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LPF week 21 - OK
At first, no one realized the true importance of the message. Its manner of arrival was certainly nothing remarkable, delivered as it was sealed inside a hollow diamond and carried in the talons of an osprey made of copper and glass. Oh, the fact that it was an osprey was a bit unconventional, but the gargoyles at the post office had seen far stranger things. They accepted the parcel and fed the bird some crystal fish.
There was a bit of confusion as to the identity of the intended recipient, but eventually one of the truly ancient gargoyles recognized that the archaic glyphs etched into the diamond labeled the contents as a diplomatic message from the Embellished Khanate. This rendered the message mildly more interesting, since no one had heard from the Khanate in so long that most people assumed that there had never actually been such a place, and that it had been concocted by cartographers who thought that the edges of their maps looked a bit dull and could really do with an few extra islands.
A minor functionary who was out of favor with his superiors was given the tedious task of descending to the archives to wake up the appropriate Minister of Exceedingly Foreign Affairs, who had been entombed in honey uncountable years ago when contact with the Khanate had officially been deemed to have been lost. The minister composed a brief poem granting access to the message to the scholars laboring at the Ziggurat of Enlightenment, and a graduate student in Obscure and Possibly Imaginary Languages translated the message as probably saying something along the lines of "Everything will be okay."
It was deemed very thoughtful of a legendary lost civilization to send such a thoughtful and reassuring message all the way across the Devouring Sea, and then no one thought anything more of it. That is, until the ships started to arrive.
Well, several of the things were ships, while others were more properly described as floating islands being pulled through the water by massive domesticated squid. The ships were elegant but had a look of being pushed to their limits, and some of the trees on the floating islands looked a bit shabby. All of the vessels flew the flag of the Embellished Khanate. People began to doubt the accuracy with which the message had been translated.
As the first ship coasted up to the docks, an actual professor of Obscure and Possibly Imaginary Languages was lured out of his office to see if more reliable communication might be possible. The Khanate sent forth an emissary who had a similarly academic bearing, and the two of them set about the task of trying to talk to one in other using obsolete and outdated words from each other's languages.
Eventually, an understanding was achieved. The news was not good.
The visitors were refugees. The original message had been, in fact, a dire warning: the world was falling to the mundane. This did no seem terrifying at first, because people had forgotten what the mundane truly was.
The truth was, people experienced the extraordinary every day. But, seen every day, the extraordinary becomes perceived as merely ordinary. When everything is exceptional, the exceptional is seen as the rule.
But now, all of the wonder that people no longer truly saw as wonderful was fading away. Back in the Khanate, most of the floating islands had already become stuck in place and immovable. It was growing impossible to sing autonomous constructs like the messenger bird into existence - the one they had sent was the last they were able to create. Clouds no longer listened to reason. The tame gargantuan squid in the bay were already growing feral. People had started simply eating toast for breakfast.
From the perspective of those who had so much, enduring the merely ordinary sounded terrifying. Where else could they go? How long did they have before the mundane caught up with them here?
Out in the bay, one of the floating islands started to sink.
There was a bit of confusion as to the identity of the intended recipient, but eventually one of the truly ancient gargoyles recognized that the archaic glyphs etched into the diamond labeled the contents as a diplomatic message from the Embellished Khanate. This rendered the message mildly more interesting, since no one had heard from the Khanate in so long that most people assumed that there had never actually been such a place, and that it had been concocted by cartographers who thought that the edges of their maps looked a bit dull and could really do with an few extra islands.
A minor functionary who was out of favor with his superiors was given the tedious task of descending to the archives to wake up the appropriate Minister of Exceedingly Foreign Affairs, who had been entombed in honey uncountable years ago when contact with the Khanate had officially been deemed to have been lost. The minister composed a brief poem granting access to the message to the scholars laboring at the Ziggurat of Enlightenment, and a graduate student in Obscure and Possibly Imaginary Languages translated the message as probably saying something along the lines of "Everything will be okay."
It was deemed very thoughtful of a legendary lost civilization to send such a thoughtful and reassuring message all the way across the Devouring Sea, and then no one thought anything more of it. That is, until the ships started to arrive.
Well, several of the things were ships, while others were more properly described as floating islands being pulled through the water by massive domesticated squid. The ships were elegant but had a look of being pushed to their limits, and some of the trees on the floating islands looked a bit shabby. All of the vessels flew the flag of the Embellished Khanate. People began to doubt the accuracy with which the message had been translated.
As the first ship coasted up to the docks, an actual professor of Obscure and Possibly Imaginary Languages was lured out of his office to see if more reliable communication might be possible. The Khanate sent forth an emissary who had a similarly academic bearing, and the two of them set about the task of trying to talk to one in other using obsolete and outdated words from each other's languages.
Eventually, an understanding was achieved. The news was not good.
The visitors were refugees. The original message had been, in fact, a dire warning: the world was falling to the mundane. This did no seem terrifying at first, because people had forgotten what the mundane truly was.
The truth was, people experienced the extraordinary every day. But, seen every day, the extraordinary becomes perceived as merely ordinary. When everything is exceptional, the exceptional is seen as the rule.
But now, all of the wonder that people no longer truly saw as wonderful was fading away. Back in the Khanate, most of the floating islands had already become stuck in place and immovable. It was growing impossible to sing autonomous constructs like the messenger bird into existence - the one they had sent was the last they were able to create. Clouds no longer listened to reason. The tame gargantuan squid in the bay were already growing feral. People had started simply eating toast for breakfast.
From the perspective of those who had so much, enduring the merely ordinary sounded terrifying. Where else could they go? How long did they have before the mundane caught up with them here?
Out in the bay, one of the floating islands started to sink.
no subject
Great piece as always :)
no subject
I'm not sure we could convince many people to give up the Internet just to get unicorns back. = )