ꙮ The Liminal Library. It feels nice to, wherever you go and no matter whose living room you’re inhabiting for the time being, have a space you can duck into that’s yours entirely, doesn’t it? Not that your three new friends have been anything other than good hosts - but to have your own space, wherever you go. Who’s taking a break in the Library, and whereabouts are you?
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- Yazhn Ravhi, the Hierophant
Scene Archives
← Active ScenesA Room With A Remarkably Specific Purpose
#awoken
#saint
sits on the floor in her atelier, near the window, a shallow ceramic dish in her lap, a spindle dancing within the dish, expertly feeding wool to it with one hand, maintaining even speed by keeping the spindle turning with her other hand. She’s humming tunelessly, occasionally pausing to wind her newly-spun thread along the shaft and to lift her face up to the Centrelight’s warmth.
raps his knuckles on the door and lets himself in without waiting for an answer. He carries a small plate with little cakes on it- white with blue specks, topped with a dark purple buttercream frosting. He’s in his usual outfit this time- laced with irrica, half-cuffed with style. No bottles on the belt or garland, however.
: “Hello, Salme! When was the last time you had a snack?”
doesn’t lose focus—she’s done this too often for that—but she does say, “probably too long” as she spins the hank of wool in her hand. She completes this draw, sets the spindle aside, and looks up at him. “Did you bring me a snack?” smiling.
takes that as an invitation to swoop forward- which he does, silkly, silently, and smoothly. “Sure did! Vanilla with starlight sparkles, and a dollop of space creame icing on top.” He presents the plate to her.
blinks. “Did you make this? Or did you find it?” She doesn’t wait for him to answer. She grabs a cake and takes a bite. She really was a little hungry, she realizes.
: “Ahh, this one I made, as preparation!” (It’s vanilla cake with oxberry tones and an icing that practically melts once it’s in your mouth.)
(oxberry is basically blueberry. they're blue and are shaped like an ox's head when ripe.)
: “You really are full of surprises. I didn’t realize you were an accomplished baker as well.” She takes another bite of the cake, savoring, imagining, for a moment, what he must’ve looked like baking such things, and smiles a bit more. “Thank you. Is there a reason for the space theme?”
: “Sure is!” He dramatically swoops a hand skyward. “In stark contrast to the radiance of the Centrelight, I have plans to gaze into the forever darkness through the telescope within the Liminal Library. We’re just about prepared!”
perks up. “Oh. That sounds fascinating.” She finishes her cake with a decisive bite, then licks the icing off her fingers. “Do you have room for another? I’ve been … curious. About what we might be able to see.” She blinks. “Also who is ‘we’?”
: “The one who flies through the liminal space, themselves! Come, come.” He takes her hand in one of his own, still holding the plate with his other, and he begins to make for the door. He’s insistent!
follows easily, but she always does. For him at least. (Most of the time)
leads her from the weaving room through the door that leads deeper into the Witnessed Annex. (He named it, just now.) He heads for the large domed room- the observatory.
mouths ‘Witnessed Annex’ but doesn’t say anything.
ꙮ The four-way hallway with its soft, pleasant carpet, and then a door into the observatory - cool stone floor, exquisitely polished, lapis inlaid with gold. A preposterously complex mechanism sits in the centre of the room, set into the floor somewhat - it looks, somehow, like it’s independent of the floor itself, built into an enormous gimbal-frame that’s built into the room, and freely rotating within it, with an observation platform on the telescope mechanism itself that could certainly seat two people, if they weren’t afraid to get cozy.
: “And…” He advances to the other side of the frame, pulling a small desk from behind it. On the desk is paper, a refilling pen, and a bird stand.
: “Jory!” he calls out.
: “Jory?”
ꙮ The Liminal Librarian suddenly comes tearing ass through the open hall doorway to perch on the bird stand in hopeful expectation of either receiving Treats of some variety, or of witnessing something cool happening. Probably both? He caws amiably at Salme.
: “Hey buddy!” He holds out one of the small cakes to the bird. “We need your help taking notes!”
: “Can he take notes?” He probably can?
ꙮ He looks like he would be more interested in a SECRET scrawled on some of that PAPER but the cake is something novel so he’s interested enough to snoofle at it and catalogue its particularities.
is sort of weak to Jory in particular, so she goes over and scribbles a SECRET on the PAPER, and offers the scrap to him.
nods toward the paper, because there’s one thing (now two things) written on it.
"Right Ascension 04h 30m 53s Declination +21° 41’ 20” Magnitude 1.30."
is careful just to scribble a very rough note at the very bottom, so as to not mess things up too much. “What does this writing mean, Sininen?”
ꙮ Jory gobbles up the paper scrap with Salme’s secret, and a companion star of another world entirely - or just Salme’s secret, it’s unclear - and seems satisfied with that and makes contented bird noises.
clarifies that it was just her secret.
: “The telescope’s kind of hard to aim. Everything seems just so far away from each other. So… there’s all these gauges and markers inside the viewport. With a little fiddling you can see what you once saw again, provided you aim it just like how it’s written there.”
: “I mean… I could explain it, but if you get your hands on it and start turning it, it makes sense.” He pauses. “Or, well, it does to me.”
laughs a little. “Well. We’ll see if I can make any sense of it. I always learned best by doing anyway.”
: “Anyway. I figured with eyes in the scope, it’d be kind of hard to write at the same time.”
: “What if something is moving out there? I’d hate to lose track of it!”
: “I can also take notes. Or simply remember for you.” She looks at Jory, contentedly ruffled up. “He’s doing pretty good to be able to move around folios. I’m not sure about his note-taking prowess.”
leans over and kisses Salme on the cheek. “I knew I could count on you!” He then nods to Jory. “Looks like you’ll get to relax and eat up any findings, yeah?”
gathers up the paper and the pen. “I am going to sit beside you though.” She certainly isn’t afraid of getting cozy.
ꙮ Jory chirps, and watches with interest, even if he’s NOT being tasked with note-taking.
: “I wouldn’t have it any other way!” He hops into the seat and holds out a hand to help her up.
takes his hand, even though she doesn’t really need to, and settles in next to him.
: “The tricky part, is figuring out where to look, because it’s just… everything!”
: “Fortunately, I have an idea.”
ꙮ Stars in every direction you look, it’s true.
: “Some things… we just feel. We intuit. We glance up, and look for them, and they’re there.”
nods thoughtfully, and grabs his hand to squeeze it. “Yes. That makes sense.”
: “The constellations. The Golden Lion. The Beating Heart. The Lantern-and-Eye. The Soldier-and-Brother. The Duelist’s Mask.”
looks to the dome, and looks for the constellations.
ꙮ The thing about the constellations is that anyone, from any world, has seen the patterns in the stars before, in anything that the eye could look at and find patterns in - they’re in clouds, in whorls of smoke, in patterns of leaves dancing in the wind. And, more than anywhere else, in the stars, and so your eyes are drawn to them - at least, those constellations that you can see, from your current vantage point. The dome of the observatory only covers some of the sky, and you can see the Soldier-and-Brother, the Fiend Engine, the Golden Lion, the Hollow Skull, sparkling jewels in heaven’s vault.
: “The Beast has a dark, starry sky, and so do we, here.”
: “It’s a stunning backdrop to the rock-bitten reds, brass pipes, and emblazoned flags.”
: “And it’s there where the constellations were also witnessed.”
: “So…”
: “In a place displaced from space, but conjoined in time…”
: “Should we be able to see ourselves, perfect porcelain and gold statues, just barely past the balcony?”
: “This is what we will attempt to discern first.”
gives him a small smile. “Clever. Let’s see what we can find out.”
puts an arm around her, and gives her a squeeze. “I’ve spent time studying the night sky on the Beast. I don’t have a full idea of every last twinkle’s location, but I think if we start with what we could see- The Constellations- and then the surrounding patterns around them, we might find similarities.” He tilts his head. “Or we won’t, and this is somewhere else entirely.”
: “It’ll be interesting either way!”
laughs. “That’s true. Do you want to start with a specific constellation? Of the ones we can see?”
nods. “Mm-hmm! Now, let me think…” He tries to recall which ones he’s seen in the Beast’s sky.
ꙮ From Queenstown, you can see them all, albeit with one or two trying to duck under the horizon at any one given time. That said, you’d spent time looking at the stars, you know their parallax and position relative to one another. You think that, wherever this is, it can’t be extremely far from the Beast, based on the way the constellations you can see look.
: “Let’s start with the Soldier-and-Brother and the Golden Lion. I think once we get both of them in perspective, we can figure out the degrees and bearings, somewhat.” He reaches to the side of the large telescope- there’s wheels with handles and levers and a few cranks- and starts turning one of them. They’re not in the direction the telescope’s pointing at, just yet.
: “Good choices.”
ꙮ That principle which observes lovers reaching out towards each other over an uncrossable gap; that principle which observes the powerless and the underestimated. Visible high in the night sky of the Beast, now, at this orientation relative to one another, and at that elevation, and between the two of them, that principle which observes impossible mechanisms and those who might construct them. With hours, and the right calculations and charts, you could determine your own position, relative to the Beast, if you knew your vantage point from that plane, if you knew the precise time and date – or, with an [Empyrean Intuition] you could not name or pinpoint if you tried, you know where the Beast would have to be. Lurking, just out of range of the viewing-dome’s available azimuth. [Take Half]
: “…ah.” He looks into the viewport, looks up at the dome, looks in the viewport, and clicks his tongue.
: “Salme.”
turns to look at her, biting his lower lip.
: “Yes?”
: “We reached the limit of casual observation.” His lip biting curls into a smile.
: “Oh no,” she says, bringing her hand up to cup his cheek. “Whatever shall we do, my love? Surely, the simplest course is to accept defeat and give up.”
is teasing, though. There’s absolutely no hint that she’s inclined to give up in her eyes.
: “It’s time to turn the universe around us.”
grins at him. “Let’s do it.”
leans forward through her hand to kiss her on her lips, and just as quick as he does, he hops down. “I’ve got a pretty good hunch that if the Beast is out there, it’s just out of our scope’s reach.”
ꙮ Certain controls catch your eye that had, previously, been mysterious, seemed inert. Crystalline structures where one might place one’s hands, within the gimbal-armature.
: “I’ve not yet taken the time to tinker with all the controls, however! So let’s pull some levers and have some fun…” He pauses.
: “Actually…”
: “That’s a good idea…”
: “Let’s have a bubble, to have four eyes, two heads on it, at the same time.”
scrambles back up, settling back into a snug seating with Salme.
: “You mean methexis?”
: “Methinks so, yes!”
is already reaching out to touch him, tendrils of flourishing magic drawing him in. She doesn’t have to kiss him to make the connection, but she does because she can.
acceps the connection, wholly and lovingly.
ꙮ You don’t have to, certainly, but it feels right. Where he leaves off, and you start, blur a little, and then a little more. You shine, in each others eyes, did you know that? Of course you knew that. Salme - for the moment, you see the stars with the Awoken’s eyes, the beautiful patterns they weave, the clarity of it all. Certainly not the first time the two of you have beheld the stars, together, but certainly a notable one.
catches her breath, seeing that, and yes, there is a blurring—he is threaded through her, every vein and artery, every heartbeat, all of it. The gift of seeing the stars as he does, though—that almost, briefly, brings her to tears. It might later, when she revisits the memory, but she has some sense of staying on topic.
stares close and deeply into her eyes, nearly holding his breath. “I’ll control the scope. I want you to look through it.”
: “I… I believe that you will know what to see.”
lets him, for one brief moment, see himself through her eyes—the fall of his hair and the way her fingers always wish to run through it, the clarity of his eyes, the way she’s fascinated by the cleverness of his hands, his tongue, his mind, the admiration, the trust, and also love—beloved, beloved, beloved, it echoes through her whenever she looks at him. And then she draws back and nods. “You can believe in me,” she says, certain that he can.
beams, supremely confident that they could witness the stitches in the universe if they so desired.
shares the tension in his forearms, the sensations of his fingers firmly gripping the crystalline controls. He will know when she sees. She will know when to stop, and he will.
ꙮ It’s Salme who notices the stars move. The tiniest, tiniest movement - the flutter of a leaf, an insect beginning to begin to decide to take flight - when the Awoken’s hands find the crystalline contacts.
shares the movement of the stars, matching it to the tension in his forearms and the sensations of his fingertips, bringing them into alignment.
ꙮ And then?
pushes forward on the controls. Either the dome will tilt, or the universe will.
wills the azimuth to dip lower. Enough to let them see.
ꙮ It is not, of course, the case that the entirety of the vault of heaven moves with your will. But it certainly feels that way - the stars shift, and turn, slowly, the viewing frustum indicated on the armillary sphere that’s part of the complex mechanism shifting, millimeter by millimeter. And the two of you, and the telescope itself, you remain perfectly still - but the entire room spins on its axis around you, and with it, the telescope’s reference azimuth shifts. ⁂
ꙮ Round, wreathed in burning gnosis and thick atmosphere, shards of metal and rock piercing through the skin at angles you recognise, haloed with six bright, close full moons, the Beast in all its glory. It looks almost small– but the Beast could never look small, could never be other than awesome in its bulk. At the same time, you feel like you could reach out and hold it in your hand, from here.
: “Awa. I see it.”
halts the controls, and carefully reaches over to the zoom crank.
tries to divine more details. Is it spheroid? How are the moons laid out? Are there dark parts, strange parts?
ꙮ Is there any part of it which is not dark and strange? Could there be? Sunlit, the ridges of rock and metal cast shadows deep as night in which bright-eyed fiends and monsters thrive.
ꙮ Vaguely, vaguely oblate, its moons laid out like a perfect little hemicircle from your perspective. As equally-spaced from this angle as they seemed from the surface.
: “Ha…hahahaha!”
: “Oh?”
: “It’s… ahaha… it was possible!”
’s certainty flows pellucid-cool through their link. “Did you ever doubt?”
did not. She believed in him wholly, without even a shade of doubt.
: “Heh! Of course not! I simply enjoy all miracles, written by fate or not.”
smiles, and the Awoken can probably feel it more than see it when she does. “Interesting silmät said ‘sunlit.’ But we can save that for later. Zoom in, rakas?”
: “Aye aye!” He cranks further.
ꙮ Telescope, enhance! Above you, systems of lenses shift their positions in inhumanly complex ways.
ꙮ It feels, for a moment, like it’s going to just keep going and going and you could pick out an individual momo on a plate carried outside on Spice Row– but, no, it’s not quite that good. You can certainly see Queenstown, at least.
tries to make out any details of Queenstown. Perhaps the giant wheel in the Adaman district?
ꙮ Yeah, it’s there. (Currently not in active use. It seems like it’s a nighttime thing?)
: “I think this is as close as we might be able to get with the telescope alone,” she announces.
: “It’s perfect.”
: “We exist, out here in space. We must.”
: “What do you think we would see, if we were on the Beast, looking up?”
links his fingers with hers, and draws Tenebrous gnosis from the both of them.
: “I’m not sure, though we’d certainly shine, wouldn’t we?”
ꙮ Could you ever do otherwise?
looks at the tenebrous gnosis swirling around her bluejay and thinks he could devour light as easily as shed it.
draws a hand back, and waves it in a circle- a Tenebrous orb forms, a pulsing violet sphere with their gnosis weaving around it.
: “We’ll save that for later. I’m curious if Queenstown would have a telescope powerful enough to reach this signal- if it exists, Zaedulf must have it. Or perhaps our companioned hosts?”
: “Hmm. Possibly. Or Jae would.” She laughs a little. “Even if they don’t we could probably propose the idea to Zaedulf, and he’d work on it.”
thinks… REALLY HARD. Salme can feel the thought bubbling. It feels like ‘what if I activated [Walk The Strange Paths] while on the Beast, with this orb in the chair. It’s technically in the same plane, right?’
isn’t sure it’s technically in the same plane. She remembers the feeling, shifting, as she crossed threshold after threshold in the annex—the sense of moving from one place to another. He can try, certainly. She can’t imagine there’s any harm in it. And she can hold the link open, too—or try.
: “Actually,” she says aloud, “do you think you could find where we are? I wonder if that might be even more precise.” With the train line and the metal mirror-shard, it might work.
: “Oh yes. Oh yes. I have no doubt.”
: “Here, have a glance at the coordinates, and I’ll write them down… but, y’know…”
: “I sort of have a really, really, really good hunch of just about where to look, now.”
laughs, and gets the coordinates written down one way or another.
: “I figure it’d be something as easy as, ‘just invert the coordinates!’”
: “Which sounds like a lot of math…”
: “But just having them will allow us to get a pretty good estimate just at a glance.”
: “You are wise, Scholar-Professor Awoken.”
ꙮ There is a truly prodigious amount of relevant math that one would need to do to calculate the coördinates that you simply– see through the numbers, the patterns, and understand what the answer must, could only ever, be.
tilts his head back and forth, resting one of his temples on one of hers.
: “What do you think? Is there a way we could see ourselves, right here, right now?”
: “I almost wonder if you left, and I stayed here and kept the link open, if you could find me in the sky, looking at you. But—hm. Do you think you’d be able to see? Your eyes are only human, impossible as you are.”
: “Hmm…” He chews the inside of his cheek a bit.
: “I think… we would know we were seeing each other. Which is very romantic of you!”
: “I want to try it just for that alone.” He winks.
blushes, a little, almost like a teenager with her first crush.
: “That’s why I want the scope centered on where we are right now, though. I’m wondering—I don’t know. Maybe you could send out a flare? Maybe I could too, somehow.”
: “I think we’re going to try it.” He grins, not even sure himself on what magic will unravel, but he’s excited to try. “Keep the seat warm for me, and see you in the stars.”
blushes harder and nods.
gives her a long, lingering kiss, as he gently extradites from the seat, and his lips are the last to leave. He turns with a billow of his mantle, and walks, determined towards the exit of the Library.
ꙮ There’s a weird tug on the methexis when he leaves the Observatory, and another when he leaves the hallway for the main entrance.
does not clench the bond tighter, but opens herself further, imagines herself in his light, easy step, the swish of his mantle, his grin, and imagines him with her—in the beat of her heart, in the tap of her fingers against the seat.
ꙮ And, so far apart, you remain as one, even if and when the Awoken steps through the soap-bubble threshold of the Sealed Space.
is easy to follow. He doesn’t hide, always shining, even in complete nothingness. His nostrils fill with the fresh, gravelly smell of the mountains, and he takes a few steps forward out from shelter, onto the step-paved ground, and stares up into the sky. He knows where. He believes just has to look.
ꙮ Well, that’s strange, isn’t it?
ꙮ I described this as the day side of the Beast, and six full moons - and, looking up at the moons you can see, the lit face normal to the direction in which you know to look, light coming, obviously, from somewhere, to illuminate them, and thereby the Beast itself. But there is, of course, no source of light.
ꙮ A second strange thing:
ꙮ You immediately feel confident that, even were Salme to send up a flare, you could not see it, or her, or the far shore on which she waits for your return. (Conversely, if the Awoken were to send up a flare - it would be small, and dim, and time-lagged, certainly, but Salme could, in fact, see it through the scope. They may try this! I assume that they will.)
ꙮ The third strange thing: You do know precisely where to look. Your eye guides you to the centre of the Empty Space. 🙧
points his finger, his thumb cocking back like the hammer of a gun.
: “Bang.”
emits a tenebrous streak of gnosis- a tracer round, fired between the moons and all neighboring stars. Right where it should be seen.
laughs a bit to herself, eye pressed to the scope, watching for the violent-black shot of nothing.
ꙮ And she does, of course, see it, as I predicted.
, knowing that any flare would be hopeless, thinks of trying to send out a halo of light, to limn the library and make its shape apparent. She thinks of it radiating outward, like the rays of the sun, and tries to send out enough radiant gnosis to maybe do so.
ꙮ The Library does shine. You know it does, and you know it’s beautiful. It is, after all, yours; your gnosis courses naturally through its channels. And yet, in that same certainty is the knowledge that its radiance will go unseen by the Awoken.
sends mild exasperation through the link.
responds with good-natured amusement.
thinks about light, thinks about sunlight. You did say sunlight at first, Silmät. Is there a sun hiding in the heart of the Beast?
ꙮ If that were the case, then the moons would always appear utterly full looking up at them from the ground on the Beast, rather than having phases, albeit subtle ones! No, they all six appear full from where you’re sitting, Salme. Is there a sun hiding in your eyes? The Awoken seems to think so, I believe.
: “Why hide? Why not dazzle in the darkness?” he asks, to nobody in particular.
: “But, well, I’m not sure if you know, if you can know. You must. But you might only when we do.”
ꙮ An excellent question, and one to which I do not, and could not, know the answer any more than do you. But a question I find myself asking, indeed.
: “You know where the True Sun is. You have always known, Sininen. Come back here, and perhaps we can look for it? I suspect it might be near us.”
smirks and nods, heading back to their room, seating himself next to Salme once more, and touches the tablet.
ꙮ That’s better. (Not that the methexis was overwhelmingly difficult to maintain over the distance, or anything. It’s just better to be by Salme’s side again.)
: “Would you be okay with that?” Taking his hand, kissing it. “To look for the True Sun? Or is that getting ahead of your plans?” And through the link, you can feel her wanting to ask about Almachadta, about Samudra, Mu, Valaïs—could they find them as well? But she’s most curious, almost desperately curious, about Almachadta.
settles in next to her, practically becoming cospatial. “I’m more than delighted to try! And I know-“
: “I want to see if I can find them too.”
: “It’s definitely much more difficult, but… not impossible!”
: “We just have to do even more creative thinking.”
ꙮ Well, you’ve full azimuthal control over the Observatory, at the very least - couldn’t hurt to do a sweep.
thinks, and looks through the scope once more. He sharpens his focus, weaving pellucid gnosis within his pupils- is the Beast putting out any particular signatures of gnosis?
ꙮ Predominantly Burning, which probably isn’t a surprise.
looks as well, trying to pick out any other threads—Flourishing or Pellucid, mostly. There is a connection, sleeping. Waiting to happen.
ꙮ One direction, rather than the other, tugs at you, Salme.
sends the tug to Awoken, asking him to move the scope in response.
follows that feeling, hands guiding the controls as an extension of both of themselves.
ꙮ Some azimuthal distance away, but not too much away, another orb suspended in the vast.
ꙮ This one’s marbled, swirling, green, swollen with Flourishing gnosis, with a faint blush of red cast along its surface; the hemisphere that faces the Observatory is significantly darker, almost black-green at the centre, thirsty for light. There are rings around it, haloing it from your perspective, scattering light in chaotic rainbow-ways. Like irrica dust, almost, to a first glance; if you could count them, each by each, there would have to be thousands of them, but they’re finer than fine, and it’d be hopeless to try.
asks awa for the coordinates and writes those down duly as well.
: “Wow…” He tries to zoom in as far as he can.
relays the coordinates, and it’s like she knew each number before he rattled it off.
: “I wonder if the dark spot is where the umbilical attaches.”
: “Hmm…” Or the hunger that is consuming it…
ꙮ Something about it does feel like a plant’s coloration, like the striations on a melon, rather than any sort of rot.
: “Looks… delicious?”
ꙮ …a description I’ve been avoiding out of tact, but must corroborate.
: “Mmm,” she acknowledges, but does not agree. Can they make sense of the red coloration at all?
ꙮ Like the adumbration, it feels like a natural property of whatever makes up the– well. Knowing what you know of Almachadta, this would have to be its outer surface. Its shell? Its rind? No words seem appropriate.
: “I don’t think we’re glancing upon the Courtyard anytime soon. Not from this perch.”
laughs a little. “No. But we found it. And if it’s … on the same azimuthal then they all might be. Though. Hm.” She closes her eyes, briefly, and thinks of Samudra, thinks of Melpomene. She left part of herself there, didn’t she? Oughtn’t they be able to find it, with that?
ꙮ Ah, Melpomene. The fire of her does sing to you, doesn’t it? [Take Half]. But it does not sing from widdershins ways or turnwise tilts but rather – you’ve explored azimuth, but not elevation. And you know, Salme, immediately, that to see Samudra, you’d have to look down.
nods, down it is. He pushes forward on the controls.
ꙮ Are you capable of disbelieving in gravity?
laughs easily, certain. “Gravity is simply something which we allow to act upon us when it suits us, but only when it suits us. Right, Sininen?”
: “That’s right. Gravity works, until it doesn’t. A metal is solid, until it isn’t. Ice is water is mist.”
[Turn the Chessboard Around]
ꙮ Invoke your Liminal gnosis, then, o Awoken navigator.
- The Awoken Prince invoked their 🌌liminal gnosis [d10] -> 7.
ꙮ DC 11. Salme, in this moment, with your methexis blurring the boundaries of what is his and what is yours, you could expend arete on his behalf at 1:1.
: “This is our joint endeavor.”
- Salme, The Sword-Saint spent 3 Arete and now has 8 remaining.
- The Awoken Prince invoked their 🌌liminal gnosis [d10] -> 8.
: “Yes! Ours! Our steps into the darkness!”
- Salme, The Sword-Saint spent 2 Arete and now has 6 remaining.
- The Awoken Prince‘s 🌌liminal gnosis has ascended unto the 12ᵗʰ rank.
ꙮ Ascension!
- The Awoken Prince invoked their 🌌liminal gnosis [d12] -> 3.
ꙮ And with the ascension, the controls of the telescope - no, the entire Observatory - are yours; the room entirely spins off its axis, immediately going deliriously, hilariously arse-over-tip with the two of you safely ensconced in the armature as it slides smoothly along every axis of freedom granted it by its gimbal; Jory begins squawking in utter indignance but is not disrupted from his perch, which says good things about the effect this might have, or the lack thereof, on anyone NOT safely seated in the mechanism. ⁂
ꙮ And, through the viewport, as it dips down precipitously, you see, almost immediately, and then taking up the entire viewport, an endless cloudy and watery expanse, stretching seemingly to the celestial horizon, far far below.
: “I am unstudied in such matters but … I am guessing … oceans are generally not found in space?”
ꙮ I’m not sure who you’re asking, but it seems unusual to me!
: “It’s… very interesting! And bizarre!” His mind is racing with possibility!
: “Shall we try for the other two? Or the sun itself? I don’t have any tricks to help us here. Just your [Empyrean Intuition].” The link is thrumming with excitement, with curiosity, with possibility, with wonder.
: “Yes, all three!”
: “Though I float a question into the universe…”
: “I knew, I knew I would not be able to see you, but I knew you were there, in the Empty Space In The Sky.”
: “Somehow, we are hidden. And somehow, is Samudra hidden behind us, behind the Empty Space In The Sky?”
ꙮ How do you mean? From your perspective, Samudra is ‘down’.
nods. Yeah, true. But ‘down’ is very relative. It’s ‘down’ to us here, but would it be ‘behind’ if viewed from the Beast?
ꙮ Well… it’s funny that you mention that.
ꙮ You’d think that someone, from some perspective on the Beast, would be able to look ‘up’, from their position on its surface, spherical enough to count, and see Samudra. And yet– that doesn’t seem to be the case.
: “And it’s not a function of distance? If Almachadta was much larger, I think it would be hard to see the other side when looking up, even if the other side was right there.”
: “Hmm…”
: “Well, we can already infer something is very strange about The Beast in general- its lighting is all… weird.”
ꙮ Hard to imagine ‘distance’ counting when faced with what seems, at least, to be a truly infinite plane.
: “I mean I think we can infer something is very strange about all this and … that these three planes, at least, are shrouded from each other somehow.”
ꙮ That would seem to be the case.
: “Layers within layers within layers.”
: “Yes.” She touches the Rose Gold Rose at her throat. “Where next, Sininen?”
: “Mu. And Valais. Radiant, and Tenebrous.”
: “And the Suns… I’ll try to… I’ll try to remember.”
ꙮ And– you would know, if there were a trace of Radiance or Tenebrousness to follow, like Salme followed Melpomene and Flourishing gnosis to find Almachadta and Samudra.
ꙮ Wherever they are… they are without of any azimuth and elevation which the Observatory can observe.
adjusts the azimuth, zooms out, alters the degrees…
ꙮ Aiming anywhere in particular?
: “We could try up, if looking down got us that. Or—“ she takes a moment in thought. “Or, are you not starlit when dealing with complete unknowns. Perhaps it is wherever your heart points?”
exhales, and waits to take a breath. Even if he doesn’t know… maybe it feels familiar. Where has he walked? What sunless road has he tread? Where did he wander, towards the sun?
has no clever trick for this, only love, and belief, and trust in him. She wraps those feelings around him, weaving them through the link.
eyes unfocus, leaning back from the viewport, looking at the entirety of space through the dome. He whistles- low, high, high, low…
ꙮ You do remember these stars. And it must have been from a position close enough to your own here, or the Beast’s, that they’d appear in roughly the same positions, relative to one another. They cannot, possibly, be far. And yet. And yet.
, at the same time, reaches for the Song. Does a ripple of it exist, anywhere? Has anyone else heard it? Was it ever played?
ꙮ It ripples, untouched by the ravages of time, in your memory, in your heart. But you can hear it, from here, no more readily than can you see it through eye or lens.
: “Let’s look up. It might be hidden further, still. But there’s no sense in coming this far and not.”
nods and presses her eye to the scope while Awa works the gears.
ꙮ And you look up, and up, far past the familiar houses of the constellations, and you see the bright and shining star at the zenith of the vault of heaven, but as bright as it is, it is not the Radiance you seek, and as dark the depths around it are, nor are they the Tenebrous plane you knew.
: “Does the star have a name or a story?”
ꙮ Those of the Beast, who know the stars by name, may know. Or, perhaps, those of another plane, also familiar with the stars? That is another story, though, and will be told another time.
: “I think we have to do a little searching before unlocking that door.”
: “Nothing feels right, in a way that also feels right to these eyes.”
nods and slides down off the seat, going over to press her forehead against his. “I do have one more exploration to request of you,” she says.
hops down from the seat, and leans into the press. His smile is back, at least.
: “Name it, and I’ll find it!”
: “Once, we were together, you reached out into me and … touched the Song so indelibly it’s carved across the Traveler’s Guide. Is that a thing you could find in me again?”
: “Of course. It wasn’t all me, though- your burning gnosis and desire fueled it.”
: “Well. I’d like to understand the process better, and I have plenty of burning gnosis and desire. Never seems to be much of a shortage of that.”
: “I’m a very good teacher. You know that.” He winks.
laughs. “Well. I think, perhaps, we could do some exploration under the stars? The Empty Space may hide us from view, but it doesn’t hide us from certain birds.”
takes her hands. “Of course. It’ll be nice to be a little grounded before weaving the Song of reality.”
laughs, and says, “Thank you, my Awoken prince, for sharing such wonders with me.” And then she lets him guide her out of the library.
: “Doubt not the strength of your own wings, sweet sparrow.” Soon, the statues are flesh and blood once more.