Discendium

II

 "Hello?" I said "Is there anyone about?"

Nothing

"Well, I know this may sound sideways, stranger, but I've been found to this place by an odd encouraging light."

Still nothing

"Might I come in?"

Just silence

Right, maybe no one's home at all.

I pushed the door open slow and more light came flooding out, searing spots on my eyes and putting my thinker in a tizzy. When my eyes came back to seeing and my legs back to walking, I found I was already in the lit up room. And lit up it was. So many perfect untouched oldworld lights were nestled high in the ceiling and shone down on the whole room like the entertainment stadiums of the in-towners. I was so awe-struck that it leg-locked me for what I guess must have been the third time tonight.

No one was home, indeed, but it could have been hard to tell in such a massive room. I could not estimate, my dear readers, for you, just how big it was, as I am afraid I that lack the knowing of anything that bares comparison.

The whole place was crowned and capped in all this carved ornate and shiny deep rich red-brown wood. All was curves—not a straight line in viewing; which was strange to me, for nearly everything oldworld was marked by its harsh straight line like making. There were three sets of free standing walls that ran, with broken paths for crossing, lengthwise through the room. The walls were all shelves made of the same wood as all and crammed with more things than I could dream up.

There before me, a simple seven or eight steps, was this long and sturdy table it too stretching across and reaching for the far wall. On it were all these silver trays in one bit, some stacked and tiered, other with lace swatches beneath them, but all bore the same dust of long rotting food. In another section of it there were all these yellowy papers with like crude and blocky marks one some, and line-shapey pictures of instructions on others. There were cups and knives, and all I manner of things I had not words for.

But what drew me across this cavern was this big imposing like podium all pushed up against the far wall with lights strung up around for seeing better and pens and inks in cups and glasses for looking and threads and needles and skins for binding and so many many things, my dear readers. It was a place for making and doing, and especially reading the giant leathery volume which sat in the center of it all.

Take the book. Cooed a thought, though I was not the father to it.

I drew closer. The big leafs of paper were crammed with all this writing of the oldworld and edited or added to in many different inks. All edges were lined in gold and sloped in their mass like two gentle nature hills a-crest into a valley of writing. On the open page I saw, there were numbers and pictures and sketches and giant bits all crossed gone in red. Someone had done much work to this thing and cared a great deal for its upkeeping.

Now I could nearly smell it, some old feeling that was seeping from the pages so long sedentary. It almost stirred the air like heat. It was coper blood stinging the corners of my mouth. It was the smell of rain deep inside my nose. It was silk breezes sweeping the hair on my neck, and a quiet ratcheting hummm hummmm hummm sitting-hanging in my ears.

Take The Book.

Though something told me not to. What something? What am I doing here messing it matters that are not mine? I still have come this long way. . . My thinker must have been diluted by the lateness of the night, as I was being swayed and whispered to by feelings of this and feeling of that and had come out in this way in darkness with feet bare. Stupid. Enough, just make up your mind. That is a power we all have after all, to bend our thinker to what we will. Though thinking what would do the bending made me spin a little.