Midnight, it Comes Once A Day. Also the Sisters

Pogs faced backlash for taking back his suitorship to the Mother of Trees. He had heard the whisper of her resting companion before the night started and had a conversation with him while he was awake, waitting for the party to be over to venture out and decide on his best course of action. Something about that conversation changed Pogs forever, what we may never know. For one reason or another the memory stones didn't cover that angle of the great and powerful tree. The trunk itself was as large as a modern city block. It was easy to forget that there was another life sleeping sound and quite on the opposing side of Tessa, why would anyone place a memory stone on the opposite side of the Mother.

So many beings thought that the attacks on the 'Shroom Trolls was in fact Tessa taking revenge. Then it was thought that it was the sleeping male counterpart feeling slighted. That was before Pogs had come out in defense of the being he had fallen in love with. Rumor after rumer spread as the attacks on the clan came months apart, then weeks, then daily and soon without end. It seemed that the Trolls were suffering lost daily to a war that was only rumored to be taking place. Most of the 'Shroom Trolls had migrated to another realm at this point and the attacks had been mostly in what the magical community at large started calling the hinterlands. It was that land that the 'Shroom Trolls called home. There were nicknames for all the realms, each had a true name but only a small group of people used the true names of a place. Knowing its name made it easier to stubble into them using stray magical essence. There was a man a few hundred years ago who found a sword made by the lowland Elves, who lived mainly in grasslands and rocky outcrops at the base of mountains. When they left this world past the Eastern Gates into the realms a few things were lost or forgotten, the sword being one of them. The man in question had books and knowledge of the ancient arcane powers, he was the sorcerer to a great british king. With the magic in the sword the royal magician accidentally opened a portal in a lake at the mountains base and the sword was swallowed leaving a scar in the world that he could travel back and forth from Earth to the Elvish world, with just a few words from his book and the true name of a realm. So, as a community we chose to use nicknames to avoid any further contamination from the humans invading the safe spaces we had found or created.

The Hinterlands was only host to the trolls, there were no other people native to the land. In many ways it looked very much like their normal home. The trees, the bushes, the knolls and grass. The soil is perfect for their spores to take hold and grow. The animals were very different, still they posed no threat to the beasts of that land. 'Shroom Trolls' were by nature vegetarians. They were born on, and from decay. The sky never reached the full brightness of the human world. It seemed like something in the Hinterlands formed a natural canopy that kept the lowlights needed for the Trolls at just the right levels. My favorite part of the Hinterlands was the air, it was full of sweet decay like the air in fall and never hot, never cold.

As extra-dimensional space I enjoy the Hinterlands of the 'Shroom Trolls, I liked it far better then other places I've been even in the human world. I mean, being immortal doesn't mean you are capable of always being comfortable or that I was incapable of sweating. Take the Mojave Desert, it was the Death Valley for a reason. I'd never in my life in all my travels between this world or another, have been to a place more deserving of its name. The death valley is hot, it is dry, it has very little life, and what life it does have seeks out one thing. It wants to take life to feed its own. I passed through a handful of times though the last time I had been traveling with a group of wagons. Men, women and children hearing of a better life at the coasts of California. It seems that wherever a discovery is made the humans run to claim it and everything around it. I don't know that I would call it a fault, but it was born out of fear. Fear of having nothing, fear of giving nothing, I think deep it's a fear of being nothing. These main bodies of these caravanes were composed of a lot of the same kinds of people. Though this group couldn't have been more different then the settlers I had met in "New England." Those were men and women in search of a place to punish the people they wanted to punish and to rule over those that they sought to punish. These people were different, they had a spark. That spark drove them to desire not just freedom but personal power, they sought personal sovereignty!

The men and women sitting in their wagons, driving their horses crawled slowly over the dry, sandy, bitter land. The only brake from the sun beating down was under the canvas canopy of their wagon or under it with the supports and wheels. The latter being a choice for pets and the lizards, and rodents that had learned to travel with the caravans to pick up the scraps they leave or drop, and the lizards were there hoping to catch the flies or rodents that were attracted by the leftovers of humans. The travelers were, in a lot of ways, the first eco-terrorists without understanding what it meant to be one. Small bodies of water were encountered from time to time and the men and women would wade in it, bathe in it, wash cloths and drink it up. Watering their horses was probably the most natural thing for them to do. I was traveling with them under the disguise of a healer and shop owner in search of land to grow crops of healing herbs. I had jugs of soil,roots and seeds in paper bags and canvas pouches. I looked the part, and the travelers were all too happy to have a healer traveling with them and blessedly asked a few questions about where I came from, where my family was from or why I was without a wife and children of my own. Thinking back it was common for intellectuals to forgo families until their profession was established. I used small acts of essence to help this small group of people, people just trying to survive. It was my position in life to serve, to aid and without their knowledge I did just that. A cloud to block the sun, a cool mist in the morning to help gather water. At one point a child was bitten by a snake. I used an "herb," to heal him. It was just some mugwart that I crushed into a mash and filled with essence. I put it over the wound. The child recovered but I said to the group that was the last of the herb I had and to be extra careful, that the act couldn't be repeated. It was fun. After getting to the coast, I said my goodbyes to the group and "made my way north." I was always headed north when I left people. The deception was as much on me as it was on them. I secretly hungered for my village, my people but those days were changed, gone forever. The hinterlands and the civilisation that called it home was gone now, the only thing left was Pogs, Pogs and his endless supply of Billy Weed. What was done to his people was unforgivable, even from the standpoint of endless time.

I could understand if it was a sickness that took them, I could understand if a war had taken them, I could even understand if the Trolls had chosen to die out on their own but this was so much worse. After the party was over Pogs had left NewFoundland to a portal back home. When morning came and his witnesses came to his hut to retrieve him for his wedding and found it empty a search party set out to find him, the trail led to the sleeping bark of willow at the back of the great Oak that was the body of Tessa, the male was deep asleep and his dreams of the night before danced in the cracks and colors of the gnarled bark about his head. It showed a story of a little man, sitting enthralled by a story of some kind, falling in love with the man telling the story and falling even more in love with the story. The question now was, where had Pogs gone? Also what was it that the nameless male had said that impressed Pogs so deeply? It was a story to this day that had yet to be answered. The male part of the Mother of Trees slept after that night and he sleeps to this day. Pogs appeared in the annex that House provided one day. The last of his kind. He didn't even have the will to seek asylum, he hardly had the will to breathe. It was House and the Healers guild that kept him alive, it was Billy Weed that brought him a kind of sanity, but it was time, the slow ebb and flow of time that brought his will to move, to eat, to live again. It was that fickle time, the same time that heals all wounds.

We went to the hinterlands as a family. We went as representatives of our village of our people as the Elders of our land. The gateway was bared by magics both dark and unknown. We stood with me at the front of our formation and spread out younger siblings to my right, and older to my left. If we were seen in the sky we could be mistaken for a flock of migrating birds, which gave this stance its name. The flock, together we could breath essence from one into another then another until it was collected like wind in a sail. Each of us entered a state of mind that was common among those from our village so long ago. Each of us lost our edges, we lost ourselves into the collection of energy that was common between us. We all had water in us, we all had elements of the earth in our bones, in our blood, the air in our lungs that led us down to the into the fire that our bodies produced, the memories and knowledge of the oceans and rivers, the smallest drop of water and the crash of the Seas as they rip apart beach and coral, as oceans devour masses of land. At that moment each of us became the source elements, the joining factor of elements devoured one another and becoming one another. All that was channeled from one edgeless mass into the next until finally It was not in my body, it was my body, it was my mind,spirit, and soul. With that force at my sides I rushed into the darkness, into the daunting mass of unknown and broke it apart. We gained entry like a battering siege ram gaining way into a guarded hall. It was messy, it wasn't delicate, but at times like this it worked. So the doorway broke, we found the Hinterland not empty, not dead. The whole world was there but it lacked any feeling of will and that lack of will crept forward, outward, it went down and it went up. The lack of will moved like a supernova robbing roots of the will to take up water and food, it stole the leaves the will to take in sunlight and by products of breathing. Birds lacked not only the will to fly but to hunt, to feed, to mate. Even the water lacked the will to change into clouds and travel the sky, without the will the land that the water would travel over and through, the waters just lay unmoving, unchanging. So the will was taken from everything, that included Pogs family, friends, loved and despised, they all lost the will to live. A door was opened to Pogs as he was falling from his lack of will, an open door right into the bed of the annex room. House called sister, Karen came at once from some tea she had been hosting. House had its ways of calling us, calling in ways that we almost had no choice but to answer. More and more it felt like the long unseen reach of a grandparents hand, of a grandparents love.

With that memory I turned off of Haul Street, a street I had built and the first street I watched a building constructed on, I left my bench mark to witness its growth and my bench mark to set others on needed paths. Humanity couldn't stay in the dark much longer." I've seen enough, time to go home, Pogs is waking up." I was talking to a seemingly lost cat that had sat at my bench once a few hundred years ago, his name was Sage but now hes called secret and hes kept that secret for over a hundred years. I didn't even know what the secret was but I suspect that it he would tell his secret one day.

Whatever was affecting the Hinterlands, whoever brought this infection to that world, it wasn't one of the Fey, it wasn't Tessa, it was a mystery. Another story for another day I suppose.

After my night in the city I was full of new hope, I had a vitality, a glow that hadn't been there the day before. House seemed to notice straight away. As I came onto our land a trail of heath and heather split the ground from our home to the road. The earthy and musty sweetness of the flowers filled the air. I love heath and heather. House knew

As suspected Pogs slept the entire night I was away and he slept the entire day after I returned. After my welcome home I came into the grand entryway. It looked as clean and fresh as ever, the pixie party under the stairway had calmed down and a little pixie slept off the night before, passed out on the welcome mat into Pixie Hall. Karen came out of the kitchen door, my coffee cup in her hand, a steady stream of steam flowing out of it and finding its way directly to me. Her ever ready smile on her pal face, blue lines streaked under her lip and over her chin, her true form being a foot taller than her human form, her reach much longer then she seemed to understand. She banged out of the door cracking it as she came through. "You need to stay in form more often sister. Your a mess, what if you had to fight this way?' I was poking fun at her, but it was true. None of us spent enough time in our true forms, getting lazy and accustomed to the length of our reach and stride of our steps. The current result was simply that my coffee got to me that much faster. "Thanks! I needed that." Thanking my sister I realized that I had been gone all night, "What are our brothers doing?" I asked her. I could have been more direct but she understood who I was asking about. "Steven is in his study, David and Matt are still asleep." She answered me. "Auquast Perfektum ye Azugar et um Cafe'." I called out and added the smallest touch of essence. A small ball of milk and a touch of sugar appeared and hung in the air above my coffee for just a moment before falling into the dark liquid and stirring itself in. "Ahh, perfection." As I drank my coffee pleased to be home. "Latin, so soon early?" Karen said in jest. "What we don't have a word for coffee in our language." I smiled still pleased at with my coffee. I thought back to the early days of spell casting, it was easier in our language but there were words that just didn't exist and when using spoken magic being exact was key. The closest we have to coffee is tea. "Saiyu", is our word for tea, though words were created or combined to make words for coffee, those not being original to our language, to when we were created/born so using those words just wouldn't do. Draw back to spoken magic, specifics. Thankfully another benefit to our condition is the time to learn every language, every story from history behind those words and use them in their truest form. Quyanaq saying it means thank you is one version of that story. It meant so much more and just as much at the same time. But that's a meal for a different day. For now, just nice warm coffee.

As I drank my coffee I walked the halls, not heading any one place more just enjoying the harmony that our home played. Boggart was making his way to the library. The myth that they were evil or fearful was far from true. They could be the nicest, kindest, most helpful beings or they could be the definition of mischievous. The change in mood had as much to do with the day, how they slept as well as how they were treated by the household they inhabited. This Boggarts name is Hensfield Boggesta, Henny for short. Unlike most of his kind he didn't come with the house or the land it was built on. How could he, House built itself outside of the lean-to-hut that House now used as a stable, and the land grew out from house. Henny was free to feel however he chose to feel and free to take whatever form he wanted to be. Giving him so much freedom when he was assigned to House was hard on him at first, but as time passed he grew to enjoy his freedom and through the Boggart Network, a system of mirrors and reflective surfaces in houses across the realms, Henny tried to explain to his clan that they could have a choice and being a trickster wasn't where their story was born. Henny wasn't sure where their story was born but he felt in his core that it wasn't to be tricksters. "We are not the fox or raven in the story. We are not the shapeshifters in the dark or the sly tongues of liars." He would say,"We are the changelings that help reflect what the world doesn't see or doesn't know, we help humanity to learn and grow from their own adversity." He always added. Right now he was sulking into the purple door of the libraries arch with no doubt a hangover from his late night visiting the Pixie hall. I imagined to myself how much that party must have raged into the night. By the end pixie and boggart, elf and garden fairies all in the spiral dance of creation and harmony degrading into the typical chaos that only a true party can bring, splintering into those who moderated and those who went full out. "Hensfield! How are you my dear being?" I asked, a little loud and with a small touch of essence to ring and covering the distance between myself and the door of the library. Making the ancient glass in its door rattle ever so slightly. In the blink of my eye, Henny changed from the morphic blob into an old man, tired with bags under his eye deep and purple, with a sallow color to his skin. Slowly he turned his head to me and scowled at me. I haven't seen such a deep loathing look in years. 'Can I offer you a little Coca leaf and a touch, small pinch of limestone?' I asked Henny as I reached into my pouch and pulled out a small leather envelope, with a silver clasp. I undid the silver hands holding one another softly and pulled out a fresh cocoa leaf and a tiny pebble of a rock and handed it to Henny. "Thank you, so much." He answered me as he took the remedy from out of my cupped hand. He pinched the leaf over the stone and tucked it away in the lip of his mouth. Slowly he changed from a tired old man into a slim, light framed man with a smoking jacket and wispy pipe. He went deeper into the library and found a place under a bright window to enjoy his recovery from the Pixie hall party. "Stay out of trouble Henny." I warned him as I walked past him with my coffee, headed for the back of the stacks, looking for an artifact I stored, folded into the pages of a human story, told about human times, and survived by human telling. It was by some telling the first story of mankind, Gilgamesh. It fed a need they had to believe in faith and in history at the same time, the story on stone held a better thing for me. I call it a secret delight.

I walked past rows of books, groups of scrolls, some on shelves, others in clay pots and urns. It became a movie of history with each step. A man wakes up from the dirt he was just formed in and his side splits open, only for a woman to form at his side. A great garden enveloped them, a pair of beautiful trees sprouted and grew to be great and proud providers of shade and food. A snake shared a truth to the ignorant man and women. She took fruit and the garden overtook them. Then the story started again. A man woke up from the dirt that made him….etc and etc. I turned past a collection of tablets full of numbers and lines.

Smoke rose from them, like dust settling backwards. A man could be seen in the holding a tablet in one hand and a alder stick in the other, with a blade covered in blood. The lines of the tablet rose, shining in the darkness. A great demon came into being entrapped by the lines. A great cage of lines at strange and impossible angels kept the demon at bay. Its horns blazing like two flames escaping its head, a body of ash and blood were its body. The man held the knife to his arm and made a command. His folly in assuming he could command a demon. The story collapsed into a ball of smoke,ash and blood. Only to start over. Still other stories sprang forth, a unicorn danced from shelf to shelf, a great albino Ox was being born, growing and dying to be born again while Indigenous American peoples danced and sang around it. A great snake, a serpent of impossible size came down from the sky, step after step it worked its way down bringing fire to the people and a great ruby in its mouth. A large man was bound to a boulder and a hawk was feasting on his liver. The giant man cried out, only to fall asleep and heal and start again. Every drop of blood he shed while his liver was eaten because he took the knowledge of the Gods, as a tool for human kind to use so he was joyful in his punishment. Over and over these stories danced and played out. Until finally, I came to the end of the start of humans knowledge and parts of their downfall for it. Other tails could be seen in the stacks beyond.Some of the stories were faint, others as vivid as a movie. Some danced others rallied and battled things out. I have seen these stories, collected them for thousands of years and was for the most part unfazed by them.

Though one story was more vivid than others. It was a man, with links and links all around him, not chaining him, not stopping him from moving but connecting him like the fine spindles of a spider's web to everything around him. The boy's face was obscured by mist as if he had no face while countless masks took their place in the void. Watching long enough and he became every person male, female and otherwise,every animal played a part in his masking. I noticed something I hadn't before, a fine and beautiful owl mask took the place of the mist of his face and a golden light could be seen around the edge, like the light of an eclipse of the sun. I knew that mask and I knew that light. Before I could look closely a lion exploded out of a book in a stack next to it. The mighty lion was chasing a white hart through a forest, all of it composed of lines of paper, folded and folded, twisted and turned, bent in on itself as the tale unfolded. Again and again the lion chased the hart and again and again neither won. I walked on, the story of the man without a face had ended and didn't show any sign of starting again.

Finally after hours of walking I came to the base of a fountain with three sisters sitting and spinning the Eithers of water, air, fire, and earth into the large and small stories of all beings' life. Their work spinning unseen from their spools, their shuttle, and loom, out into the world, as those stories came back and folded over one another the slighted shift of light bent around them and the outline of a draping tapestry, faintly into being. Along the way out and back in, tiny mouths could be seen eating stray fibers and strands of each woven line. Seven mouths in total took small and unnoticed bites as the lines and of stories and tails past them by. "Sisters, mothers, daughters. Good time of day to you." I said as I came up to the tree that there was one. "Hacote,Bridget,Isis, what a pleasure it is to see you all." I said again.``It will be a pleasure to see you later, again." I finished our greeting. Saying good morning, afternoon, or evening to the sisters was pointless. We may be immortal, timeless and unchanging as a family but the sisters sat outside of time all together. In many ways it's their being, their weight in the world that made time possible. The woven lines, the extra that they wove was a natural by product of their being or because of their being. It was an unknowable thing which caused the other. "Jonesie, Tocktoo, Etukok. The many that are one, the collector of lives. It's been, is, and will be nice to meet, greet, bid you bye.?" First the youngest spoke, then the mother spoke and finally the crone. Not one after the other but more of echoes of one another an almost silent chord as they spoke each word overlapped and then the sound drifted to the line that they wove and disappeared into the tapestry. As I talked to them I felt the faintest of migraines begin. "Pudding?" I asked, addressing no one but holding out a bowl of chocolate pudding with three silver spoons. With smiles the sisters stopped to eat and all the world outside the fountain in which we four were now standing stopped and stories were silent. Somewhere, deep inside my core a silent but painful hunger could be felt. I looked out from our pond of water, the threads of gold, silver, copper, strings of wool, cotton, silk and countless others floated still in the air and into each book, scroll, tablet, or stone had an umbilical cord that stretched, and twisted and turn from one to another and another and back again. It was even for me a sight to behold. Now for my questions. "Sistes, do you enjoy my gift or would or have pleased you more?" I used essence to break the words into a triplet of themselves, allowing me to speak to all three at once. My migrain deepened.