I guess these books are bedtime stories of a sort, but I'm not entirely certain they're what someone would choose as bedtime reading :) By the way, we're at the 20th (where I am, anyway) and I think we still need to visit Hindsight this month.
Bedtime story I picked up the prayer book first, mostly because it was shorter than the other one. The other one might contain much more relevant information but we'd had a pretty long day and I wasn't feeling that clever at the moment, so I went with easing myself into it. The pictures still made no sense to me, though I turned the book in all four directions. They were abstract geometrical pictures, almost technical diagrams. It felt like a steam-engine mechanic might understand them better than me, and if I squinted hard at one of them it did almost look like a train. Maybe. I turned the pages, giving up on trying to figure them out, and started reading the first prayer. An itte pleases those that dwelleth in the coniugaite spaces then this shalle be the reckoning of the fyrste. Bye the lawe of Banak, the ruling divijon of Harne and the sovreigntie of Jaymes the construction of the gate be so prescribed: It seemed like a fairly typical invocation to strange gods and arcane ritual at first, but as I read through in more detail I realised that it wasn't exactly a prayer: it was a set of instructions to be followed. By the time Jimmy had set a bowl of hot, cooked grains in front of me I was turning the pages back and forth, matching up the description in this tortured English with the diagram on the first page, and wondering exactly how some of these things actually happened. The revelation occured when Ben and Jimmy were about halfway done eating. "The mirror is part of the gate!" I looked up at both of them, my heart racing for no reason I could think of. Blank eyes reflecting firelight looked back at me, and I realised that somehow it was very dark outside, the fire was lower than I would have expected if it had just been lit, that I was very tired and very hungry, and that no-one understood what I was talking about. I picked the grains up -- now lukewarm -- and started eating and trying to explain. "They're not prayers, not in this book," I said between mouthfuls. The grain was bland, mush, but still welcome. "It's instructions for constructing a gate of some kind. Only the picture doesn't make sense unless you have that mirror there; half of the construction goes on in the mirror, so some of the things you do aren't making sense on this side of it because they only make sense on the mirror side." "Why do you want to build a gate in a chapel?" asked Ben after he thought I'd calmed down enough. I scraped grain-mush that had run down my chin back up to my mouth with my spoon, and then shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe you want to bless it first?" "Maybe that's what they did with the door they walled up?" Jimmy set his bowl aside, and it clattered slightly. "They blessed everything in the chapel first and then took it to the doorway and locked it all up." "Makes me really curious about having someone else find out what's on the other side," said Ben. "I'll watch from a safe distance. A building or two over." "That... would make sense," I said. "Is that all of that book then?" Jimmy sounded slightly disappointed, and I understood: a building manual wasn't really much use to us. I checked the second prayer. "Odd," I said. "After you get past the ritual invocations and honorifics at the start, it says, To openne the gate the steppes must be enacted as follows." "So they did want to get that locked up room back sometime," said Ben.
Greg - yeah, I was watching the end of the month approaching and trying to find a day to do Hindsight. Obviously I found a way...
Hmm. I definitely would be vacating the premises after reading that. But then I'm not one to mess with old rituals and strange creatures and everything else that seems to be going on down there...
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I guess these books are bedtime stories of a sort, but I'm not entirely certain they're what someone would choose as bedtime reading :)
By the way, we're at the 20th (where I am, anyway) and I think we still need to visit Hindsight this month.
Bedtime story
I picked up the prayer book first, mostly because it was shorter than the other one. The other one might contain much more relevant information but we'd had a pretty long day and I wasn't feeling that clever at the moment, so I went with easing myself into it. The pictures still made no sense to me, though I turned the book in all four directions. They were abstract geometrical pictures, almost technical diagrams. It felt like a steam-engine mechanic might understand them better than me, and if I squinted hard at one of them it did almost look like a train. Maybe. I turned the pages, giving up on trying to figure them out, and started reading the first prayer.
An itte pleases those that dwelleth in the coniugaite spaces then this shalle be the reckoning of the fyrste. Bye the lawe of Banak, the ruling divijon of Harne and the sovreigntie of Jaymes the construction of the gate be so prescribed:
It seemed like a fairly typical invocation to strange gods and arcane ritual at first, but as I read through in more detail I realised that it wasn't exactly a prayer: it was a set of instructions to be followed. By the time Jimmy had set a bowl of hot, cooked grains in front of me I was turning the pages back and forth, matching up the description in this tortured English with the diagram on the first page, and wondering exactly how some of these things actually happened. The revelation occured when Ben and Jimmy were about halfway done eating.
"The mirror is part of the gate!" I looked up at both of them, my heart racing for no reason I could think of. Blank eyes reflecting firelight looked back at me, and I realised that somehow it was very dark outside, the fire was lower than I would have expected if it had just been lit, that I was very tired and very hungry, and that no-one understood what I was talking about.
I picked the grains up -- now lukewarm -- and started eating and trying to explain.
"They're not prayers, not in this book," I said between mouthfuls. The grain was bland, mush, but still welcome. "It's instructions for constructing a gate of some kind. Only the picture doesn't make sense unless you have that mirror there; half of the construction goes on in the mirror, so some of the things you do aren't making sense on this side of it because they only make sense on the mirror side."
"Why do you want to build a gate in a chapel?" asked Ben after he thought I'd calmed down enough. I scraped grain-mush that had run down my chin back up to my mouth with my spoon, and then shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe you want to bless it first?"
"Maybe that's what they did with the door they walled up?" Jimmy set his bowl aside, and it clattered slightly. "They blessed everything in the chapel first and then took it to the doorway and locked it all up."
"Makes me really curious about having someone else find out what's on the other side," said Ben. "I'll watch from a safe distance. A building or two over."
"That... would make sense," I said.
"Is that all of that book then?" Jimmy sounded slightly disappointed, and I understood: a building manual wasn't really much use to us. I checked the second prayer.
"Odd," I said. "After you get past the ritual invocations and honorifics at the start, it says, To openne the gate the steppes must be enacted as follows."
"So they did want to get that locked up room back sometime," said Ben.
Greg - yeah, I was watching the end of the month approaching and trying to find a day to do Hindsight. Obviously I found a way...
Hmm. I definitely would be vacating the premises after reading that. But then I'm not one to mess with old rituals and strange creatures and everything else that seems to be going on down there...
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