Account of Saturn Forumy 2675

An old man had told Billy 6, the third incarnation of Jerrimoo in as many days, that her kind was to inherit Brightworld. This much was written in the Accounts; scriptures that have been passed down to me, as transcribed from the fevered dreams of the Artifact Readers, or so I’m told. In any case, their meanings have dislodged from their former substrate, and it is students like myself that have to come to terms with them. So who spoke to Billy 6 all those years ago, that could have such an impression? Why was this world called Brightworld? Was theirs so dark? Or were they expressing of the “darkness of ignorance”, or speaking from a dark place, something disembodied, something far away from the light, something unknowable. I am just the latest generation to ask these questions of a strange religious text written at the beginning of our time, recounting something just before, across the veil, in the World of Jerrimoo.

As I savour the brew that I am drinking, the rim of the class cup bisects the world into the clear and the dreamlike, which is how I see our whole past, passing a clear boundary between the dreamworld and what we see around us in, for example, Lulkatar. Here stands a University a building made of knowledge, meant to reflect the wilderness of the afterlife, there is a lycanthrope, sitting on a throne made of brambles, representing our journey into knowledge, and there is a dusty pall from the planes of Gennah, that frequently swallows the broken stones and temples in a wave of dusk. It places another veil over our attempts to make certainty out of the chaos. The broken stones are not so stark that we should ever confront that certaintly, or even rcognise the layers of history, the layers of brave attempts to order the world into our dreams. The chaos breaks into the world as in history, it is only a boundary away.

It is written that just after the world became clear, the Northern Marshall were fleeing the fiery ruins of Quatzeletamaine over to the east. They had fought off Demon hordes, in the canyons and dusty plains all the way through, losing contact with their Southern counterparts. They moved north and over time settled down and began farming. Eventually they formed a kingdom, several, actually. This was a long time before the Hearts were to flee their own great city, and form the Lycanthrope. Both groups have fought off invaders from the south, probably the descendents of the Southern Marshall, but so far avoided fighting each other. This is kind of lucky because I come from Tiber Canyon, so I count both Xoenner and Hearts amongst my ancestors.

Everything is confused between the mind and the blood, such that I can never truly rise above the babble and make sense of the wars fought in the Scaffolds or northward at Oyuverahm. Why do the Hearts and the Klondykes fight? Because they always have, I suppose, but those of a witching kind ascribe to all sorts of fancy theories to do with the idioms. In any case, it’s hard for a geographer like me, as I want to be able to visualise the physical world and its various layers of history, that is, I want to explore. The thousands that have died get marked up amongst our losses, and justify the pressing of the Klondykes. To save our souls from the Demon influences, to save the civilisation, requires a war fought over centuries, with few breaks for exploration.

So what has come over the Moonsiddows such that they can agree to terms with the Klondykes, such that an expedition to Krowkanyon is possible? God knows, but it’s a chance to embark on one of the greatest expeditions in history, and I’m not going to miss the chance.

A tall, gaunt and strangely-attired dan, carrying a travelling sash that looked like it was over stuffed with papers, stood opposite me. Looking up, I could see his face, even though silhouetted against the yellow haze, and it was familiar. Before I could quite place it, he sat down, with a flourish, opposite me.

“Saturn Forumy unless I’m misled”, he said with a kind voice.

“Indeed, my Trust…”

“Yoseemus”, he stated with a slight nod of the head.

“I saw you, on The Run, earlier, you were talking to Toosimine, but I’ve seen you before that, haven’t I?”

“I also frequent the Department Library, and having tea with the Emeritis Joulisoon”, with a smile, he seemed to indicate his allegiances as a Geopooreen, and there seemed to be no conflicting facts that I could recall, that could put this in doubt, so I smiled as well.

“Well I have no particular…friends, so I wonder what you wish from me Trust Yoseemus”, a said, but I bit my lip at the straight-to-business attitude I must have just projected.

“Well, I have something for you, and a bit of a proposal…an opportunity?” At once, alarmingly, he pointedly handed something over to me.

I took it, looking around, suddenly very aware of myself. “Why did you do that?”

“You mean here?, because I am a Geopooreen!” he then stood, and said, “I’ll be contacting you at the department, when you’ve had a bit of time.” With that, he winked and stepped out of the corralled area and back onto The Run and headed toward Tower Palace. I saw other dignitaries and others, possibly witches, follow his pace with their eyes, a couple flickered back to me. I was meant to be excited to be noticed for the first time, but all I could think of was taking this document home – it looked like a lot of reading.

I began reading it on the spot, it was an account of a Dhorisoon Monk, who wrote very well. His encounter was so bizarre that I almost jumped out of my skin when my eyes went over those lines.

My grandmother was one of those Forumy’s in our family that had some reknown as a witch. There are others in the tree, but her story is probably the most relevant to this one. She was a crazed eccentric, but brilliant in the area of witch idioms and her skill was not lost on the Coven, who were in the middle of prosecuting the Segliot War, and she was soon recruited and dispatched to the Dhoorisoon area to try to break into the Segliot idoms. She wrote whole chapters to the Segliota – as the scriptures devoting themselves to all things Segliot were styled, and pushed the boundaries of mathematical idoms at the same time. Some of this reached the public sphere through peer sharing, others extracted by Klondyke aligned Moonsiddows and still more disseminated through the very people working on it, accidently, sort of.

Most of the things I remember were her astoundingly good porridge and ample knees upon which to sit my boyhood frame, while she told me stories of Princes and Demons. Stories that would make account of clever farm boys going off to some ruin somewhere, trick the local demon into handing over the girl or some glittering prize and him coming home to become the local princeling. They had a romantic tip back to the frontiers of the Heartlands, before everyone had become aware of so much warfare. This was not really what my mother wanted, but she had become rather pious as well as practical and wanted me to hear more about the heroics of Jerrimoo. The other thing that I remember were the lots of important-looking people that came to her house in Catterrougas to pay her a visit. Often they would take out papers or divining instruments, they would either talk or carry out some kind of ritual. Often these people would talk to me about my school or how brave, wise and knowledgeable my grandmother was.

It wasn’t until years after her death that I actually started reading things about her. It was a thrill at first, because it set her into the substrate of history, gave her officialdom, stature, permanence, but it also filled me with wonder at the depth of her life, the things that she accomplished and never told me about. I would have thought, for example, that she might’ve mentioned that she was possessed by a demon-controlled gargoyle for six nights, fighting off a fever for dear life, while a dozen witches, travelled via her mind into a Yakreet idiom to effect an invasion. Then again, it was all pretty out there.

I remember being interrupted by a change in the weather. The changes come slowly in Lulkatar, but there were made more obvious on Pardry Down. There under the lone quat tree, there was little to shield you from it. Rusted metal spears in racks stood up in all sorts of crazy angles pointing in warning at different parts of the sky. These had mostly fallen over amongst the broken stone blocks that covered the vast area: the fallen warning bells of yesteryear. No one had lived on Pardry Down for many years, it was one of the several vacant areas of Lulkatar, a kind of spooked area, but strangely settling for me. Somehow I concentrated better there, like I was part of a flow.

The sky was now a burnt orange colour, but I could see lower on the horizon, a dark blue pall, with a sharp outline. It was moving from the north, and I smelt it, delivering a shock to the senses! Rain! I thought about staying out to feel it wash over me, but then, of course the document. So I got up and started to walk toward the main road. I found the page I was on and read on.