A STORYTELLER IN PYTHINIA
.... And this is not the End and maybe this is just the Beginning.....
Come here, come here, dont be shy, come sit down, yes, there on those cushions, on these pillows; the diwan is for our more noble listeners I'm afraid
Come sit down, its such a lovely day, no better time to celebrate this feast day, all of green verdant Pythinia, homely Pythinia, is on their feet to participate in the festivities, dont you think?
No comparison to my own dull hometown of Hypantanion, City of Thorns, I have to admit. Haha, no, its alright, its my taint that gave it away, isnt it?
Come sit down, the Cathedral of the Allfather provides such a splendid background panorama, its spires stretching....
Yes, you can stay there, no problem, no problem at all, its fine, yes, you too, here take some of those figs and pomegranades, these, those are indeed fruits, as much as they may seem a triffle strange to you, their smell, their fragrance.
They come from none other then Tomarza, its what made them so delicious you see, no figs better then those grown in the gardens of Tomarza of the Sun, where all day long the sun shines, where sunny figs grow in endless plantations among the many terraced levels of Tomarza that rise up to the sun itself, a sun that doesnt stop bathing the people and the stonewalls and the oranges and the apples and the figs and the multi coloured tiles of the rooftops and the dates..."
And for one moment, standing up there on the gardens of sun-bathed Tomarza you might imagine yourself not in Tomarza, sun-baked Tomarza, no, you see the emerald encrusted halls of Darendez before your eyes, you dream, just for a moment, that you might have crossed the Deserts of No Return, and passing by the sand-burried catacombs of ill-spoken Manbj and have crossed the snake haunted town of Urffa, if you can in truth call the sunken oasis ruins of Urrfa, the domains of the Serpentine Gods, this accursed desolation whose worship of the Serpentine Gods, whose worship had brought them one day ecstasy and one day a venomous rapture,- if you can call those sand-burried catacombs of Urffa of the Serpentine Gods indeed a proper city, and having crossed the endless Deserts of No Return have come at last to emerald encrusted Darendez, whose streets...."
....No, that was not a viper send from Urrfas accursed ruins, calm down my sweet boy, it was a hare in the grass, nothing more natural then seeing hares on a day like that and in a place like here on the meadows of lovely Pythinia.
You have seen it as well, young lady, right? You look so pale under this summer breath of wind.
Girls like you used to dance and to sing in Zaberda, the City that Never Sleeps, the city whose sleep never is disturbed by dreams of Hypantanion the Thorny, whose ladies, more lovely then anywhere else, sing and dance and marvel throughout the nights, not imagining what their true purpose was to be, what would come when the night finally ends, that this was when...."
Oh, yes, they worship the Allfather there in Zaberda City of Sleeping, of course they do, but they say that the Allfather is sleeping, just as anyone else is in Zaberda, and that.... no, dont get angry.... those are indeed the beliefs in Zaberda, I'm telling the truth.
Its not much different from the creed that the scholars of Kayseri embrace, that all of the world is in a state of statis, including the Allfathers embrace of our destinies and that to break this equilibrium is to invite the paradise at last, but also an end to our dreams of this world, and it is said that Kayseri has been burned in the Hundred Crusades for teachings like that, that its scholars, its deans, its lecturers had to be cut down for teachings like that, sayings like that.
But what is there in the creeds of Kayseri so wrong, to justify so much slaughter, so much carnage in the streets of learned Kayseri, when the monks in the multi-storied basilicas of Harrani proclaim the Allfather a mere phantom of the real Divine, or in a world where the Church of Arkayoun, whose city looks down on the many valleys of the Mountains of Red Feathers with a pride that hides their own inadequacies, and whose church proudly speaks of the Allfather, Him as like all the other gods as just hypostases of each other, both different gods and both the same god and both nothing divine at all, and that they are at the same time -and that makes the Church of Arkayoun, City on the Red Feather cliffs, so divious- not divine at all!
I see you have grown silent, you may consider me, humble me, a blasphemer, and still I would never raise my voice to speak of the true heresies of this world, of the treacherous belief of Barbelisos on the sea, the Sea-Eaten City of Barbelisos, who does not acknowledge the Allfather at all and call their kraken deities the true form and substance of the Allfathers divinity, and my breath stops to utter what is said in Hypantanion City of Thorns, that we all are the real divine beings, and that seen from our perspective the Allfather might be the first, and certainly the last, the only human being living in this wide world of ours and he was the one whose prayers to us gods keeps the world of today standing....
.....What is the matter? A cat has cried, nothing more!
It was a cat, who is scared of cats?
Are you still that infantile? No, dont get angry, it was a joke in innocence spoken, but a cat had cried out, not the populace of Bile-San-Ban-Bile, as the Fountain erupted, as the Geysir Of The End, who gave Bile-San-Ban-Bile its picturesqe moniker, its spray a daily, an hourly refreshment and a dusty reminder that everything must end, that the Geysir Of The End will one day erupt and drown out Bile-San-Ban-Bile, the City of the Fountain of the End, and all its people and noone in Bile-San-Ban-Bile of the Fountain would be left to tale the tales of the sea, the tales of Arkayouni which had been build on the waves themselves and had been swallowed by the sea just as Bile-San-Ban-Bile would be, just as Tarbsag was doomed to fall in ruins on the very tombs they had build for their future inhabitants, the tombs of whom.....
That hurt? What hurt.. a bee, a step on the wrong stone, surely, no, no thorns were inserted into those sweet smelling pillows, no Hypantanionian would commit ever such a crime as to bring forth the thorns of whose his city is so infamous for in most-learned circles, to fit them into pillows, no it was a bee, nothing more.
Please dont go now, stay here.
Please stay for a bit and I will tell you of Kesz, whose towering sepulchre was the wonder and the envy of all the Golden Lands, and also its doom, the downfall that came to the Golden Lands, brought in the end by Kesz of the Tower, no less severe then the Hundred Crusades had been that burned blasphemous Kayseri and the watery graves that became the geysir-bathed Bile-San-Ban-Bile, and it is said that the Golden Lands.... of course, no one would call those devastated landscapes golden anymore, that the Golden Lands were now not much different then the poisonous wastelands along the river Sephrateus, whose poisonous waves battle agains the rampants of Hromkla the City of the Dogmas, whose poisonous waves have long since ended all prosperity in Aybatan, whose proud merchants had once proclaimed their caravans would reach wherever the moon was shining upon! Oh the senseless pride of those bankiers and traders and boasting merchants of Aybatan City of Merchants and Pride, now long sunken to ruin on the shores of poisonous Sephrateus River!
Because that is the lesson I am teaching you here, that is the purpose of this little performance of mine, of those fires you see on my stage, whose shadows remind you of the sacrifices that Khais'Tu once made, the sacrifice that we all one day have to consider, no less a sacrifice then the people of Khais'Tu had made in ancient days; and it may even remind you of Barbelisos the Sky-Borne City, yes Barbelios had known the lesson and and had known it well when is ascended into the skies, and just as the people, low and highborn, of the people whose ordinary lives were so suddenly disrupted in Khais'Tu upon their sacrifice and in Barbelisos when it ascended into the blue neverending sky, the answer to why a darkness has fallen upon lovely verdant Pythinia lately, why there is a sense of foreboding, why the prayers to the Allfather seem to not be answered anymore, why you have listened to me for not more then half a hour maybe, maybe less, and its not a sunny afternoon anymore as when it started, not more then it was a lovely sunny afternoon when you stepped before me and my humble stage, to hear tales of Hypantanion City of Thorns, it was all for you to remember, remember good and well... dont scream now, not now, my fellow connoisseurs of the wonders of this earth.... the lesson that in this hopeless world of ours, that the end has very well been reached already, that an era has finished... sit down please, its too late, to be fair, much too late to leave now anymore.... that this hopeless world of ours, even now in verdant Pythinia, has reached its conclusion.
And just how the acolyt in the deepest grove of Derbesak revealed to the poor souls who have reached the core of the forbidden realms of Derbesak, just as the lost wanderer in Armenaz the Forgotten, which you only can reach when you have found a highly specific route, and when you reach Armenaz in truth, you have already forgotten Armanaz and its splendour, and the acolyt in Derbesak and the tyrants of Forgotten Armenaz tell the same tale, that this world and its hopes are ephemal, that nothing lasts, that all is changing.
That this is not a day under the sun, that this is the night, a night brighter then any day, that very well this is not a tale I am telling you, no less then there ever was listener in Derbesak or Armenaz, that we ourselves are the way on which we tread to the end, blind, but going forward and that this is not Pythinia, lovely Pythinia, but that right now, you dear listeners are nowhere else but in dreaded Hypantanion, abandoned Hypantanion, in the City of Thorns into which you enter in your darkest dreams and may never leave thereafter, and that you, in the recesses of Hypantanion City of Thorns have come to an end not more drastic and more fabolous, more definite then ever you could have imagined and that this in truth, here on this thorn-crowned Plaza of Hypantanion, that this is not the End and maybe this is just the Beginning..........