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It's approximately midday on the 9th of Eleint as Sithani returns home with a new philosophy book in her possession. Not having been invited to the Xiloscient party - not that she'd have wanted to go to that dull kind of party in the normal run of things, but she's a little miffed that she'll miss a chance to hear Sunrise perform - she had decided to console herself with some mental exercise and acquired a second-hand copy of "Against Forms" to read and see how other people have formulated the inherently un-ordered nature of the cosmos.
As she sits down in the solitude of her room to read the book, it falls open and a tattered clumsily-stitched - to call it a book would be generous - slips out. Sithani shrugs, accepting the unexpected free gift as a happy coincidence, and looks at the first page.
It describes a nightmare in which featured shadows, and eyes, and a cratered plain under writhing stars.
Tearing eagerly through the rest of the book, Sithani discovers it to be a palimpsest: descriptions of many-angled cosmic vistas and terrified rants about sealife are scrawled over letters, receipts, pages torn from other books, and in one case what looks like a recipe for cupcakes. As she reads further, Sithani comes to the conclusion that there's a layer of significance beyond the text itself: the choice of pages on which to write certain essays, the angle of the text in relation to the page, even some of the blots and crossings-out seem to hint at a meaning. The cupcake recipe, meanwhile, looks like it would be very bland and Sithani decides not to waste her time with it.
"Against Forms" is put aside for another day. Sithani's brain hasn't felt like this since she chewed those really good moon-leaves. And as new connections form in the parts of her brain that were reshaped by her patron, she realises there's magic in this book.
As she sits down in the solitude of her room to read the book, it falls open and a tattered clumsily-stitched - to call it a book would be generous - slips out. Sithani shrugs, accepting the unexpected free gift as a happy coincidence, and looks at the first page.
It describes a nightmare in which featured shadows, and eyes, and a cratered plain under writhing stars.
Tearing eagerly through the rest of the book, Sithani discovers it to be a palimpsest: descriptions of many-angled cosmic vistas and terrified rants about sealife are scrawled over letters, receipts, pages torn from other books, and in one case what looks like a recipe for cupcakes. As she reads further, Sithani comes to the conclusion that there's a layer of significance beyond the text itself: the choice of pages on which to write certain essays, the angle of the text in relation to the page, even some of the blots and crossings-out seem to hint at a meaning. The cupcake recipe, meanwhile, looks like it would be very bland and Sithani decides not to waste her time with it.
"Against Forms" is put aside for another day. Sithani's brain hasn't felt like this since she chewed those really good moon-leaves. And as new connections form in the parts of her brain that were reshaped by her patron, she realises there's magic in this book.