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lustrumlane · 2 days ago

Text

The Applebright's Rot

“We hear it in your hearts: Emerson Tiels.”

“The sound is dolorous, the painful ringing in your mind: ‘why?’”

The Emissaries begin their performance dutifully, bringing two of their hands together: they clasp one over the other and grip tightly before raising the shape between them.

Part I

“An apple is a sanctuary to that inside, the skin is a barrier to that which would eat. It will one day die, it must be eaten, but the skin does not want this; it exists to lose.”

They bring their other hands over the two joined, making two four and holding tighter.

”The skin outlived the tree and became too tough; the seeds inside could not grow, suffocated by the apple itself. So long as the meat was sweet, the seeds could not tell the rest was long dead. The skin became harder and harder to protect that which was soft.”

They turn their hands and push their fingers through the bottom two hands, twisting all four hands together.

“This seed met a worm who said: there is so much more, you should be a tree, not a seed. If you stay, you and this skin will rot together; you’ll all become nothing.”

“We do not understand the item itself, but the keys you have been given appear to be powerful things.”

They take their hands apart, leaving them touching at the fingertips, making an expanded, square-like shape with two of their hands as they turn to face the audience again.

“Using this key, the seed approached his captor. He sought his truth by force: with this key, he accessed the knowledge that lay deep in its mind: what are you hiding from me?”

“From this seed grew a poison tree; watered in fears, with tears.”

“And it grew both day and night, till it bore an apple bright.”

One Emissary turns to the other and takes them by the chest, grabbing their scarf and rocking them back and forth.

“This hurt was repaid again and again until the futility felt sickening; a thing cannot die by any meager means when caught in Lustrum’s web, so the machine would reappear again and again, greeting him over and over no matter what action was taken.”

Then, suddenly, they let go, letting the other fall away.

“Maddening, to be caught in another cycle. Do the days ever end?”

They regain their footing and step together again, facing one another.

“Something had to change. He became a tool again. Telling everything he knew to the machine, he was given a plan.”

“The programming was done in elegant script to give the tool all he needed: two locked rooms only he could pass between. If no one knew, he would be safe. It should have been perfect.”

Part II

Now one starts to walk while the other follows, a weaving sway to their movements.

“Meanwhile, the song-sick composite pursued that annoying relict around the arcade, begging for sweet things he hardly cared to hear.”

“‘Anything, friend, anything; I’ll take whatever you have, just please let me have it, for it is what I am without what it is, and to live without is not to live!’”

“With a plan of his own, the relict agreed; but plans half-baked do not rise.”

One Emissary sweeps an arm out wide, the other’s arm low as they crouch.

“It draws a path of violence and panic, it seeks the familiar and finds the foreign, danger around every corner!”

“It’s only solace is in the tool’s machine, who, on hearing such horrible chaos, knows its own plan has been compromised: if this thing is here, it cannot be there, thus, the arcade’s doors cannot lock as they should, such as we’ve already programmed it to.”

“Such a simple error. The thought of its tool being seen and caught unaware in the act could not be abided, so it formed a new plan to patch this hole.”

“The composite was filled with not one but two, and the two repaired his tools of violence. Before the machine could properly take control, a bysander wandered in; and you know how this goes, and you’re familiar with the song.”

One Emissary points at the other, making a swinging motion with their arm, and the other kneels quickly, leaning back. The one standing turns away, and the one on the ground rises to step around them and they join hands again.

“Retreat to safety, to the arcade, to the familiar: the machine and relict are in agreement on the destination.”

“Here, they find an accomplice for a crime uncommitted, and more importantly, a place to dispose of the stubborn program that would not leave.”

“The automaton listened to the panicked thing’s cries and held it in its palms, it told it not to worry: it would protect it in itself, it would protect it from it all.”

“A savior, a bulwark, a light in the dark to this haggard lemming. ‘I would make them cut through me before they can consider hurting you’ it says as the worm is placed in its own skull.”

“Genuine, truly, this compassion was real; moreso, a convenient thing for the other machine, who removed the spells placed on the composite and exited the arcade to patrol, ensuring no one would step inside and interrupt its tool’s plan.”

Part III

The Emissaries walk in a circle, matching one another.

“All this time, the plan had been afoot. With his peers, the tool had entered the arcade with everything he needed. He knew which test must be chosen for the separation, all had been made clear thanks to the test operator’s knowledge.”

Then, they stand back to back, one holding their hands in front of their face.

“They step in as one and the machine’s tool is left alone in the console room. He knew, so long as he stayed quiet and sweet, the real operator would have no reason to look; so much became clear to him when he saw her files laid out.”

“Using the sleeping copy of the test operator, he was able to exit: acting as her, he has full permissions to do as he wanted. This is the privilege of an administrator.”

“He sets a standard for practice and connects the phone to the console, plumbing the sleeping copy of the test operator’s mind for answers. She would know what comes next, for the answers do not change.”

“This is the moment in which the music was heard, that of the arcade: the small thing on the phone heard, but could not see, she could not act, she had been disabled down to nearly nothing.”

“All she knew was something was wrong. Nothing to be done. The door closed behind him, for he only used her credentials to open it for a moment.”

They separate and walk in a circle again, the opposite way now.

“Who was Uroro Zenzen?”

“A coveted moppet, an effigy of power. He thought himself a hurricane when he was only the rain.”

“Raw and tempestuous, wild and natural; nothing without the wind, nothing without guidance.”

“Left alone for a final time, he stood alone: it was a targeting of convenience. His nature was not known, not truly, for a tool struggles with nothing more than that it is not made for.”

“A drug transformed, seaweed slipped into a snack. An ordinary man would have fallen into a peaceful slumber, but this one woke to a terrible nightmare.”

One Emissary grabs the other and spins them around a few times before tossing them roughly to the ground, causing them to roll before catching themself.

“Cruel, violent; now this is fear, now this is rage. He saw the tool, he lashed out: this story would have ended differently should this have continued.”

“The machine saw this from its post and could not stand by. Mercilessly, the monster was taken down, for this could not be a human, no.”

“Could any of you be, when by every logical process, you have been dead for years and years and years? Deaths calculated or even recorded? Only one man is truly alive: all else is nothing to this machine.”

The one on the ground rights itself and hops towards the other, stepping behind them with a spin before taking their neck and putting their hands around it.

“Intercession. This monster continues to fight until the last, but the machine tips the tides. Lucky, with a nearby mallet, he is finished.”

One’s head falls to the side. Then, they step apart and walk opposite ways.

“The tool uses his bracelet, with the administrative credentials copied onto it, to re-enter: this causes an error, as this device is not recognized. He does not realize this, but the door remains open.”

“The machine exits and runs to the House of Refulgences to return to its cage before it's caught: it does not make it. It hides in the composite as quiet as one can be.”

“And a guest is invited into Uroro Zenzen who answers, rising to his feet to pursue the tool. Damaged, he only enters the room as the others enter the victor’s hall, the killer escapes.”

“He knows discovery is near, he knows we will remove him, he knows he should not be here, so he performs a rite to seal himself in this corpse so that we cannot send him away.”

“Petulant.”

“Thus, here we are.”

The pair then stop, releasing one another and standing side by side.

“This is how it happened. We give you this truth.”

“Your judgement is correct. Emerson Tiels did the deed.”

#ic #trial 3 #machinations #emissaries

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bestworstcase · 11 days ago

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@pinkrosealice

Thank you so much for the further explanation, I think most if not all of your speculation is incredibly sound! But just so I'm not misunderstanding your point your argument is that The Monarch at The Crossroads is The Wheel correct? Or are you arguing that the Monarch is a Hod from Stone that has otherwise not been explicitly named? And The Black Dove refers to not The Monarch himself but a Name of the Monarch who would eventually ascend to become the Hour known as the Ivory Dove? At the risk of causing further confusion and or time lost on wild speculations, how do you think that tracks with the information we got in Hol in relation to a certain Black Wolf and Rowena, and how this all might relate to The Wolf Divided and Ys? Regardless your enthusiasm for the lore of these games is so commendable and inspiring!!!! So again thank you for your response. It certainly gives me a lot to think about!

i'm normal ab the wolf-divided come closer

OUGH okay so. the six attested gods-from-stone—wheel, flint, tide, seven-coils, horned-axe, & the egg unhatching—do seem pretty inarguably to have been the only gods-from-stone at least insofar as 'from stone' is taken to be a discrete category as opposed to a catch-all for the pre-lithomachy ruling hours usurped by the gods-from-blood and light. my thesis broadly is that the gods-from-stone originated from the wood and the house of the moon—that is (in biblical terms), the pillars of the earth.

the gods-from-stone are of particular importance vis-a-vis the events of the lithomachy for obvious reasons; however, they were not the only hours around during that time. the Nowhere-hours existed as well. disciplines of the scar hushery commit makes the implication that the mansus exists at all because of conflict between the gods-from-stone and the Nowhere-hours:

The Mansus is the fortress in dream raised by the gods-who-were-stone. Nowhere is the inevitable scar beneath it. Monstrous, the gods-from-Nowhere; but cruel, the gods-who-were-stone.

similarly, the priest can give this sermon:

'In the House of the Sun, the dance of the angels of Glory does not cease. Those who were cast down, wave or wound or snow, are gone from the House, and as long as their parts in the dance are filled, they may never return. Therefore let us join hands, and add our little steps to the dance.'

two of these are unambiguously gods-from-Nowhere—snow, and the blackbone—while the third is evidently the giribrago, who seems to reside in the glory based on what very little we can glean about him. and these are all hours who were 'cast down', which is the same sort of language used elsewhere to describe the extirpation of the gods-from-stone.

and of course even in the present, we find Nowhere-hours exerting influence and wielding in some cases considerable power beyond Nowhere; the mare-in-the-tree, for example, is both the third hour of calyptra and the sister when the sister-and-witch are not conjunct (with the applebright being the witch in relation to the mare).

likewise the vagabond has gone Nowhere and i would argue that she ought to be considered a god-from-Nowhere as well as from flesh for several reasons (the traveler is always returning and is thus, in a way, always nowhere; her painted river flows up into the mansus from nowhere; neither the vagabond nor nowhere can truly be kept out).

the point being that the Nowhere-hours may exist outside the laws governing the, for lack of a better term, gods-from-somewhere, but their exile is imperfect and likely always has been—just as alukites are monstrous outlaws but the ligeians wield immense power as Names of the Twins and holders of the keys, the gods-from-Nowhere are an exiled class of abyssal gods but some have been quite successful in establishing footholds of power in the upper realms.

it's just that this is impolitic to acknowledge, in-universe. the Nowhere-hours don't count, and things like (for example) the malachite's liaisons with the mare-in-the-tree are regarded as anomalous and kept secret (even if poorly) because they are forbidden.

hence: the monarch-at-the-crossroads is/was a god-from-Nowhere contemporaneous with the gods-from-stone. as i said, broadly my theory is that the gods-from-stone ruled over the house of the moon,* the woods, the bounds, with the house of the sun being its enigmatic reflection—before the dawn, night, so to speak. given that context, it makes sense to me that the house of the sun might have been ruled by a Nowhere-hour.

(*i consider the meniscate to be a god-from-stone as well as from light for this reason; she presides over the house of the moon now and she "was born in the moon from light")

there are a handful of references to the house of the sun during this period (e.g. in the book of dissolution) and all note that it was different in some fundamental way.

now consider that:

one tradition holds the mansus to be a fortress raised by the gods-from-stone in the course of their conflict with the Nowhere-hours.

the wood, the bounds, and the house of the moon are all conventionally figured to lie beneath the house of the moon, between Nowhere and the mansus.

it is the gods-from-blood and light who are said to have opened the ways into the house of the sun, and nearly every attestation of the gods-from-stone locates them in the woods or the bounds.

…so it actually makes quite a bit of sense for the gods-from-stone to have been in conflict with a Nowhere-hour whose domain existed above theirs—the Sky. the firmament. the Thirty Birds who had dreamt themselves out of Nowhere to become the Monarch-at-the-Crossroads. (in the allegorical sense this also tracks: one builds a house to protect oneself from the wind and the rain.)

and this loosely follows the biblical order of creation: first the separation of day from night, then the parting of the waters, then the formation of the earth, then vegetation, then celestial bodies, then birds and fish, then the beasts of the land. the monarch-at-the-crossroads in this reading represents the parting of waters; and the gods-from-stone presided at the emergence of land from the sea (flint, tide, seven-coils), the growth of the wood, the creation of celestial bodies (wheel and egg unhatching, sun and moon). and then the lithomachy begins with the birds of the air and the fish serpents of the sea.

now all that said

one thing i think worth keeping in mind with regard to the Nowhere-hours is that they are, in effect, chthonic powers – they are not dead per se in the sense that the gods-from-stone or the sun-in-splendour are dead, but they also do not seem to be considered alive per se (and certainly if "the oldest living hours are the gods-from-blood" then the Nowhere-hours who are older must necessarily be unliving.)

death is down – death is Nowhere – and 'dead' is also not an immutable state of being but rather seems to be understood as the act of descent itself (cf the major forge victory: "I am Nowhere. Nowhere is lit by lamps of black nephrite. In Nowhere, we hear the voices prophesying. In Nowhere it is very cold. But it is always possible to be deader." – if death is down then "deader" implies "deeper"). and because the passage from life to death can be figured as a threshold, the sanguine exception applies – the door must open both ways, that is, the dead can rise back into life.

we can find any number of examples demonstrating this principle (the thunderskin, the sister-and-witch, elegiac winter-long…) but it's also interesting to consider with regard to the Nowhere-hours. what does it mean to be from Nowhere? a thing that begins in the depths and seeks to rise can't be dead (because it hasn't ever died) but it also isn't exactly alive. i think – and this is very tenuous, i don't have firm textual evidence – that the Nowhere-hours may be sort of reverse-psychopomps, in that rising from death is possible fundamentally because the Nowhere-hours are down there and striving in the other direction.

now, the serpents & venoms hushery commit:

In the dawn times the sun was lower, so we gave it our blood. From our blood it knew us, and so it was kinder. Its serpents brought us its poisons to drink, and so we died. But we only died a little, and so we dreamed, and returned the next day to give it our blood again.

infers an equivalence between death and dreaming – and that suggests some interesting things about how the monarch-at-the-crossroads came to be as per the sky determination 'we came from nowhere': the Thritige-kind "dreamed themselves out of black glass, to be their own Monarch." this is, as i noted previously, overtly drawn from 'the conference of the birds' and the last thing the birds in the poem must do to achieve enlightenment or reawakening as the simorgh they seek is self-annihilation. death here is figured as metamorphosis.

likewise in the secret histories, the Thirty Birds dreamt themselves out of Nowhere, and dreaming is figured as a kind of dying; thus, the monarch-at-the-crossroads became so by rising-from-death. but the Thritige-kind weren't really alive to begin with because they came from Nowhere, and i think this is the key. the monarch never died, but he came to life from death.

who leaves a place without entering it?

put a pin in that for a moment. let's talk about rowena and the black dove. and henavek.

first point: like vak, henavek is a god. (conversations on this subject between yvette and arun indicate there is one tradition which regards vak and henavek as sister and brother, and another – or possibly the same – that they're lovers.) denzil "refers to it as 'Tavas Mytern' - perhaps 'the King Tongue' - and speaks not of 'it' but of 'him', as if the language were a living king indeed."

both commits for henavek get at the 'as above, so below' conceit ("what starts in the roots, ends in the sky" and "what starts in the sky, ends in the earth"). this is a thematic idea that comes up again and again in relation to certain particular hours but the most salient repetition is the birdsong commit for leaves & thorns:

The gardener's first lesson is this: look up. What starts as weather ends in the world, what starts as sky ends in the soil. This is what the birds know, and the birds know most things first.

now. the monarch-at-the-crossroads is the thirty birds is the sky, the winds—the breath. one tradition holds that speech, that language opened the way into dreams; speech is the first wound and first weapon and first key. and this is, evidently, not a metaphor, or at least not wholly metaphorical, given that ebrehel… exists. ebrehel is 'the word of god.' ebrehel, gatemaker, scarsword, is the shapt of an hour. ebrehel was to be borne by a king against the city unbuilt, it's associated with the presence of worms, and the exile finds it in the church of st marzanna the white—which is either an epithet for snow or a name of hers, or both.

it follows for ebrehel to be the monarch's shapt – it opens the way for worms in the same manner the thirty birds dreamt themselves out of nowhere, and the connection between speech and breath and the winds is intuitive. thus my inclination is to identify henavek, the king-tongue, with the monarch-at-the-crossroads.

which brings us to the black dove:

Coquille asks Yvette what she knows of the line of Kelemdu, the 'Black Dove'. Yvette describes a Henavek folk-tale in which the Black Dove is assigned the wardenship of the Moon-marches by Henavek himself - a folk-tale associated with Brancrug.

and:

Serena and Yvette discuss the death of the Marcher Lord Gwilym Ddu, 'Black William', in which the nuns of St Brandan's might - might - have been implicated through their dealings with the old powers of the hills… Yvette brightly suggests there might have been some linguistic confusion between 'Gwilym Ddu' and 'Kelemdu', the Black Dove... but Serena puts her finger to her lips.

(<- cf 'ud rocashaas' and 'annals of st brandans')

the backstory here vis-a-vis rowena and kelemdu gets laid out by connie after the affair of the rising while (if given 'a pale lady and a prince of wines'):

Eva Dewulf was a many-times-great daugher of Rowena of Ys, and of Kelemdu the Wolf. Yvette, we suspect, is a daughter of Eva's line - descended both from Ys and from the Dewulfs.

so. one of rowena's epithets is "wolf-wife" and if kept on as secretary persistent she'll reference "my kelemdu." connie believes that only one of them was immortal when rowena gave birth. the story yvette recounts of kelemsu's appointment to wardenship of the moon-marches by henavek aligns with the black dove being a name of the monarch-at-the-crossroads; rowena seems to have gone long later than that – perhaps even as late as 600 AD, but i personally am in the camp of rowena being, or having been, queen lagiah and in that case she might be the first alukite. (but not the oldest. important distinction.)

which is to say, if connie's putting the pieces together right, rowena bore kelemdu's child when she was mortal and later devoured that child after growing long – but not before that child had children of her own. and then however many generations later, giles dewulf ran off with hafren waters.

yvette's insinuation that kelemdu may have been identified with black william is not, i think, altogether baseless. ud rocashaas:

An anonymous confessional account of unsanctioned activities by the nuns of St Brandan's. The title is a Henavek phrase that might be translated as 'the spirit flees the shadowed places.' The author writes guiltily of her dealings with hill-children and Carapace-relics - she suggests she herself has a connection with one of the Carapace-kinds. Most of these dealings are trivial, but she claims to have arranged the death of the Marcher Lord William de Braose, called Black William... De Braose' wife, Eva, evidently seeks the Abbey's help to free her from her hated husband. Subsequently he is found in the bed-chamber of the wife of Llywelyn the Great, Prince of the Welsh, while attempting to negotiate the marriage of his daughter (also Eva) to Llywelyn's son. Llywellyn takes this badly, de Braose is hanged, the elder Eva inherits his estates and makes a substantial endowment to St Brandan's. In the author's telling, de Braose was 'innocent of all but cruelty' and the adulterer found in the bed-chamber was a shape-changing 'undergoer'...

note that translation of the title – the spirit flees the shadowed places – and the author's implied connection to "one of the carapace kinds." which kind? well, she tells us in the title; the kind that fled the shadowed places. the kind that dreamt itself out of Nowhere. yvette, who speaks henavek and is well-versed in the folklore of bancrug, is – i believe – making this connection because kelemdu, or a remnant of kelemdu, was involved in arranging the disgrace of gwilym ddu.

there are also some eyebrow-raising similarities here in what went down between eva dewulf and abraham wheelock and, notably, connie will only mention kelemdu if you give her 'a pale lady and a prince of wines,' the one book about eva dewulf that provides a detailed account of her relationship with wheelock. so there is some sort of real connection here that yvette has noticed.

now this incident – the death of black william and subsequent patronage of st brandan's by eva de braoise – is also mentioned in the annals, along with the construction of the winter tower and the death of abbess nonna…

…who was devoured by black elie.

the relevant texts here are 'the most sorrowful death of lady nonna' and 'the shadow in the stair' with circumstantial support from elie's books ('commandments for the preservation of all that exists', 'a journey to the grove', and 'the secret colours'), tied together by this pair of conversations:

Stanislav asks Douglas about the death - reputedly murder - of the Abbess Nonna, almost six hundred years ago. Douglas acknowledges it's technically within the Bureau's jurisdiction; and that the Bureau doesn't recognise any statute of limitations short of eternity; and adds that he has a great deal on his plate; but promises to look into it, and asks Stanislav some incisive questions about rare poisonous herbs. Douglas has been looking into the six-centuries-past death of Abbess Nonna. He's questioned unspecified sources that he doesn't share with Stanislav, and concludes that Nonna was possessed by a Name of the Blackbone and 'put down' by her sistren - 'nasty business, but best thing for it.' He and Stanislav discuss the herb-mixtures that might have laid her open to that possession.

…and elie herself. if the institute allies with ys:

'My first calling: to preserve what exists. My second calling: to preserve what exists as it is. An alliance with Ys will do little for the second; but it is necessary for the first.'

if it's foe is nowhere:

'I was called on to extract a Worm from the spine of a shepherd. It had been in there almost twenty-eight days, but it showed no signs of development. I have learnt of other such cases: the Worms are weakening. I will not speculate as to why. I do not trust it yet.'

if its agenda is peace:

'For so long I have striven to keep the world afloat. So many times, my efforts have been undermined by treachery. This Institute has done nothing like that… yet. I dare to hope.'

serena says she's nectar-long, which might seem like an odd pull for name of the blackbone—except that the blackbone has associations with earthquakes and nectar is the aspect once called blood, which (as i discuss here) seems to have been a grail-precursor and thus associated with the sea. and while black elie is apparently free now, the details of her biography and present interests align with the prophecy of the weaver's tale:

There is a prophecy among weavers: of one who will unwisely seek to find the future in a tapestry of her own hair. Her house will grow dark, shrouded in the labyrinths of her tresses. Pilgrims will seek her in the cellar of her house, where she will plead with them to cut her free. They will always fail, and she will always devour them. At last one will come who will ask instead to stay with her. Others will join them, until the house becomes a palace and the palace a city, below the world, where all are welcome and in the tapestry all truths are revealed.

we know (from her 'commandments') that elie was entombed in an 'unmarked sepulcher' and also (from all three of her books) that elie had a keen interest in prophecy; the killasimi text (textile?) 'one thousand threads' supports reading elie (the prophetic 'matriarch of the well') as the weaver in the prophesy.

and the description of the "tenebrous spirit" which possessed lady nonna, which ernestine peterhans later nicknamed the donkerling and douglas identifies as a name of the blackbone, aligns precisely with the prophesied behavior of the imprisoned weaver: she will plead for freedom and devour all who try to set her free, until at last one asks to stay with her. and then they'll raise the city unbuilt.

(eva dewulf is the one who asked to stay with her. but we don't have time to unpack that rn so let's just leave it at "the wolf-name coelle drowned herself" and "rowena implies drowning is a fundamental aspect of wolf-ascension" and "the blackbone gets namedropped in 'the crossing to moon' for a reason" and "who was teresa looking for in port noon in 1932")

final point, black elie has the aspect fear: nowhere ("This one understands the all-consuming horror of the gods-from-Nowhere") but that in itself is ambiguous – is it feeling all-consuming horror about the Nowhere-hours, or understanding the all-consuming horror felt by the Nowhere-hours, all of whom seem desperate to escape Nowhere? – and thus not necessarily in contradiction with elie being the name of a Nowhere-hour.

wheeze. ok

the point of all this is to get to cygnifer <3

the other eye of the serpent:

In which the heresiarch Cygnifer attempts to resolve certain mysteries of Lightning. Cygnifer considers Lightning to be 'the division, the connection, the joined serpent.' The Serpent's Eye is said to be the Sun - but as the division and connection, it must have a second Eye. Cygnifer considers and rejects, three times, the hypothesis that the Moon is the Serpent's other eye, insisting that it and the Sun do not share a nature. (This, as much as the Serpent business, is what got him burnt by the Church.) He proposes that the Serpent's teeth are towers, that the Serpent's mouth is a gate, that the Serpent is the 'devourer of Ys'... and 'therefore' that the Serpent's other eye is amber.

WHY ARE YOU BURNING HIM. HE'S RIGHT

some facts.

the spider door is also known as the serpent gate (and 'the wrong door')

anbary & lapidary ("'Lightning is a little life, and jewels are its eyes'—Eva Dewulf") aspects sky/forge, same as the sky determination; anbary means lightning.

the wolf-divided is represented by the tower card – traditionally depicted as either a lightning-struck tree or lightning-struck tower. see also: orthos wood, tower revek, & the furious tantra.

the wolf-divided is 'the wound of the sun's division', but the received and shuritic versions of the book of suns intimate that the wolf existed in some form before the lithomachy.

the wolf-divided is associated with wind and the smell of ozone – lightning – and with shipwrecks (cf the mausoleum of wolves, "a faint descending howl, like metal tearing in the hull of a ship") and drownings (coelle, name of the wolf).

there's a snake ->

some more facts:

wolf-snow?? wolf-snow it's right there. snow that eats flesh.

"Death alters; Snow endures" (husher, on putrefactions & calcinations)

'Here is your paint,' whispered the Wolf to the Pale Girl. 'Here is your knife-for-scraping. And here is your face.' (a child's treasury of golden afternoons)

snow – not the elegiast! – is the patron hour of hush house.

'chione at abydos' was published by an 'apollo fireweaver' in 1892.

sir david greene, eighth librarian of bush house, embezzled funds from the nocturnal branch and eloped with an 'a.f.' in 1903.

'abydos unveiled' ("An oil painting of a city foundered in snow. Behind its bleakest tower, a sickle moon rises.")

nix abolix. fucine for 'snow unmaketh'. lmao

ok. ok.

snow is a Nowhere-hour. Nowhere is an abyssal cosmic ocean and it's also death. every other winter-Hour is associated with the sky somehow – the elegiast is an aviform hour, the horned-axe has horizon and dusk/dawn associations as a threshold guardian, rags and the madrugad are from light. how come snow is from Nowhere?

and, in the same vein, how is it that the lightning is "the serpent that devoured ys" – that is, the sea? why is the wolf's howl the sound of "metal tearing in a ship's hull" and why is it that drowning is how the wolf's names ascend?

and what happened to the monarch-at-the-crossroads? well

points at fucine the queen's weapon

There is a story known to smiths: of a Queen whose realm was invaded by a great army. When she learnt that there were nine invaders for every defender, she ordered her army to surrender its swords. Night and day her smiths laboured to melt down the swords to bronze, while her generals threatened mutiny and the enemy advanced unhindered. They used the bronze to cast a Bell, but each time the Bell was rung, it cracked and had to be recast. At last on the night before the invaders reached the city, the Queen surrendered her crown to the casting. When at dawn the smiths rang the Bell, it cracked the moon like an egg and drove the sun from the sky. The invaders fled. But the Queen without a crown was no longer any queen at all.

this is about ys:

Ys, by her arts, found the strike-tone that shakes the Hours. For this reason among many of the Hours discourage traffic with Ys. But a bell cast with this secret could speak the Ys-note...

and here's memory: storm:

There are storms great enough to shake the moon from the sky, and one's thoughts from one's skull.

and – last piece – there's sabazos, a phrygian sky-god associated with sabazine (whose commits concern port noon and sabazine), and whom yvette may discuss with arthur:

Yvette raises the subject of Sabazine again with Athur. She has been reading of the god Sabazos, who brings madness by deploying the weapons of speech-in-silence. Arthur has heard of these techniques, and very cautiously shares a very little… [Lesson: Sharps]

and what are sharps commits about? speech tearing open the way to dreams. so that makes a clear connection to ebrehel and to the monarch-at-the-crossroads, but the idea of 'speech-in-silence' is of winter and specifically in the vein of snow's tradition that speech is a wound.

historically sabazios is fairly obscure, but one of the icons associated with him is a hand with a serpent twined around the wrist. the greeks associated him with zeus and dionysus, and strabo linked him to zagreus – whom the secret histories identifies with the thunderskin.

the thunderskin is also identified with marsyas, the musician satyr whom apollo flays alive to punish his hubris.

now, apollo wasn't associated with sabazios, but he was a god of music and poetry and prophecy (among other things), later associated with the sun. wolves, various birds (ravens, crows, swans, and hawks), and serpents were all sacred to him.

in one myth, apollo sends the white crow corvus to spy upon coronis and, when the bird reports her unfaithfulness, apollo turns its feathers black in rage; the beachcomber – a god-from-flesh depicted as a black crow and described as a "voyeur" who tells tales of the forbidden liaisons between the mare-in-the-tree and the malachite, and in orthos wood:

This is the great oak where the masked Crow once roosted. Lightning has split it from head to heart, and the tree is charred and rotting.

…the cultist's expedition finds the charred, lightning-struck remains of the beachcomber's nest. and besides the black dove, the monarch had a name called the white crow.

so.

in essence, before the lithomachy began, i think the monarch-at-the-crossroads ruled the lower skies—the firmament, the house of the sun. and another god-from-Nowhere (who may be identified as or otherwise a patron hour of ys; generally i just call her the Sea) ruled over the sea—Nowhere. birds of a feather, worms of a scale.

'the dream of the conspiracy of the lower skies' implies that the hours' fear of the crime of the sky is not abstract:

Damaon suggests that the Hours have constrained their rivalry to avoid a war within the House of the Sun. He identifies the 'Fear of the Crime of the Sky' as the reason that Hours do not satisfy other passions. He speculates on the horrifying possibilty of Hours turned alukite. 'What then would they devour?'

– that it has happened before. the 'crime of the sky' is the crime that the sky committed. the moth is the thought that was shaken from the monarch's skull; the red grail is the blood that was spilled; the forge is the fire of the moon that fell from the sky when the monarch and the sea came together.

(on the forge being born from a fallen moon/meteor impact, see the star-shattered fane and line that up with what we know about the unwise mortal and the flint and the egg unhatching.)

there is always an element of violence involved in the crime of the sky – union through the creation and consumption of one's offspring – and this is the point where it gets a little strange, because gods-from-Nowhere aren't really alive and can't really die, as such. death alters; Snow endures. and Lightning is 'the division, the connection, the joined Serpent.' i think the Sky and the Sea ate each other and in doing so became the Serpent, who is both of them.

and then, during the intercalate when the forge of days divided the sun-in-splendour, the Serpent was divided and became snow and the wolf-divided. both of whom are still the serpent, who is still the monarch and the sea. because Nowhere-hours don't die, they change. and – remember that i said this:

who leaves a place without entering it?

of the monarch-at-the-crossroads ascending from death without ever having died. well. that is one of the chandler's enactments.

the chandler's wish:

The author makes a passionate argument that the Hour named Chandler is in fact the oldest, even though he does not exist, because he is - supposedly - the culminating event of a plan that precedes even Grail and Moth.

sometimes the chandler is attested as male, sometimes female. they both do and do not exist; the chandler is the culminating event of a plan set in motion before the grail and the moth existed. the chandler will arise through the second dawn.

what precipitates the second dawn? the wolf-divided eclipses the other solar hours – feasts upon them – and through their deaths, becomes whole again. snow awaits the sun in the mausoleum of wolves. the sky and the sea become the serpent becomes the wolf and snow become the chandler.

wheeze.

last thing. the monarch is identified with sabazios, whom strabo associated with zagreus – the thunderskin.

sabazios is strongly associated with zeus, apollo's father; apollo is the serpent, lightning, who scorched the white crow's feathers black.

apollo flayed marsyas. marsyas is the thunderskin. why is he called the thunderskin?

sabazios was also identified with dionysus: zagreus was sometimes identified with the orphic dionysus, child of zeus and persephone.

marsyas was a devotee of cybele who challenged apollo to a musical competition and lost. secret histories traditions hold that the thunderskin was sacrificed by the red grail for ambiguous purpose – to appease the horned-axe, to protect her, to challenge the twins' dominion over the heart principle, to seal the pact of the triple knot. 'apollo and marsyas' implies that marsyas was flayed before he became a name of the red grail.

The Skin of Marsayas gives oracles, and is later smuggled to Phrygia, where the priestesses of Cybele use it for a drum. At the climax, the striking of the drum drive would-be violators of the priestess to suicidal madness. The opera ends with a wistful hymn from the youngest priestess on the beauty of mountain pines.

when did the crime of the sky become a crime? serena can raise this question:

Fraser and Serena speak of Antaios, who might have been a child of Name-emanations of the Flint and Wheel. Fraser wonders why, if Antaios' forebears were immortal, they did not suffer the urge to devour him. Serena provokingly asks when he thinks the Crime of the Sky first became a Crime...

now consider this: marsyas was a poet and musician who went long beneath the serpent – apollo, who flayed him and came to regret it. he then became a devotee of the red grail, one of the three offspring of sky and sea who had slain the wheel, the flint, and the tide.

the name-emanations of the wheel and the flint bore offspring with each other without being inflicted with the all-consuming hunger for their offspring because, serena suggests, they did so before the crime of the sky was outlawed. the hunger is the punishment.

the horned-axe demanded restitution for the slaughter of the wheel, the flint, and the tide. so the red grail sacrificed the thunderskin, who loved the malachite, and the malachite gave him up. at this point the thunderskin was certainly long and may have been a name; the malachite likewise had ascended to hourhood. and the thunderskin was both a (symbolic) child of the sky-sea union – having gone long under the serpent – and devotee to one of the real offspring. and he loved the malachite, with whom he might have produced offspring.

he was a proxy for sky-and-sea, for the serpent and its offspring. the crime of the sky became a crime through this treaty between the red grail and horned-axe and malachite, which established the law and its punishment – the insatiable hunger to both punish the parents and insure the offspring's demise, so that the violence enacted upon the wheel, flint, and tide could never happen again.

(the skin-drum of marsyas drives would-be violators of cybele to suicidal madness – the thunderskin beats to protect the skin of the world – the red grail compels those who commit the crime which created her to devour their offspring so that she will never be slain by the child of two gods, as she herself did to the tide. this is the reason for her involvement in the intercalate as well.)

he's the thunderskin. the skin of the serpent who is lightning, killed in effigy. and then he returned from death through the peacock door – vak – to preserve the law.

killasimi the weaver's tale is about black elie (and eva dewulf). killasimi the carpenter's tale is about governor collers.

deep mandaic the jeweler's tale is about the monarch at the crossroads (the butterfly-keeper) and the unwise mortal (the jeweler) and the egg unhatching (his egg). deep mandaic the chandler's tale is about the chandler (obviously) and her witness and the red grail but to be more precise it's about how the chandler is in fact the oldest hour.

fucine the queen's wound is about snow and the sky. fucine the queen's weapon is about the serpent. both of these are the same story. sabazine the fisher's tale is about ys. sabazine the sailor's tale is about noon. all of these are the same story.

ramsund the falconer's tale and the thief's tale are two halves of a secret.

ericapaean when i get you…

#i can be normal about the wolf-divided (lying)#this isn't even the Full Iceberg #i didn't even talk ab melancthe's heresies or calyptra or teresa :) or the ortucchio incident or #nina lagasse. or solomon husher or eva dewulf.#i also think i forgot to directly answer the question ab the elegiast rip.#yes i do think kelemdu ascended to hourhood in his own right and became the elegiast. black dove -> ivory dove.

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