? Spit? Blood? And where. How much. Or energy?”
Baskets didn’t have words or mouths, and there was no evident manual for use placarded onto the space allotted to the thing. Even if there were, it wasn’t likely to have been in English. He tried casting near the thing, intending as much as possible for it to be a target. The flowers threw out their perfume to no effect. Thraen shifted, took hold of the basket fully and removed it from its place. He quieted his mind and focused on it, on himself. Tried Stroud’s old breathing and visualization technique, imagining himself full of power like clear water. Then tipped that hand slightly, as though pouring. Felt the pour along his wrist. Tried to feel as though it filled the basket with clean and sparkling energy. It happened, the p***k deep in his chest and the exhaustion, but in that moment the basket grew heavier in his grasp. Opening his eyes, Thraen found the thing was full of beets, bright tomatoes, an onion, garlic still wrapped in it’s paper sheaths, a clay carafe that sloshed, and more. The spread was a riot of color in the dim.
The Heart of Harvest. Where did it all come from. Is it real? It IS a title. A name. It’s a harvest basket. His free hand pulled what seemed to be a strange variety of Bell Pepper from the load. A bit confirmed it was real enough, fresh, and so far not poison. At least not one fast acting. Questions piled into a traffic jam in his mind: how long did the food last? How much was there all together? Did the amount change? Did the kind change? Could it sustain if used as a sole source of nutrition? How often could it be used to create the bounty? Did the items provide viable seed? Were the items affected by the location or world that it was used on?
Could it safely leave the chamber? The little asteroid world?
Study would have to begin in earnest. If visions provided nothing more concrete.
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