Gri Leven

<h1>. . .</h1> The inside of a large sphere, lined with tiger skins. It seems to be slowly rolling, yet "down" stays underneath you, as if "down" is rolling as well. [[Look down at yourself.]]

You appear to be a scribble, like in this picture: <div style="text-align:center;"><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Gri-leven.jpg"></div> You can move with ease and mystery. Rather too much mystery for your taste. [[Soft suggestions of something else sift in from outside.]] [[Sit up, whatever that may mean, and think.]] [[Roll yourself in a fold of the savage hides, and sleep.]]

There are sounds of rushing, like waves of the sea, or gusts of wind, heavily muted by whatever the sphere is made of. [[Look down at yourself.]] [[Sit up, whatever that may mean, and think.]] [[Roll yourself in a fold of the savage hides, and sleep.]]

There is an idea in your head, something you have always wanted to see. Rain is the idea, and you feel a poignant stir welling up from deep within in response to it. If there is any chance of finding out what rain looks like and feels like... there is something dreadfully important about it. There does not seem to be anywhere to go inside this sphere, except [[around in circles.]]

You are in a passage made of stones, with a [[warm light]] coming from ahead, and a [[cool darkness]] coming from atail. [[Look at yourself.]]

(set: $a to 1)As you move, "down" still remains underneath you, as if you are rolling the vast sphere like a rat's exercise wheel, though the movement of the globe is hard to notice, and it still seems to be rolling in a direction of its own. However far you go in any direction, you always feel you are walking along the bottom of the sphere. The tiger skins that line the inside of the sphere seem the same at a distance, but moving across them you begin to notice that some are rough, and others are smooth, or even soft and downy. Some are very old, and even have bare patches which are striped like the hair they lost, but thankfully none of them are... new. But however different they are, there is no possibility of finding anything recognisably different at a distance, which could be used as a landmark for you to try to reach. It is hard to see how the skins are held down, and they seem almost loose, so that sometimes it feels as if you are only ruffling and rumpling them instead of moving yourself anywhere. But at one point you trip, having caught on one of the skins. Though of course falling over makes little difference to you, since you have no top or bottom, [[it does hold you back a moment.]] There is little accomplished by trying to keep track of a point above you, it only makes you slightly dizzy. But at least you have not started to think that everywhere you go is somewhere you have been before. The size of the sphere keeps that feeling away. You are almost tempted to think that you will never reach a place you have been before. But even if you did, you would hardly recognise it. Placing your weight on a skin, you find it giving way [[beneath you.]] [[Fly.]]

You find that the edge of one of the skins is actually loose from the inside of the sphere. It is one of the oldest of the skins. You begin to wonder what would wear out the skins, and whether anyone has walked over it before. You pull at the little bit of free edge, and discover that the skin seems to grow directly out of the stone which you see underneath. However you are able with great force and patience to get a large enough part of the skin detached, so you can see clearly what is under it. Crude stone blocks it seems, older and more deteriorated than the skin that covers them; probably another reason you were able to tear the skin from them at all. One of the stones is loose enough to move somewhat, and with further tedious effort, you begin to work it out of the floor. The moment the block comes free you feel an odd, sideways gravity drift [[through the opening]] like a cool breeze.

(set: $b to 1)You let yourself down through a [[ragged, stone rent,]] and find yourself in soft light. The air is extremely cold and dry, and filled with an overwhelming scent of copper. Now that you can hear it more plainly, you find that the rushing sound is that of machinery, rather than water or wind. But it is not like any other machinery: there are no snaps, or grindings, only whirring, sliding, locking, rolling, tapping, slipping, and spinning. You cannot tell if everything you see is silver or gold, but everything you see is spotless, polished, and metallic. It is from these shining surfaces, curved or level, that the light comes. There are no gears, chains, bolts, wires, belts, rivets, sprockets, screws, or hinges. There are only wheels, cups, blades, rods, tabs, discs, pipes, bowls, rollers, funnels, plates, fans, sliders, and majestic levers of every description. There is nothing but the metal, there is not a speck in the air, not a stain of grease or rust on anything. The cups and trays you see are all empty, the fans make only gentle movements of air, the blades cut nothing, and there seems to be little done or accomplished except their movement. Everything is like stars, existing simply to exist, and to move ceaselessly in the paths laid out for them. Also like stars, there seems to be innumerable gravities in various parts and directions, and the arrangements and structures would be impossible a thousand thousand times if there was a single gravity encompassing the whole. With the way your perspective of these things changes as you fall among them, you are not at all sure that you are even falling in an entirely straight line. A gentle wind [[seems to usher you]] in a new direction, offering another option rather than the gentle, non-linear gravity. The wafting is too light to carry you unless you try to be blown by it though. As you pass downwards through a more crowded array of machinery, there grows a sense of expectancy, as though you are about to come out of a cloud and see what is below. A few blades pass through you, which matters little as you are so flexible. You are brushed by a swinging lever, and seem to fall into and back out of a tremendous bowl without touching the inside of it. Then you see below you, laid out like an aerial photograph, a wide field spangled thickly with trees. You soon alight in the long, wilderness grass, and look around at what seem to be olive trees, all lit by the gleam reflecting from the still moving mechanisms above. In contrast, the trees and [[grass]] are unmoving in the windless air. [[Those trees.]] [[The other trees.]]

As you leave the unstable floor behind, you begin to see further and further around you, as if the floor was curving down on all sides instead of curving up. Then you begin to realise that the far side of the sphere you thought you were moving towards is not coming any closer than before. It comes into your mind that the sphere is growing larger as you move towards the center. Already it seems that there are far more tiger skins than you thought at first, which must be needed to cover the now greater immensity of the strange globe. When they appear like the skins of striped red ants, or cruelly coloured rice husks, you begin to see something ahead of you, suspended on the emptiness in the midst of the sphere. As it comes more clearly into view, you see a punctilious planet, with all that it needs and nothing more, and you recognise each item as if it was included from a checklist: a sun, a moon, [[a cloud]], a sea, a mountain, a river, a tree, a field, and a sandbox. It also has a road, a house, a man, and an animal; but it could not decide which animal, so it has a multi-animal, like a Swiss army knife zoo.

Looking back up, you can see that the outside of the sphere is entirely covered in deep moss, nearly as deep as a human arm is long in places, and nowhere less than several inches deep. You can hardly see the crack you came out by. Here and there seem to be tiny flowers that smell like water. "Down" seems to have left you behind, while you walk among the moss plants, enjoying the deep, warm feel of it. As you seem to be on a small planet or moon, you begin to wonder what is over the horizon. Someone who lived on earth might be tricked into thinking this horizon is further away than it is, but you can tell the distance by how much the ground curves towards it. The sky beneath you is filled with colossal, perfect mechanisms of some metal like silver or gold, from whose gleaming surfaces comes the light that surrounds you, as if from a sky crowded with intricate moons of polished brass. The journey as you travel around the outside of the sphere is slower than on the inside, but somewhat easier, as the moss is more interesting, and the sky provides mainly reliable indication of your movement and direction. As you [[shliffer]] through the soft, green threads, you smell a mingling of a smooth, heavy, metallic smell from the sky, and a rough, warm, earth smell which your movements stir up from the thick moss. There hangs another mingling in the air, of the clean, clear sounds of the mechanical sky, and the quiet rustling of your progress through the moss. You have gone far, and the sky is wholly different than when you began, when you find, scattered in front of you, several large, unhulled [[sunflower seeds.]]

Your drifting tour is curious, like floating through a [[cyclopean]] Christmas tree, without the tree, or candles, or garlands, or even more than one or two colours. Something non-metal comes in view, a curve that eventually is discernible as a sphere, which must be larger than the one you came from. It is bare, seamless wood, whether carved by incalculable labor, or grown in a sphere like a planetary oak nut wasp gall. Settling deliberately against it, you find that the wood does not give off enough gravity to let you press against it. You have to waft yourself along, like swimming in air, which is easy enough since you are so light. A small variation in the smooth, wooden surface draws your attention, and you direct yourself towards it, feeling a growing impatience now that you have a destination. You find it is [[a small, round hole.]]

After looking through the grass a little, you see it is full of fleas, which do not disgust you, because they cannot crawl on you. You have nothing for them to crawl on. [[Those trees.]] [[The other trees.]]

The trees seem slightly thin for their height, perhaps because of a lack of gravity (which you would not notice), or because of a lack of wind. There is a distinct stillness involved in everything, further emphasised by the quietness of the now distant machines of the sky. On one tree you find some passages carved in Arabic, which seem, from your limited knowledge of Arabic, to be a love song. No other sign of human presence is to be found. The long, pale leaves hang like beautiful ornaments as you pass under them. You sweep through the grass like someone looking through a heap of disorganised documents. A dusty, dry, and slightly sweet smell grows in the air. You begin to notice a film of brown dust on the grass blades, and, further along, small heaps of the same brown dust weighing the grass down. The slightest touch against grass bearing even an invisible accumulation of the dust sets a little cloud of it rising in the air, greatly increasing the dry smell. Soon there is an incessant, nebulous trail following you. You come to places where the brown dust is piled in shallow drifts around the bases of trees. It does not have any of the ripples that are in windblown sand, either because the texture is different than sand, or, of course, because there is no wind. Later you come into places where the brown dust makes an unbroken ground cover, and grass tips rarely show through, even in the trough you leave behind you as you stir along. Then the trees begin to be fewer and smaller, and if they were men they would be waist deep in the brown dust. The brown of this dust is more brown than dust usually is. By now there is so much in the air from your moving through it you can taste that it is [[carob powder.]]

You are surprised by a small breeze, making the leaves fumble like the hands of lovely troll girls, and the grass waver like the antennae of so many groping moths. When the wind disappears again there seems to still be a sound [[some ways ahead.]]

"Shliffer" being a motion similar to shuffling and slithering, nicely adapted to your unique physique. [[Alright.|ragged, stone rent,]]

You pick up and shake each one, and all you hear is rustling. The sound is like rain, but wrong. They are empty, and each one has a hole in it. One you pick up is not empty, and feels as if it is filled with water, though it also has a hole in it. Out of the hole and onto the ground darts a small garden snake which had been coiled inside the seed. It is thinner than a fat pencil, and longer than a small child's arm. It has a tiny mouth like a split almond, and eyes no larger than one of its miniscule scales. It is dark green, and glossy as glass on the moss, and starts to eat you, since you are the perfect shape for being [[eaten by a thin snake.]]

The carob powder has now risen into a sort of erg, and the trees had dwindled down into it as the grass had long before. There is still a suggestion of vegetation away back the way you came, but nothing ahead. Except a sort of speck. It is hard to reach, not merely because it is far away, but because if you try to move without great carefulness the dust sifts up into the air and makes it impossible to see the speck. As it comes more into view you do not have to be so careful of the dust to see it, and can move slightly faster. You are sure now that it must be something thin and upright [[stuck into the ground.]]

It is hard to tell whether the hole you have made is more like a gap in a wall, or a seaside cave. Probably this is because of the clashing gravities. To put a stop to this effect, you slip dexterously down, or through, [[into the outside.]]

(set: $o to 1)Now it is clear that it is a sign post, dark and worn as an old broom stick in a corner. It has two, small pointers on it, the one saying [[Help me]], and the other pointing in a different direction, saying [[Help me please.]] As the sign post is so old, you think it quite probable that whoever put up the signs on it are no longer in any immediate need of help. You touch the post and find that it [[tips a little,]] and no wonder, since it is stuck into such loose powder. And at least there is no wind to blow it down.

You hope it is not far to go, as it would be hard to tell if you were still going the same direction that the sign pointed. It does start to seem like a long way, and you are not very apt to travel in a straight line, being a wandering line yourself. But as soon as it starts to seem long, you slide down a steep slope in the powder, carrying a great deal of powder down with you. The slope seems to surround a place on a level with hard ground, but the powder has thoroughly coloured it brown. In the middle of this more or less flat place is a wooden structure suggesting [[the entrance of a mine.]]

You decide to wander off in the direction the more plaintive sign indicates. You seem to see something in the distance. You are not moving again very long before the dust obscures it, but eventually you approach [[it.]]

You wonder if you could stick the post in more firmly, or if it would simply keep going down into the powder till no one could see it. But when you push it down, it does not move, though it moves from side to side quite easily. When you stop pushing it even springs back up a little. It cannot stand upright anymore, and leans so far over that you are sure it will eventually fall down if you leave it. There is clearly something underneath it, so you pull upwards this time, and scoop away the dust from around the bottom. You find a place where rough, old fibres of blackened grass or faded twigs are bound in great number to the lower end of the post. You start to suspect, before you dig it up entirely, that the post for the signs is actually a broom. It is a broom, rather large, and very old. You wonder if the broom was originally intended to sweep up this vast mislocation of carob powder, and you begin to sweep it up yourself, at least [[where you are standing.]]

(set: $p to 1)Of course most of what you sweep goes into the air, but as you have no lungs to suffocate you are not worried. However, when your sweeping uncovers something other than more carob powder, the brown obscurity of the air makes it hard to tell whether it is grass or trees or a collection of books. In fact, it is a collection of books: the top of a pile of books, almost level, so there is no guessing how large it is; some books lying flat with vertical books in between them and in rows, some of them spine upwards. After sweeping off an area the size of a small restaurant, and finding no downward incline of the books, you tiredly lay down the sign post broom, and start to glance about at the dusty volumes you have uncovered. There are some titles you recognise: [[The Edward]], Happy Lowfoot's Lands, [[Lisa Bean]], Parbicke's Compendium of All Nothings, Henwhill to Aton by Lacy Longgate, [[Locus of Acuity]], and Arching Arthurs Angers. There are some others you do not recognise, like Oefield's Law, Cunneng Al Bal, The Wickerstike by Adon Bale, [[The Whale of Bricken]], Our Skrimm Pile, Lucille's Plod by Anthony Howard, An Alligrater's Dole, and Hard Dip by Paul Hall. As there usually is, there are [[a few without titles.]]

*"Withhold not from the hands of a child The masterful things of yesterday's wild, Take not out of the hands of a man The willing pieces of future's plan."* *-Blihelm* <h3> Chapter first: the coming to Waithaven.</h3> Columns of dust followed the wagons; it was that time of year. In the fields wandered dust devils here and there, as if stirred up by the carriages of day time ghosts. In a carriage on the road sat one sadly like to a ghost, a boy of twelve with a face of thirty, wrapped in a gray mantle of cropped wool, as if the searing sun was cold to him. Beside him he who drove the carriage was a young man who looked younger than the boy, though he may have been twenty years. He bore a shallow moustache and white sleeves, and an expression of self-contained kindness. He glanced up as a whirlwind passed rather close to the road and died out. The boy did not move, but must have said something quietly, because his elder companion responded. "What? Yes, that is Waithaven this time. I hope you... I hope it agrees with you." The boy's shoulders shook because the carriage shook. They went on in silence. Inside the carriage was a single figure, clothed as darkly as the shadow inside the carriage, which was ironically at its darkest because the sun was at its highest. All that could be seen of the dark passenger was a sharp-nosed female profile, and the outline of a broad brimmed hat. You turn over [[the soft and cracking page.]]

*"Taken all together, I am not sure my life is worth more than another's, except in that I have taken it all together."* *- Abraham Fierwell* **T**he Edward will live in my memory as indefatigably as he lived in his own body. This book is written almost as self-defense against the frank displeasure I would no doubt have been subjected to by him if I once gave any reasons for not writing it. He had a deft way of poking you where there was a hole, and he must have considered the opposite of life to not be death, but excuses. You nod (at least in sentiment, since you do not possess a head) and [[stuff|where you are standing.]] the book back in a crack.

(set: $c to 1)You stand in front of a wall bordering a moonlit golf course, with a prestigious castle in good repair on the far side of it. Turning, you see that the so called hole you came through was actually a small, dark crack in [[the wall.]] It is an admirable, well kept golf course: gentle slopes as smooth as a green rabbit's back, some of the green visible even in the pale night time light, and the flags stand as significantly as pennanted lances in a field after a battle, only straighter. A few dark trees form a backdrop to the field, separating from it the [[imposing form of the castle,]] which seems taller in the dim light. It has at least four, square towers, and perhaps another lower down behind it. Above the towers there floats some small clouds, as pale in the moonlight as the castle walls, but more bright. They bring back the thought of rain. In the surrounding silence you feel an itch to hear the sound of it, which you can never get clear in your mind. A few more dark trees stand along a path which runs past you, along the line of the wall. You see something giving a slight gleam, leaning against one of the trees down the path a way. You venture out to investigate it, and it is an abandoned golf club, with an empty bag below it. But the bag is not empty, having in it two golf balls. All these things are not old, and could even be new. The handle of the club even seems to retain the warmth of someone's hand, but this may be your imagination. You decide that you can risk borrowing them for a shot, since you are [[quite good at golf,]] and can simply return them to the place you found them.

(set: $d to 1)The wall is somewhat tall, but easy enough to climb. When you come down on the other side you find yourself among some privet bushes that line a gravel path. You look around and see that you are in a walled garden, well tended, though it looks more faded in the moonlight, and the ragged shadows cast a sense of disrepair. You move across the garden to the back of a house, which has a glassed in sun-porch, partially shadowed on the right by one of the few trees there. The door is open a crack, which is enough for you, but you wonder if you should go inside. Looking back you see a black cat walking the wall where you climbed over. You [[do not want]] to knock or call. You look down a little longingly at the mat inside the door, and you cannot see part of it. A shadow of something seems to be falling on it, but thicker than any other shadow in that place. Then there is a breeze, and you see a glint of something as the shadow changes shape, like the flicker of a coin in the darkness of a deep well. The shadow is a cat, and the glint is an eye, and the cat is closer now, and says in a deep, creaking murmur, "There is nothing in the house now but me. [[Come with me inside.]]"

You are drawn to the looming, stone edifice, and you move across the wide golfing green like a figment of an unimaginative person's imagination. After you pass under some trees, it is still a long way to go around the castle until you reach the yard before the gate. The gate is not open, but there is plenty of room underneath [[to enter.]]

The club glimmers in the slim light. The sweet tick of the stroke and the dim form of the ball gliding away over the field. It is not a hole in one, but it was close. It rolls down a gentle slope. You line up again, and this time the faint, white circle neatly sets behind the rim of the hole. You feel good, and go to get the ball. You find that this hole is deeper than you thought, and you cannot see the ball inside. [[The darkness]] inside looks thicker than you are comfortable with, but it was someone else's ball, so you go down into the hole, lower and lower. The hole is [[very deep.]]

It is certainly an old, abandoned shaft. You get between two of the boards that cover it, and slither down, vanishing into [[the darkness.]] You find your way to place deep in a back passage, where a simple candle sits in a crevice in the wall, and on the floor beneath is a large, soft earthworm, curled like a snake. The worm curls itself tighter as if it is cold, and asks in a damp, mournful, flutelike voice, [["Have you seen any rain?"]]

You are somewhat afraid of dark, because you do not exactly exist in darkness, but it makes it easier to move about. It has something to do with rain: the opposite of darkness is rain. [[I see (figuratively speaking).|the entrance of a mine.]]

"People say we come up in rain to keep from drowning. It is nice to not die, but the true reason is that we love the rain. Will you [[help]] me look? I cannot carry the candle."

It does not trouble you to be eaten, only you are a little afraid of the dark. You do not exist in the dark very much, so that you vanish quite well into the small creature, through the black pinhole of its tiny throat. You can tell that it finds a sunflower seed that is not empty, and empties it. You can see out when the snake's mouth is open and empty. You cannot feel the sunflower seed flesh once it has passed into the darkness inside the snake, but you can smell it overwhelmingly. The snake empties a sunflower seed and leaves a rustling shell four more times. Then you can tell that it is worming its way deep into the moss, and you can smell a deep, green smell more and more. Then it is sliding through [[a little, lightless, stone hole.]]

"Cyclopean" means gigantic, and comes from the Greek word for "round-eye", because of Greek myths about giants that had only one eye. [[Interesting.|seems to usher you]]

The little hole is full of [[darkness]], but you do not mind too much. Going in feels like going inside a towering pyramid. The tunnels inside are long and with few corners or divisions, but, as a whole, they are as complicated as the inside of an ant hill. Sometimes you feel some scratches in the wall, most of which are too hard to read merely by touch, but you think you can make out, "When? Year 1870", "This job This pie", "Jimm bought it", "Table legged spider foot", and, "Joy got in my ear". You come across a solitary light bulb, a wire leading into it and out of it stapled to the wall. There is nothing around it though, not even a scratch on the smooth, wooden inside of [[the tunnel.]]

You find the telephone on a hump of the tunnel wall and floor, and above it shines a lightbulb. You pick up the receiver, and hear the voice on the other end saying, [["Let me tell you a story."]] <audio src="https://archive.org/download/various-sound-effects/phone-ringing-once-closer.mp3" autoplay>

You pass through the various rooms of the house and find them all empty, as the cat said. The beds are not made, but at least the dishes are washed. Despite a few minor things, everything in the house seems in order. The plants seem to have been maintained, but there is no food, and no pictures of people. Crossing the sitting room again, the cat bats you a few times, then paws you wildly, then sits bolt upright. You pause, wondering if the cat wants to tell you something. It does not seem to have anything to say, but after you wait it does speak, in the same soft, grinding tone as before. "I will not apologise for playing with you. My actions were entirely honourable." It looks away slightly, and, seeing that it has nothing more to say, you find your way to the front of the house, and the glass front door. This door is sealed so that you have to open it to pass through. Once you have it open, and are closing it behind you, you hear the cat speaking again, and see it in the entryway. "Have you ever had a bubble bath? Let me give you [[a bubble bath.]]"

You climb up more or less easily onto the slick glass of the sun-porch roof, and cross to the end spangled with gray shadows. You climb into the tree, and thence onto the concrete roof tiles. Up on the ridge, you can see over the whole, fine neighbourhood. The meagre light reflecting from the roofs with the shady gloom beneath gives it a significant, apprehensive air, as the kindest face can be given a grim look when a torch is shined from the chin. A block away there is a glow of firelight from a window, and a slight progression of smoke disappears into the dominion of the moon. Settled there on the cool, corrugated tiles, [[you fall asleep.|Roll yourself in a fold of the savage hides, and sleep.]]

The snake exits the hole through a crack in the pavement of a ruin. You emerge from between the snake's little, hard lips. The ruin is very bare. Not a single weed, not even a small heap of dust. The walls are erect, many of the Grecian pillars as well. Though all is cracked, chipped, and worn to the last degree, there is little mess. It is mainly courtyards, in places with roofs extending from the tops of walls to rest on what pillars are left. The shade under these is not very dark, but pensive. You find some stately statues still recognisable, gazing it seems blindly with their smooth, pupilless eyes. [[You wonder]] if they would rather see the state of their dwelling, or if they would rather be blind.

There is not a light in the place, nor anything but the more permanent furnishings. Yet it is perfectly clean. It is as if everyone had moved out of this castle only last evening. But after some time looking here and there, you hear a sound of someone singing, high up in some room of the upper levels. You find a [[winding stair.]]

With the quiet but distinct singing to guide you, you come to a room that may have been an upstairs drawing room, for it is slightly too large for a bedroom. It has a beautiful view over the countryside, but what draws your attention is a stone wall table with an ornate, silver chalice resting on it, from which the music seems to be coming. You approach it and find it empty, yet the metal vibrates with the clear song nonetheless. The voice is feminine, and the song in Arabic, sung in the manner of a Latin chorale. You lift the chalice, and feel it ring, and, though you have no mouth, you drink deep and large of [[the empty cup.]]

(set: $e to 1)You feel the sound resonate through you, as if you were a harp string, and the voice is swellingly joined by others, and you can now see the singers, men and women in pale robes in the dim light of the tall, narrow windows. Their hands behind their backs, and their mouths like so many "O" shapes, make them look like singing children. After a sweet, lingering harmony, the song dies away. The choir looks at you, and one and all smile beatifically. From behind their backs, where they were hiding them, they present rakes, bug nets, hoes, and other such items, then one and all run towards you. [[Slip away out the window.]] [[Slip away back down the stairs.]]

As you float away from the castle on the breath like wind, the choir clusters at the windows, and all begin whistling for you like you are a dog. But now you probably could not get back to them if you tried. And it seems you have no way of getting down to the ground. You see the beautiful view spread beneath you, in the dim colours of night. The fields; the walls, copses, gardens; and sullen, grey roof tops, each with one chimney letting out a little, shifting phantom of smoke. All this becomes smaller and everything becomes wider, and you see with some surprise an object standing out like an abandoned doll house of minimalist and grim aspect: the castle from whose window you left. You are floating upwards, and soon are bathed in the white and then dimmer and dimmer gray of [[a cloud.]]

You resist the temptation of jumping off the stairs, knowing that you can [[pull yourself down the steps]] faster than you can slither down through the air.

You come up out of the cloud on a fishhook, and across the little field of fog both softer and whiter than snow you see an old, fat man in a robe sitting cross legged like an Asian, with a beat up, olive brown, waterproof hat pulled down so you cannot see his face. It is he who holds the simple fishing rod. He picks you off the hook, and looks at you closely, though you still cannot tell what he looks like. He intones, "Vanity of vanities." And he tosses you higher into the night sky [[above the clouds.]]

They would have been hot on your heels if you had any heels. At the gate more than one of them makes a stamp at your end as you [[slip underneath the great doors.]]

But as you emerge on the other side, something falls on your middle with a clanging boom. You would have been crushed [[if you had not been so thin.]]

You look back and see an old, iron bell has fallen from above the gate, and landed squarely on top of you. How it kept from falling until just that moment [[you cannot fathom.]]

As you are squirming from underneath it, your pursuers open the gate, and the swinging door knocks the bell aside. You might escape if you think of going back among them, where they would lose you in each other's robes, but you do not think of that in time, and one of them snags you with [[an antique spaghetti scoop.]]

They wind you around a wooden spool, and carry you to a tailor sitting in a window seat. He is young, and does not even have spectacles. He takes you, and says you are something that will match. He threads you onto a needle, and uses you to stitch a dark patch on a small, white blanket. At least they do not use you as a candle wick. You are incombustible, and would be trapped forever in a waxen prison. Then one of the choristers brings out a fake infant, which smells powerfully of an uncomfortable amount of soap. They wrap the blanket around the doll, and begin to sing an ancient lullaby - or dirge, but you hope it is a lullaby. The haunting tones of a full choir by moonlight in an empty castle very soon, and quite understandably, sink you in [[unconsciousness.|Anise]]

Now you can see further than ever before, though now places are blotted out with the purest drifts of white vapor, on one of which you see the little dark speck of the old fisherman, still fishing. You feel a little sad for him, though he called you a "vanity of vanities". The moon is not noticeably larger in the sky, yet it seems nearer, and the stars are like luminous grains of salt scattered in the path of a dark witch, to keep it counting them till the sun returns on its beat. Like a spider's parachute thread without a spider, you float still higher, till, slipping across the thinnest part of the air, you come to the [[rising of day.]]

(set: $l to 1)The sun that pulls up the tides, just as nicely as the moon does, licks you off the upper atmosphere into the vacuum of space. Out here the sun looks a little more [[angry]] than it does from the underside of the blue. After some weeks, you wonder if you should even try to aim yourself for that little [[dark spot]] that seems too round for a sunspot.

The sun's horizons encircle you long before you are near the surface, so that you begin to feel as though you are falling into a vast hole. When you do reach the surface it is hard to tell what it is, it is so angry. The heat is intense enough to stand on, and gives very direct hints that the intensity goes on increasing into the depths. A solar prominence rises like a sun's son in the distance, though nowhere near the horizon. A female figure approaches. "Excellent, a visitor to [[paradise!]]"

After some months it is obviously Mercury, a helpful little circle, like a moon of the sun which is almost three times larger by now. The planet seems to say, "This way! I'll catch you!" and after several more weeks it seems that it will actually do it. But as you finally drop within the circle of its horizons, which have long before eclipsed the sun, you realise as you stick to the frozen ground that this hemisphere has never seen the sun, and probably never will unless something kicks it. There is still some light at least, star and planet light, reflecting rather weakly off the ice. Nothing else happens for so long that [[you fall asleep.|Roll yourself in a fold of the savage hides, and sleep.]]

You soon come to a place where you can look out into a stone chamber that is filled, almost up to the hole where you sit, with [[hot spaghetti.]] The warm colour of the pasta and tomato sauce was the light you saw, and the smell is very sleepy and spicy. There are also meatballs, larger than you are. There are [[some notebook pages,]] pinned to the stone wall somehow. [[Bark.]]

You enter a winding, stone stair. Cool air comes from [[above,]] darkness comes from [[below.]]

You are a beaver, a fine beaver. [[Oh.|Roll yourself in a fold of the savage hides, and sleep.]]

You see they are all recipes. [[Jordan Fry]] [[Lighthouse Cakes]] [[Blacksmith Cakes]] [[Erstwhile Platter]] [[American Soup]] [[Joseph Rolls]]

A dozen or so magpies come from somewhere you cannot see, and alight on the [[spaghetti.|hot spaghetti.]] They peck it, perhaps eating some herbs, or perhaps trying to stir it with their beaks. Satisfied, or disappointed, they fly away again, though there is no sky, only a stone roof. The [[papers|some notebook pages,]] are still on the wall somehow.

Fearlessly you jump in, and make for a good sized meatball. A bread coloured octopus rises like a kraken from below the noodles and drags the meatball [[under,]] and you see it no more. You make for another meatball, and succeed in biting it, only to be confronted by a tail. You take it, and pull out of the meat a jackrabbit covered in gravy, who spits in your eyes and says, [["Good morning."]]

It is the upper part of a round tower, the rest buried in the carob powder. You call out, asking if anyone is home. From the single window an aged lady looks out. "Please do not leave me. The dragon is gone because he preferred chocolate, but I cannot open the door or jump from this window. It is my belief that saving me has gone out of fashion, especially now that the dragon himself has gone to seek his fortune. If someone came who could wield a broom as well as the sword the door would soon be clear. My hair is quite long, but I have already been forced to cut away the greatest length of it to spin and weave new clothes. That is why you see me clothed in plain white. I now have nothing to lower to you that you may [[climb up to me.]]"

As you make your way up, even before the light gets to be full, recognisable daylight, you start to find pictures on the walls, and hanging plates. Then there is [[dark red tapestry]] and carpeting with intricate, light patterns. At [[the top...]]

As you descend the darkness grows thicker, really thicker, as if it is turning to water, and making it harder for you to push your way down. Every now and then there is [[a rumble]] that quivers the rock.

Jordan Fry 1 Large Cabbage chopped 3 Medium Onions cut in rings 1/2 Cup Flour 1/4 Moths 2 Tbsp. Oregano 2 Tbsp. [[Peas]] 1 Tbsp. Cedar Wood Chips 1/4 Tsp. Salt 1/4 Tsp. Sand 1/4 Tsp. Larkspur 1/8 Tsp. Thyme 1/8 Tsp. Barley Fry in 1 Tbsp. oil, and eat with great decorum and display, in due respect to the culture.

Lighthouse Cakes In a circular vessel mix the following: 7 Cups Glass Oil 4/5 Cup Chickpeas 1/2 Cup Soda 1 Tbsp. Gross Domestic Product 1 Tsp. [[Edelweiss]] 1 Tsp. Water 1 Tsp. Grain Form into six cakes. Bake in a cool kiln, and hold high above the head, to guide ships into port.

Lighthouse Cakes 3 Cups Salt 3 Globules Black Resin melted 1/3 Cup Raisins 1 Tsp. Clove Tea 1/2 Tbsp. Pine Charcoal 1/2 Tsp. [[Yeast]] 1/2 Tsp. Melaleuca Powder Shape into oval cakes, and serve on iron.

Erstwhile Platter Phinson's Relish Dried Beet Slivers Snowglobe Snow Chopped Echoes [[Rosemary]] Minced Lettuce Evening Salad Tossed Boat Leaves Rocket Coriander String Liquorice Crushed Potatoes with Hardly Sauce 1/2 Cup Canola Oil 1 Tbsp. White Bean Flour 1/2 Tbsp. Peanut Flour 1 Tsp. Paprika 1/2 Tsp. Onion Film 1/4 Tsp. Salt 1/8 Tsp. [[Smoked Cranberry Powder]] 1/19 Tsp. Tea Serve with pickled Spanish sausage and toasted baguette sliced lengthwise.

American Soup 5 Cups Liquid Water 2 Cups Canola Oil 1/4 Cup Drained Dwarves 2 Tbsp. Black Pepper 1 1/2 Tbsp. Ghee 3 Tsp. Baking Soda 2 1/2 Tsp. Stevia 1 2/3 Tsp. Granulated Salad 1 1/2 Tsp. Basil 1 1/2 Tsp. [[Anise]] 1 Tsp. Alphabet Place all ingredients in a stomach, and regurgitate as needed.

Joseph Rolls 2 Spherical Eggs 4 Cups Sifted Flour 1/2 Cup Beeswax 1/2 Cup Juniper Berries 1/4 Cup Fine Oak Sawdust 2 Tbsp. Rice Flour 1 Tbsp. Event Horizon 1/2 Tsp. Salt 1/2 Tsp. Bees 1/5 Tsp. Water Shape into balls using airguns, and garnish with dried water chestnut leaves, or [[coriander.|Lancelot]]

Lost in the spiralling labyrinth of a sunflower head you are, a galaxy of lesser seeds opening between every seed. You find [[a door]] in the side of one of the seeds.

You discover that one reason it may be more difficult to go down is that the stair is making it more difficult to go around it. It is starting to turn itself. The thunderous sound comes again, but does not die out. The stair turns faster, till you feel yourself driven towards the wall. You hear another rumble, softer and looser, and growing louder. A sharp smell of soil reaches you, and you realise the stairway is being drilled into the earth. You gallop giddily up the stone steps. As slightly more and more light filters down, you see more and more clearly the [[grim flood of churning earth]] mounting the steps behind you.

The revolving stairs come to an end beneath the revolving light in the top of a lighthouse. Knowing that the rising ground will not wait, you leap and climb into the girders of the roof. You find a missing section in the roof, and climb out on top. There are several ravens here, placidly roosting, or strolling to and fro. You see the beam of the light swing through some light mists in the air, then dim and vanish. The rumbling ceases. You look down through the gap, and see that the lighthouse has filled with dark earth from deep underground. The ravens go down inside, and walk here and there on the loose soil. They find worms, of a translucent, milky colour, the size of plums, rumpled as a pug's neck, spangled with sparse, horrent scales. The worms when found sedately allow themselves to be picked apart and pointedly discussed and swallowed. You wonder if it is because they are dizzy. A nearby bird looks up at you, and sagely intones in a gravelly voice, "We draw the deep ones up." When they have all eaten, the ravens get up through the gap again with a great waving and clapping of wings, and fly away through the clouds crying, "We are wise now!" And you are left [[alone.]]

There is something large and round through the trees. Coming into a small clearing you find a hot air balloon, of the most antique fashion. The envelope and car are ornamented with large, extravagant images of the sun and moon and elephants smiling and dancing in frames and garlands of large, curling, white leaves, all on a background of vivid blue. The car is spacious and circular, with a great fire burning in the center. The vehicle is straining at its ropes. Tending it is [[a black monkey]] with long fur and tail, and white shoulders.

(set: $n to 1)Since you clearly have no money, the monkey allows you to ride his balloon for free. The inside of the round car is floored with varnished wood slats. The monkey stokes the fire which sits on a sort of round pyre in the center. He releases the balloon, and you see tree branches passing downwards all around, and the streamers of flame pour and dance upwards into the envelope, as if trying to push upward the air inside. The balloon reaches its level, and begins [[to sail]] with the wind you felt earlier, only it is a little more insistent above the trees. The monkey fixes a woven wall beside the pyre to shield it from the wind. You look over the side, and the trees look like the tops of unruly boys' heads, with some glimpses of the shivering grass even further below. [[Scream.]]

(set: $g to 1)"A man is to die soon and has a large fortune to give away. Two men arrive who each claim to be his eldest son, but the elder of the two men arrives several days later than he should have. Should the man leave his fortune to the man who was born first, or to the man who arrived first?" [[The man who came first.]] [[The man who came to be first.]] [[Do you know where I can go to watch the rain?]]

"You have given the correct answer, your fortune will arrive shortly." Almost immediately you hear a sound like distant thunder, growing quickly louder. By the time you see what it is in the not-so-far-reaching illumination of the light bulb it is [[too late.]]

"You have chosen the correct answer. Your fortune is [[on its way.]]"

The lightbulb flickers bright and dim, and you hear a roll of thunder over the phone, the sound distorted and scratchy in the old machine. You hear another, lighter rumbling in the distance, and the air begins to move past you faster and faster, growing cooler. The sound clarifies into that of water rushing along the wooden tunnels, and as soon as you see the glint of it you are carried away in a dancing, shooting hurry [[through the dark.]]

You catch a glimpse of swirling coins, rolling mounds of banknotes, crowns, candelabras, mahogany furniture, stretch limousines, private yachts, and several story mansions crashing and cascading through the narrow, wooden tunnel towards you. Then you are swept away in a wild race through the dark, little holes, with the occasional flash of an approaching light bulb that vanishes with startled tinkle when you and the opulent torrent that carries you reaches it. But at last a flash of light that does not go out, [[a flash of daylight.]]

You are floating in the cold air of a cave, watching your unruly inheritance pour in an astonishing cataract from the mouth of a heathen looking wooden statue. It is skillfully carved but not very decorative, and represents a bald man with pointed ears standing with one foot resting on an upside down orb. Its mouth is formed to look like it is blowing, but with the gold, silver, chrome, documents, stained glass windows, and Victorian architecture pouring from it, the statue looks somewhat sick. You settle down on top of the tremendous pile as the flow reduces to a dribble of jewelry and motorcycles. Then you hear a thunderous but silky voice echoing in the cave, "It is long overdue, but gratitude is in order nonetheless." You see a vast, wingless wyrm, like a cross of a giant, a weasel, and an alligator, come into view from another part of the cavern. It shakes hands with the statue - whose right shoulder is jointed for that purpose - and then the incomparable reptile begins to settle its voluminous coils onto your treasure. You do not mind so much except that it sits on you as well. It is not as dark as you would expect, there being a chandelier glowing somewhere in the cache beneath you, but it is intensely hot. You do not have a chance, as the giant is, according to custom, unlikely to move for any number of centuries. In this modern era, it is probable that it will be left undisturbed, perhaps even made into a tourist attraction. Eventually, you succumb to the heat and the boredom, [[and faint.|Roll yourself in a fold of the savage hides, and sleep.]]

You are swimming in a pitcher of water. Something flashes on the bottom, and you dive for it. It is a curved piece of glass. When you shift it, the light focuses and lights the water on fire. You flee to the surface and rise on the water's smoke, which is not at all like steam. It shuffles like papers, curls like petals, and makes varied shades of brown like burning paper. It smells like raw, oxidised potatoes. A hairy butterfly carries you away because [[you are a beetle.]]

A cave of boiling wax, both the walls [[and roof,]] and there is no floor, at least it is not visible, as the cave is filled with the most fluid portion of the substance. The cave is lit with its own heat, and the glow emphasises its translucency, highlighted by the bubbles that wander up and down and out of the walls to release a burst of yet more intense heat. Liquid as it is, the wax with which the cave is filled does not allow you to move at all. The heat radiating from all directions makes the surface shiver as if with sound, and makes the depth shiver like the distortions in the air above a fire. The heat coming from every side seems to pin you down, keeping you from changing [[your original position]] in the slightest.

Then down comes the candle flame, burning down the wick, like a house burning down, and you are picked up into it, and threaded into the dancing ribbon of beautiful smoke. But before you get clear, down on the flame comes the snuffer, big as a steeple, black as a tomb, and you are [[caught.]]

Every now and then some of the most liquid wax solidifies like a surfacing whale, or part of the wall slides away like a curtain falling, so that the cavity you remain in gradually changes shape. Then everything is poured away, and the boiling wax fills an ornate chalice, which is then raised to great, bearded lips, [[and drank.]]

All is black, like the backs of your eyelids. You open your eyes, and you are lying in heaps of cotton in a wooden box. You used to be a dragon's egg, now you are a dragonet. You kick your eggshell pieces with your whip like tail, and cry because you want pearl necklaces, thrones, and jacuzzis. A wooden man with pointed ears looks in at you, and shrugs its shoulders - its shoulders are jointed for the purpose. You would fly in its face, only you are not the sort that has wings, so you climb in its face. Its mouth is nicely round, and you slide [[into it,]] as it rapidly and desperately shrugs its shoulders.

You climb like an inchworm up the side of the tower. You take apart the lady's spinning wheel and loom, and take the largest pieces of metal from them downstairs to the door. You scrape away the wood from behind where the hinges and bolt would be on the other side of the door. It is days of work, but of course the lady is patient. Once some of the backside of the hinges and bolt are exposed, it is comparatively easy, pounding from this side, to force them outward, prying them off the door. At long last the door can be worked inward, and taken out of the archway. The flat wall of packed carob crumbles after a few blows, and the loosened powder drains into the lower part of the tower, until daylight shows at the top of the door. The lady never minds covering her snow white robes with brown, crawling out to freedom. It is only then it occurs to you that you could have taken a piece of wood, climbed down from the window, and dug away the powder from outside the door with less trouble. The lady's name is Rachel Heartlet, and she makes you the chief butler in [[her mansion.]]

She lives on a vast plate of the finest china, under the dome of a bowl, of even finer china. On these are depicted here and there in warm colours idyllic scenes of rural life. Inside the bowl the mansion itself is made of agates, moonstones, carnelians, and garnets, with mother of pearl door knobs and taps. She owns pleasant gardens of holly and cotoneaster, and flocks of polite cats. Lighting the whole estate is a mighty gathering of fireflies in a paper lantern on the highest tower, giving out a pale and soft but bright gleam. As her chief butler you sleep in a faberge egg, and try to wear hats. One day, going round her border, you see a chip in the edge of the inverted bowl she lives under, and you hear some interesting sounds through the tiny, triangular gap. You poke yourself through [[a little ways.]]

[[...]]

(set: $h to 1)Other than a few slight breaths of cool air out of the darkness that seem like accidents, and a few clicking sounds from the lightbulb, you have had nothing to keep you company for uncounted time. To pass the time, you start to call some numbers you had found scratched on the wall when you were first exploring the tunnels. [[777-2035]] [[969-3008]] [[603-8807]] [[000]]

"You have reached Miss Heartlet's residence, I am sorry but Miss Heartlet is not at home. Do not leave a message, as it would be absolutely useless, just listen to the tone." You listen to the tone, and try another number. [[679-5932]]

From the receiver comes in the tinny tones of the old phone the sound of a Latin choir singing a slow, haunting song, in an echoing chamber. The music overpowers you, and you drift [[into sleep.|Anise]]

All you hear is a droning sound, like a disconnection. You hang up the receiver, and hear someone speaking from your left: [["What is it that you wanted?"]]

(set: $j to 1)You hear the sound of sizzling, and a black, crackling fluid wells out of the holes of the receiver, gathering in long, shaky drops like fingers of a greased toad, before it finally drops and drizzles onto the wooden hump on which the telephone rests, and forms a circular, bubbling stain. You can tell that the snaps and bursting of the bubbles are making voices, many voices in many conversations. You hear catches of them, "...let them..." "...the weight of which..." "...breathe out..." "...duplicitous..." "...without..." "...hard to see..." "...welcome in..." "...overheard us..." "...by the hand of..." "...the times are upon..." "...away to..." "...torches for my..." All at once the boiling substance seems to slip from the wooden dome, and glides quickly [[out of the light.]] You try dialing some of the other numbers, but the phone seems to be disconnected now, and [[is silent]] as an undiscovered tomb.

You follow the speaking blackness into the blackness. You can tell where it goes by the slight hiss it makes, like a shrew giving a baby shrew a belly blow. You can tell that the black thing is moving fast, as if it is falling along the floor and around corners, and it slips far ahead of you whenever it crosses a patch of light, which you cannot move through as easily as through darkness. But at a certain opening, [[you hesitate.]]

You leave the useless telephone behind and continue through the tunnels. You come upon even longer tunnels, and though the walls could not be smoother, they are straighter and more regularly round then before. You come upon light bulbs more frequently, though they are still all but out of sight of each other. There are less scratches on the walls. The air is warmer, but there are cold smells in it, like mildew and decomposition. At least there are no bats, but occasionally a paper airplane glides silently past in the gloom. Some of the tunnels seem like ramps, or you being followed by an unfriendly gravity that stealthily tries to hold you back. After a time there are fewer choices of ways, and you start finding corners rather than turns. Then you come to a tunnel so straight and long that though the lights are so far apart you can see many of them. The foreboding smell fills it like marrow in a bone. You cross each interval of darkness as easily as subtraction, but crossing the light patches one after another becomes tedious. At the end there is a sharp corner almost pointing back the way you came, and you see no more lights. It is on the same plane as the tunnel you left, but seems to slope [[steeply upwards.]]

The perceived slope comes to an abrupt end, though the tunnel is straight, without any change of angle. Here there is a light that is not even a tenth the brilliance of a lightbulb, and you cannot see where it comes from. It faintly illuminates two things. [[A bell pull, and a coffin.]]

It is a young man standing as if he had just stepped into the light. He wears a black dress coat, open to show a white shirt with many small buttons that seem to be made of pearl. He is clean shaven, but his hair is somewhat unkempt. You tell him, [["I want rain."]]

"I will see to it." the man replies. You can hardly hear his slippered footsteps as he turns and goes the way he came, vanishing like a shadow into shadow. You wonder what he meant by seeing to it, and whether [[he will return.]]

The room seems to be changing shape like an optical illusion, though it is too dark to see. You sense rather than see the form of a speaking mouth, speaking incessantly, and the sound of the voice is that of many millions of voices in many hundreds of languages, distant, and distant from each other. The dance of the speaking mouth lures you as a serpent lures a deer. Entering the Voice you are joined into a world of thoughts, overloading your mind instantly, as a string would vanish on the surface of Betelgeuse. Your cognizance attempts to smear over a universe, snapping out of recognition, and leaving you in [[complete unconsciousness.|Peas]]

The coffin is a heavy sarcophagus of dark, hard wood, and unlike the rest of the wood in this place, is polished till it glistens sleekly. The bell pull is simple, and [[you pull it.]]

(set: $k to 1)You hear the doorbell ring deep inside the coffin. You pull again, and hear it ring again. But nothing stirs in response. You see that the tunnel goes on past the coffin. It occurs to you that you have not found any of the tunnels to come to an end anywhere. You edge your way hesitantly around the coffin, and start into the darkness on the far side. You feel someone looking at you from [[behind,]] but [[the darkness ahead]] seems the source of every foreboding you felt in your coming to this point.

You flee into the tunnel ahead, and can tell by how limitless your speed becomes that this is the deepest darkness you have vanished in. You have already passed beyond the greatest length you think could be contained within the wooden orb you entered, and you feel that this tunnel does not exist in the same reality as the rest of what you have seen. As you pass immeasurable distances you soon suspect that it is a bottomless pit, or endless tunnel; you do not know up from down, or whether such things exist any longer. You cannot tell if the walls of the tunnel are made of wood still or they are now made out of the darkness itself, existing only to mark your unimaginable rapidity, as quick as light leaves a room when the candle is snuffed. You do know, without seeing or hearing or feeling, that passing and surrounding you as you stream through the dark are grotesque beings of indiscernible, wild shapes, and no good intent. Then you hear a distant voice call, as if echoing over a grassy pasture, "Stop!" And somehow [[you obey.]]

You turn back, if only to weigh your options. The coffin is open, and on the side sits a five year old, European boy, with his head shaved like an African, or like an Asian monk. He is holding his finger to his lips in sign to be quiet. He is dressed in a long sleeved, plaid shirt, leather waistcoat, boots, and chaps, with spurs on his heels, and a red handkerchief around his throat. [[He beckons]] with his finger.

Down the creaking stairs you follow the clumping of the boy's feet and the jingling of his spurs. It's an old place, lit with old lanterns, and all the wooden supports everywhere make you think of a mine, only it is too roomy, not damp, and there aren't any mine car tracks. There is a great store of dry provisions and water. The boy shows you a contract, offering to make you his butler for room and board and a good wage. [[You sign it,]] if only out of respect for the lack of fine print.

In the dark around there are no longer any walls, or any evil, indistinct companions. Entirely undefined and separated from anything clear, yet now also separate from anything malicious, preserved in perfect safety, [[you deliver your thoughts to sleep.|look around.]]

He steps out of the darkness again, with his hand cupped. "There it is." He bends down and empties his hand onto the floor, making a little, dark puddle on the wood. Then he leaves again. The smell of the water tantalises you, but though it may be rain water, it is not rain. You decide to try some other number. [[777-2035]] [[969-3008]] [[000]]

Unfortunately this man possesses a gizzard like an avalanche. You dance between the boulders like a seagull in a crowded asteroid field. You seem to be getting out of the thick of it, when you perceive a rising glow like an oven beyond the rolling rocks. As you feared, a pool of liquid fire awaits you. Thankfully you land on a mat of digesting salad, and leap to an unwell buffalo as the salad goes under. The bovine lasts a little longer, and you have time to choose between half a camper van or a rather wilted, floating flower bed. Some pretty dicey moments later an iron tub comes alongside, piloted by a man like a train engineer, rowing with the fin of an airplane propeller. Without a word you spring from a sinking bag of concrete mix into the makeshift boat and help the man row between hugs. A leak springs up like an angry candle flame, and the man plugs it with a nail, hammering it in with a charred eggplant. When you reach the fleshy shore, the man drags his boat out of the fire, and ties the painter to something like a stray uvula. He points the way out: a round but [[ragged hole]] in the fleshy wall, sloping up with foot and hand holds dug in it.

You find something hard and metal, and curiosity overcomes you. You pull it out, and find that it is an antique spaghetti scoop. Yet a single noodle of this spaghetti is larger than it. A person wreathed in white, with gravy coloured skin, rises from the spaghetti and clutches the scoop in his arms. He turns away and begins to return to the depths, but you bite his robe, and he drags you swiftly down and through many strange places, till the robe tears, and you find you are a dog with a mouthful of white stuff in [[a dark alley.]]

You are a jackrabbit trying to leap up to the hole in the stone chamber. You finally catch the edge with your teeth, and pull yourself into the passage. You race down it towards the light at the end, and it does indeed seem like you are racing down the side of a pit. The view from the end of the passage is of looking down on the tops of sunlit trees. You plunge into the top of the tree, and look up to see the stone passage in the air that you escaped from. But all you see is the eagle that had been trying to carry you to its eyrie. You try to climb down the tree, but as far as you can see through the branches the trees go down forever. After climbing for a long time (and jackrabbits are not supposed to climb very much at all) you find [[a hole in the side of the tree.]]

You are sliding down the inside of the hollow tree. The hole you came in through is out of sight, yet the inside of the tree is lit from below, and it is dark above you because you block this light. The light is warm, in colour and in feel, and somewhat worrying, especially with the cloudlets of smoke that push rudely past you on their way up. At the height of your suspense the tree widens out and you have no hope of stopping yourself. You fall the rest of the way, and land astride a whole horse roasting on a spit above a fire as if it was a pig. You leap off before it rolls you off into the fire. A large person sets aside a chalice and wipes his bearded lips. He reaches for you, but you dart between the legs of him and his chair, and run blindly through the forest. Running blindly leads you through a hole into someone's basement, where a bear is thrashing around in a pile of cupboards. You run out again. But you must have run out through [[another hole.]]

You pad along until you reach a half door, and beyond it is light, the smells of wholesome foods, and sounds of merriment. You push on the door, but it is fastened on the other side. [[You spit]] the bit of white robe out of your mouth to bark.

Her face is nearly as white as her hair, and she wears a rustic, green petticoat, quite incongruous with her fine and queenly form and demeanor. You ask why it is paradise. "Because I am here! Do not be impertinent, or I shall cast you in a sunspot." She gives you tangram pieces, and several tangram pictures of herself to solve. Her conversation soon becomes [[impossible]] to follow.

(set: $m to 1)[["Yes."]] [["No."]] [["..."|wake up]]

[["Yes."|1]] [["No."|1x]]

She spears you with an indignant glance. You are hurled into a sunspot, and the darkness [[closes around you.|"Good morning."]]

"Wake up!" she cries, and throws you in [[a sunspot.|Yeast]]

[["Yes."|2x]] [["No."|2]]

You are flying through the searing heat [[into the blackness of a sunspot.|Edelweiss]]

You glimpse the deathly flash of her white teeth, and you are flying into the deathly blackness of [[a sunspot.|Roll yourself in a fold of the savage hides, and sleep.]]

[["Yes."|3x]] [["No."|3]]

You are a small child cautiously exploring the cave of a butterfly, and you are frightened when you see a beetle hung on the wall. You hide in a hole in the rocks when the butterfly returns, but it finds you by smell and puts you on a high bookshelf to decorate it. You cry because you cannot get down, but soon fall to admiring the great snowglobe, and wonder if you could [[crawl underneath]] and get inside.

She shakes her head at you sadly, and throws you in [[a sunspot.|Smoked Cranberry Powder]]

[["Yes."|4]] [["No."|4x]]

You are a good, bald gentleman, and you hug your greatcoat closer against the blizzard. Fear not, a knitted cap is tied on to keep your head warm. A grating in the street moves: something is coming out of it. A small boy comes out of it, and huddles by the curb, crying because of the cold. You take the child and hurry into [[the nearest building]] warm him up.

You are an embryonic wild boar, cowering in the grass for fear of the mower that is coming. You cannot find a hole to get into the ground. You find a hole in a hollow, green, grass stem, into which you climb, and curl in the bottom. The mower comes and whips off the top of the stem, and the swish of air sucks you up and out like a mouse out of an organ pipe. You land in a cup of warm water on a table. You suspect that someone is trying to poison someone else, because you see something on the bottom of the cup. You dive for it, and find that it is a bomb. You disarm the bomb, and in reward you are given [[a private yacht]] to sail in the warm water.

Once the child is happy, and a policeman is taking him home, you [[look around.]]

You seem to be in a garden, or a library. You are inside a large and perfect cube, from every part of which you see growing many vines like wooden conversations. Great trellises span the space from floor to ceiling, bearing many more vines. These vines are covered with blooms, in various stages of opening or closing, and these blooms are books, the pages arranged like petals, and the covers arranged like sepals. Flowers need rain, you need rain, and you have to find it. As you look into this blossom or that, you start to see things you recognise. [[Tiger Sphere]] (if: $a is 1)[[[Walking|around in circles.]] ](if: $b is 1)[[[The Misstep|beneath you.]] ](if: $c is 1)[[[The Golf Course|into the outside.]] ](if: $d is 1)[[[Knock or not|the wall.]] ](if: $e is 1)[[[Slipping away|the empty cup.]] ](if: $f is 1)[[[Eyes|You wonder]] ](if: $g is 1)[[[The Story|"Let me tell you a story."]] ](if: $h is 1)[[[The Telephone|...]] ](if: $j is 1)[[[000|000]] ](if: $k is 1)[[[The Coffin|you pull it.]] ](if: $w is 1)[[[Below the Coffin|You sign it,]] ](if: $l is 1)[[[The Solar System|rising of day.]] ](if: $m is 1)[[[Yes or No|impossible]] ](if: $n is 1)[[[The Balloon|a black monkey]] ](if: $o is 1)[[[The Signpost|stuck into the ground.]] ](if: $p is 1)[[[Books|where you are standing.]] ](if: $q is 1)[[[The Cloud|a cloud]] ](if: $r is 1)[[[The Sailing Ship|sailing ship.]] ](if: $s is 1)[[[The Airship Steps|mad]] ](if: $t is 1)[[[The Cast Die|inside the die]] ](if: $u is 1)[[[The Decayed City|you fall.]] ](if: $v is 1)[[[Behind the Curtains|some curtains]] ](if: $w is 1)[[[Who You Are|an end]] ] It occurs to you that flowers open in the morning.

There is a leak in your private yacht, so you call a plumber to repair it. He installs a shower above it. You take a warm shower, and when a fish blocks the pipe you eat it for supper. You find a sunset, [[and sail into it.]]

Sunsets are hot and sticky, like a hungry octopus, and they make poor conversationalists. Once you find your way past it, there is a secret, floating city disturbed by your intrusion, and the inhabitants intend to keep you prisoner for fear of your betrayal. A procession of beautiful people yelling angrily carry you to [[their securest place.]]

Once they put you in, and their shouts have died away, you [[look around.]]

Every sound is muffled by the water, though not as much as it would have been if you had ears. The crisp washing sound of the water thooping along the wood sides of the tunnel makes a continuous background. Either the power is out, or you are being carried through unlighted parts. It is the speed of a subway train. Then you shoot out, quite unexpectedly, into a half daylight. Out of a knot hole high in a tree to be precise. It takes a long time to untangle yourself from a branch, particularly with a steady stream of water flooding over you. As if inconveniencing you was its sole purpose, the water ceases moments after you escape from under it. At least you do not soak up water, as you would if you were a string. As you look about you notice something unsettling, and look again. You see that a small owl is looking out of the darkness in the knot hole you and the water just flew out from. It opens its beak and makes a twittering sound. An elderly wind stirs the branches, and tosses some of the wet from the branch you rest on. While you are distracted, the owl descends upon you with a soft flapping, and takes you back inside [[the hole.]]

You hear a noise as if a flock of meanly cackling fowls are approaching the phone on the other end. Then a flock of black, flying creatures rush past you in the tunnel, and you realise that they only sounded like their noise was coming over the phone. Finally their foul laughter vanishes in the distance. [[708-3303]]

"What are you doing with my telephone?" the man on the other end asks. Surprised, you put the receiver down, and wander away from it [[nonchalantly.]]

You leave the light behind and continue through the tunnels. You come upon even longer tunnels, and though the walls could not be smoother, they are straighter and more regularly round then before. You come upon light bulbs more frequently, though they are still all but out of sight of each other. There are less scratches on the walls. The air is warmer, but there are cold smells in it, like mildew and decomposition. At least there are no bats, but occasionally a paper airplane glides silently past in the gloom. Some of the tunnels seem like ramps, or you being followed by an unfriendly gravity that stealthily tries to hold you back. After a time there are fewer choices of ways, and you start finding corners rather than turns. Then you come to a tunnel so straight and long that though the lights are so far apart you can see many of them. The foreboding smell fills it like marrow in a bone. You cross each interval of darkness as easily as subtraction, but crossing the light patches one after another becomes tedious. At the end there is a sharp corner almost pointing back the way you came, and you see no more lights. It is on the same plane as the tunnel you left, but seems to slope [[steeply upwards.]]

The diminutive bird of prey takes you into a gourd shaped chamber half full of nest and eggs, and uses you to repair a less than perfectly secure patch of nestwork. Then it settles for a roost, and you fall as [[asleep|Roll yourself in a fold of the savage hides, and sleep.]] as the eggs that share your circumstances.

As you run your fingers along the soft, richness of the textile, you feel something underneath. Taking your knife from your pocket you cut it away and uncover a door like a [[trapdoor]] in the wall.

...you come out in a grand dining hall, and all the majestic ladies and gentlemen at the long table stand up shouting and screaming at the sight of you, and throwing their food at you, since you are a bear. The ice cream and soup is first rate, the knives and candlesticks are tolerable, and someone even throws roast pork, but unfortunately he misses. A stew rains down, which would have been excellent if it was not boiling. You step on a broken bowl, which is uncomfortable. Then a fork alights all points foremost in your left eye. You cannot help rushing, or roaring. You slip on gravy, and plunge under the table. There you fall headlong [[down a long stair.]]

You adjust your suit and comb your beard, for you are sure that a great occasion waits on the far side of this door. You step through it with a spark in your brogues and a spring in your eye. It is a good thing that you still had the knife in your hand, or the red carpet might have turned a darker red. With flourish you drive the cloaked assassins from you, and chase them as they flee down a secret passage hidden between a wall and a ceiling. This is indeed a great occasion. You round them up as they flee across the countryside, tie them to sheep, and stampede the whole flock over a waterfall as a final touch. A barge comes leaping up the waterfall like a salmon, and drifts serenely upstream, filled with wet sheep and assassins. The boatman complains of the unwanted passengers, but consents to drop them off in the next whirlpool he meets. Lying back on the warm meadow by the river, a horse steps on your head, and complains of your thick skull. You [[run inside,]] crying.

You pick yourself up from the wreck, and rummage through the fallen cupboards you landed in, looking for an eye patch. You find a lot of garlic and marmalade and a fossilised crab, but when you come across a chess board you forget about your original purpose, and sit down to play a game. You play one side, and put all the pieces on the other side to make it fair. You take out three of the rooks, send the knights running like rabbits, and reap a harvest of their pawns. But the bishops outrun you, and release the black king you hold hostage. Then the two queens checkmate you and they all carry you away to lock you up somewhere. You fold them up in a rug and lock them up instead, in a freezer you found. For good measure you roll the freezer into a closet and over the edge of a well. Once their muffled shouts and imprecations have faded in the abyss, you start to [[look around.]]

Sitting atop a lighthouse full of dirt, there is much to see but few places to go. The sky is mainly overcast, the crashing waves are only a murmur from this far away, and there is only the slightest wind. Nonetheless a yellow [[kite]] floats neatly in the air, within jumping distance.

A man is sitting on the hole of a large anthill, and the ants are asking him to move. He is an old fisherman in a robe and a beat up hat, and he does not hear them, whether because he is old, or because his hat is pulled over his ears. The ants bribe a lion to play taps on a trumpet at the man's head. The old fisherman falls asleep and rolls down the anthill, and falls [[through a trapdoor.]]

You are a caterpillar in a birdcage in a grassy field like an arena. Several birds assail the outside of the cage trying to get at you. You cannot see very far, but you think [[a bull]] is charging this way and that in the field as well.

You are a stork stepping cautiously across a mincemeat pie, hoping not to fall through the crust and add your own meat to the number. A fly stops to dip its head in one of the holes. Your goal is an apple on the far side of the pie: you hope there is a worm in it. Another party seems to have the same object. A knight in full armor rides along a loaf of bread crying in a stentorian bellow, "Show thyself fiendish worm and meet thy well deserved end!" When he reaches the end of the loaf he plunges into the pie. The worm puts its fiendish head out of the apple, breaths fire at the knight, and pulls its head back in. You hurry delicately to the knight, thinking he might have something to bequeath. All he gives you is a letter, which tastes rather bland, and his sword, which does not go down well. Last of all he gives you a key to [[the heart of a giant.]]

(set: $f to 1)At a central place - at least it looks central, from its demeanour - you find a standalone wall, with eight pillars supporting a roof and a pediment, decorated with relief sculpture that no doubt used to be heroes and metaphors and histories, but at present represents stone mashed potatoes. In the shade of this structure sits a statue of moderate size but of mighty grandeur. You look in its face, and find that it has living, human eyes set in stone eye holes under its stone brows in its stone face. They stare more fixedly than any full human could stare, yet there remains the inescapable, minute tremor, a resonance of life. Incidentally, they are brown eyes. You would never have thought it at first, but after a time it grows on your mind that the [[left eye]] and the [[right eye]] seem to be of two different people.

It seems that the darkness in the center of the eye would receive you, but instead you seem to have entered the reflection in the eye, for you find yourself where you were before, but facing the opposite direction, away from the statue. But now, though nothing appears to be changed, it seems less blank. Then you realise this is because there are sounds now, whereas before there had been an impenetrable silence seemingly over all the world. Now it seems that life has returned to all the world except this one place. The noises are distant and confused, like those of a small city. Eventually some individual, confused murmurs separate and come nearer. Then people begin to come in sight from time to time. A family, speaking Arabic; a couple apparently on honeymoon; and a man with a spanking good moustache, who comes closer than the others, and raises his eyebrows at you. A few others come wandering through, and you start to lose interest. Then a young man comes and sets up a large camera on a large tripod. His shirt has horizontal bands of blue and white, and his hair is ruffled. He takes pictures of you and the statue. Then he considers you. "This must be the spirit of the ages, or some such." He puts you in [[his pocket,]] and, peeking out, you see him nod amicably to the statue.

It seems that the darkness in the center of the eye would receive you, but instead you seem to have entered the reflection in the eye, for you find yourself where you were before, but facing the opposite direction, away from the statue. But now it is evening, and many people in fair garments are gathered at tables there. The changed shadows, and the light of lamps and braziers, hides for a few moments another difference: the stonework is now in good repair, though it still looks old and worn. It is refreshing to see and smell the living people, the rich food, and the green plants growing from pots and over trellises and arbours. It is pleasant to see the joyful, beautiful faces of the men, and the radiant, lovely faces of the women, as they sit laughing at the tables, stride from friend to friend, or stand conversing by a pillar in the light of a tremulous fire. You venture forward, to see if the relief carving in the pediment above the statue is of a more defined shape, when you are distracted by a more general but subdued stir among the humans. You see a man preparing to play on a gleaming [[harp.]]

The poet brings forth enchantingly sweet sounds, then threads in his voice among them, singing a slow, storied song of loves. The people sit solemnly, leaning forward and on each other. The majestic tenderness of the music falling like keen snow, mingling with the perfumed smoke of the somber fires, works on your senses strongly, and [[you fall asleep.|Roll yourself in a fold of the savage hides, and sleep.]]

The darkness in his pocket makes you uncomfortable, so you are glad when he gets to his hotel room and takes you out. He slips you in a plastic cover in his scrapbook, which he closes and leaves on his bed. It is dark again, but not so dark, since some light gets in the side, reflecting along the plastic. And there are some smells from the other things in the book with you, like flattened tea boxes, flattened coins, leaves, an eyebrow shaved from an ascetic, a foreign banknote, and a thumbprint. They keep you company, and start to make you feel rather [[sleepy.]]

[[You sleep.|Roll yourself in a fold of the savage hides, and sleep.]]

There is a turn to a level run, but you do not find the ball, then there is another turn, straight down, and it has not yet become any wider than at the mouth. It goes on like a pipe. You tend to underestimate distances since you move so quickly in the dark. You are not sure that you have not gone down more than a mile, when the hole begins to get hot. You hope the ball can survive heat. The hole deteriorated from a kind of pipe to a winding fissure in rock. In the end you find yourself in a vertical crack, and come to molton stone glowing sullenly in the gloom, filling the lower part of the crack, so that you cannot go further. A rather elaborate golf hazard. No doubt the ball is incinerated. Then you see a spot silhouetted against the grim illumination. Looking closely you see it is the golf ball, floating like a swan on the magma. You take the ball, and begin [[finding your way]] back up.

Darkness is irksome to you, as you do not exactly exist in darkness. But you can move more easily through it. Darkness is the opposite of rain, rain is the opposite of darkness. [[Oh.|quite good at golf,]]

You realise you have been going up the fissure further than the pipe came down. You try to find it in the dark, but you get to less and less familiar places. The golf ball cannot move as fast in the dark as you, and the dark makes it hard for you to hold it at all. Finally your only thought is to get up again. Then, you see moonlight seeping through a crack above you. You thrill with relief, then you almost lose patience, realising you can only slip through the crack if you leave the golf ball behind. It seems in your wandering you are forced down even further down than where you found the ball. But unexpectedly you find an opening, and you emerge through a gap between the curb and the street in a moonlit neighborhood. You fold an envelope from a piece of more or less intact packing paper, borrow a pen from one of the houses, and mail the golf ball to the tree in the golf course where you found it. You leave your package tucked in a mailbox. Going back to return the pen to the desk you got it from, you somehow trip on a cradle, fall in, and go [[to sleep.|Roll yourself in a fold of the savage hides, and sleep.]]

You are in a narrow, apparently endless passage made of wood boards, and all along it are fine and detailed portraits, of rich, antique mode, but framed simply. One and all they are portraits of men and women dressed out in lace and velvet, but without any plumes or extravagant gems as you would have preferred, and they are all frowning hard down on you. You notice a kind of metal catch under the frame of a painting, and, releasing it, you discover that the painting swings away from the wall, revealing an opening to another world. You find the catch underneath every painting you come to, they are all doors to many, wonderful worlds. But you do not see any diamond rings or hot tubs, so you do not care. Then, as you slam a painting on the sight of a luxurious, utopian garden, a bald man with a hooked nose steps out of a painting behind you, takes you by the nape of your neck, and carries you down the passage as you squirm, flail, and whip your tail. He opens a painting of a newborn baby (which is frowning more vigorously and effectively than all the rest). The man with the hooked nose [[throws you viciously]] inside and carefully shuts the painting after you.

The kite crashes to the ground, and you wonder what else you thought would happen. You broke at least one leg jumping like that, and your tail seems flatter than before. The owner of the kite is a black monkey with a long tail and white shoulders, and he is not pleased. He scolds you furiously, in Arabic, for a full minute. Then he sighs at his fallen kite, and begins to take pity on you. He makes you a splint out of the rods and string from the kite, then takes some coins from a pocket in his fur, and pays himself for his kite. He gives you a simian smile, and scurries off through the grass to find something else to fly. You start to leave also, when a circular portion of the field levers up, and a cluster of thick, dark spider legs darts out like a black, hairy giant's hand, and drags you [[inside.]]

As you feared the crash comes: the cage is kicked by thunderous hooves and springs open. A yellow bird darts in and seizes you, carrying you high in the air, and the wind makes you cold though the bird's tongue and breath is warm. It takes you to its birdhouse, and ties you to a hook with some ribbon. It hangs you on its Christmas tree. You become a chrysalis, and on Epiphany you emerge as [[a butterfly.]]

You are a painter at your easel painting a landscape, and a butterfly flies into it, but does not hold still to be painted. You run after it with your canvas and brushes and paints, until it flies through a door and comes to rest. Once you have painted it into your landscape, you wonder where the rest of the landscape is now, and start to [[look around.]]

She looks indignant, and brings her hand down on top of you, but this matters little as your top is not so clearly defined. She looks away trying to hide a sort of smile. Then she shrugs, tells you that you are sweet, and gives you a red rose that beats like a heart. You take it, happy for a distraction from the tangrams of herself sitting, standing, kneeling, smiling, frowning, and so on. The petals are vibrant like crimson velvet, and each time they contract in their beating, the scent of the blossom swells heavily in the heat that takes the place of air here on the sun. You hold it close and smell deeply, and the voluptuous, living fragrance filling you puts you in [[transports of joy.]]

She laughs merrily, and throws you in [[a sunspot.|Lancelot]]

You find yourself in a tiny castle made of golden glass. The reflections of your own, twisty shape makes you dizzy as you move. You find a rich mattress, white as wool, glistening with embroidery. The moment you let yourself down on it, the softness sends you to [[sleep.|look around.]]

The trapdoor spider gives you a tour of his marvelous underground mansion and his series of specialty silk furniture. He keeps everything spotless and in order, every strand and doorknob is polished till glistening. He eagerly expounds the history of the regal architecture, and treats you to a sumptuous meal of roast lamb and cranberry fritters. Once the repast is thoroughly enjoyed, he leads you to his auspicious collection, and instructs you to [[look around.]]

Once you stop crying and whining, you begin to [[look around.]]

Once you stop crying, and the blinding pain diminishes, you start to [[look around.]]

The hole comes up in a forest. There is a massive voice speaking the distance that makes the ground tremor. A few ravens come flying up out of the hole, shaking their heads and cawing somewhat nauseously, and they disappear among the branches. You wander trying to find a way away from the ground shaking voice, but it seems like a colossal ventriloquist, or the voice actually is coming from everywhere. Notwithstanding, you find a hunter's cabin, and go inside at least to block out part of the sound. A lion is curled by a fire on the floor. It wakes and looks up as you are trying to find something to eat. Being inside a stomach has given you some thoughts of your own. The lion addresses you, "There is an owl, some chess pieces, and a garden snake in the cooler; help yourself." You make a satisfactory supper on the above mentioned items, but what you really have an eye on is a brick in the unused fireplace with claw snicks on it. When the lion is asleep again you press it, and the fireplace opens into [[a secret room.]] It is little wonder the fire was made on the floor.

Once inside you dust the ash from your hands and [[look around.]]

You discover the giant's heart as some sympathisers are smuggling it out of the country in a laundry basket, and you unlock it. It reveals a square, wooden chute, down which [[you plunge.]]

Once you land and straighten your feathers, you have a [[look around.]]

You are a dog in the cabin of a boat during a storm. You whine and beg your masters to let you see the map, but they only patronise you. You see a hidden door, less than knee high to a master, open in the wood of the wall, and a human no larger than a cat dressed all in black peers out, beckoning towards another corner of the cabin. You bark, but the masters think you are barking at the storm, even though you were not barking before. Another black figure like the first one runs from a shadow in the corner and joins the figure at the door. You charge, and get through [[the door]] before they close it.

Hundreds of small, sinewy hands tie wire around your mouth, and push you into a lead capsule, which they drop out of a secret hatch in the side of the ship. At the bottom you are about to suffocate when you feel a slippery hand pull you out of the capsule by the tail, and dip your face into some air. Then the hand unwinds the wire. The person is carrying air in a bowl, and carrying you under the other arm. He takes you for a long walk to a hole in the rocks that is full of air, and takes you inside. There are others here, and burning lights also. The people are dressed finely and their clothes are in good repair, but are very draggled and muddy, and no one seems to notice. They decide to put you in their [[celler]] to catch the mice.

You shake the water out of your fur, and [[look around.]]

Once you quiet your heart a bit, you put up your ears again, and [[look around.]]

Once you pick the old man up and give him back his fishing rod, you take a [[look around.]]

The sounds are those of a busy workshop, but all you see is some green carpet on which is gathered a collection of animals like an ensemble from a child's picture of Noah's ark. They are all pointing at the hole you are in, like metal shavings toward a magnet's pole. They tell you they want to come in. When you tell them to leave, and start to go back, the elephant eats you. You hate being in the dark, because you do not fully exist in the dark, and because it is not rain. But it keeps you from being digested. The slow, profound throb of the pachydermous heart counts you down [[into sleep.|Roll yourself in a fold of the savage hides, and sleep.]]

A serene and uneventful passage of time, and the trees below dwindle to fair and spotless fields of waving grass, and a city comes in view. Later, the balloon drifts casually over the snow white domes and spires, framed and accented in immaculate gold. As the balloon slowly passes one of the greater palaces, you hear a song, and spy a woman who sits singing on a balcony with a lute, and a man standing behind her playing on a pipe. The harmony and warmth of the melody, the soft, level glide of the balloon, the dreamy landscape of the clean, clear rooftops and towers, and the smile in the eyes of the singer and her companion, settle you into contentment, which is the softest bed, and [[slumber|Rosemary]] claims your mind.

The monkey is not at first sure where the unearthly noise came from, and darts glances up and around. From below in the trees come several hawks carrying canisters of liquid nitrogen, and they fly up inside the envelope. You are not sure what they do, but the airship quickly becomes a cold air balloon, and descends towards the trees. The monkey is in a rage, and expostulates fiercely in Arabic at the birds. The car strikes a tree and overturns. In the confusion as you fall you see several branches catch fire, and the hawks hurrying towards them with a hose, and the monkey swinging away through the trees. You land in a life net tied between several trees, and the hawks gather around you, giving you an ice pack, kissing you with their beaks, and cuddling you in their wings, until [[you lose consciousness.|Roll yourself in a fold of the savage hides, and sleep.]]

Immediately you are a wolf standing on a red, circular stage in a street circus, surrounded by brightly coloured crowds. You look desperately for the piece of robe you dropped, but cannot see it. There are so many bits of cloth of so many colours, and so many of them are white. A man in a long moustache and wild clothing approaches you across the stage. "Now attend to me sir. Give your hand friend, let us dance. You know you know how. Come man, they are all waiting!" You glimpse the torn fragment of pale robe folded in someone's vest pocket, and you leap from the stage on top of the man. Shrieks erupt like a geyser, and people are rushing toward you, but mostly away from you, as you frantically roll the heavy man over and clench your fangs on [[the bit of robe.]]

You are chained, wearing an armoured harness, and you feel a pulsing force in your hardened flesh and churning blood. You are pretty sure you are still a dog, but from the crash of metal and roar of horses and men thundering all around you, you begin to think you might be a particularly unpleasant sort of dog. You are convinced of it, when someone slips your chain and shouts, "Now up and destroy, son and father of death, make a slaughter for the night to howl at!" You rage forward with the rest of your kind, galloping paws and gleaming eyes, and foam flies from your thirsting teeth. Thankfully when you open your baleful jaws wide to tear, [[the bit of robe|again]] falls out again.

You shake your head and blink away that last bit, and, nervous about where you might be now, you take an apprehensive [[look around.]]

<h3> Locus of Acuity</h3> **W**hen it becomes necessary to take into account the wheeling fortunes taken in years past by our finicking compatriots across the bench (not to say over the wall), I find it enlightening to remember the adroit handling of the angulation by one of the most capable of our predecessors: Bon Hammonis. I do not apologise for taking up this name, as some would expect who are less forgiving of the use of cant and personal metaphors. I hope they will find themselves able to renounce, at least for the time being, the peripheral differences imposed merely by purity of school individuality, and give ear to the key thread this master has laid at our disposal. As threads are, it is, of course, created through the twining together of lesser fibres, which, though weakened in being unwound and dealt with individually, I will dare to do this with the aim of winding them together more tightly. The thread as a whole is commonly referred to as the waking of material idealates, which I prefer to call breaking ins. The agents of these angulations I will address in my present discursion will not be divided after the usual manner, and not even in the same manner as I have seen the admirable Bon sometimes categorise them. It is not my method of sorting that I would suggest, I merely use it as a means of suggesting what I do suggest: that Bon's example should be more thoroughly integrated in our present systems. I will proceed with my first example of the aspects of Hammonis' procedure. <h5> The Inward Height</h5> This is perhaps the one aspect that requires the most brute force to accept, which is why I have placed it foremost, between the eyes as it were. I take it that my colleagues and also the uninitiated will agree that it is indispensable to many common lines of perantulation, which You turn over [[a crisp but dusty page]] without quite realising it.

You pry one out, and find that it is the journal of [[a veterinarian.]]

The cat fills the tub with perfectly warm water, puts in lavender and thyme scented bubble bath mix, and uses a whisk to swish up the bubbles. The animal is very cool and obliging and debonair; you are very impressed by its courtesy. The bath is very relaxing, and you can hear the minutes tick by on a clock in some other part of the house. Then the cat reappears, and you are about to ask if it is time for you to get out of the bath, when the cat pins you under the water with a flyswatter. You do not actually have lungs to drown with, but, to please the cat in return for a nice bath, you struggle a bit, and pretend to die. But it is so warm under the water, and the bubbles dance above you in the dim light, and the cat is so determined to make sure you are dead, that you [[fall asleep|Roll yourself in a fold of the savage hides, and sleep.]] waiting.

instead of grounding its importance in the central processes of angulation, seems to have built up an ironclad wall against its further involvement. Bon Hammonis seems lonely in his good uses of it, which are very good indeed when taken in conjunction with the other agents of his working, especially running turns, but more on this later. The basics of the inward height are that the levels of every matrix, whether formed by novice or acme, develop parallel to the planes of an image. These gravitate (or perhaps the opposite of this word) to the central plane within the arms according to the severity of the incline, and this central plane takes by tradition the dominant posture, thus, the "height". This is so simple and easy to know that people have built up a resistance to its presence in the advanced circles, as if thinking that something cannot be both simple and complex[[... . . . .|Lancelot]]

This page is missing, and it was one of your favourites. [[Disappointedly|where you are standing.]] you set the book aside.

You take the candle and follow the rosy, brain coloured worm as it reaches and dribbles along the dusty floor of the mine for hours, till you come to some large object blocking the path. It is bulky, and armored in heavy sections of gray leather. You go here and there, passing the light of the candle over it, and find more and more of it. Then you find a horn, and an ear, and conclude that it is a rhinoceros. You hear the low, pipey voice of the worm behind you, "It may know where rain is. Go inside and see." You set the candle down on a broad, flat space between the beast's ears, and filter into its mind. On the way in you sense keenly the massiveness and formidability of the creature as the creature sees it, and after long aimlessness and vulnerability, you seek peace in [[the dreams of a sleeping rhinoceros.|Lancelot]]

This book seems possibly more significant, at least in some small way. You pick it up; the dust clings to the cover and is slippery. The binding grunts when you open the book. <h3> The Whale of Bricken </h3> <h5> By Maideth Owen </h5> <h5> Chapter 1 </h5> <h4> The Aunts </h4> **A**s the planets gathered around the sun like waywards around a campfire, one small plot on earth seemed left out. As the sun bent its accustomed path to warm the home of men, the marsh of Avis lay cold under its most savoury beam. The salt filmed leaves of the native grass bowed in harsh comment on the light touch of air, scented with the incense of the nearby sea. The dimpled undulations in the grass formed from the uneven ground below, mingled harmoniously or disharmoniously with alike waves formed from the movements of wind or breeze; these forms, one from the force of solidity, the other from the force of fluidity, twinned each other like an ironic rhyme. The smell of sea and smell of marsh casually traded places in the air, both so deeply ancient it was hard to tell whether they were the closest of friends or the profoundest of enemies. The simple thoughts of the unseen insect and rodent seemed to colour the stems, which hid them if they took care, and announced them if they were clumsy. The sun here did not seem a distant friend but a nearby stranger, moving slowly through the marsh's sky just as the worms moved slowly through the marsh's mire. The heavens here did not seem another region but no more than a medium to carry the sounds of rustling grass and the muffled washing of water on the shore. The whole breadth of the marsh was empty of any craft of the finger of man[[.]] ...you [[begin to notice|where you are standing.]] yourself being drawn vividly into the setting, and wonder if that would be dangerous, considering the nature of your being.

<img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Rain-Lock.jpg"> (set: $w to 1)To exist, to become what you were meant to be, is to remember. *You remember him, little Gri Leven, the black curls of his head, his determined lips, and his gentle eyes. He was like no other, he was. He needed nothing, he was needed, the universe needed little Gri in it.* *So many things you have forgotten; it is a comfort that so long as you remember rain, you will remember little Gri Leven.* This is the end of the story. With this comfort, you may [[recall your dreams|look around.]], if you so desire. <h1>. . .</h1> <audio src="https://archive.org/download/various-sound-effects/rain2.mp3" autoplay>

You look around for the book, but, as the book said, the marsh is empty of any craft of the finger of man. Which is disappointing, since you will never know any more of the story. Though there is little of you to smear with mud, you move carefully as you push through the rough plants. The bleak colours that surround you suggest that if you ate the marsh it would taste bland, though in reality it would no doubt be a good deal more salty than necessary. The stinging cold of the air seems to harden the horizon into an uninteresting band as unreachable as a colourless rainbow. In the distance you can see a large, dark [[lump.]]

You see that just outside the edge of the marsh rests some craft of the finger of man. It is a profoundly large and thick armchair of dark blue, and in it sits a man in a sable cloak. His beard is thin and dark as his brows, and his nostrils appear large enough for a mole to wear as shoes. He is fishing in the marsh. He waits without a sign, but not apparently without impatience. His hook is taken, and after a struggle much hampered by the high grass - though it is unclear whether the grass is a greater hindrance to the fisher or his prey - the man drags a water rat into view, and taking it off the hook he holds it by the back of the neck, admiring it with severe satisfaction. He places it in a basket, already populated with an assortment of creatures you cannot see, and closes the basket with metal clasps. He stands and contemplates, then decides with a conclusive nod. "I have now a sufficient audience." He casts aside his rod, seats himself regally in his armchair, and takes a book from within his cloak. It is not the book you hope for, the Whale of Bricken, but a book apparently authored by the man in the armchair. [[He begins to read it aloud.]]

<h3>Candles by Lancelight</h3> <h5>By Coris Evenworth</h5> <h5>1</h5> <h5>Backhanded</h5> *Whither? I only know that he was bent on dying. So all who draw the sword among the bullets flying.* *-Lecarre, The Spindle and the Spear.* I kept my eye on a man trimmed in ermine, for though his aspect was a one that would cow death itself, he seemed straining under a nervous tension: it hung behind his eyes. The lamplight that aided the overcast daylight from the windows glinted from his forehead with the same sheen that glimmered from his plate and glass. But there was little to further justify my attention to him, and in conversation with another guest I lost sight of him. I did not find him again, though I looked. Some minutes later, as I passed a curtained door on my way from the hall to the tea room, I heard a voice from the room beyond the curtain which, though I understood none of the words, had the note of a deadly important interchange. I slightly parted the curtains, and saw the man who had spoken, a man that I knew, standing face to face with the man trimmed in ermine. The man I knew was one Dr. Innescourth, a man who had been at war and sea, and was quietly well known among loving companions. The man I did not know was very quiet, and seemed coaxing in his gestures. Then came the words that nailed me to my place, spoken levelly and with indignant gravity by Dr. Innescourth: "I really would prefer death to such a course." The stranger held a finger to his lips, then showed his interlocutor a small picture of which I could only see the back. But the doctor gave me the clue when he spoke his daughter's name: "Corinthia." The stranger nodded and withdrew the picture. As Innescourth bowed his head, clenching his hands, the stranger turned to leave, and his eyes lighted on me before I could slip from view. I stepped smoothly towards my original destination, though my The reader [[turns over a page.]] The basket is very quiet.

heart beat quick and harsh. Soon I was lifting a cup of tea to my lips, but even as the warm, savoury, sweet smell entered my nostrils and began to clear my thoughts, they were clouded all over again by a furtive but heavy tap on my shoulder. I turned slowly, knowing I would see the man in ermine. He smiled to me imperiously, but with a tightness of the mouth that no one but I would have noticed at that moment. He leaned forward slightly, inquiring, "I believe I know you?" His left hand was held close to his stomach, the fringes of his mantle swinging forward hid it from any view except mine, and he seemed to flex and extend his fingers slowly but pointedly, no doubt to draw my attention to them. When it was evident to him that I took note of this movement, there appeared between his fingers as by some slight of hand a single, severed claw belonging to a chicken's foot. It was clearly a token of some fraternity, a sign to which I had no countersign. I decided not to pretend knowledge, as I would fail, and seem less dangerous to him. Instead, I leaned forward slightly myself, and whispered with my own smile, "Just put me on your blacklist, Mr..." "Rillchurch." I nodded, and watched him over the rim of my cup, continuing my interrupted refreshment. His eyelids dropped one fifth lower, and some of the tension seemed to go out of him. He turned The reader turns [[another page.]]

and left the tea room, giving the doctor, who was just entering, a brief grasp of the shoulder as he passed him. The doctor only half turned his face toward Rillchurch, and I could see a dull gleam in his eyes. I set my cup on the table behind me, and walked to meet the doctor, but also to follow Rillchurch using my friend's body as a blind. I clasped hands with the doctor, and murmured: "Please to inform me if I may be of any service to you." His face did not change, but he gave me a second grip of the hand. As I stepped through the door I saw Rillchurch preparing to leave, and I prepared to leave after him. Since he knew my interest in him already, I was not over careful to conceal my intentions. I stepped out of the door moments after him, so that he was still in sight. But I had not walked more than a few paces when he stopped and spoke: "You seem to misunderstand." He faced me, and I stood still. He waited a moment, and continued abruptly: "You do not realise the extent of my immunity. I am able, without danger to myself, to cut you down here and now." He drew a long, black pistol from within his clothes, [[and]]

levels it at you. Thin as you are, you doubt he could miss a hairsbreadth at a far greater distance. But in a moment of looking, you see that he holds out an escape to you unknown to himself. You slither into the darkness within the barrel of his gun. You hate darkness, it is the opposite of rain. But you do not fully exist in darkness, and thus you easily fit entirely inside the gun barrel, and there you do not have enough being to catch a bullet. The trigger fully depresses and the gun fires just as you twitch your other end past the rim. The bullet passes you hurriedly in the dark, and the flaming lunge behind it flushes you obligingly out of the blackness and into the light again. Thankfully you are not flammable. Rillchurch looks down at you smugly and blankly, like an actor trying to remember his line. Then he saunters away down the street and you see him no more. You have a sense of a story that was meant to go on, but is not. As you become used to this feeling of suspended action, another feeling grows on you: a feeling that something is going to happen soon, the imminent crisis of another story that is coming to an end. Yet there is nothing in that grey street, or the few, ordinary passersby that would give any sign of what that crisis could be. You hear a sound and look across the street. There is something there, small, and flat, but it was not there before. You [[cross the street]] to see what it is.

It is a circular stain of water darkening a spot on the granite flag. As you begin to realise the meaning of it you see another appear with a tiny pat not far off, then two others. Then all around, till each of them is crowned as they touch the ground with twinkling rings, water falls from the grey sky in innumerable drops. With the smell cool as autumn and bright as spring, and the sound like the profound peace of sleep and the abounding joy of waking, and the touch like the incarnate thrill of every song with a claim to glory or tenderness, it rains. And the rain puts [[an end]] to the darkness.

(set: $q to 1)You find yourself engulfed in a labyrinth of budding, vaporous pillars and walls. Deep white and deepening blue lurk behind every texture of varying shade. You lose any idea you might have had of up and down, and you had no idea of left and right to start with. You narrow down your options to two: [[one way,]] [[or]] [[the other way.]]

(either:"You can sort of bend over a silvery veil and see, around the corner of a blooming mass of mists, [[a darkening tunnel.]]","A slowly closing crack in a mass of pale gloom invites you with a suave sense of [[slight urgency.]]")

You choose a straight course, unheeding of the clouds attempts to make itself seem a barrier. In parts it is as dark as inside a wall, but you are better able to move in darkness, notwithstanding the repulsion you have for it. Thankfully you are not of very absorptive material, or else you would have been a thousand times saturated with a heavy burden of water. You pass a hushed conversation held in the depths of that labyrinth in the air: "He will like the shoes, you are sure?" "Don't be fussy, he will like them because you are in them." "And remember he's only seen one pair of shoes since he was born." You pass on your way, and soon the brighter patches are more frequent, and all at once you get your first aerial rather than extraterrestrial view of the planet you were making for. You look from between two rolling banks of cloud as if out of the bottom of a canyon, and can see the shore of the one sea, the one tree, and even the one flower. [[You slither blithely down into this new world.]]

(either:"An upside-down cottony pile of dimpled fog points out a hole [[like a whirlpool]] that is in no hurry to turn.","A blurry forest of blue and white pillars offers one of those [[dubious]] forest paths. Slowly boiling rags instead of branches shadow it above and below.")

You dislike darkness, since it is the opposite of rain. But it does not grow too dark, and like an almost colourless dawn you find yourself in a large, [[open space.]]

(either:"The crack narrows to nothing, but the side widens into a dim vault, which is [[smaller than it appeared|end1]] from outside.","The crack opens into a well of air with walls made of water, vanishing into mist rather than darkness in both directions. But in one direction this may be [[because of a bend.|end2]]")

You head into a hole that appeared black with darkness, but when you enter you are swallowed up [[with white.|to go.]]

The path wanders, but you have little trouble keeping up. It eventually leads into a [[steamy grotto.|end1]]

You float in a comfortable place, with only the discomfort of not knowing how you came in, or where you were wanting [[to go.]]

(either:"You find yourself on a high, misty shelf, and once again have the choice of going [[one way,]] [[or]] [[the other way.]]","The dimness becomes dimmer, and you have a feeling that some bright passage is closing [[ahead.|like a whirlpool]]")

The mists clear, so that you can see more mists around you in more definite patterns. Definite patterns such as a horse head, an ominous mushroom cloud, a [[bear,]] a falling hammer, a [[whirlpool,|like a whirlpool]] and a [[sailing ship.]]

The mists clear, so that you can see the further mists in more definite shapes. Shapes such as a [[sailing ship,|sailing ship.]] a [[whirlpool,|like a whirlpool]] a falling hammer, a [[bear,]] an ominous mushroom cloud, and a horse head.

A very detailed bear, with [[a dark mouth,|a darkening tunnel.]] and [[two heavy forepaws.]]

(set: $r to 1)The sea spray drifts fiercely through the tightening shrouds as you board the slippery deck. The flapping of the sails draws your gaze into the wet, ashen confusion of the sky, palely luminous through the heavy canvass. The groaning and cracking as the ponderous vessel shifts in the swelling waves calls your thoughts again to the wooden landscape that surrounds you, sleek and dark with dancing water. The obscurity of the air and the length of the ship hides the [[bows]] from your view, just as [[above you]] the masts, ropes, and sail above sail seem to vanish upward into the very clouds. But nearer rises the ship's poop, and in it [[a doorway]] stands dark and open. Though no more than several yards distant the gusting fog rhythmically changes the black of the doorway to gray, in no way lessening the aversion you have of entering it.

Doomful configurations of vapor. [[One paw,|one way,]] [[or]] [[the other paw.|the other way.]]

After what seems a long hike, though the cruelly expeditious wind is always at your back, you begin to see the deck narrowing on either hand, and the ropes above slanting down toward the still unseen jib. And then there comes the shape, as of a standing man, a shadow in the gray. You see after a time that it must be the captain, to be standing unmoved in all the wet and cold and wind, and standing twice the height of any other man for all that, ceaselessly looking forward over the sea, as if drawing the ship forward as magnetism draws the compass needle north. It is not till you stand, or rather float in that importunate wind, directly beside the towering shadow that you see it is the figurehead of the ship, the captain of its spirit, a carved statue of a mighty explorer. The hurrying rolls and shapeless, towering globes of fog bound ahead like dog's over the billows' pricked, metallic flanks. The grim shape next to you seems to be sending them on to smell out a path to unseen countries. This figurehead seems to be fashioned so as the catch the wind and turn it to sound, a complex sound which indeed forms words: "I will tell you the story of a worm: it did not know what it was, and did not know that it wished to know. The story begins in red, and when it could go no further it found a way down, and continued down to a decision; it decided those, and became a bookworm under a sign. Now the story within my story, a tale of a whale if you'll pardon me, brought the worm into the bleakest of places, where it came to a full stop that was the way forward. This way forward carried it into a story within the story within the story, and through death (or just past it), to what was the end at last: rain. Rain! You have heard! The story is told! And now [[go!|Tiger Sphere]]"

You climb to where the rope of the bare flagpole rattles in the wind, and find yourself enveloped in cloud above, below, and on all sides. The only likely looking courses you can make out are [[a swiftly closing rent|one way,]] [[or]] [[a dim, opening cavity.|the other way.]]

Inside you find a band of glistening wetness and gray blue light spreading from the open door, illuminating various things as they roll across it: an empty inkwell, the body of some small, dead animal, an apple core, such things. As you work your way deeper into the bowels of the ship you meet several things you do not recognise by feel, which could be lawn furniture or torture apparatus, a rotting meal or an experiment on subterranean plant life. In the end all you find definite about the ship's cargo is that its bottom is now filled with a vast load of loose sand [[ballast]] from end to end.

You alight on the one road, which vanishes into the meagre distance of the sandbox at one end, and vanishes into [[the house]] at the other. The multi-animal is grazing in the one field, propped on a variety of legs. It seems to consist of a cow, fish, pigeon, ant, dragon, cat, and dog.

You dig in the caked and crumbling ballast, or rather you sift yourself through the shadows between the grains of dust. You begin to smell something of a different sort, and come across a hard, rough surface. But it curves, and you find it is a beam of some curious, pitted material. You find the same in other places far apart, but the curves are not always predictable, and you highly doubt now that they are simple beams. At the end of the boat under the prow you find a surface that curves only slightly, and continues so that you seem to have found a vast dome. But in the dome and at one side you find a change in the curves, and a wide opening. Then everything you have found in the ballast and the places where you found them comes to your mind together, forming a now clear pattern in your mind, like a riddle with the answer suddenly given. Buried in the ship's ballast you have found the skeleton of a giant. And if you surmise correctly of this new substance discovered inside the dome, there is still [[some of the brain left.]]

It is like dried, patina oatmeal, but you naturally find your way into what is left of thought in it, finding yourself in an old battlefield. It reminds you of Waterloo. The vanquished cross their ankles and rise like hung sacks and cast themselves on their victorious foes in a random and ridiculously morbid rough-and-tumble, and the prisoners join in. The army whose triumph is so rudely contested flees to the river, but the banks are hummus garnished with parsley, and they sink, crying with their bad breath that it is not fair. The prisoners make a raft in the air of their reanimated comrades and cross the river with hurrahs and sabres flashing hot in the sun! They land on the steamy, foamy shores and beach their rag-tag craft. The coconut palms fire a volley in defense, and they are driven off into the flickering tongues of frothing waves. Their craft falls apart and follows them into the water like logs bound for the sawmill. They all hide behind the waves, crouching in the shallows and firing on their new enemies, the incoming shells kicking up ragged spears of water all around. You have heard that the tops of some palms are good to eat, and make your way up [[to see for yourself.]]

Rather than a top you find a hole traveling down the entire length of the palm tree, and possibly further as the gradual bends of the trunk hide the further portions of [[this wooden tunnel.]]

Contrary to expectations the light increases as you reach the lower portions. It does seem that the tunnel continues below the bottom of the tree, and does not even cease to be wood. Eventually you reach a place where the tunnel is a different shape and bears an interesting aspect, and you [[look around.]]

You pass through the one door. You see the one window, one bed with one pillow and one blanket, one table with one bowl and one spork, and the one chair with the one man in it. He glances up from his one pair of shoes, and looks as if he is seeing the ghost of a departed comrade. "Company? You are my best friend of course, we won't mention why. Let me show you my most prized possession, it is deathly secret of course. When the world isn't looking, I play with this!" He looks about surreptitiously, and shows you one die, and begins rolling it on the floor. "Oh, now it is six! That is my favorite. Well, now, two is also my favorite. Five is good too, even better than four, but three is nicer. Oh well, four again. I like it when they come back: it is a good change..." He stops, staring [[out of the one window]], mouth and eyes agape...

You look out, and see, where the one hill/mountain is closest to the underside of the one cloud, there is a tall step ladder coming down, the sort that is sometimes used for aeroplanes. Down out of the pale mist there steps a little foot in a plain, simple shoe. But it is the first third shoe that the man has ever seen. Next comes the fourth shoe he has ever seen, and he seems to like the number four best of all now. A young lady follows the little feet, ducking a bit to look around sooner, her smiling cheeks pink with excitement. The man is already [[halfway up the hill]], riding the poor multi-beast like a compound stampede.

"A person needs two shoes after all, a house needs a table and a chair: it cannot have just one furniture... even the world has two hemispheres!" He is sobbing on her shoulder, while curious heads peek down on the scene from the top of the step ladder. Finally one intervenes: "Must go folks: the world is changing." And the world is changing. It is getting [[mad]].

(set: $t to 1)The humans have the singular experience of actually feeling the air tingle, and you vibrate with the thrills of the incensed monosystem like a banjo string strung on steel amoeba. You see a darker rectangle in the mists above the step ladder and conclude that you must be looking [[into a hidden airship]]. But you feel you would prefer the more well lit [[ground]].

However, your curiosity lends you strength and mental fibre (not that you aren't already a mental fibre yourself), allowing you to shoulder your aversion (not that you possess shoulders) and enter the misty gloom and the ship hidden therein. Once all are in, in their beatific plurality, the steps are drawn up, and the ship begins to rise. Once free of the cloud a good deal more light enters, and you feel more solid and courageous. The planet stirs up its cloud, and sends a lightning bolt after the ship, and catches it completely [[on fire.]]

They forget to say goodbye to you, but you are pleased as it shows how excited they are. They pull up the steps, the dark rectangle with their faces in it vanishes, and their sounds dwindle away into the cloudy cloud. You have the distinct impression, like a leaf shaped moon crater, that the irate planet plans to do something about it, but an as distinct impression that the resourceful human creatures will get the upper hand(s). You return to the house, and find the die left behind on the floor like a cubic skull. There is something about the single pip on the side for one on the die, perhaps because of the significance of one in this place; that dot seems [[darker]].

March 9th, 1984 I, Ben Basin, take this journal in hand to March 13th Sorry Ben. My apologies. I take this journal again to truly give myself the pleasure Well, sort of. It was sunny today. It's been sunny for a while. March 14th Two days in a row! That's March 15th Three days! Well It's been sunny. March 20th Anyway Ben, don't forget the dog. You don't want to you know, it was such a good dog, and so sick. That's why you started I know. And It's really the only way I can think of to not forget all my friends I make. I'm not good at thinking about things other than activated charcoal. That was funny. You turn the page. [[It feels]] a bit damp.

March 13th Something else. What was it? March 13th (on April 1st) Oh yes. The white one. And someone is being mean today. Remember that. I'll try it next year (maybe). April 1st Still? It's been a long day. April 5th or 6th It It was sunny. It is sunny. The brown one died anyway. Don't want to forget that one. It's kind of nice when they're chronic, harder to forget them. April 6th (I'm sure) I got the yellow one all fixed up. She says it shines brighter than when it was a pup. Why doesn't anyone want to marry me? I'll have to ask them. April 7th I shouldn't have asked. The next page doesn't feel [[as damp.]]

April 3st no 3rd I forgot to tell you Ben, the Brown one. I didn't capitalise that on accident. April 10th What did I eat today? Oh, the white no no, let's not talk the same way about food. But I'm not good at thinking about other ways to say things Ben. You know that. April 12th I ate beans. It wasn't sunny. April 13th The white one died. I scraped as hard as I could. April 13th They asked me to help bury the white one. I April 14th thought I would like it, to help with it I mean. April 16th There was a dark one. Darker than I thought I'd see. Better keep it away from the others. The next page is [[very dry.]]

April 18th April 19th What was that? Oh no, it must have been important. April 20th Maybe not. April 21th no 21st Actually it was. They gave me the white one's hitch bit. I shouldn't have forgotten that. I didn't really, just to put it in here. April 23rd (right) Great day. April 24th What was great? Anyway, had bread and cracknels and wall. Great stuff. April 27th The dark one won't get brighter. Tendrils are quite smooth. Bad sign that is. April 30 Seems like the dark one will die. The next page seems [[drier]] than you thought a page could be.

April 31st (right) Good beans today. Akie took wall with his beans. I don't understand him, but I'm not good at thinking (except about activated charcoal. And other things, that wasn't so funny this time. Can you put full stops inside the parentheses?). May 2nd (right, and the other one was wrong, about that day, not nevermind, I understand.) What was I going to write? The dark one didn't die, but I don't see why I would write that. There's hardly a glimmer now. I don't know why I would write that either. May 2nd I was just going to say, Akie might have got something from the animals. Doesn't seem bad though. May 10th She said yes! Her name is Heather. Not that I'll be forgetting that. May 23rd We'll be married very soon. I like this page, maybe I'll tear it out and keep it somewhere. If the pages get [[any drier]] they might start to dehydrate the powder all around you.

June 5th I should have told you before Ben, Akie did get very sick. It was quite scary. June 7th Oh he's alright now. I'll be married soon! Good beans today too. Still working on the dark one. Not sure what to do. Very smooth tendrils. Maybe it's not as dangerous? July 18th Married at last! She wore white of course. I/you wore white too. Don't forget her face Ben. Of course you won't, but her face right then, when you really understood that she was glad she was marrying me. You. July 21t st Rekindled the dark one! I tried some things from Asia, and they might have helped. But I just did a lot of the charcoal, and finally this white crawler came out too. Yes, after [[the next page]] the carob dust in your immediate vicinity feels distinctly more dry.

July 26th I should try to say what my wife thinks or does too. She wasn't as excited about the dark one, but she was very sweet trying hard to be. August 3rd Akie got sick and well again. Not so bad. The brown one, a different brown one, a bit darker, it oh, I just wanted to remember it. August 5th Great day. Because they weren't very sick, and the beans were good as usual, and, you know, my wife. August 6th Windy today. August It seems that the entries stop here, and that's just as well: the dryness further into the book might begin to damage things. You close the book and [[pry it back into its space|where you are standing.]] (if prying something in is a legitimate usage).

As averse to darkness as you are, you slip [[inside the die]] through the darkness of the one pip.

They throw a ladder to their second airship (to the intense and futile indignation of the ascetic miniverse below) and climb across to safety. You're not sure at first how to manage a ladder, but in the end you weave through it up and down like a dolphin in a mirror. As the hostile realm diminishes in the distance, the red sphere in which you all float appears to reduce in size and detail. Soon you can make out the individual tiger skins of the wall of the sphere. But there is something strange about these skins. They are [[moving.]]

These skins are still on their tigers, tigers piling on each other, swarming like rusty bees in an overpopulated hive. They begin to snarl and howl at the approaching airship, and the amount of teeth you can see is an exercise in grim arithmetic. These humans are rather [[bold.]]

(set: $t to 1)You hear the echoes of die rolls in the blackness all around, echoes that have never escaped the solid walls because there isn't any space within the walls to escape from. In one direction you hear it like [[a hammer.]] In another direction like [[galloping hooves.]] In another direction like [[rattling train engine wheels.]] In another direction like [[a tripod being positioned with extreme and prolonged clumsiness.]] In another direction like [[drumming fingers.]] In the opposite direction like [[drumming drumsticks.]]

As you come out again onto the floor of the one house, you think you might as well [[go back in again.|inside the die]]

You are on a dark road on a dark night, with tree silhouettes towering up to the dullest blue you can imagine (which is very dull). The darkness would have made you uncomfortable, but, as it is slightly less dark than the inside of the die, it is somewhat refreshing. The hooves gallop nearer, but nothing can be seen yet of the horse or its rider (it sounds like there is a rider). Then you are too powerfully confirmed in the suspicion of human presence, when the rider turns on and brandishes that formidable and magnificent electronic weapon called the "torch". The mounted ruffian swings the weapon at you, and, with the reverse of the effect of darkness, the huge, heavy beam of light interacts with you solidly. Though you lack a head (or any similar organ) the tremendous blow succeeds in knocking you [[completely unconscious.|Edelweiss]]

You are indeed on a small train engine leading a long train down a vibrating track under motherly, evening sky. You are making for [[a dark mountain range]] silhouetted against the aforementioned sky, all prickly and stiff.

A smooth, tile floor, covered in sunlight from a wall of windows. The tripod is not being touched, at least not by a hand. It is surmounted by a blinking eye the size of a plum, which is apparently trying to walk or at least reposition its inflexible, metal body. You creep towards [[some curtains]] to the right, being careful not to [[squeak]] on the slick floor.

You underneath the hand whose fingers drum. When the hand is lifted to scratch a nose you catch a glimpse of an old fashioned dining room and lace cuffs and shrieking people. Apparently they are shrieking because of you, because the hand comes hastily down again, slapping you [[into the wood]] of the table.

You find yourself inside the drum, which would be loud enough to hurt you were it not that you have little substance to hurt thanks to the uncomfortable darkness. You find this lack of substance also allows you to fit through very small holes, and you make your way through one somewhat smaller than a pinhole, out into the quieter and brighter outside world. This is a marching band practicing in a forest where the leaves are green in winter, and the sunlight finds its way to the forest floor all the same. The band members look like happy, young men and ladies, until you see that their smiling faces are painted like wild indians. That is when you also notice the scalps hanging from their belts and instruments and around their necks. Wanting to keep your scalp (not that you have one) you take to your heels (not that you have them either), and try to find a [[less dangerous]] part of the forest.

Right through the teeth and claws the airship goes, plunging into the writhing, raging, striped mass like a summer squash dipped into a net full of adrenaline laced nudibranchs. The monsters are all around now, a medium of wildly tensing flesh with sharpened tips through which the airship presses on. You hear tearing and shredding all around like the swirling ministrations of a flaming palm thicket in a blender. You gather in the middle of the gondola to keep out of reach of the swiping claws; it is only the sheer number of the enemies that prevents any one of them from squeezing through the frayed window frames. The lady clings to her man, and the friends brandish pitchforks against the hyperanimated masks of violence and red destruction. But the airship forces its way through by sheer matter over mind, emerging like demon possessed mincemeat rising from the cauldron of a conspicuously malevolent sorcerer. The tigers' cries, pitched eerily high from the massive amounts of helium they have inhaled, ring out from behind in shrieks and gibberings like emergency sirens or flocks of oversized and mentally damaged jungle fowls. These cries and the swarming red and black texture melt into a soupy sunset. Cool grey mists lie ahead and all around, and down through them the tatters and ribbons that remain of the airship sink like the wig of a famous actor (or even actress) sinking to [[the bottom of a pool.]]

Thankfully the contents of the gondola remain intact, and seem likely to remain happily intact ever after. You float down like a fragment of the wreckage yourself, and catch glimpses of happy fronds, tree ferns, the Eiffel tower against a backdrop of Mt. Fuji, and then you land in a teacup full of tea. The full bodied and floral flavour penetrates you through and through, sending you deep into [[slumbrous swoonings.|Smoked Cranberry Powder]]

(set: $v to 1)Behind them you find another room which, if it were not completely colourless, would be vivid purple. Objects like statues or far away buildings close up stand here and there - "there" not necessarily meaning they are on the ground or anything else; they are all simply where they are, as if a two-dimensional composition of images was transmuted to three-dimensions. You find two doors, each on the other side of the other like the two sides of a wizard's playing card. On each door are many lines and figures; the only distinguishable shape on the one door is a representation of [[the moon,]] and the only shape distinguishable on the other door is a representation of [[the sun.]]

Earless as the creature is, the squeak alerts it to your presence, and it immediately fixes you in its line of sight. Through the machinations of something like hypnosis and forced mimicry, the eye closes, which shuts down your consciousness, capturing you in a dark trap [[of sleep.|Yeast]]

It is interesting to be in the grains of the wood, rather like being among the trees of a wood, only without the ground below, or the branches above. You're not entirely sure that you did not just see a leatherback turtle passing some ways away. You were afraid it might be dark, but it isn't, and you thread your way along, looking for rain. In the side of one of the wood grains you find a hole like an owl's nest in a saguaro. There seems to be a light inside, and you venture into the opening to see where [[it's coming from.]]

A gnomish creature with a nightcap, pointed mouth, and eyes as round and bright as coins. "Ah," it says, "listen to this crochet pattern I've invented." After a few minutes you find that you cannot think of anything that could be more fertile ground for grievous ennui, and begin to sidle towards [[the opening again.]]

Even you fail to elude the sensitivity of the crochet imp. It abruptly ceases it's spiel as soon as you move. "It looks like you are trying to leave." it says, and fixes you with eyes that are even rounder (perhaps slightly elongated into vertical ovals?). All at once it leaps forward and [[chloroforms you.|Rosemary]]

In your haste you stumble upon a brownish hollow where several forest animals, mainly of the larger size, are gathered like a support group. They sip hot chocolate and console their weeping comrades, and you notice that they are all missing their scalps. A mammalian dragon stands up to speak, and the sight is so alarming (not to mention the sight of so much bare skull) that you [[politely scram.]]

You come to a cliff edge, and see the lights of a great, modern city twinkling in the darkness below a blanket of fog, with the bright daylight above it. On the spot you think of a poem to say over this city you do not know. I do not know you, city dear, Nor even your first name, I fear. When all this fog is going past, It'll leave your dear face at last, And I'll drop into your gutters To tell you what the sun utters, Then leave again, though I love you, To wander the sky above you. This is the reason I know it, Why I sit up here and crow it: The wind is waiting for singing, And the gates of dreams are ringing; My head is heavy with thinking, And into sweet swoons I'm sinking. Do you think I'll come back alright? Will you sink with me in the night? I really have always not known How from foundations you've grown, To be a tall city and brave To twinkle through your foggy grave. I know I should... A terrific crash and a terrified warble sounds from the forest behind you, and, taken completely by surprise, [[you fall.]]

(set: $u to 1)As soon as you enter the dim fog, you wish you had a nose, and something to pinch it with. The sickly sweet, sulphurous scent permeates you to your very lack of bones. If you had a head, it would be aching. Instead, your entire existence aches. You struggle to worm your way quicker through the thick, cloying masses of fume, and finally come out into the dank, damp, dungeon-like city under the cloud. All the lights are broken, out of fuel, and covered in webs and dust. All the light comes from the phantom luminescence of decaying rubbish which lies like dark, complicated, chunky, stringy snow over everything. If you had eyelids you would be blinking in amazement. Instead, you seem to be blinking in and out of existence. There doesn't seem to be much life in the city (other than the microbial variety). Only there seems to be [[a faint sound of crying]] in the distance, and in [[a nearby alley]] the air seems staler, as if recently and repeatedly breathed.

As you make your way nearer, it is clearly the crying of a small baby. It is coming from a dark window halfway up one of the filthy buildings. Here all the buildings look as if they had lost any conscience they had long ago. The crying is coming from a birdcage hanging outside the window. In it you see a baby girl clothed only in feathers, crying for her dolly. As you approach the wires, the baby's wandering eyes catch sight of you. "Dolly!" she barks, and snatches you with [[a tiny fist.]]

When you get just inside the deeper, danker darkness in the alley, you discover that it is quite crowded with life, of the fitting sort for the environment. A spider crouches on the wall, about the size a watermelon would be if it dried up like a raisin. Scavenging beetles buzz like pigs in the rubbish below. Something bursts out of it like a drill through meat, and flies past before you can tell what it is. Then part of the deepest shadow lurches alarmingly. It raises itself up with sounds of peeling, dripping, and sepulchral flapping. Fang filled jaws come apart in it with a slick unsticking sound. A nearby pool of absolute swamp flares up brighter, revealing glimpses of the rising creature's front: matted grey fur between bare ribs, and a pulsing, flesh stained, exposed heart. With a hiss like a fat serpent being devoured by an angry cat, the creature glides straight up from its squatting place, its wings scraping muck from the walls, and then it darts forward [[upon you.]]

She cradles you very firmly, and wraps a feather very tightly round you. Then she rocks you more slowly than a baby should be able to move, and sings to you a lullaby in an uncannily accurate imitation of an old nursemaid. It is [[very effective.|Smoked Cranberry Powder]]

It misjudges its attack, and instead of teeth and claws you come slap against the exposed, feverishly [[throbbing heart.]]

There is a warm, orangish grey half light, and a harsh tightness. Then with a shake and loosening flutter you realise that you are inside the beast's heart, and are feeling with its nerves, seeing with its eyes, and experiencing its hot, wordless thoughts flowing through its body. It slides aimlessly higher in the noisome air, hunting for the intruder, not understanding that you have accidentally intruded into its very mind. You can sense its confusion and disappointment. You are overwhelmed by the smell of the creature which fills its own nostrils, while it is apparent that the creature itself is wholly used to it. Gradually [[a different smell]] distracts it from its missing intended victim.

After a gruesome while the smell is distinct to you even among the other smells the creature is inhaling, and it is a different smell indeed, though hardly pleasant. Then to the smell is added a crashing, rushing tumult. You feel the creature's hair bristle and its bones quiver, as if the sound was a personal insult to it. When you see the source of the sound through the beast's keen though bleary and twitching eyes, you are measurably intrigued. It is like a gigantic shopping cart with the wires (or bars) on top as well as the bottom and sides. A whole murder of muscular crows are harnessed to the inside of the back, so that they can pull it forward and stay safely inside as well, though they are rather crowded, often clashing wings. The vehicle's wheels plow and dig heavily through the detritus. You notice that the deep, zig-zagging ruts it leaves behind do not uncover bare pavement anywhere, but only more hard packed layers of waste. Inside this inventive conveyance is a band of people (though one looks suspiciously like a large, animate artists' mannequin), armed to the gums with unconventional means of destruction. None of this is taken in by the creature in which you are confined: it recognises only the presence of other creatures which it desires to attack. It shoulders through the defiant smell, and stoops with a shriek upon its "prey". A dart (wearing a tribal mask) flies with a whoop to meet the beast, and stabs it through the eye. A stream of disdainful iciness washes over the twisted folds of the beast's brain, and spreads its dancing fingers through the tangled veins of its body. With a choke and a convulsion it collapses from midair, and before it reaches the inhospitable ground it succumbs (and so consequentially do you as well) to [[the powerful sedative.|Yeast]]

This is a place filled with square tunnels or shafts, criss crossing each other with no regard for the laws of things-can't-be-in-the-same-place. They are made of stone, or glass, or iron, or indifferently of all three. They are entirely featureless, yet medievally grim. When you close the door behind you, it falls backwards off a ledge and down one of these endless holes. You are able to pass freely from one shaft to another, unless you try to go through the walls. As there is no way back anymore, you press on to find anything other than more walls, hopefully a clue to finding rain. Going around one tunnel into another, you see another [[wandering figure]] (far more substantial than yourself).

The moment you close the door behind you, it transforms into an antique mural. You are now in a museum, with a floor of grass and flowers, and a roof of clear glass which makes it quite hot. All of the statues which call that place home plainly dislike you, as they very expertly eject water from their mouths onto you, as difficult a target as you are. Finding no doors except the one which is now useless, and only a few windows similarly consisting of paint, you resolve upon a desperate plan. The water must come from somewhere, and so you enter the mouth of an athletic looking granite individual between its fervent and disrespectful spouts. Even the darkness is less uncomfortable than their mistreatments, which are not at all like rain, rather a mockery of it. Hardly existing in the darkness, you are of course no longer wet. You hear a rumbling lower down, and [[make for it.]]

It was robed in reflections of the walls, and striding, or sliding like a chess bishop, along the side of the tunnel. You feel no gravity, so the figure seems to cling, and perhaps to move as well, by means of some static electric force. Bobbing and dancing around the figure like an anti-gravity lapdog is something like a large inkblot. The moment you give your thought to it this strange attendant bobs swiftly close to you and steals something you did not know you had. It bounds away down a side passage, and [[you pursue]] to find out what it was that the thing stole.

As the creature runs you glimpse its black slippered feet, and two coattails, but no other features, and you cannot see what it carried off. As it goes it leads you through an array of traps, which pleasantly break up the monotony of the surroundings. You waft over the points of spikes which lunge out the floor, walls, or ceiling (whichever is which, that which you pursue dashes along all four of them alternately), you slither out of nooses that whip out and pull expertly tight around you, whirl around blades as they slash by, trail through the serrations of vast, spinning saws that glide out of nowhere. The only thing which slows you is a ponderous column of stone which pins you to the side of the shaft, but it lifts again, and you continue. Then after a patch of darts, bolas, and shears, there comes a trap perfectly suited to your particular nature. In the wall is carved a complex emblem, and you no sooner have seen it when your consciousness is [[blotted out completely.|Anise]]

You aren't able to stop yourself before thick, groping fingers of jointed stone close around you and pull you in a direction that must be through the side of the statue, but not back into the museum. Your rumbling captors drag you through many rooms, dimly lit by miniature lamps. There is a hall where large yams, scratched here and there with indistinct, arcane marks, stand in rows on pedestals. You see into a small study where heads of bulls and rams are mounted as trophies on the walls. There is a closet full of willow twig brooms and smelling strongly of smoke and stew. In the end the stone phalanges bring you into a strong smelling scullery, where you become an ingredient for soap, as [[a substitute for three and a half ounces of forgetfulness.]]

After a gruelling ordeal of washing (and an appreciation gained for the dreary life of laundry), you eventually are carried to a bedroom the size of a thrush's nest, clinging to the fibres of a white blanket covered in prints of chicks and hams. The blanket is delivered to a small princess doll with a large head and very small eyes. She rapturously breathes in the smell of the clean new blanket, and [[inhales you]] in the process.

As she doesn't possess lungs, you remain inside her head. Later, when she curls up in her big four-poster, the lights are put out except the night light, and the bed curtains are drawn, her pleasant, porcelain dreams [[put you to sleep.|Peas]]

It is then seen that the range consists not of pine clad slopes, but is a city of towering buildings. Not one is a "skyscraper" though, all are such things as steeples, clock towers, spires, round towers, and belfries. As the train approaches the shadow of these mountains, you hear the guard announcing to the train through a pipe: "Please close all windows and put on your safety belts, as we will soon come to [[the pass.]]"

"The pass" apparently meant the train coming to the end of its track and proceeding into the air at an angle calculated to clear the topmost turrets of the city. You climb into the speaking pipe and slip along inside it, listening to the sounds coming from the different coaches. You think you hear something said about rain, and come out to [[hear better.]]

"Well, he'll never know the difference now." says the one, talking across the top of a newspaper. "Never and always are two brothers." says the other, a centaur kneeling like a deer on a whole bench, with several safety belts wrapping him this way and that. "I make no objection to that, but he needs to read more." says the first. "He has time. So long as he thinks he is running out of time he won't." says the centaur. "You think he'll get there?" "Especially if he finds the figurehead in the clouds." And that is the end of the conversation. One of the windows [[was left open;]] the passenger nearest to it, a bear with large wings, a large moustache, and ordinary sized spectacles, is sleeping soundly, and none of the other passengers have noticed. Somehow it doesn't occur to you to tell anyone or to try and close the window yourself. The feathers of the bear's wings quiver as it almost mutters a secret in its sleep.

Outside the train you see the dreams of the sleeping city beneath going up like puffs of smoke or transparent, grey caterpillars. You see a dream with giant garlic, coattails, and hooked noses, and another about a rainy alley, looking for a whistling kettle. As you lean out to see what the city looks like from above, a passing dream sweeps over you, and you are [[absorbed|Edelweiss]] into it.

Your duties are more that of a secretary, sorting and responding to the large amount of mail that arrives down a chute. You also do a bit of cleaning, maintain the lanterns, and put together the meals. The boy [[writes letters]] and [[explores]] the unlighted areas of the structure.

You usually put the letters he writes through the "out" slot in a certain wall. But with one letter he instructs you to deliver it to [[a certain shelf]] in a certain passage inside the structure where he lives.

One day (days being counted by the pocket watch hanging beside the mail chute, and the innumerable notches in the surrounding boards) the boy does not return from his explorings. You follow him by the smell of disturbed dust, which is concerningly easy to follow, as if there was a very great disturbance ahead. Lanterns are lit all the way. But there is [[a different kind of light]] ahead.

The roof has fallen in, but thankfully you find the boy was not struck by the fall. He is lying in a patch of the light from outside, a light of a pale, overcast day. The boy is as pale as the clouds above, and it seems from the grooves in the dry dust of the floor that he had tried weakly to crawl away. You roll him onto his back, and look in his face. You cannot tell what is the matter, and so to seek from his perspective [[you enter]] his young mind.

Towering mountains white with snow, groaning with thunder as though they are charged storm clouds. Giants stride to and fro, blue in the distance, passing through cumulonimbi as if through puffs of steam. The "boy" is more than a hundred years old, and will be sound as a bell once the sun goes down. Reassured, you attempt to leave the unexpected world within him, but the power of the sun over him, now exerted on you as well, forces you into a [[deathly swoon.|Anise]]

You leave the letter on the designated shelf, and see that the rest are filled with bottled chemicals, drugs, and help messages. The bottles are mainly darkened glass, and filmed with dust and cobwebs. Wedged behind one of the larger bottles is [[an old photograph.]]

It's an old, black and white print, only slightly sepia. It is a photograph of a town mainstreet, and most prominent in the picture are the shadows. You look at it too closely, and the collected memories radiating from this particular photograph [[transmit you]] to their source.

Because of your experience as a butler and secretary you do well in the old town, and eventually are made the mayor. But after many years have passed over you your time for retirement comes on a moonlit night. You leave your wealth and your moustache to your godson Lopez, and travel up the moonbeam in the window to [[the valley]] on the moon's face from which it falls.

There in the center of a crater you find a pot. You enter the soil that fills it, and thus fertilised it produces a fine lemon tree. Your consciousness travels up the sap of the tree and out its leaves into the moon's mythical and dubious atmosphere, leaving you [[wholly devoid of perception|Yeast]] (asleep).

A plashing, trickling, dripping, pattering sound, and you can't quite make it out, but it means something to you, if only you could get out of darkness into the real, vibrant experience of it. [[Reach out...|Tiger Sphere]]

{  (set: $_version to "1.0") (set: $_autosave_slot to "autosave") (set: $_autosave_filename to "save v"+$_version) (set: $_start_passage to "Start") }

{  (unless: (passage:)'s tags contains "nosave")[ (save-game: $_autosave_slot, $_autosave_filename) ] }

{   (unless: (saved-games:) contains $_autosave_slot and (datavalues: (saved-games:)) contains $_autosave_filename)[(goto: $_start_passage)] }''(link: "Continue where you left off.")[(load-game: $_autosave_slot)] [[Begin again in the darkness.->$_start_passage]]''

After this spot of amber glow has faded from recent memory, you catch a whispering echo of a sound. You follow it through vermiform passages, hearing it increase or diminish as you wander. Some quality of the sound staples the surrounding silence into your mind. Your form has no feet with which to make footsteps to accompany you, and your present lack of existence in this darkness means that you do not even stir the air you pass through. As you draw nearer, the sound is clearly that of [[an old fashioned telephone ringing.|a sound.]] The strident bell sound repeats twice every four seconds or so. <audio src="https://archive.org/download/various-sound-effects/phone-ringing-longer-four-seconds-quieter.mp3" autoplay>