Secret Histories

[Astra]

The great Bookkeepers of Isphi wrote of these things, and debated them in the Vellum Tower, before the Ringfall and the coming of the Ash Waste. Written here are my half-rememberings, my conjectures and recollections from my youth as a scribe in the Tower when it still stood.

SECRET HISTORIES, or THREADS OF HIGHER SPLENDOUR
Hypatia Komitou

Every decision is spun by the Fates in an ever-iterating tapestry of History, woven without fail or pause. Because we have identified this History, we may easily think that it is the only History, and look only to the different threads in front of us to tug at and shape. This is reductive. While there cannot be effects without causes, there can be causes without effects, and causes which do not go away even if rendered redundant.

It is possible to tamper with histories beside our own, and with some skill render their boons and woes to be a part of our own. A blow which killed you in this world may have been rendered impotent in another - it is a relatively simple matter to transpose the other world's blow to your flesh instead. The scholars of the Vellum Tower, however, left these sublunary applications of minor History to their scribes, hoping instead to find a deeper truth through the cataloging of major Histories.

As Izdu shepherds and broadens the secrets of our History, so does Gellema reveal fragments of other, secret Histories, in visions and dreams. Thus is Gellema the goddess of the unconscious, the night, the dream and the seeress. Scholars, do not be so quick to discount the madman or the fool. Perhaps their theories are correct in another world, perhaps their visions stem from a higher place.

The sage Eramentheou theorized that there were five major Histories beyond our own, each with their own branches of minor history that often varied only in degrees. These are the Star, the Wildwood, the Bridge of Sighs, the Moth, and the Nowhere. Of these, however, I was only taught the mysteries of the Star, which is the most fundamental - for we know through prisms that color can exist only within light. The Star, often called Izdu's Lantern or Izdu's Splendour, is almost not another History at all - it is a firmament of endless light. Knowledge dwells here, and the answer it speaks is always that of affirmation - existence - being. Light from this brighter place bleeds through candles, cards, and lesser stars into our own History. It is the inverse and opposite of the -----, who is formlessness - denial - shadow - negation.  The two mediums which this light most purely touches are the living Soul, and the Ash.

There are those in this world who disappear without a trace. Many of them simply die in forgotten and lonely places. But others have, through purpose or through misadventure, passed through the drumskin of our world and found their way to another History, a journey which is so often a one-way trip. Mark this as the ultimate fate of the Bookkeepers of Isphi, who sealed themselves in with their books when the Inert menaced the Vellum Tower, finally disappearing in a great ritual that they hoped would deposit them in a separate History entirely. Their ultimate fate is a matter of some debate between the handful of those who remember lost Isphi. Some think that they were burned up to cinders at the sight of Izdu's Lantern in its full Glory. Others believe that they fell to the Nowhere in their haste to escape the -----.

My position on the matter is quite clear, for we know that the Fates adore irony.