"Correspond precisely to a symbolic statement, rigorously logical, doth every possible physical configuration of the Triad.

Have a logical antecedent, doth every statement, unless it is primitive. Call this 'cause', do wights.

If thou gainsayest cause, thou dost gainsay the logicality of the Triad, and thus also the Dyad,

And thus thou dost also gainsay the Monad."

-- The Cosmogon Codex, Prolegomenon, Verse 49.

You might have supposed, dear reader, that I ran from that place as soon as I was able. But it is not so. Recovering my breath took some time, longer than I liked, and afterwards I continued to lay on the stone and think. I was not afraid of attacks from any more brutes--I had the feeling there had been only the one, and he had fled.

Why had he fled with such eagerness? For the same reason he had whispered--he did not wish to be recognized by me. That does not mean he is personally known to me now, but that I have the potential to recognize him amongst the brothers of the bedestow. Not much else about him could I write--except that he was perhaps a younger man, as he was strong and incredibly fast. And he has a mole on his hand--this, I knew, was the only chance I would have of identifying him.

Eventually I returned to my room and sat at my desk. I opened The Codex to a random page. I looked at it but did not see. My powers of focus were sapped once again. But this was not the brain-fog induced by fermented saguaro fruit-juice--rather, my mind was focused--but on something which some other part of myself declared verboten.

I needed to see the sky and feel the sun. There is a sloped passage with an aperture near my room. This I employed to arrive at an opening in an external wall; I squeezed through and stood on a platform above a bulwark, gazing appreciatively at the sea of sand. Then my eyes fell to the stone beneath my feet.

The surface was precisely scoured with lines. I walked along these like a child playfully following hopper trails in the dirt. A sense of familiarity dawned on me: did I not recently see this diagram in The Codex? Why would it be carved on the exterior of this building, as if it had been part of the original design? The idle puzzlement soon flew from my mind when I noticed something else: scratches in the stone near the edge of the platform. I drew near; it was someone's writing, scrawled in the letters of the House Tongue. This struck me as quite bizarre--one only writes House letters when one is first learning to read and pronounce the language. Surely the spirits in the walls would pay no heed to scribbles. Nonetheless, after carefully sounding them out, I was able to decipher the words, which were thus:

Whence fell the Disarray?

Sayeth not wisdomlove--

Thence saileth the Settling.

At the time, I did not know the verb "saileth"--but I soon consulted a dictionary and learned its meaning. In distant parts of the world there are vast basins covered in water rather than sand, and the folk travel in carts: instead of using wheels, sleds, and beasts, these carts have attached to them great sheets of cloth that catch the wind and drag the carts across the water. A truly fantastical concept, though I can think of no reason why it should not be possible.

I supposed the first line was asking about the cause of the Disarray, that distant, past Dark Age of unknown depths, but which ended at "Year Zero" with the Rearrangement of the Moon after the Swift thundered away from the Earth. But what occurred to me at the time was the strangeness of the historical references. This meant it could not be a quotation from The Codex, for The Codex contains absolutely no references to any eretidal event. But what else would someone quote? It is my impression that members of the laity have the wont of quoting the great oral epics which record ancient yore.

Those were my thoughts on the matter before I grew too hot and had to escape the sunlight. After returning to my room (where I looked up the verb "to sail" in a House Tongue dictionary) I decided my head was clear enough to attend a godlore study session.

At this session, there were a megaschema, two novices, a rasophore, and a postulant. I sat with them and respectfully listened to the megaschema lecture on the Monad. When I entered, he was reminding the disciples that the Monad is probably not a mind with a will--it is merely the grounding of all being, though it is not the Creator.

The postulant asked how could this be, if it were true that the Monad begat the Dyad, Who created our cosmos. The megaschema conceded that, in that sense, the Monad is indirectly responsible for our creation, though by mere happenstance. On the other hand, some scholars conjecture that if the Monad does have some awareness, It perhaps knew It would emanate the Dyad, Who would create the Triad, which would destabilize in the Big Wobble, resulting in our cosmos.

At this point during the discussions of esoteric godlore, my mind wandered back to thoughts of Hearsome Cloud and the assault in the passage.

The assault, in particular, is completely counter to the ways of the bedestow. If I let that person intimidate me, it would communicate to him that such methods are effective. I do not wish to promote the future abuse of my brethren and sistren. The assault also had another unintended backwash on me--it caused me to wonder even more strongly what the brute wished to hide.

There is that word I have been writing here often: "wonder." There is another word we so rarely use, I can barely call it to mind. It is a noun for wondering ...

witfire.

Could it be that simple? Did Hearsome Cloud wander so far from the populated buildings simply for the sake of wondering, for the sake of witfire? But if so, why was she exiled from the bedestow?

Thus during the godlore study session, I had come to decide several things. First, I needed to find out who attacked me and why. Second, I would not be intimidated, but I would be more careful: I would gather friends with me to wander the distant passages for the sake of witfire.

~ Path Dust

Upon the Hour of the Fox, Quick Ink Day, First Moon, in this the 17,622nd Year A.R. ~