The first facet of joy

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Scott Alexander
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The first facet of joy

Post by Scott Alexander »

When he was seven years old, Kayi's parents told him to leave the eyrie along the river path, and the priest said he must not come back until he had discovered all the facets of joy.

There had been three other children in the eyrie before, and all of them had gone down the river path when they turned seven years old. None of them had come back. Kayi was the last child in the eyrie. He didn't want to leave, but there was no helping it. So he asked the old priest for his blessing.

The old priest blessed him, and handed him three things. A parasol, to keep him safe. A fan, to keep him cool. And a shiny white stone, so that he might have a piece of the eyrie with him when his memories began to fade.

Thus armed, Kayi began walking down the river path, further than he had ever walked before.

It was spring, and the river path was still coated with ice. The further down he walked, the more slippery the ice became, but after he had been walking the better part of a day, it disappeared altogether. He began to feel like he was not walking through space but through time. It had been only a few hours, and already spring had become high summer. Maybe by the evening it would be winter again. Maybe this was how grown-ups got so old, was by walking the river path where time moved faster. Maybe this was why he saw only young children and adults, but never any children above the age of seven. Maybe in a day or two, he would discover all the facets of joy and return to the eyrie as a grown man.

But by the end of the day, if anything it was even hotter, a summer-beyond-summer. He was glad of the parasol and the fan, because the night brought little relief from the heat.

He slept in a little cave in the mountainside, but awoke well before dawn. Trusting in the starlight as a guide, he returned to the river path and continued his descent.

It was still dark when he saw the monster. At first he thought it must be one of the ice-bears, because nothing else he had ever seen before was as big. But even the most cursory look proved it was no ice-bear. It had a body as thin as his leg and as straight as a rod, but it was tall, and where its head should be, there were only outstretched arms, grabbing for him.

He was afraid, but he was a child of Raknumve, of the great mountain where the ice bears dwelt, and he would not shame the eyrie by dying on his knees. He collapsed his parasol so that it was a straight rod, a weapon, and he swung it at the monster, shouting the old battle cry from the mother of all the mountains: "DRAGUMVE AGAINST DARKNESS!"

The parasol struck the monster with a great crash, but to Kayi's horror the monster did not fall. Instead, flakes of green, webbed skin fell onto his body. He shrieked and began brushing them off, then remembered his peril. "DRAGUMVE AGAINST DARKNESS!" he cried again, and smashed his parasol into the monster a second time, and a third. The monster just stood there, unmoving, unspeaking.

Then Kayi stood back, and got a better view of the creature. He regarded it with suspicion. For its part, it just stood there. It made no move against him, only shaking its many arms almost imperceptibly, and making soft fluttering noises with the flakes that hung down from them.

"Monster?" asked Kayi, but it responded only with more fluttering.

Suddenly, the young boy felt ashamed. This creature meant him no harm, and he had clearly injured it, knocking off the green flakes it used to communicate. He hung his head in a gesture of respect.

"My apologies, monster-nomai. I come from high above, from the eyrie on the top of Raknumve, and I have never seen your people there, or any people except my family and the other families and sometimes the ice bears." He had a sudden impulse, and removed the silver chain from his neck, the chain with his sigil. "Please, take this, monster-nomai. It is my apology. It has power to protect you against harm."

He hung the silver necklace over one of the monsters arms. The monster made no response, but he thought he felt a certain aura of gratitude from the creature. He wondered if the monster had met the other seven year olds, and if they had behaved more kindly to it, but he felt certain the monster would not answer if he asked.

The day began to dawn, and now truly he had passed beyond summer into some new season, hotter-than hot. His parasol was almost useless here, The river had grown wild here, and his path diverged from it, first hugging the sides of cliffs, then on rope bridges across great heights. Finally, just as he felt he could take no more of the sun, the path veered into a cavern.

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Here it was very dark. He shook his parasol, and it glowed with a faint light to guide his path, just as his parents' would on moonless nights in the eyrie. He noticed some marks on the wall. His reading and writing wasn't very good yet, but he sounded out each letter. D-R-E-N. Dren. One of the boys who had taken the path before him. Then he was going the right direction. A thought struck him, and with the sharp part of his parasol, he scratched four more letters beside DREN, straining his mind to remember their flowing shapes. K-A-Y-I. Kayi. If anyone else came down this way, they would at least know he had made it this far.

He wasn't sure how long he spent in the cave, except that he slept once, and woke up feeling refreshed. It was not much further until he saw light on the other side. It was either dawn or dusk, he knew not which. He turned a corner, and...

Image

There stretched before him the most astounding view he had ever seen.

An endless blanket of green, twisting in fractal shapes as far as the eye could see, itself coated with brighter bursts of blossoming color. All around him flew tiny phosphorescent insects like dancing stars, and a shiny blue lizard slithered into the undergrowth at his feet. And there, awaiting him, were all the children missing from the eyrie. He saw Dren there, no longer seven years old, and Qare, and a host of older children and young adults. A giant blue snake slithered on Dren's shoulder, and a scarlet-and-blue bird called out a welcome from Qare's palm.

Kayi's mouth hung upon.

There was only one adult there, and he welcomed Kayi. "I am Masyin, the Low Priest. Do you feel it?"

Kayi nodded. He wouldn't have been able to say exactly what he felt, but he knew he felt it. A sudden overpowering knowledge that the world was alive, that his previous experience of humans and the occasional animal being points of life in a sterile world had been an illusion, and that everything was breathing and thinking and blossoming along with him at this moment."

"This is our way," said Masyin. "For your first seven years, you lived at the eyrie with your parents, among the cold winds and ice bears, beginning your life as our people began theirs. We give you your first view of the Garden of the Gods the same way our people were given theirs - suddenly, like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky. Without time for contemplation or accomodation, so that it fills you and you break. Do you understand why we do this?"

"I was told to seek the facets of joy," said Kayi. "Now I have found them."

The priest laughed. "This is the first facet only. If I know Dreyevin-nomai, he said you are to return home when you have found all the facets of joy. You are only seven, and there are many new joys to be had, and many worlds within the Garden. You have lived your life in one, and now you have seen a second. Will you join us, and explore new worlds, until you can return to the eyrie as a man?"

Kayi nodded again.

"Then come. We will show you to our home."

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Scott Alexander
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Re: The first facet of joy

Post by Scott Alexander »

I have been informed that it is not immediately obvious that the monster Kayi meets is, in fact, a tree.

More context for what's going on here can be found in my entry to the Minorities contest:
Most of the commerce and government of Galinomai takes place on the sky islands, the great plateaued mountains that dot the landscape. Most of the philosophy and science take place in the eyries, the monastery cities perched on tops of gigantic mountains. Only a tiny minority inhabit Galinomai's most forbidding and inaccessible terrain: the ground.

Sure, some people need to do some work on the ground, if only to catalog its plants and animals, build some basic infrastructure, and mine a few natural resources not available on the mountains. A few tried to make roads, once, before people decided the zip lines were less fuss. These people are dutifully respected and given extra hazard pay. After all, if the spiders and snakes and wild animals don't get them, the heatstroke or water-borne diseases might. They serve their time, get amply rewarded, and end up with nice houses in Arborvine or Oceanfree or one of the high peaks.

But then there are the other ones, the ones who the highlanders alternately romanticize and condemn, the ones who live on the ground because that's where they want to be. They have many names: lowlanders, greenlanders, and most curiously "mermen" and "divers" - because to the highlanders, their mountains seem like islands in a sea of green, and the lowlanders like magicians who can live underwater.

Every diver will have a different reason. Some are tired of the hubbub of society, so much so that even one of the more remote eyries will not satisfy their need for solitude. Some feel a religious calling to the Garden, to get to know its animals and plants and to live with them and among them. Others find a life picking limes and pomegranates straight from the trees more attractive than doing paperwork indoors in the cities for money. Almost all say that they just saw the jungle once, and they were saturated with its beauty, and they found no reason ever to leave.

The divers are theoretically under the jurisdiction of the nearest city, but in practice no one goes into the jungle to enforce their rules. But though divers are mostly solitary, word spreads in their community, and if anyone is abusing their common home - killing animals needlessly, or lighting fires, or whatever - their justice is swift, and no one from the cities ever comes down to warn them against such harshness.

In recent years, as the generation that went through the Dark Passage has been dying off and leaving the world to their children and grandchildren, the jungle is no longer a darkness to be feared, but a new land to be explored, and so more and more of the cityfolk are becoming divers, and vanishing into the trees.

And in a few places - Oceanfree and the Raknumve monastery, for example - parents are deliberately sending their children out into the jungle, where they live and study under experienced divers. Maybe feeling guilty themselves about barricading themselves on their mountains and neglecting the treasure beneath them, they hope to make their children comfortable in both worlds, so that even if they choose the cities it is a free choice, made without fear.

Those children who come back to the cities come back different, as if the jungle has marked its own. They are quieter, and less able to take the norms and the subtleties of the city seriously, but they have a solemn tranquility, and a connection to other former divers that no one else can break. And the older folk remember their god's promise - that the garden will garden its gardeners - and wonder what is being made from their people.

Demon of Fides
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Re: The first facet of joy

Post by Demon of Fides »

IT WAS A TREE?
Hier post ich, ich kann nicht anders

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Harvey
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Re: The first facet of joy

Post by Harvey »

I would have never guessed tree. The description isn't terrible, but monster = tree is something my brain would never connect. Plus it's odd to think of a boy wandering through a jungle and seeing a single tree by itself at any point.

Adelene
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Re: The first facet of joy

Post by Adelene »

It wasn't immediately obvious, and I kind of expected there to be a confirmation of my guess later in the piece, but I got it.
Plus it's odd to think of a boy wandering through a jungle and seeing a single tree by itself at any point.
It's a small tree, as big around as a 7-year-old's leg, so I think it's plausible that it wouldn't be obvious to the kid that that's what it is if all the other trees he's seen are large and don't have low branches or leaves he can see up close.

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Kallinn Ynnetrrr
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Re: The first facet of joy

Post by Kallinn Ynnetrrr »

Aw man, I totally called it in my head.
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Scott Alexander
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Re: The first facet of joy

Post by Scott Alexander »

Plus it's odd to think of a boy wandering through a jungle and seeing a single tree by itself at any point.
So what's supposed to be happening, is that he's lived his whole life in a monastery on the top of a mountain, which is icy and cold and above the tree line.

Now he's climbing down, and when he reaches the tree line, he sees his first tree, which is small and lonely.

Then he goes into the cave, comes out, and sees the full jungle for the first time.

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Scott Alexander
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Re: The first facet of joy

Post by Scott Alexander »

The second facet of joy was knowledge.

Under the tutelage of the older children, Kayi learned all the hidden secrets of the jungle. He learned where the bees hid at night and where the wildcat hid in daylight. He learned how to smell rain and how to tell which way was north in sunlight or in darkness. He learned which frogs would kill you, and which would give you vivid dreams, and which would make you see the gods, and which just hopped and swam and never bothered anyone. He learned to walk in the dead of night by clicking and whistling, and how to walk by day without being drained by the heat. He learned how to fight off a jaguar with his parasol, and how to hunt the boar and tapir.

Though he was the youngest of them, he excelled, and learned all the older children had to teach and then some. He could swing from the trees like the gibbon, and tease the river crocodiles by darting away at the last moment. The others began to look up to him as a leader, and it made him proud.

One day, when he must have been ten or eleven, he went to Masyin and matter-of-factly announced that he knew everything.

Masyin looked at him, neither approving or disapproving. "Do you know where to find the kiyose eels?"

Kayi nodded. "They're very rare, but sometimes in the rainy season you find them in the stagnant pools, just before sundown. You shouldn't touch them, because they shoot energy at you, but if you capture them in a net they can't hurt you, and they taste okay."

Masyin just nodded. "Do you know why the nasyare monkey howls?"

Kayi nodded. "To scare away bigger animals, and to warn the other monkeys in his tribe to run away."

Masyin just nodded, and said nothing.

"So it's true?" asked Kayi, kind of surprised. "I know everything?"

Masyin stared at the boy. "Do you know why the sun rises each morning? Do you know why it sets? Do you know why some stars are brighter than others? Do you know where the rivers come from, and where they go? Do you know why there are so many animals, and not more, or less? Do you know why there are both men and women? Do you know how far away the moon is? Do you know what lies across the ocean? Do you know the Final Facet of Joy?"

Kayi's head spun. Something seemed unfair. "But...but..." he argued. "Those aren't even, like, real questions! And there are too many!"

"Okay," said Masyin, his face almost, but not quite, breaking into a smile. "The first one, then. Why does the sun rise each morning?"

"Because it's the sun!" said Kayi. "That's what the sun does!"

"And if someone came and told you the monkeys howl because that's what monkeys do, then you never would have realized they howl because of predators. You have an explanation for monkeys because you know monkeys. If you knew the sun, you'd have an explanation for that too!"

"Fine," said Kayi. "Why does the sun rise in the morning?"

"I," said Masyin, "am not going to tell you. Figure it out."

Kayi stormed out of his master's hut, then came back five minutes later. "The sun rises in the morning because it wants to give light to all the people and animals."

"Hmm," said Masyin, and twirled his parasol. "Then why does it set at night?"

"Because," said Kayi, "it wants people to be able to walk outside without getting sunburnt."

"Hmmm," said Masyin. "If the sun wanted people to walk outside without getting sunburnt, couldn't it just sit low on the horizon? Then we'd still be able to see and hunt, but we wouldn't have to worry about sunburns so much?"

Kayi stormed out. Five minutes later, he was back.

"The sun can't help going so high. It's attached to a zip line, like the people who fly into Raknumve. It's on a gigantic zip line, which goes all the way around the world."

"If the sun is attached to a zip line, how come it takes the same amount of time to go up as to go down? Zip lines take forever to climb up, but then you go down really fast."

Kayi stormed out. Five minutes later, he was back.

"It's not a zip line, it's a staircase. The sun up climbs the staircase, then climbs down another staircase at the other side."

"But I thought before, we agreed that if the sun was able to control its movements, it would sit at the horizon in eternal twilight, where it was most convenient for everyone."

Kayi stomped his foot and stormed out of the room again. This time, he did not come back. Masyin returned to whittling the ice-bear icon he was working on.

For the next few days, Kayi didn't come back to the childrens' village. He wasn't there at dinner time, when everyone met and ate and told stories. He wasn't there at bedtime, when they slept in netting to keep out the flies and mosquitoes. Finally, he came back to Masyin, looking tired and hungry.

"Masyin," he said, barely able to force out the words. "Give me a hint. Why does the sun rise in the morning?"

The priest spoke kindly. "Tonight, climb the highest treetop, and watch the stars. Really watch them. Tomorrow morning, tell me what you find."

The next morning, Kayi burst through the door of Masyin's hut. "Masyin! The stars spin! They spin around, at the same rate. The sky is spinning! That's why the sun rises! The sun is attached to the sky, and the skin is spinning!"

Masyin didn't even look up from the jaguar he was whittling. "No," he said. "The sky is vast and endless. It does not spin."

"You're wrong!" shouted Kayi. "I stayed up all night, just like you said, and I saw it spinning! I don't care what you say!"

"So be it," said Masyin. "But if I were you, I would go out by the river, and think of what you saw. And when you think of an explanation where the sky doesn't spin, come back and tell it to me."

Three days later, Kayi came back. "The world is spinning. The sky stays where it is, and Pelagia spins."

"Yes," said Masyin, who was whittling a lizard now, out of teak wood. "That is why the sun rises each morning."

Kayi almost collapsed with relief. "Now I know!" he shouted gleefully. "I know why the sun rises!"

"In Arborvine, every child learns why the sun rises when they are five years old," said Masyin. "Now, answer the second question. Why are some stars brighter than others?"

Kayi just stared at him. "It would take forever to answer all those questions!"

Masyin nodded. "Yet we have many lifetimes. Each lifetime, we answer a few more, and we pass them down, as I pass them down to you, and when all the answers are found, then our garden will be complete."

Kayi looked at the old man with more respect. "That is our mission?"

"That is a part," said Masyin, and he handed Kayi the completed lizard. "Now go out tonight and watch the stars again. Watch especially the ones we call Mirun and Gavith. Watch them every night for the next month. At the end of the month, come back and tell me why some stars are brighter than others."

Kayi nodded. "I, too, will help build this garden of answers." Then he went out to find a good tree from which to watch the stars.

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Scott Alexander
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Re: The first facet of joy

Post by Scott Alexander »

The third facet of joy was words.

Kayi learned the reason some stars were brighter than others, and many more things besides. Masyin took to asking riddles of all the children, and soon their little village in the jungle was talking of nothing else. Kayi knew why the sun set at daytime, but Endr knew where clouds came from, and Zate knew what made people get sick. Even big, slow Dren figured out, with time and a great deal of Masyin's careful prodding, why it snowed on the mountains but not in the jungles.

Masyin took to teaching the children how to make things. First they made simple things, like spears and slings. Then, when Silisy asked what the moon was made of, he went off for several days and came back with all the materials needed to make glass lenses. They began to make telescopes, microscopes, periscopes, and other toys.

At sunrise, most of the children would meet in front of Masyin's tent and discuss everything they had done and learned the night before. At first, Masyin would object. "If the clouds are really the seeds of gigantic trees, blown about on the wind, then how do they make rain? And where are these trees, anyway?". Later, the children began to get into the same spirit, shooting down each other's ideas. Masyin would remain silent, rarely endorsing or attacking the conclusion.

But when everyone was done talking, he would sing. His songs were ancient and epic. There were songs of Authi Kalirion, the man who was raised by ice bears, and of Kadham Ragum, the unspeakably ancient priest who had bargained with a volcano. Other songs were newer: songs about Omi Oitherion, who had remade the world, and Eith Korphorin, who had led his people into the Garden. Kayi reflected often on the last story, because it included the name Liuj Dreyevin, and he wondered why a man in a story would have the same name as the high priest of Raknumve, the man who had given him his parasol a blessing.

One day, Masyin refused to sing, requesting instead that his charges sing stories of their own. At first, everyone was taken aback, but finally, Endr sang a short and halting song of the time he and Dren had fought off a tribe of monkeys trying to encroach on their land. Masyin nodded his approval. The next night, Silisy sang a song she had written, and soon the group had its own lore of poetry and music.

Only one thing clouded Kayi's happiness during these months. One morning Silisy, with all the silliness of a young girl, declared she would marry the boy who brought her whatever was most beautiful. All the boys of the jungle, and even some of the girls, set out looking for beautiful objects. A few came back with feathers, more with flowers, even a few with precious stones they had found here or there.

When Kayi's turn came, he recited the Passage of Memory from the Book of Two Stars.

Silisy laughed, and gave a kiss to Venn, who had brought her a green-and-red butterfly. But Masyin, who had watched the affair, came up to Kayi, his face a mask.

"That was from the Book of Two Stars. Why did you choose it?"

Kayi thought. "Because butterflies and flowers and feathers are beautiful, and the Garden is overflowing with beauty, but to me, words are the most beautiful things of all."

Then Masyin sighed. "You could have been a greendiver, Kayi, the greatest of greendivers. But it is not to be. Whether tomorrow or ten years hence, your destiny lies in the whitelands."

"I don't understand. Is this a punishment?"

"No. But here we live the life of things, of tree and seed and flower. To those who prefer words to things, whose minds are built for the abstract and symbolic, the Garden, however lush, will eventually become a prison. Your mind is so built, and to garden a mind like yours I must plant it in the soils of the plateaux. Run off, and enjoy what time here you have left. Soon, I will take you to Arborvine."

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Scott Alexander
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Re: The first facet of joy

Post by Scott Alexander »

The fourth facet of joy was adventure.

Zate and Silisy got into an argument over rivers. Zate thought that the Phare-su, the big river a few days' walk to the east, must come from Arborvine, since there was a river of that name in Arborvine in the stories.

Silisy thought that was silly, because Arborvine was in stories and the river was real.

When Masyin heard the argument, he declared that they would find out.

And so Masyin and the eleven children packed bags and set off east for the Phare-su.

The great river was the furthest any of them had ever wandered, but now they tacked north along its banks. By night they traveled, and during the day, they dug shelters into the soft soil, or made lean-tos against the rocks.

Eight days out of Raknumve, they were attacked. It came so quickly that only reflex saved them, but reflexes they had a plenty. Kayi was the first to collapse his parasol into a staff, and flung it against the unseen enemy; after a few seconds, the others followed. Parasol clanged against parasol; shout responded to shout. Masyin stood, watching, as if he had only a mild interest in the proceedings.

Finally, Masyin shouted, in a tone of absolute command: STOP. And he took out a whistle from his pocket, and sounded it, a noise louder than any this jungle had heard before.

Everything stopped.

In among the children of Raknumve stood eight other children of about the same age. Their clothes were woven of the big reeds that grew on the banks of the Phare-su, and they wore jewelery of macaw feathers.

"You're in our territory," said one of the new children, a girl. "Get out."

Masyin stooped, until his face was of a level with the girl. She looked about fifteen or sixteen. "And who are you?"

"I am Nixite Karulion. We're from Caravelsail, but now we live here, by the big river. You're in our land. Get out."

"Listen, Nixite," said Masyin, and his voice was not harsh. "This is Galinomai, the Garden of the Gods. All those who keep the way of the bear and quetzal are welcome to it. As easy to own the Garden as to own the stars in the sky, or the waves on the sea."

"Don't care," said Nixite. "In Caravelsail, our street collapsed. Our parents died. We were at school at the time. They wanted us to stay there, get new parents. We said no. We ran down into the jungle and became greendivers. Now this is our place. You can't make us go back."

"We, too, are greendivers," said Masyin. "And we greendivers have to stick together, don't we? If greendiver fights against greendiver, and mark a territory, then we trade the freedom of the open jungle for whatever small patch we call our own. Then we become no better than the whitelanders, imprisoned on their mountains."

He spoke to her as an equal, adult to adult, and maybe this was what moved her. "All right," she said. "You can cross our land."

"Your people have much to learn," said Masyin. "We are headed for Arborvine. Come with us."

The girl shook her head violently. "This is our spot. No one can make us go back to the cities."

"All right," said Masyin. "Then we want to stay here with you."

"No," said the girl. A few of her people nodded their heads, or gave angry shouts of agreement.

"You had the element of surprise," said Masyin, "but my charges here were about to beat you bloody if I hadn't intervened. You don't know how to fight."

"We fight just fine!" said one of the boys.

"Is that so?" asked Masyin. "I would fight you, then."

"Me?" asked the boy who had spoken up.

"No," said Masyin. "All eight of you." He gestured at his own children. "You. Out. I would like to show the sons and daughers of Caravelsail something."

It was not a side of Masyin that Kayi and the others had ever seen before. They retreated a safe distance.

The boy who had spoken up before, hoping to get the element of surprise, charged at Masyin.

Masyin's parasol parried, riposted, and knocked him to the ground.

Then all eight of the children came at him. Masyin, standing relaxed, barely even moved. Just a constant stream of swift, efficient, almost effortless strokes that knocked down any who came within his range. After three minutes, a good number of bruised limbs, and no one so much as touching Masyin, the old greendiver held up his hand. The bout stopped.

"I and my charges will stay with you. I will teach you how to fight, and many other things besides. Then those of you who wish will come with us to Arborvine."

For three weeks, the expedition stayed there by the banks of Phare-su, and Masyin taught them how to fight. Kayi had fought the older children many times, usually in play, sometimes otherwise, and had considered himself skilled, but Masyin knew an art on an entirely different level from any skills Kayi had managed to pick up. It was not something he had ever expected to be taught, and he began to wonder what other arts there might be, lurking unknown to him, and where else he might be too ignorant even to realize his ignorance.

At the end of the third week, Endr, the oldest of the Raknumve boys, disappeared. The same day, Nixite also went missing. The children were in a panic, but Masyin would not join in the search. At sunrise, as they retired to their shelters, all the talk was of what disaster might have befallen them. Tigers, jaguars, the talons of monstrous birds who had carried them off to the tops of mountains.

Masyin just laughed. "If I judge right, they have found the final facet of joy. They will return to us, but not soon. Let them have their time alone."

Kayi slept fitfully that night, imagining the final facet of joy. A mythical creature, to carry people off? A magic portal? Ascending to a higher plane?

He remembered his parents words, that he should not return to Raknumve until he had discovered all the facets of joy. If the final facet of joy was here to be found, in the overgrown banks of the Phare-su, perhaps it was closer than he had thought. Perhaps one day, he would wander from the path and find it, gleaming in the foliage, and return with it to Raknumve in triumph.

The next morning, by mutual unspoken agreement, the expedition left the Caravelsail childrens' village. With Nixite gone, all seven of the remaining Caravelsail children decided to journey with them, to see the Holy Mountain with their own eyes. Their numbers swollen to seventeen, they said goodbye to the camp that had sheltered them for almost a month, and continued upstream.

After another week along the Phare-su, an impossibly large block of stone rose before them, shrouded in clouds. The place of legends. Arborvine.

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Scott Alexander
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Re: The first facet of joy

Post by Scott Alexander »

(So, this story's going to take a bit of a left turn. I'm setting this about twenty-five or thirty years before the events of Dreameries of Oceanfree, which makes it sort of unstuck in time considering the earlier parts were set earlier, but whatever.)

The fifth facet of joy was purpose.

The other greendivers returned home after a few frantic weeks, but Kayi, in accordance with his destiny, stayed in Arborvine.

A century's frantic flowering had come and gone, leaving the plateau-city beautiful but stagnant. Whole neighborhoods were empty and overgrown with green poppies, and whole streets had reverted to nature, full of ferns and mushrooms and strange lizards.

But the center of the city still bustled, and it was here that Kayi learned the arts and sciences of civilization. If Masyin's instruction had laid the foundations of a rational curiosity in the boy, the learning of Arborvine built vast soaring towers upon it.

From libraries of piled mica, Kayi learned the history of the old world, and the much shorter but more poignant history of the new. He learned medicine and metaphysics, philosophy and art. He brought his things into one of the abandoned houses, and supported himself off the mushrooms and fruits that grew everywhere, sleeping by day and studying by candlelight in the evening.

He began visiting the Temple of Truth, for instruction beyond what he could glean from books, and caught the eye of Astate Tuin, daughter of Kerite the old High Priestess. She took him on as a private pupil, and they talked philosophy. And as they circled all the old questions, eventually they reached the one that every thinker in Arborvine faced eventually: how does one build a civilization?

During the century of prosperity, there had been endless haggling over primacy between the sky-islands, whether Arborvine or Bellmaker or one of the others should rule, or whether there should be equality among everyone. Now, though, with all cities equally concerned with their own bare maintenance, and with the zip lines to Symboltrue and Caravelsail failing and not rebuilt, other questions took priority. Why did so many seek the greendiving, and abandon the civilized ways? What to do about the green poppies, which claimed more and more people every year? Temptation, that was the thing, and jockeying for power no longer held meaning when the power grew less and less every day.

There were those saying only force could hold the sky-islands together, that those trying to leave Arborvine for the jungles below should be shot on sight. That the poppies should be scoured from the earth, and the land salted so no more could grow. They said they were doing it in Bellmaker, holding the city together by whatever means they could.

And yet, Astate told Kayi, the ancients had no need for violence. They had held their civilization together through reason alone, by the almost supernatural ability to know what was right. They had some sort of logical calculus, and the Priests of Truth had spent the last century desperately trying to piece together what remnants they could. Here and there, they had found fragments of equations, or the hint of an important constant. What was lost was Kalas Elityin, a language designed by gods in which falsehoods could not be uttered. As long as there was no Kalas Elityin, there could be no certainty, no faith in the fundamental goodness of civilization.

Kayi spent three years in Arborvine training to become a Priest of Truth. As he trained, he watched his tutor Astate grow more and more frustrated, come closer and closer to losing hope in her own efforts and in the viability of Arborvine as a city and Galinomai as a nation.

He still remembered the day he found her in a dreamery, drinking from one of the green poppies. "Don't turn out like me, Kayi," she told him, but there was no conviction in her voice, and Kayi had the feeling that if he had asked why not, she would have shrugged, or said never mind.

In a way, that was scariest of all.

For some reason, the proper response seemed to be to vow a holy oath to search the world for the lost language of Kalas Elityin. Of all responses, he chose that one. And he left Arborvine a week later, the city having starting exuding a peculiar terror for him.

Somewhere, there was a language in which all that had happened made sense. Somewhere, there was a language in which one could explain why Galinomai should live, and not die. He would find it and learn it, and everything would be set right again.

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The raid on Bellmaker

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"Halt!" shouted the vebt, and three figures halted on the edge of the great plateau.

"Tlach it, he's got a gun," Kayi muttered. "I hate guns."

It had been five months since he left Arborvine in search of the lost language of Kalas Elityin. Three since Dren had joined him in the steamy jungles beneath Raknumve. One since Tave from the Phare-su clan had caught their tracks, confronted them, and been persuaded to join. Kayi was pleased. He had a party. All of the good adventurers had parties. When Arvi Stephken had traveled through time and space to restore peace to Nelaga in the old stories, the first thing he had done was collect a party of heroes, and he would do no less. Of course Dren was a bit overweight, and Tave was paranoid and not nearly as good-looking as the female heroes in the stories, but one took what one could get.

The more pressing problem was that he had no idea how Kalas Elityin might be found. He had hoped the libraries of the sky-islands could provide clues, maybe a lost volume that would explain the grammar or provide some hints, but after a week searching Caravel and Caravelsail, and even a few eerie days poking through the mostly haunted remnants of Oceanfree, he and his companions had to admit that even the most venerable historical texts there gave no more clues than any in Arborvine.

The oldest everything in the world, everyone agreed, was to be found in the lost city of Drachumphan, where all of civilization that survived the Second Apocalypse had been preserved. But it was pushing the boundaries of possibility that anything there would have survived, and Kayi wanted to follow any lead, any lead at all, before committing to make the Dark Passage in reverse chasing after texts that he would not find. And that was what brought him to Bellmaker.

Of all the sky-island-cities of Galinomai, Bellmaker had come out of the recent crisis either best or worst. Best, in that its civilization was mostly intact, its civic functions up and running. Worst, in that it had survived only by sacrificing its soul, turning into a tyranny permitting no one to leave the city. But the scholar Nemeire Oyen lived, or had lived there, and Astate had told Kayi that she was Galinomai's foremost expert on ancient languages.

And so, arming themselves appropriately, the three had set out to infiltrate Bellmaker. They waited until the heat of the day, when all right-thinking people would be asleep, and when the glare would be too bright to see anything at all, and they climbed the relatively forgiving eastern face of the sky-isle. They reached Oyen's house - or where Tuin said Oyen's house should have been - without incident. The house was in an abandoned district of the great city, and it was clear that Oyen had been dead for some time, for none of her effects were disturbed. Of things that might be useful to them, they found only a single book - Languages Ancient and Modern among the decaying furniture and moldering walls.

And as they tried to leave the plateau the way they game, the guard spotted them.

"Tlach it, he's got a gun," Kayi muttered. "I hate guns."

"Stand where you are with your hands up," said the vebd, her name a mockery of the ancient paladins. "You are under arrest for attempting to leave the Serene Republic of Bioly Mekerl."

"Put down the gun," said Kayi, "and I will fight you with the parastaff, as civilized people do."

The guard seemed to recognize from his accent and his bearing that the three weren't from the city, and her demeanor softened. "Look," she said, "I don't know what business you have in Bioly Mekerl...in Bellmaker...but you're forbidden to leave. It's the law. If you come with me, then I'll take you before the Priests of Joy this evening and we can get this all sorted out."

"I'm afraid not," said Kayi. "We're on a mission...no, a quest. The Priests of Joy cannot be trusted. Since Kalas Elityin was lost, they've strayed. They've become directionless. Join us!"

The guard almost rolled her eyes. "Please," she said. "Come with me. I don't want any trouble."

"Dragumve against darkness!" shouted Kayi, and before anyone could react he had jumped off the thousand meter high cliff, off the sky-island, and down through the mists to the jungle floor below.

"Dragumve against darkness!" echoed Dren and Tave, and they followed.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Five hours later, as evening fell, almost in a trance Melotye Korchin reached the bottom of neli-inlision Bioly Mekerl, of the sky-isle of Bellmaker. Charged with preventing Bellmakers from deserting, she had deserted herself. The look on the faces of the three young people who had jumped to their death that afternoon - jumped to their death rather than be caught by her - haunted her. At first she had only wanted to go down, look for their bodies, get some sort of closure, maybe bury them. Then she had realized that to go down to the jungle floor was illegal, the very sin she was there to prevent. And then she realized that she didn't care, that she had had enough of Bellmaker, that nowhere worth staying in had ever had to keep people from leaving. And so she had walked down the perilous path to the jungle, too numb to hear the screaming macaws or the hooting tamarinds, and started searching for the bodies. The bodies of the people she had killed.

"Ho!" came a voice. "I remember you! Come, join us and share our dinner!"

There, gathered around a roaring fire, were the three people she had met on the clifftop earlier that afternoon. Alive, well, and intact.

"You should have told us you were coming down!" said Tave. "We would have lent you a parachute."

"Wouldn't have worked," said Dren. "It was Masyin who trained us in BASE jumping. Said he wouldn't have us ending up like that ancient Shirerithian Kaiser who died of it, what was his name?"

"You're alive?" asked Melotye, still almost uncomprehending.

"We are," said Kayi. "Now come, look what we're doing. At great personal risk to our lives and limbs, we have stolen from your city this book, perhaps the only of its kind - the manuscript of Languages Ancient and Modern by Nemeire Oyen. And we have been looking through it by the light of our fire, searching for any reference to the greatest prize of all: the lost language of Kalas Elityin."

"I'm Melotye Korchin," she told them. "And, uh, sorry about before. And, uh, have you found it? The language, that is?"

"We have not," said Kayi. "Oyen-mai herself says that the language was lost with the Apocalypse, that even the Drachumvelin did not speak it. Omi Oitherion-nomai might have known it, but he is long since dead, or mad, or gone to where we cannot follow."

"Then you have reached a dead end," said Melotye, but it was intended as a question.

Kayi smiled. "Almost. Very almost. Yet there is one thing here which gives me hope, one possibility I cannot quite discount. Look at this map." He unfolded a page in the back of the book. It was a map of the world, one of the best, obviously copied off a map from the days when Drachumphan had still stood and the tarotl had explored and traded with all the countries of the world.

"What am I looking for?" Melotye asked.

"Here," said Kayi, and his finger pointed to a small landlocked plain between two rivers, shaded a dull white. "Look what it says."

Melotye's eyes went wide.

Kayi read Oyen's hand-scribbled notes aloud. "It says, 'This is the land of Those Who Shelter Words, about whom nothing is known.' And if there is a whole country of people who shelter words, who better to ask about a lost language? Where else would Kalas Elityin be waiting for us?"

Dren, Tave, and Melotye were caught in his spell now.

"It makes sense!" he insisted. "That is where we must go. We must cross the Mountains Beyond Mountains, and the unknown lands to the south, and reach the sea, and sail across it to the land marked Kalaspira, and then head inland along this river, until we reach Those Who Shelter Words. That is our quest!"

Melotye sighed. "I can't go back to Bellmaker," she said. "I'd be arrested. And you're obviously insane. But if you can survive jumping off a neli-inlis, you're probably good people to hang around with."

Kayi stood up and did a little dance. And to no one in particular, he exclaimed: "Melotye Korchin has joined your party!"

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Scott Alexander
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A sign of things to come

Post by Scott Alexander »

"You know," Dren said to Sjayi, "back in the sky-islands, everyone said Venzibiankoth was the future, the new frontier of Galinomai civilization. But I've been up here three weeks now, and all I've seen are llama farms and mining camps."

"Alpacas," corrected Sjayi.

"Excuse me?"

"Llamas bigger, with coarser coat. You see alpaca farms. We have llama farms too. More west, near Grisumve. But not here."

Kayi, Dren, Tave, and Melotye had been traveling with Sjayi three weeks, and they still hadn't figured out whether he spoke with some new accent from a remote corner of the mountains or was just too laconic to form words and sentences correctly. Surely the generation or two since Venzibiankoth was first settled was too short for entirely new speech patterns for form, wasn't it?

"Also, guanacos, east of Brokolve," he added. "Guanacos big, fiercer than llamas. Too angry, angry every day. Sjayi's family try raise guanacos, but useless. Killed and ate them all. Not even taste good."

They'd hired him in Sorolve. Even Kayi's recklessness hadn't been quite reckless enough to try to cross the Mountains Beyond Mountains without a local guide. Sjayi, for his part, had jumped at the opportunity to attempt a full crossing of the plateau: practically no one, he said, ever went as far as Antanave, and he'd never heard of anyone but a few explorers back in the days of Arborvine's glory actually reaching the lowlands on the other side. He'd taken out a few maps and sketched them a route across several ridges and endorrheic basins, hitting the mines and alpaca farms often enough to replenish supplies but not so often as to slow them down. Then he had demanded a price which was outrageous, but not as outrageous as the price Kayi had gotten for the trade goods he had hauled in from Caravel. When they shook hands to seal the deal, Kayi had done a little dance and exclaimed "Sjayi of Venzibiankoth has joined your party!", much to the amusement of the others.

"Dren's right," complained Melotye, who had taken to life in the wilds with vigor. "I wasn't expecting a second Bellmaker, but you guys barely have any towns at all."

Sjayi shrugged. "Have Adratil."

"Adratil," scoffed Melotye. "Capital of the mountains. There were what, five hundred people there? At most? Even some of the llama farms were bigger."

"Alpaca farms," corrected Sjayi.

Image
Adratil, so-called "capital" of the Mountains Beyond Mountains


"I'm tired of alpaca farms and tiny camps," said Melotye. "I can't wait until we cross the sea and discover great civilizations. This place is hopeless."

"Not hopeless," said Sjayi. "I take you to great city. Only few days from this place."

"A great city?" asked Kayi, his ears perking up. He'd never heard of any cities in these mountains besides Adratil, the small frontier town where the alpaca farmers went to trade their wool. In these days of decline, even Adratil was only a dusty outpost.

"The great city," repeated Sjayi. "Near this place."

The next few days seemed to pass more quickly, as the promise of civilization lured them on. But the land seemed to grow barrener and more desolate as they proceeded. No plants grew at these altitudes, and the naked stone threw up dust that attacked their lungs, already starved of oxygen. The passes on Sjayi's maps were frequently blocked by landslides, and they would have to spend a whole day laboriously retracing their route and finding other ways through the mountains.

One day, the beginning of the fourth week since they had left Sorolve, they reached the top of a particularly high ridge and looked down into the barren valley below. There stretched a lake, fed by streams that never found the sea. Perfectly still, perfectly lifeless, unseen by human or animal eyes since the world was remade.

Image
The lake in the mountains


"The great city," said Sjayi, and he pointed to the lake.

Kayi's eyes followed the guide's fingers. He traced the shoreline of the eerie lake, but there was not a sign of human habitation. At this altitude, even the alpaca farmers were gone. The lake was as unpeopled as the bottom of the sea.

"I don't see it," he said.

"Not on shore of lake. Look into lake."

Suddenly, Kayi saw the great city.

It was reflected in the water, a beautiful city of monumental white buildings and stately towers, bigger than Arborvine or Bellmaker. Tall, willowy people thronged its narrow streets, some walking, some riding llamas or stranger beasts, all dressed in warm woolen clothing.

There was no origin to the reflection. It was an image without a source, a copy without an original. The four of them - Kayi, Dren, Tave, Melotye - stared at Sjayi, waiting for an explanation.

"Sign of things to come," said Sjayi. "One day, here is great city. Usually, build city, then see reflection. By gift of Anarokai and Aternomai, here other way round. See reflection, later build city."

"It's...beautiful," said Tave, who was uncharacteristically fascinated by the vision.

"Name of city is Mirror" said Sjayi.

"When we return," said Kayi, "bearing Kalas Elityin, we must build Mirror."

"And live here for the rest of our lives?" asked Melotye. "Sacred truth and beauty, I'd rather be a llama farmer."

"No llamas for any of us," said Sjayi. "When we return, be rich and famous. No need farm llamas..."

Kayi nodded.

"...we farm vicuna," said Sjayi. "Excellent wool, fetch best price. Maybe I marry Melotye, she help me. Man with many vicuna irresistable to women. It is known."

"I don't think we sky-islanders work that way," Dren suggested.

"A sign of things to come," muttered Kayi, still staring at the ghost city. "A sign of things to come..."

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Scott Alexander
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Resurrected, living in a lighthouse

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The great wave caught the Tuinomai head-on, scooping up the tiny ship and sending it into the air. A sound of wood shattering joined the roar of the wind and the lash of the rain.

"We're going down!" yelled Dren, clutching to the mast for dear life. Melotye huddled by the stern, terrified, while Tave muttered curses to herself and Sjayi frantically tried to tie down the last few barrels of supplies that hadn't already gone over. For his part, Kayi just stood there in his makeshift captain's hat, looking more disappointed than anything as the ship slowly split in two.

They had been so hopeful as they climbed down the far side Venzibiankoth, their energy renewed after their vision in the city of Mirror. It had been only a week more to reach the coast, and there, armed with Kayi's books on shipbuilding and seamanship and Sjayi's inborn talent at anything practical, they had begun work on the Astate Tuinomai, the ship that would bring them across the great sea to the land of Those Who Shelter Words. Fortune had been kind to them, for preternaturally large trees had grown in those hills, and the trunk of a single one of those giants, hollowed out and rigged with simple sails, had been sufficient to comfortably transport the five of them and all their supplies.

The first week at sea had been tranquil. By day, they slept beneath thick blankets of llama wool to protect them from the sun; by night, they navigated by the stars, quickly putting great chunks of distance between themselves and the Nerolean coast. The ocean formed a strait here, and it was less than a thousand miles to the island marked "Omega Complex" on Oyen's maps. At thirty or forty miles a day, they should be able to make the crossing in well under a month.

They had just begun to think they'd gotten the hang of this "seamanship" thing when the storm came. Hundreds of miles from any land in any direction, the Tuinomai gave the unmistakable sound of cracking apart, and the five of them - Kayi, Dren, Tave, Melotye, and Sjayi - found themselves clutching splinters of wood in a freezing churning ocean.

Impossibly, a light appeared ahead of them. In the fury of the storm, Kayi couldn't see where the light was or what was casting it; he could only see a light. And so he swam. He swam as he had swum in the Phare-su as a child, in the rivers of the Garden, but now he swam for his life.

It was not by his own effort, but by the force of a wave, that he was smashed against a rock. Briefly wincing in pain, he got to his feet, his torn and sopping clothes falling to pieces around him. He walked a few steps toward the light, then collapsed.

* * * * *

When he woke, he was wrapped up in warm blankets in a room. For a moment, he was disoriented and had no idea where he was. Then he awoke completely, and found he was still disoriented and had no idea where he was.

A few feet away from him slept Melotye, and a few feet further, Dren. There were two unoccupied blankets that must have once warmed Tave and Sjayi. They were no longer here. Where were they? Where was he?

He saw only one exit - a staircase. He followed it down, and came to a door. He opened the door.

A foot or two of sharp rocks, and then nothing but ocean, as far as the eye could see.

He looked up.

Above him towered a lighthouse. He was on a lighthouse on a rock in the middle of the ocean, hundreds of miles away from the nearest land. He remembered Oyen's map pretty well, and he was almost sure there was no lighthouse here.

He walked back inside, and climbed back up the staircase, and continued climbing until it ended. The top floor had several large windows, which gave a spectacular view of...ocean. And nothing else. He was truly in the middle of the ocean, where no lighthouse should rightly be.

Three people were in the room. Two of them were Tave and Sjayi. The third was a very old man.

"And you are Kayi," he said. "Truth and Beauty warm. Welcome to the Lighthouse."

He said it with a capital letter. You could tell.

"Where am I?" asked Kayi. "Who are you?"

"You're in a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean," said the old man. "I'm the Lighthouse Keeper."

"Oh, I see," said Kayi. "This is the part where you answer only in riddles, and I never get any straight answers to my questions, yet eventually I leave having learned some sort of indefinable wisdom. Is that it?"

"Yes," said the Lighthouse Keeper.

"Only I'm afraid it's not that easy. For example, I'm not leaving. There's no ship. Our ship got torn up in the storm."

"Of course there's a ship," said the old man. "There's always a ship. Look outside." And he pointed out one of the windows.

Tethered to the lighthouse was the most astounding boat Kayi had ever seen.

It was small but sleek, its sides made of a black metal that shone even through the water, and studded at irregular intervals shone luminescent portholes and figures of stained glass. From its stern jutted a beautiful tail, like of a fish, and its sails seemed to cascade in an inverted waterfall out of its mainmast, each decorated with celestial signs and figures. It was beyond the craftsmenship of men, even of the craftsmanship of the geniuses of the golden age of Arborvine. Kayi had never seen anything like it, never realized that there could be anything like it.

"What is it?" asked Kayi.

"It's your ship," said the Lighthouse Keeper. "The Dawn's Left Hand Extended Forward."

Image

"My boat? You're giving it to me? Why?"

"Because I'm the Lighthouse Keeper. It's my job to help people who are lost, to show them the way, to keep them safe. To be a safe haven. And the one who built that boat, the one for whom I keep this lighthouse, she has plans for you."

"And if I asked who that might be, I assume you'd give me a cryptic answer?"

The Lighthouse Keeper nodded. "Tonight, I'll show you and your crew how to sail her. She's stocked with supplies, so that shouldn't be a problem. Tomorrow morning, when your friends have completely recovered from their hypothermia, you can set off."

"This is all very mysterious," said Kayi. "And I know you have to be cryptic, but, well, I demand a clue. A riddle, even. I'm within my rights to demand a riddle."

The Lighthouse Keeper thought for a while.

"I'm reincarnated Eith Korphorin," he said.

"What?" asked Kayi. "How can that be? You've been dead for..."

"One cryptic clue," said the Keeper. "No more."

Emir of Raspur

Re: The first facet of joy

Post by Emir of Raspur »

:yay:

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Scott Alexander
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Re: The first facet of joy

Post by Scott Alexander »

"I am the sustaining spirit," said Illuminë upon her grey-blue pedestal, "the green life of Pelagia." Sparks and wind whirled around her, lifting her bright red hair and forming it into intricate curlicues. "Darkness lay me low, Kayi, but it is the will of God that you have come here to save me."

The Dawn's Left Hand Extended Forward had sailed as smooth and true as its divine origin had suggested it would, and only three days from the supernatural lighthouse the crew had spotted the northern island of the Omega Complex. They had passed it in darkness, hoping to avoid any encounters or conflicts, but as the next day dawned, they came to the coast of Kalaspira itself, and here they had no choice but to pass through the Omega territory of Orion, where the great river that led to the land of Those Who Shelter Words drained into the sea. They had hoped to encounter as little Omegan civilization as possible, but those hopes proved vain. At the very mouth of the river stood a city of tall steel and glass towers.

Along the banks of the river stomped mechanical men, carrying loads of all sorts of goods from building to building. Before the crew could quite overcome their astonishment at these creations, a gaggle of laughing children - human, this time - ran up to the boat and started shouting. "Who are you?" they shouted in comprehensible language, and "Welcome!", and "Hello!" and "We must bring you to Illuminë". Tave frowned and retreated to the lower decks, but Sjayi found them adorable, and began shouting back at them in Galisyin. When they had been only fifteen minutes in the river, a band of gaily uniformed men appeared beside them in a riverboat and told them they must do them the honor of meeting the city's leader, who could tell them more about these lands and help them in their mission. Though Tave and Dren would much rather have continued upstream, Kayi, Sjayi, and Melotye voted to investigate this city, the most beautiful they had ever seen.

They docked the boat in a marina, and the uniformed men led them across the wide, nearly-empty boulevards between row after row of shining glass buildings. Inside some were gardens; in others great libraries, and still more seemed to be mansions, where whole extended families lived in towers that stretched to the sky.

"Not Arborvine, nor Drachumve, nor even Sxiroheim in all its glory could have been like this," Kayi whispered, and the others were less eloquent but equally bedazzled.

In the center of the city stood a smaller building of three or four stories, a round colonnaded central hall of white marble crowned with a great gold dome. It was here that they were led, Kayi no less resplendant than the temple in his captain's uniform from the Dawn's Left Hand, Dren in navigators' garb with the ship's spyglass, the women in formal dresses found in the ship's wardrobe, and Sjayi, eschewing all the finery on board their magic vessel, dressed in his tunic of alpaca wool.

The woman in the center of the temple outshone them all. Her pure white tunic seemed to be made of the very stars, and her long red hair made elaborate curlicues in the whirlwind that surrounded her.

"My name is Illuminë," she told them. "I am the sustaining spirit, the green life of Pelagia."

They stood, bedazzled, by the goddess of the Omegans.

"I honor you, Kayi Dren Tave Melotye Sjayi, for your crossing of the mountains and the sea. For the mountains are high, and the sea is full of monsters, yet you have done what no other has done in many decades and crossed between the continents."

"Don't think we saw any sea monsters," said Melotye.

"Oh, but you did," said Illuminë. "One of them has taken an interest in you. The most terrible of all who dwell beneath the waves, for she can take the form of a human, and appears fair, and humans serve her without knowing why."

Kayi thought of the Lighthouse Keeper, who had claimed to be the resurrected Eith Korphorin.

"It is my rede to sustain Pelagia and protect its people. But the queen of the sea monsters grew jealous of me, and tried to kill me, and it was only the Omegans who offered me refuge. And so only the Omega Complex survives, while all the societies around grow decadent and fall. Galinomai too is falling, for lack of me."

"What...what can I do?" asked Kayi.

"This city is called Mintaka, the jewel in Orion's Belt. It was once where the Omegans trained their healers. Now it is the only oasis of health in a sick world, but a curse is upon it, Kayi. The curse is that by the will of the Queen of the Sea Monsters, I may not leave this city. Yet her power over you is...lessened. I need you to hide me, to bear me hidden out of this city, so I can sustain Pelagia once again."

...and around this moment, Dren felt the ship's spyglass grow warm in his hand, and while Kayi and Illuminë were distracted with each other, he looked out the window through the spyglass.

Desolation. A formless, endless plain of rock and dust, underneath a sickly sun. At intervals, huge machines drilled into the earth and spewed out black smoke. There was no city except the building in which they stood. There was no sign of human life.

Dren put down the spyglass and saw a city of sunny towers and laughing children again.

Dren picked up the spyglass and again saw a plain of death and desolation.

Dren put down the spyglass, and the sunny towers and laughing children came back. He wondered if he could look at Illuminë through the spyglass, and the obvious answer was "Not without her wondering what was going on." And the second obvious answer was "Not unless I want to see something terrible."

He coughed, and scratched his right ear furiously.

During their time with Masyin, the greendivers had learned a series of hand signals. Some of them had been their mentors'. Others they had developed on their own. The one he was using now meant "hidden danger".

Kayi looked at him, and gave no sign, but turned back to Illuminë. "Of course we will bear you hidden out of the city," he said. "How can we help?"

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Re: The first facet of joy

Post by Scott Alexander »

The ship Dawn's Left Hand Extended Forward. An hour outside of the phantom city of Mintaka. Kayi sat in the captain's chair, shaken but still with his trademark confidence.

"Apples are bad luck," Melotye told him. "That's why words with an 'm' in them are unlucky."

"Apples are bad luck," agreed Sjayi. "It is known."

"Golden apples especially so," said Melotye. "The worst luck of all."

The mysterious ship sailed on, upstream, without a captain or navigator. There were only empty grasslands here, outside the Omegan borders.

"She offered me the apple," said Kayi. "She told me that taking it would save Pelagia. And she was a goddess. What was I going to do? Say no?"

"I told you there was danger!" Dren yelled at him. "I gave you the hand signal! I saw it through the spyglass!"

After they had gotten safely back on the boat, with a cursed magic apple apparently in Kayi's stomach, they had all taken turns looking through the ship's spyglass. They had all seen the other Mintaka - the dusty, blasted plain broken only by wicked-looking many bladed machines.

It could have been the beautiful city of parks and boulevards that was real, and the spyglass that showed a false vision. But in their hearts, none of them really believed it.

"Look, it's been two hours," said Kayi. "Two hours since Illuminë asked me to save her by eating the apple that contained her seed and bringing it outside the prison that the...other goddess built for her. And I feel fine."

Truth be told, he did. If there was any seed planted inside him, it was staying silent. And by now they were well outside of Mintaka, and the spyglass showed green fields identical to the ones seen by the naked eye. If Illuminë had some plot, it was more complicated than bursting out of Kayi's stomach the moment they left the city.

"What I don't get," said Dren, "is what the gods are playing at here."

"What do you mean?" asked Melotye. "The sea goddess wants Illuminë locked up. Illuminë wants to escape. Seems pretty simple to me."

"That's because you're human," said Dren. "When the sea goddess...Kirenomai, Sjayi calls her...when Kirenomai saved us from that storm, and gave us this magic boat, she knew where we were headed. Why didn't she stop us? Why did she send us directly into the jaws of an enemy who could use us to escape."

"For that matter," said Kayi, "if Kirenomai is so powerful, why doesn't she kill us now? We're on board her ship. She's a goddess. She can't not know that Illuminë planted her seed inside of me. She must know Illuminë's plan to escape, and be confident she can circumvent it."

"But if we can figure that out," said Dren, "then Illuminë, who's a goddess, certainly can figure it out. And if she knows Kirenomai can circumvent her plan, why is she even planning?"

"My head hurts," said Kayi.

"In 'talking about complicated things' way, or in 'demon god about to burst out of it' way?" asked Sjayi.

"The first one," Kayi answered dryly.

"I go to other side of room anyway," said Sjayi. "Cannot be too careful."

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Scott Alexander
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Re: The first facet of joy

Post by Scott Alexander »

It's come to my attention that I'm not even trying anymore to make this comprehensible.

Basically, after their ship sunk in the ocean, Kayi and his party were rescued by a mysterious lighthouse keeper who claims to be resurrected Eith Korphorin, and who is transparently working for Stella Maris aka the deified Maria Morimoto.

She provided the party with a new, techno-magical ship, and they sailed to the old Omega Complex. The Omegans destroyed themselves by creating an AI that achieved godhood, rebelled, and gained mastery over their civilization. Stella Maris used her own, greater divine powers to trap the fledgling god in the Omegan city of Mintaka for all time.

When Kayi sailed through Mintaka, the AI appeared to him in the form of a goddess named Illumine in what looked like a beautiful utopian city. The goddess begged him to eat a magic apple containing her essence, and so help her slip out of Stella Maris' prison. Kayi, who was sort of cornered, agreed. But by using the spyglass on board Stella Maris' magic ship, Dren discovered that the city was actually an illusion overlying a dystopian nightmare world.

After having ingested Illumine's essence, Kayi is sailing down toward his goal, Those Who Shelter Words. He's not sure what it means to have Illumine's essence inside of him, whether Stella Maris knows what's going on, or, if she does, why she is letting him live.

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ari
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Re: The first facet of joy

Post by ari »

Woah, I managed to miss these last few updates somehow. Yeah, it *is* kiiinda incomprehensible. But it is also cool, and I am looking forward to what happens if an Apple Computer ends up somewhere ridiculously high-magic.
Lord Furniture
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Scott Alexander
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Re: The first facet of joy

Post by Scott Alexander »

I've lost interest in this story, so I'm going to tie it up quietly.

They reach the land of Those Who Shelter Words. Its society has decayed and the golems have gone rogue and taken over most of the cities. The only surviving civilization is in a castle in the old capital, where the last king, his family, and his court still live.

Those Who Shelter Words deny any knowledge of Kalas Elityin, and admit that they have lost most of their own words, previously the source of their magic. The last person to know many words is the King's daughter, the Sorceress, who stays in her library and does not interact with anyone.

Kayi studies the TWSW language and magic system, and begins to see patterns. Using the patterns, he is able to do something that no TWSWan has ever done before: figure out new branch words solely through analysis of the roots. This seems so natural to him that he only begins to question the ability when his friends tell him they can't follow his logic. They conclude that the ability to master TWSW magic must originate from the seed of Illumine he absorbed into his mind.

Kayi continues his project and becomes more powerful than any TWSW mage in recorded history. But his power seems to drive him mad, and he begins to take control of the rogue golems and turn them into an unstoppable army. His friends become more and more convinced that his native personality has been consumed by Illumine.

The genius of her plan becomes apparent. The native magic of the telluric pockets seems to be linked to Maria in some way, but it is outside Maria's direct control; by claiming the telluric magic for herself, Illumine uses Maria's power against her. Their fears are confirmed when Kayi announces his plan to use the golem army to invade Mevwan, another statelet with tellurics that permit magic. With the magic of Mevwan and TWSW at her back, Illumine would be in a strong position to fight Maria.

However, the TWSWans refuse to let their golems be used for aggression. The pitiful remnants of their army confront Kayi without success. Finally, the Sorceress comes out of her study and attacks him. She fights him to a stalemate, and the seed that Maria secretly planted in Kayi unfolds, making him fall violently in love with the Sorceress. He ends the standoff by telling her her True Name, a Galisyin phrase meaning "the final facet of joy", and then manages to regain enough control of himself to dismiss the golem army.

The last few TWSWans decide to abandon their crumbling castle and head to Myee Seyee. Kayi, his friends, and the Sorceress return to Galinomai on their magic boat.

Kayi returns to his parents' home of Raknumve, announcing he has found the final facet of joy, love, the original precondition under which he would be allowed to return. The monks of Raknumve explain the monastery's policy against lustfulness, under which only married couples are allowed to live in the monastery. He and the Sorceress settle down there. Sjayi and Melotye return to Sjayi's home in the Mountains Beyond Mountains, and Dren and Tave go to explore the other monasteries.

Kayi reunites with his parents, but expresses sadness that he was unable to find Kalas Elityin, which apparently is truly lost from the world. His parents inform him that the entire purpose of Raknumve and the other monasteries is to re-create Kalas Elityin from first principles. Kayi and the Sorceress devote themselves to this study, with Kayi hoping that the same enhancements to his brain which allowed him to decipher the pattern of the TWSW language will allow him to make progress here.

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