Moore's Curiosity

Young Moore walked along the dark and steamy corridor, lit only by the glow of phosphorescent algae in a trickling gutter that ran alongside him. He began to realize that what the Bards were touting might actually have some merit. The trees did seem to tell very distinct stories, at least according to what was written in their leaves that were housed here. He had been flipping through the long line of them strung along the right side of the cavern. Renditions, as witnessed through the scifocals, were stories likely to be recounted for ages. Moore nearly lost sight of his rolling sauna stone several times, getting enthralled in tales such as that of the mighty Rowan, who witnessed the calling forth the great spirit of Bran, and another time when he paused to read every last leaf of a tale about two dragons found beneath the unsteady foundation of a hillfort. Once more, he fell behind simply because he had to consult the parchment he kept in his tunic when the scifocals failed to give him a proper translation.

It was a stroke of luck that Brian had entrusted him to stand the watch instead of taking his quiz. Also, it was fortunate he had his secret little document, designed to de-materialize after the quiz was complete. Even knights of the Round Table were once little boys with enough foresight to cheat.

It is said, in certain circles, that if one were to look long and hard enough in the library below Rootworld, they might find questions that haven't even been asked. And not only are there questions from this universe, but from others.

For that reason, when Moore reached the end of the long sagging lines of leaves, the one on the left stretched a little further than the one on the right before disappearing into a tight crack in the cave wall. If he had paused to read the last few entries, he might have been left with some answers to questions he may never have found. But as Fate demanded, at the very moment the totem lines expired, his eyes fell upon the endless piles of old knowledge that stretched further down toward the aquifer. Young Moore followed his rolling stone, and the glow of the algae it disturbed as it went, further into the depths of the library until the steaming round rock slipped soundlessly over the edge of the falls into the deep virgin waters of turquoise. There, scattered around the edges of the pool, were the remnants of wisdom that might have one day fluttered down from the tops of the very first foliated species during man's rise.

Broad ogham letters were written into the veins of gigantic leaves, like billboards of druidic past. In other areas of the cavern were spattered piles of fossilized leaves, hardly distinguishable from the surrounding rock. It was a graveyard of first editions!

It took more than an hour to cover the distance back up the sloping tunnel. Moore had to manage by the dim light of his quicksilver spell, since the algae had gone dark again. About halfway up, he saw an approaching lime green illumination and extinguished his wand in fear of discovery. It turned out there were two more sauna stones making their way along the trough. He watched as they rolled by, putting off steam. Someone was up there, and they wouldn't be happy if they saw him exit. One thing was for certain: if he managed to weasel his way out of this, he was making a beeline for the academy cafeteria straight away because he was starving!

~

The following day, during a routine inspection, an oghamologist and a Bard were down at the aquifer taking inventory and paused when they noticed something amiss. A pile of fossilized mega-flora birch leaves had been moved aside, revealing something rather peculiar. There, written in the stone floor of the aquifer itself, was a fossilized sentence in the most ancient runic alphabet. It roughly translated to:

I hear it's nice outside today