I look at the stars sometimes and wonder if Aframos Longjourney succeeded.
I wouldn’t be surprised if she1 did. Then again maybe she and Torne died in that tower and the story ends there.
That’s where her journal left off last I checked anyway. Hopefully that Rheve Library scholar pulled himself back together and published a new part while I’ve been here.
My predicament isn’t like hers. While her and Torne wandered through the enchanted forest until they came across the multiverse equivalent of Tom Bombadil, I wander through the forest looking for something I can ferment into alcohol.
Can I wait seven months for a pint of beer, though?
Okay, maybe it’s a little like hers.
There’s no magic here, unless you’re the poetic type. Just walking between quiet trees and seeing things no sentient creature has ever seen. It’s a weird feeling, knowing that everything you look at hasn’t been… perceived. Not until now.
Sometimes I wonder if I might stumble on some artifact. Carved stone, the foundations of an old temple, even lingering radiation from an apocalyptic war.
So far, nothing.
The animals are animals, the trees are trees, the rocks are rocks. Maybe you have some ideas you got from that movie series. The one with the blue aliens uniting the life of their planet to expel the greedy humans trying to exploit it. I hated that movie.
Of course, a decade later, we get our sequel where they hint the planet itself is alive and thinking. Laughed in the theater at that one.
Take it from a guy who’s been there and done that, you’d know if the planet you were standing on were alive.
Beneath me is dirt, bedrock, a mantle, and a molten core spinning around a star. It doesn’t need to be more than that, something a lot of people don’t understand.
I’m holding a leaf right now. It’s blue in the shade but turns yellow when you hold it up to the sun. It tastes vaguely like spiced celery and feels like iguana skin. You could’ve lived without knowing it existed on a planet far, far, away. I could have ignored it and let it live and die and rot into the soil unnoticed by the thinkers of the universe. But I didn’t.
Part of me wants to make it a little grass crown and spear… I really need to finish that series when I get back.
Aframos must have passed a lot of leaves in the Ravelwoods. I know I did.
There were always more impressive sights in the journal. Random dancers and underwater towns galore. A lot of that stuff Aframos wrote about was gone by the time I went through the place myself, both on and off the tourist trail.
Sometimes I wish this place had some magic, but it might be better that it doesn’t.
What’s the theme of this one again? Oh yeah…
Jon Snow has been bleeding out on the Castle Black courtyard for thirteen years, and I won’t be surprised if he’s still doing that when I return to Earth.