Some thoughts of no import

  “A smallness in the spring cannot devour a monster of the morning. For what is more powerful, the beat of a griffin’s wing or a dragon’s? Perhaps it does not matter, for both fly for miles, and neither can catch the Eagle” Excerpt from Ayela’s wistfulness, the litany of days to come, second standard edition. “And now you come to me, to hear of my wisdom and my folly. Yet that which I am sure you know me for is that which requires nothing of me in particular. You may wonder then, if so revolutionary a man as I has nothing in particular to teach, what hope could you have to ever think a thought worthy of the future? But you misunderstand me, scholars though you may be. For there is much I have to teach and much I have to say that indeed few know. Stories and legends, from long ago. Lores and histories of those who are either north of Sebastopol or have forgotten what they were. You do not want to hear these stories. You do not want to learn these histories. Most of all, you are...

Jen had never known what to think about the Pontiac. She’d known what to think about the office, she’d known what to think about the station. As a holy girl, these were the important aspects to form opinions about. After all, holy girls were the prospective candidates. Only Jen didn’t know what to think about the woman herself. It helped little that there seemed to be little to know about her, though that seemed impossible to Jen. Had she been friendlier with the hexmistresses and the travelling holy women, perhaps she’d have gained a clue or two about the Pontiac’s early life. Perhaps she’d have formed a plan of attack, a strategy to take the mantle herself one day. But Jen was surly and rude, brusque and somewhat impatient. The thought of long pointless chats with the older women was near enough to trigger convulsions. In a moment that was not quite vulnerable, she stopped to share such feelings with Aroma as they headed towards the Pontiac’s meditation station. ‘When was the l...

  “There was a great cry from the great father of the spruce trees. All his children wept as they saw the father felled, and Kayatta could not nothing about it. Rage and sorrow filled him. He raged at his friends and clan, who’d done the foul deed. He raged at the gods of winter, who’d forced them into so foul a crime. He raged at the fires of war, for all the lives they’d taken. He raged at the spirits of trickery, for planting the vile seed of the scheme in his mind. He raged at the weakness of his soul, that he’d so fallen into the spirits’ plan, and had shared their plot with the clan. And he wept for the saplings and for the children yet born, who’d never know the great father of the spruce trees. But in the end he felt sorrow for the great father himself.   And though he hated himself for it, he felt too a touch of relief, that for their great crime, his ember siblings would live to see another spring” Excerpt from ‘The princes of the west wood’, Jennept’s archive of n...