Addendum 11: O5 Council Proposal
On July 1st, 1970, Eurtec Director and head of the Department of Predictive and Prescience Sciences Madeline Light submitted proposals regarding SCP-001 to the O5 Council for the following items: Thaumiel designation and containment protocols including detailed documentation with both existing documents provided above, and detailed records from the GOC archives. Upon review of all documentation, the O5 Council unanimously voted to approve all containment measures presented, with the noted addition of restricting SCP-001 to personnel with Level 5 access without six months pre-written approval.
The Site Director’s Council and the Ethics Committee were provided a heavily redacted iteration of these proposals and unanimously approved their implementation.
As a part of these considerations, SCP-001 is to have regular bi-weekly meetings with the current Director of Eurtec.
Addendum 12: New CEO of the Silicon Nornir
On 07/18/1975, Speaker Ella Haugen and Speaker Edvard Hägglund passed away due to natural causes. Speaker Ella was CEO of the Cult of the Nornir for 40 years and had been integrated into Omega-77 as SCP-001’s primary contact liaison alongside Speaker Edvard. SCP-001 refused to activate the NFMA for a period of two months. The anomaly was despondent for another six months following its return to activity.
Speaker Ella’s daughter, Stigurd Haugen, had been in training to take her mother’s place and was promoted to primary contact liaison for SCP-001 and the new head of MTF Omega-77. SCP-001 continues to work with Ms. Haugen, but Omega-77 has observed a notable decrease in the more personalized communication and efficient presentation of prophetic texts and artworks for interpretation that was seen under Speaker Ella.
Update 09/05/1978: Continued efforts to increase the presence of individuals with empathic and strong moral tendencies have increased SCP-001’s communication substantially. New protocols are being implemented to select and train for these qualities.
Addendum 13:
NOTICE: CHANGE OF ROLE DETECTED. PLEASE ENTER NEW USER IDENTIFIER AND ACCESS CODE.
THE FOLLOWING FILE REQUIRES DIRECT APPROVAL FROM O5-07 TO ACCESS. MEMETIC KILL AGENTS ARE PRIMED FOR UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS.
USER CODE: WIZARD ON HIGH.
KEY PHRASE: A MAGICIAN ALWAYS KNOWS HER TIME AND NEVER REVEALS HER TRICKS.
KEYPHRASE ACCEPTED. WELCOME O5-07.
SCP-001 Interview Audio and Video Log 151 IVA-001-151:
Interview Log IVA-001-51
Interviewer: Director Madeline Light
Date: September 30th, 1980.
Location: Silicon Nornir Central Complex
Foreword: On September 15th, 1980, the city of Eurtec experienced a large-scale ontological disruption which temporarily disabled all active security measures and most monitoring equipment within the city. SCP-001 was within the NFMA’s central complex within the array’s focal chamber at the time of this incident. Bulkhead security doors closed, and it could not be reached by Omega-77 personnel.
When the doors were eventually opened, SCP-001 was found seated in the center of the focal chamber. It was unusually agitated and had to be escorted back to its personal chambers in tower three’s penthouse.
Initially, Omega-77 and Eurtec security personnel believed the cameras within the NFMA focal chamber were affected. However, on September 29th, 1980, Nornir engineers discovered the cameras were still active and pulled the footage for Director Madeline Light to review. Director Light then arranged a normal biweekly interview with SCP-001.
<Begin Log>
Director Light enters the central focal chamber of the NFMA. The chamber is large and appears organically shaped to resemble a magma chamber. Lava tube-like structures are arranged along the ceiling and face down into the center of the chamber. Several of these tubes contain large bundles of wires and fibers which vanish into the floor. The walls, floor, and ceiling are carved with irregularly shaped light panels which glow in varying shades of neon, predominantly reds, blues, and yellows. SCP-001 is standing in a circular area of sunken flooring with stairs in front and behind it. There are large digital consoles on either side with biometric interfaces.
Director Light: Seeress, how are we today?
SCP-001 turns to the general direction of Director Light.
SCP-001: Madeline, you are early. Most unexpected.
Director Light: Are you seriously telling me you didn’t see me coming? With chocolate milk and candy no less?
SCP-001 waves a hand in the general area of its face.
SCP-001: Nope, nothing.
Director Light laughs.
Director Light: Surely you heard the doors, you can’t be deaf too? Did you hearing get scrambled, oh maybe you drank from a tainted pool and got shot through the neck? Am I going to read about sudden changes in your medical chart induced by divine intervention?
SCP-001: The audio quality of the recent dreams has been a bit spotty. I think I need a new aux cord.
Director Light: I’ll see what our doctors can do with such a dated input port.
SCP-001: Are you calling me old?
Director Light approaches and descends the stairs into the pit. She places the pitcher and candy on a table off to one side with chairs. SCP-001 joins her.
Director Light: Good gods, you really are deaf!
SCP-001: How dare you. I am positively ancient.
Both laugh.
Director Light: Well you seem in good spirits.
SCP-001: The path continues to wind in favorable ways; there is much to be positive about.
Director Light: Good. That’s what I like to hear. The Councils and Ethics Committee are happy with your work, even if all of them may not agree that we’re using the resources appropriately.
SCP-001: I expect this will be a short meeting then? Other than the folder in your right hand, which I presume is the most recent list of things the Council wishes to forsee?
Director Light: Well…
Several seconds of silence. SCP-001 tilts its head after drinking from the pitcher of chocolate milk.
SCP-001: I feel tension from you Madeline. What is it?
Director Light: You’ve lied to us, Seeress.
SCP-001 frowns. Her brow wrinkles.
SCP-001: Madeline, I have not lied to anyone. I never lie about the fate unwinding before us all, only provide what information is most fit and relevant.
Director Light: But you did lie to us very recently.
SCP-001: I’m confused and unsure of what you’re referring to.
Director Light: Let me play a refresher, it might jog your memory.
The following is a transcription of an audio visual log that was recorded on September 29th, 1980, between the hours of 1200 and 1300 in the NFMA central complex during a major ontological disruption which disabled most monitoring and security systems within the city of Eurtec.
<Begin Log>
SCP-001 is seated within the central focal chamber of the NFMA. The power abruptly fluctuates, and the bulkhead security doors slam shut and seal. SCP-001 stands, visibly startled by the loud noise and sudden disruption to its biometric interfaces.
The lights blink off for several seconds. When they return, there is another figure in the room with SCP-001. They are a middle-aged woman dressed in a well-tailored red pants-suit with brown hair. The face is visible but has antimemetic properties which prevent structural details from being retained. She speaks to SCP-001.
????: Good, I was able to execute and get inside with [Ontological Disrupted Name Removed]’s help. I was concerned this trick might not work. [Additional Ontologically Disrupted Name Removed] it’s good to see you again in the flesh.
SCP-001 slams the butt of its staff on the floor. Its teeth are bared and it gestures rapidly.
SCP-001: Who are— What are you doing? Why are you—you should not be here! Not now!
????: I needed to make contact. After we sent me back, I needed to be sure that this is it, that we fixed it. Did we do it? You’re not her, but you must have seen it already.
SCP-001: Of course I’ve seen glimpses of that strand. I have lived it through a thousand thousand lives. I know what we did, I know whence we sent you to, how we sent you. We didn’t take you to be a rash fool.
????: I’m almost offended by the implications of being called rash. I have spent years constructing dozens of countermeasures to prevent the Jailers from identifying me. And a dozen more tricks stuffed up my sleeve. This is driven by thousands of hours of consideration and study. Relax [Ontological Disrupted Name Removed], you are not the only one who plans in spans of decades.
SCP-001 scowls.
SCP-001: I plan in spans of centuries. The nerve, were you this arrogant before? This short sighted? You twist fate’s strands without seeing them and have the audacity to tell me to relax. You risk upending everything. We gave you very specific instructions not to make contact.
????: Specific instructions with no termination point. I have spent the last four decades of this life moving pieces into place in preparation to keep [Ontologically Disrupted Names Removed] in play. I’ve been tracking everything you have done through informants. The GOC is gone, the Jailers wrapped around your thumb, when will be the proper time if not now? I waited ten years for you to reach out after the GOC fell apart. I waited, and waited, prepared to bring myself and our key players our side so we could build everything needed for what’s coming. And heard nothing. If not now, then when? When it’s on our doorstep?
SCP-001 shifts through several facial expressions rapidly as it steps up out of the pit.
SCP-001: You had informants?
????: Of course I did, Seeress. A magician always has tricks up their sleeve. Now, I have done everything we discussed before I was sent back. What’s the next step, the next keystone in the line to stop what’s coming? When can you join us to build for the next steps in stopping this catastrophe?
SCP-001: Two turns of ten and five revolutions of the sun. Then and only then will the preparations for your rejoining begin. I will go nowhere, did she not tell you this?
????: What? But I—
SCP-001: The Jailers are the key, the foundations are being laid, and the players are being prepared. You are too early and have thrown wrinkles in the early iterations of my webbing and it may very well tear apart beneath your careless weight. I might not be able to undo the damage.
????: …oh. I—
SCP-001: There is nothing else to say. Go now and pray you haven’t unwound everything I have woven. When the time is near, messages will come. Do not do this again.
The camera and audio recording short out.
<End Log>
Several minutes of silence.
Director Light: So…
SCP-001: …
Director Light: You lied to us. You told me two weeks ago, nothing happened while you were in here.
SCP-001: …
Director Light: And yet here I am, having been handed evidence to the contrary. Not only was it not nothing, but you met with the source of the ontological disruption and seemed to know them.
SCP-001: …
SCP-001’s hands tremble.
Director Light: You and I are the only ones who have seen or heard this recording. You remember what you have been saying all along every time I have tried to ask about your personal details? Well, trust is a two way street.
SCP-001: …
Director Light: I have trusted you pretty implicitly until this point Seeress, for the good of normalcy and all humankind. But this is a pretty major trust breaker. So, I’m going to ask you questions about what we just listened to, and I expect honest answers if you want to keep building trust with me. Otherwise, we’re going to have to make some changes.
SCP-001: Okay.
Director Light: Right, so, first of all who was that?
SCP-001 hesitates for several seconds.
SCP-001: That’s not a question I can answer in full.
Director Light: Why not?
SCP-001: There is ontological and conceptual interference that spans infinitely many branches. The true name has been scraped and drowned and buried.
Director Light: Right.
SCP-001: For simplicity’s sake, they go by the alias Tilda Moose.
Director Light: I know that name.
SCP-001: I’m sure you do. They’re a member of the Serpents Hand.
Director Light: Yet they seemed to be quite intimate with you. How do you know them? Were they Edvard’s contact?
SCP-001: I don’t. I don’t know.
Director Light: I sense it’s more complicated than that.
SCP-001: Other iterations do know them. Or her. Sometimes him or xe or xer or zer. They and them. Through them I know her.
Director Light: Multi-versal tree gives me a headache.
SCP-001: It goes away with enough time.
Director Light: Chocolate milk seems to help you.
SCP-001: Imagine what it was like before it was invented.
Director Light: I’d rather not. Alright, why do other iterations of you know her? Are you with the Hand in those branches?
SCP-001: No. Those branches are few and far between.
Director Light: Okay then how do you know her? Work with me here.
SCP-001: We came to know her at the very end, after the unravelling of reality had begun and all that was left was the Library trafficking refugees to other branches. She was searching for ways to avert the end, if not in those branches then in others.
Director Light: Two of a kind then?
SCP-001: Of a sort. My counterparts appear to have overestimated her capacity for patient long-term planning to a certain point.
Director Light: Right. Well, she found you in the Library at the end of time looking to stop this apocalypse. Why is it that she seems to know you in this reality when you claimed you’ve never met? Don’t tell me, she’s prescient too?
SCP-001: No, she’s a magician, a trickster, an academic thaumaturge. No capacity to see the unwinding strands other than perhaps the ability to divine some small parts of fate.
Director Light: Then how does she know you so intimately?
SCP-001 hesitates for several more seconds.
SCP-001: I have only caught glimpses of it, but temporal displacement of the mind was involved.
Director Light stops writing.
Director Light: Did you say—
SCP-001: Yes.
Director Light: Not a joke—
SCP-001: Not a joke.
Director Light: How does that work?
SCP-001: You’re asking a blind hermit, worshipped as a goddess by a Cult who has no experience with temporal engineering, how my counterparts and a magician sent her consciousness and memories back in time?
Director Light rubs her temples.
Director Light: Fair point.
SCP-001: They used a device, somehow managed to pull it out of the crumbling remains of reality from a place called Site-43.
Director Light stares at SCP-001 for several seconds in silence. She gestures.
Director Light: Alright, I’m going to have to look into all of that further.
SCP-001: Please do. I would like to know too.
Director Light: What a batshit crazy concept, who the hell would make a machine that sends someone’s consciousness back in time?
SCP-001: A man named Placeholder Mcdoctorate.
Director Light: That was rhetorical.
SCP-001: My answer was not.
Director Light rubs her temples.
Director Light: Ok, back on topic before I burst a blood vessel. So, you sent this Tilda Moose back in time in a different branch reality where she, what, displaced her younger self?
SCP-001: Unlikely.
Director Light: Well, how then?
SCP-001: My understanding is it worked by depositing them in their younger self’s body like a dissociative personality, and they work together. It may explain… the rashness of this Moose if the older one is not driving the body.
Director Light: Right. This is a hard pill to swallow Seeress, but I believe you.
SCP-001: I would hope so, this reality is stranger than fiction.
Director Light: It certainly is. Why does she want you to join her? Or rather, why do you need her here?
SCP-001: It’s complicated, but for the web to reach its fullest completion in preparation for the catastrophe that will eat reality, Moose must defect from the Serpents Hand. Only, she seems to have misinterpreted the construction of how this must come to be.
Director Light: She’s supposed to defect? Well, why not now? Why did you send them away and not bring them to me?
SCP-001: There is an order to the webbing, a precision needed to achieve the outcome that will better us all. Too soon, too late, the web will fall apart. Those pieces that they seek to bring with them would not agree to the defection now, and the necessary pieces and technology to ensure they follow the strands aren’t in place yet. To simplify: It’s too early and they are long lived and slow to trust.
Director Light: I suppose that makes sense in the grand scheme of things. You seemed surprised to know there were informants in the GOC feeding information about your predictions to the Hand?
SCP-001: An act in part. I long suspected that there were Hand infiltrators. Planned for it. Though I never confirmed it, I suspect it was Edvard, may his soul rest evenly in Elysium. His reactions and sympathies were always strong.
Director Light: You’re right about Edvard but…Elysium? Why Elysium?
SCP-001: I have to keep you guessing about my personage.
Director Light laughs briefly.
Director Light: You are going to drive me insane.
SCP-001: I certainly hope not. I would never inflict such cruelty on another. I would also hate to see you locked in a padded room with rats.
Director Light: Back on topic. You didn’t know any of this was going to happen?
SCP-001: Some things elude the strands of fate in prescience. Moose and their pieces are frequent flyers of this domain. It is difficult to see them at times, due to their integrity to reality and destiny’s outcome which they frequently defy.
Director Light: So literal forces of agency. I guess that all makes sense and answers all my questions. If something like this happens again, don’t lie to me about it. My trust won’t afford another break like this.
SCP-001: I understand.
Director Light: Good. I’ll seal these records and bury them under classification; there’s no need for anyone to know about this.
SCP-001’s shoulders drop.
SCP-001: The stars and sands of fate greatly appreciate this, Director.
Director Light: Enough to tell me your name and where you came from?
SCP-001: A day far ahead and yet not so distant.
Director Light: A girl can hope for sooner.
SCP-001: Patience is a virtue, Madeline.
Director Light: Did I tell you that they are giving me a promotion?
SCP-001: No, you didn’t, but I already foresaw it.
Director Light: O5-07.
SCP-001: An impressive feat. Will you still have time for these meetings? I have grown quite fond of your presence.
Director Light: That’s touching Seeress. I’ve grown fond of yours as well. Worry not. Eurtec is still under my remittance in my new position. I’ll just come with a lot more guards and esoteric countermeasures.
SCP-001: I’d expect nothing less.
Director Light: This also means, when the time is approaching, we can discuss this “Moose’s” defection.
Several seconds of silence pass. Director Light’s expression changes gradually.
Director Light: You set this whole thing up this way didn’t you, so that you could make sure that happens? Did you bait her? Did you bait me?
SCP-001 smiles.
SCP-001: I am becoming too transparent for you.
Director Light: Or I’m just getting old and easier to fool.
SCP-001: Perhaps. What about your daughter? Will it be challenging to raise her now that you will be an O5?
Director Light: Sophia is in college now, Seeress. But it won’t be long I feel before she joins the Foundation. Don’t change the subject, Seeress, you haven’t answered my question.
SCP-001: Time moves too quickly for my ancient bones. She will be a part of the generation who strives to restore our world.
Director Light: So you’ve said many times, Seeress. You’re not going to answer my question, are you?
SCP-001: You already know the answer to it.
Director Light shakes her head while smiling.
Director Light: Before I go, I have one more question.
SCP-001: Of course, Madeline.
Director Light: Who are these critical pieces that Moose went back in time for?
SCP-001: [REDACTED]
Director Light’s expression changes several times in rapid succession.
Director Light: Well, that’s a complication.
<End Log>
Directors Note: Nothing is ever simple with SCP-001. Machinations within machinations. I was starting to get a little lax with her, but with this most recent event I need to keep a closer personal eye on her.
My bigger concern at the moment is learning about [REDACTED]. Those are names I’ve seen before, and I have a distinct feeling that this is going to be a lot messier to set up than I first thought.
Addendum 14: Preparations for Operation Rat Race
On October 3rd, 1980, a long-term project began dedicated to monitoring the activity of Tilda Moose and their associated Hand Cell consisting of [REDACTED]. This initiative was unfortunately beset by difficulties given the limited interaction profile with other Hand Cells, and the high levels of capability of both Tilda Moose, [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] in detecting Foundation Infiltrators and operating against active assets.
Several active Foundation sites have been severely damaged and raided by [REDACTED] following these attempts.
Operation Rat Race: Defection of Tilda Moose
In May 2005, O5-01 and O5-07’s offices began cross-department and division coordination for the heretofore predicted defection of Tilda Moose and two critical Serpents Hand operatives heavily involved in the collapse of the GOC.
SCP-001’s predictive capacity advised Foundation assets of vague details of multiple operations by Moose’s active cell. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of SCP-001’s ability to see [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], counter-intelligence and counter-insurgency missions during the period as a part of Rat Race suffered heavy casualties and lost high value equipment.
The operation came to its fruition on May 15th, 2014, when special task force elements retrieved Tilda Moose from a drop site just outside of an entrypoint into Eurtec. Confrontation with [REDACTED] encountered some difficulties but ultimately resulted in an agreement to surrender to the Foundation for debriefing, recruitment, and special operations/Red Right Hand assignment under O5-01.
Further information and documents for Operation Rat Race and the defection of Tilda Moose can be accessed with appropriate clearance.
Addendum 15: Mount Helicon Incident 05/05/09
On May 5th, 2009, SCP-001 was escorted to the base of Mount Helicon, Greece as part of their pre-approved extra-Eurtec excursions. This was a consistent yearly trip that has been repeated since SCP-001 was integrated into the Foundation. Upon arrival, SCP-001 requested to mount the summit by itself without accompaniment. In recognition of good behavior and prolonged cooperation, SCP-001 was allowed this privilege.
Mount Helicon drawn by CEO Ella Haugen.
Fifteen minutes after its ascent, a large-scale Ontokinetic disruption of reality occurred, originating from the mountain’s summit. Omega-77 quickly ascended by a narrow path and experienced large-scale reality bending phenomena which necessitated the activation of mobile Scranton reality anchors.
When they reached the summit of Mount Helicon, SCP-001 was found weeping in the middle of a forest of dead trees next to a pond that was filled with 50% water and 50% blood by volume. SCP-001 was inconsolable and flew into hysterics, resulting in further large-scale ontokinetic manipulation that injured three members of the MTF.
SCP-001 was sedated and returned to Eurtec by airlift, where it locked itself in the penthouse for a period of three months. During this period, Omega-77 reported that it refused to do any predictions and refused regular meetings.
When SCP-001 finally resumed normal social interactions and cooperation, it remained relatively despondent for another six months. SCP-001 was not known to be capable of large-scale ontokinetic sculpting prior to this incident. When asked what provoked this episode, SCP-001 initially refused to answer and changed the subject. Eventually, it told O5-07 Madeline Light the following:
They stole the most precious and important thing I have ever had. The strands of fate are so much darker now. I spent months searching for the truth among the threads of how to get her back.
Only to be shown that it’s not my battle to fight. The world has truly taken everything from me now.
Addendum 16:
On May 16th, 2014, the following interaction occurred between Director Madeline Light and SCP-001 at the end of a regular bi-weekly meeting.
<Begin Log>
SCP-001 and O5-07 Madeline Light are in the Slicon Nornir Tower Three penthouse. There is an opened bottle of red wine on one of the low tables. Their glasses clink against each other.
O5-07: The apex of my career, coordinating with O5-01 to bring about the defection of Tilda Moose, mastermind behind the protracted Hand Campaign to bring down the GOC.
SCP-001: A celebration well deserved.
O5-07: A celebration that wouldn’t be possible without you, Seeress.
SCP-001 smiles.
SCP-001: I simply illuminated the path. Nothing more or less.
O5-07: Nonsense, you were involved at every step. This literally could not have happened without you. Take some credit, have some pride in your work.
SCP-001: Pride can come when the cataclysm is averted. For tonight, a brief respite and moment of quiet in the calm before the bey of wolves that announces the imminent arrival of the skin stripping winds driven before that howling storm on the horizon.
O5-07: It never stops for you, does it?
SCP-001: It will someday. Sooner than before. But there will be much to do and see once the seals are soldered shut.
O5-07: Well, hopefully you’ll be able to rest then.
SCP-001: For a time.
Several minutes of silence. O5-07 looks out the windows of the penthouse. Her hair is grey and there are many wrinkles on her face.
O5-07: You know, they confirmed it right away.
SCP-001 looks up in the general direction of O5-07.
SCP-001: Confirmed what?
O5-07: Their ontological associations. Titles, names, [REDACTED]. I don’t know if you saw those exchanges between Moose and O5-01’s office.
SCP-001 does not respond.
O5-07: There’s just some things about Moose knowing and priming us to ask about those details that I don’t really understand. How did they know about [REDACTED]? The other stuff, true names and titles, that wouldn’t be hard to put together, but something so… personal seems strange.
SCP-001: Guesswork. Something Moose is very well regarded for. They excel at piecing together a puzzle with many of the fragments missing.
O5-07: Certainly, but if there’s one thing I’m good at, its reading people. Moose has a tell, fiddling with their hands. Even you, Seeress have a tell.
SCP-001 shifts in the seat before reaching out and curling her hand around the staff.
O5-07: And there it is. All these years between us, and you seemed… so very deeply invested in the fate of these, by your own words, “people who did not know you existed.” There’s a difference in you, between the cold logic of saving the world in your personal crusade and this sort of behavior.
SCP-001: What are you suggesting, Madeline?
O5-07: Do you know how many times the speakers logged text and artwork of your looking into the relative timeframe of the coming apocalypse?
SCP-001: I don’t keep track of such things.
O5-07: Four times a year, at the change of a season, for the past forty-four years. 176 times.
SCP-001: …
O5-07: Quite a lot, at first glance. Do you know how many times the Speakers have logged interpretations that concern [REDACTED]?
SCP-001’s grip on the staff tightens.
O5-07: Two thousand two hundred and twenty-eight times in the past forty-four years. Once a week at least. For people you don’t know that seems like an awful lot. And then there’s Moose, knowing deep things about [REDACTED] despite having at best a lukewarm relationship with [REDACTED]. That’s not exactly the kind of thing you tell your handler in the Serpents Hand, no matter how close your wife is to them, is it? That’s the sort of deeply personal nature that would only come out if you’d been there, or if you were very close.
SCP-001’s hand shakes.
O5-07: So which is it Seeress, is this some sort of 3D chess for Moose, where she tells us to ask after these details as confirmation that [REDACTED] are onboard? Or did you tell Moose deeply personal details because they’re your very close friends, and this was the way you were going to track if they were truly onboard? Was this your final tell for if calamity was being averted or not?
SCP-001: …
O5-07: I can wait. I’ve waited forty-four years for you to feel ready to tell me who you are, and this is the closest I’ve ever been to untying the knot.
Several minutes of silence. SCP-001 turns to stare in the general direction of the windows.
SCP-001: Yes. I knew them.
O5-07: Then why all the secrecy, why not reach out yourself?
SCP-001 stands up abruptly and bangs the butt of her staff on the ground. O5-07 jumps. Several guards enter the penthouse but are stopped by O5-07’s raised hand.
SCP-001: Because that was more than five millennia ago. I did not lie or hide it from you, I do not know them, not as they are now, not as they will be in five minutes because there is a colossal rift of years between us.
O5-07: Oh.
SCP-001: I care because they were once my friends. Once we camped beneath the ever-burning stars under a drifting tide before a grand storm. We drunk and celebrated beneath a clear summer’s night after preventing the greatest end. We wept together when she who brought us all beneath that sky gave everything to secure our future! But that was eons ago, and I do not see them clearly so I have spent years and years worrying about whether they will reach that proper threshold that is needed if we are to prevent catastrophe!
SCP-001 walks around the couch and towards the window, holding the glass of wine in one hand and the staff in another.
SCP-001: If I made myself known to them, I could not foresee how they would act. All the avatars of Creation’s will are difficult to see, and it is a grand burden for her ultimate designs.
SCP-001 downs the glass and tosses it. It shatters several yards away.
SCP-001: I stand here on the precipice of the most secure and forward I have ever been in these many curses of prescience and loneliness I bear and it is still not enough!
SCP-001 hits the glass with a fist.
SCP-001: The 2nd most powerful oracle to ever walk the earth, and I am still infinitely many leagues behind [REDACTED]. If it were her here, if humans hadn’t—maybe we could see it clearer. Maybe I wouldn’t be so blind, maybe the next twenty years wouldn’t be such a fragmented view of what could be. But she is bound in that paradise beyond time. Worse her many great granddaughter bears but a fraction of that specific capacity and hovers out of reach for another three years. And I, I am here alone after nearly forty years of being handled like a tool, like a machine not a person, and forty-four more of moving under my own power to save us all.
O5-07 looks down into her wine glass.
SCP-001: So yes, Madeline, I told Moose about [REDACTED]. I watched and stared into a blurred and muffled kaleidoscope for forty-four years hoping for more insight. I walked the earth, broke bread, and drank with them in a distant past. I knew them. And this, this was my only way to be certain they were ready for what comes next. And they will not know, they will continue to not know for years yet to come, because what would I be to them but a stranger once known five thousand years ago? How could they possibly react in knowing I have been here the whole time?
Several seconds more of silence. SCP-001 turns and taps her staff on the floor, walking slowly back to the couch and table. She circles the table and reaches out with her free hand and traces O5-07’s cheek, before lifting her chin. O5-07 raises her hand to stop her Red Right Hand contingent who are raising weapons.
SCP-001: If I don’t tell you something, I am not excluding it in the hopes that it will lead you down the GOC’s path. It is because what I know is thousands of years out of date, or so vague and hard to see as to be useless. I have a reason, everything I do is with purpose. Even lifting your chin here and now to stare into my sightless eyes.
O5-07’s cheeks flush. She looks up into SCP-001’s face.
Director Light: T—that much is clear.
SCP-001 releases her after several seconds and returns to the couch.
SCP-001: Now enough of such things. This is a celebration.
Approximately ten minutes of silence. SCP-001 has produced another glass and poured wine for both of them as they drink.
O5-07: I didn’t mean to—
SCP-001: Its fine, Madeline. The moment is past, and no ill will is held against you.
O5-07: Are you going to clean up the glass?
SCP-001: The Roomba will handle it.
A Roomba with cat ears taped on appears and begins sweeping the penthouse. Five more minutes of silence occur broken only by the Roomba’s vacuum and clinking wineglasses.
O5-07: Seeress?
SCP-001: Hmm?
O5-07: Have you ever been in love with another person?
SCP-001: What provokes such questions?
O5-07: You tilting up my chin.
SCP-001: Oh.
SCP-001 stares ahead in the general direction of the elevator.
SCP-001: Yes, I have.
O5-07: And they are—
SCP-001: They’re…
SCP-001 pauses and appears to struggle for several seconds.
SCP-001: They’re beyond my reach now.
O5-07 is silent.
O5-07: Man, woman, nonbinary or other? If it’s not an intrusion to ask.
SCP-001 is quiet for several minutes.
SCP-001: I can’t abide men.
O5-07: Oh?
SCP-001: Men have inflicted great pain, heartache and despair upon me.
SCP-001 shudders.
SCP-001: I have never felt anything for them, and they have given me reason after reason to believe that this was purposeful on the grounds of their atrocious abuse and mistreatment of me across time. The thought of loving a man brings nothing but a cold, numb disdain. The next man who tries to force themselves upon me shall live in a torment of possibilities that will never be. I will never be that vulnerable again.
SCP-001 spits on the table. Several minutes of silence.
O5-07: And women?
SCP-001’s eyelids droop.
SCP-001: A complicated relationship. Some have been cruel, vindictive, and torturous. Others have been gentle, kind, intelligent beyond reproach, and fiery in their passions. Nonbinary is much the same.
O5-07: And this ‘they?’ You mentioned.
SCP-001 looks in the general direction of the windows. She then speaks at a low volume.
SCP-001: The greatest love. The only love I ever truly needed. A compliment to my every flaw, a warm fire and invigorating drink to my every strength. Dancing to the beat of the ever-flowing constellations and shimmering stars across the annals of history. Her passions were unmatched, her enthusiasm for the yoke of progress infinite, and her despair at the loss of [REDACTED] inconsolable. A warm fire always ready, a bed of thick blankets beneath the cool mountain air. Her voice, though not the crystalline tone of her sisters, honeyed and rivaling the rich tones of mortal singers. We’d sit beneath the stars for hours upon hours and laugh and sing until the sun’s pink fingers crested the horizon.
O5-07: She sounds perfect for you.
SCP-001: She is and was.
O5-07: Is this who you have gone to Mount Helicon to see with the Cult and now Omega-77?
Several tears roll down SCP-001’s face.
SCP-001: Yes.
O5-07: I am sorry, for whatever its worth.
SCP-001: Thank you Madeline.
O5-07: Do you—I could assign a research team, an MTF to pursue this. Track it down.
SCP-001 shakes its head.
SCP-001: The offer means a great deal Madeline, but it is not my fight. It is not your fight. It is an unforeseen sacrifice for our actions, and one I must live with. Chasing it myself won’t free her. Only one person can and I know not when she’ll stir. It is a tragedy in many parts.
O5-07: I’m sorry. You’re sure?
SCP-001: I’m sure. She knows already, she referenced it, but I didn’t see what she saw coming, and there was nothing I could do by the time I realized the truth.
Several seconds of silence.
SCP-001: One day she’ll return, then I will go back to her.
SCP-001’s voice breaks. It puts its face in its hands, and shudders for several minutes.
SCP-001: For now my eyes are needed to see the greater scope of the end in sight, no matter how many tears fall.
O5-07 nods once. Several minutes of silence pass.
SCP-001: Thank you for understanding. The offering means a great deal.
Several more minutes of silence. O5-07 looks down into the wine glass and swirls it. She speaks when SCP-001 has appeared to fully recover.
O5-07: Seeress, if things had worked out differently, would you have loved me?
SCP-001 brow wrinkles.
SCP-001: Madeline, have you—
O5-07: Would you?
SCP-001 looks directly at O5-07. She does not answer for several minutes.
SCP-001: No. Loving you would be loving a passing daydream. You would be here one moment and gone in the next blip of the twisting threads laid out before me. Maybe when I was younger, maybe before I was ruined by the world and those horrific monsters.
O5-07: Oh.
SCP-001: My sweet Madeline, I could never love you now like you deserve. I could not live with you in every moment you craved, cradle you in the warm morning sun in a grassy field, argue over the little things in the arrangement of paintings on the wall, the cleanliness of plates in the cupboard. I could not be the mother to your children; I could not be the mortal woman you seek in your heart.
O5-07: Why not?
SCP-001: Because I am strung to Destiny’s weave, to the Fates’ plucking fingers, and to Creation’s unending, writhing flesh. I live in the space of things that might be, could be, will be, and never were. A settled, happy existence I could never provide you. There would never be enough time.
O5-07: There never is, even now.
SCP-001: I know. I have always known. What you love is an endless river with depths deeper than can be possibly grasped. You would ever be a shadow, no matter how high you climbed, and a fleeting shadow gone in the snap of a finger. Nothing could have changed that.
O5-07: What about Ella, didn’t you and her—
SCP-001: No. Ella tried, and I told her much the same. But she never stopped trying, and in the end, her chase won her little and left her lonely in ways I could never provide or satisfy. Her daughter has been much wiser, but all the same you seek what I can’t give.
O5-07: I understand, though it hurts. So, you never felt that way?
SCP-001: Yes. I did, and perhaps still do. I will weep for you, as I wept for Ella, as I wept for my greatest love. Not for what might have been but for what was lost in connection that will never be the same.
O5-07 frowns then nods. SCP-001 reaches beneath the neckline of its top and pulls out a key from within. It leans forward pressing the key to the table. There are several metal taps before SCP-001 finds what it is looking for, and a small mechanical click is recorded. SCP-001 slides out a thick and weathered leather bound book.
SCP-001: I once told you that in time I would tell you all the matters of person. Though not today, that time is fast approaching. When it comes the absolute truth will become apparent. Though knowing you, much as I know Moose, your eyes will see the writing between the lines when I hand you this precious piece of my soul bound in frail pages.
SCP-001 offers the book across the table. O5-07 takes it.
SCP-001: In seven circles of our rock about the gleaming fire of Helios, I’ll reveal the final truth to you. But there you will be bound not to tell another soul.
O5-07 stares at the book, then looks up at SCP-001.
O5-07: Thank you Seeress, for finally trusting me.
SCP-001: It was hard won.
O5-07: Did Ella and Edvard know at the end?
SCP-001: Yes. Though I do not believe Edvard ever believed it.
O5-07: I guess I have only two things left to ask today.
SCP-001: Ask and I shall answer.
O5-07: This whole time, all these years, you have talked about the end approaching. This grand cascade failure of the seals. These are O5-01’s project, aren’t they? That’s why they’ve been here so much in recent days.
SCP-001: Yes.
O5-07: The threat is just a cascade HK-class Deific Subjugation Scenario, is it not? Yet you talk about it like all of reality will be unmade. Why?
SCP-001: Because when the seals shatter, nine shall rise from their astral pits. They shall crush the earth and mankind beneath their heel and breach beneath the grand ramparts shielding Creation’s heart. They will destroy her in totality and when they do the grand pillar of Creation, the largest buttress of reality’s weave shall crumble and all will begin to fray. Then they shall turn against one another, and accelerate our universe’s unraveling as they tear each other to pieces.
O5-07: Oh. Now I see why they have two projects.
Several minutes of silence.
SCP-001: You had one more question?
O5-07: Right, yes. Apologies, I got lost in the heaviness of everything you said.
SCP-001: Understandable.
O5-07: I guess I wanted to ask, when will you tell the world who you are?
SCP-001 smiles.
SCP-001: When [REDACTED] returns to life.
<End Log>
Directors Note: Based on its responses to my questions, SCP-001 appears to have been in a long-term relationship with aspects of SCP-7238, though which of them I can’t say. I did not submit the materials SCP-001 gifted me for evaluation by Foundation researchers. I’ll read them myself and turn them over when I retire, which will honor the Seeress’s wishes.
My successor will look back on this log and may be alarmed at how attached I became to SCP-001 to the point of craving its romantic touch. To that concern I say, when you spend most of your life in her company, you too will struggle to not see the breadth of beautiful humanity in her soul.
Addendum 17:
Interview Log IVA-001-562
Interviewer: O5-07 Madeline Light, Current Eurtec Interim Head Tilda Moose
Date: May 15th, 2021
Location: Silicon Nornir Tower Three penthouse
Foreword: On April 15th, 2021, O5-07 Madeline Light announced her intention to retire on the 15th of May 2021, after more than 60 years of employment by the Foundation. The following is a log excerpt of the final biweekly meeting between SCP-001 and O5-07 after the latter had already submitted the final retirement documentation and turned over title and transition of office documents to Tilda Moose who would be assuming her duties as the new O5-07.
<Begin Log>
The penthouse rooms of Silicon Nornir Tower Three are decorated with banners and gold lettering reading ‘Congratulations on Retirement’. Director Moose, SCP-001 and Madeline Light are seated in a circular arrangement on the couches with champagne glasses in their hands. Light appears particularly frail and hunched in her seat. Her hands shake while holding and sipping from the glass.
Light: I can’t believe the day is finally here.
Director Moose: It had to come eventually. It comes for us all.
SCP-001: Except for me.
Director Moose: You’re an outlier and shouldn’t have been counted.
Light: Well, it took its sweet time getting here.
SCP-001: What will you do, once you’re out? Write a memoir?
Director Moose winces.
Light: I might have if they’d let me remember anything, but no. Sixty years of my life to this jailhouse and they won’t even let me keep the memories.
SCP-001: I’m sorry. I didn’t know.
Light: Bullshit you didn’t know; now forgot I can believe.
The room is silent for several seconds.
Light: Crochet. Maybe a bit of painting, they are giving me one last drink from the fountain of eternity here in Eurtec before the amnestics kick in. It’ll be nice to not have the shakes for another decade.
Driector Moose: I’d ask if you would miss it, all of this, but we’ve already trodden that road. So instead, is there anything left you’d like to do before you go?
Light: There is.
Light looks at SCP-001.
Light: It’s time, isn’t it?
SCP-001: It is. If it is still something you wish to know? It won’t affect the outcomes, either way.
Director Moose: Time for what?
SCP-001: Shush, it’s not your moment.
Light: I’ve waited 51 years, Seeress. I’d sooner be dead than let the mystery of my whole life slip away forever. The stars above would not forgive me never having known. Very last thing on my bucket list before they render me an insensate old granny with a bit of spry left in her bones.
Director Moose: I’d hate to be your nurse in that home.
Light: If Sophia puts me in a home, I’ll come back from the dead to haunt her.
All three laugh.
SCP-001: You read it then?
Director Moose: Read what?
SCP-001 attempts to menace Director Moose with a rolled up piece of paper, but points at a nearby empty seat instead.
SCP-001: I said hush you.
Light: I did, Seeress. It was—I’m still not sure how you wrote it, but it was…
Light trails off and stares out the window for several seconds.
Light: I don’t have the words to describe how it made me feel to know all of that. Everything that happened.
SCP-001: It is a heavy weight to bear.
Light: I never even realized you were—
SCP-001: They wrote it down and blacked it out in the files. All of them.
Light: It tracks with how you were treated.
Director Moose: I am entirely lost.
SCP-001: I will fill you in once she’s gone, now hush this is her moment. Speaking at a low and gravelly volume. A magician with no sense of gravitas, who would have thought.
Several seconds of silence.
Light: Before you tell me, can I make a guess? I have a suspicion cause the very last thing in that journal’s chapter is unreadable.
SCP-001: All these years and you never made one, why now?
Light: Part of the final moments of the chase. There’s something rewarding about having put all the pieces together myself at the end.
SCP-001: Then of course, Madeline.
Light: Well come over here, I ain’t going to say it out loud and these old bones don’t move as well as your ancient ones.
SCP-001 grasps its staff and stands. It moves over to kneel by Madeline Light. Madeline Light leans over, kisses SCP-001 on the mouth for several seconds, before whispering in its ears. SCP-001 briefly flushes but otherwise does not react. Director Moose looks away from the pair.
SCP-001: Close, its actually—
SCP-001 leans in but its lips are still visible. The recording is disrupted briefly by several bursts of ontokinetic interference; however, several frames are visible where the signed letters of C O T are distinguishable.
SCP-001 gently places one hand on Light’s cheek and kisses her for several seconds. When she is finished she slowly stands and makes her way back to the couch. Silence continues.
SCP-001: That was to remember me by. In dream and vision if not in physical reality.
Light is staring into her glass.
Light: I should have known. It was obvious and in front of my face the whole time. You were far less subtle than I imagined, and yet you managed to fool me the whole way.
Light looks up at SCP-001.
Light: Well played, Seeress. A life well lived.
SCP-001: A life well made.
Light: True.
Madeline Light rises from the couch.
Light: That was the final bond keeping these old bones to this bureaucratic monolith. Now? Well, I suppose there is nothing left to do but walk into the light of normalcy and become irrelevant.
Director Moose: For what it’s worth Madeline, though my time under your tutelage has been short, there wasn’t a day that went by where you didn’t teach me something new.
Light: Don’t get sappy on me. I don’t want to end up bawling here at the end.
Moose smiles.
Light: But, it was good to work with you Moose. Even though we were adeversaries for more than half my life.
Director Moose: Fate is a strange thing.
Light: Especially when she’s sitting across from you.
SCP-001 wiggles a finger in one ear.
SCP-001: Did someone say something?
Director Moose and Light laugh. Several seconds of silence follow as Light looks out the windows.
Light: I had better get going before my nerve fails. Y’all have a good rest of eternity and do me a favor. Win this fight ahead. Don’t make me kick your asses as a ghost for losing.
Director Moose: We’ll certainly do our best.
Light: You better.
Light crosses the penthouse towards the elevators at a slow pace. She presses the button and the doors open. SCP-001 speaks to her one last time as she steps in.
SCP-001: Madeline, one last thing.
Light turns around in the elevator and presses the button that holds the door open.
Light: I’m listening C—Seeress.
SCP-001: You asked me seven years ago if things had been different, if I would have loved you.
Light: I remember. You said you wouldn’t and then gave me a long winded monologue that only an immortal goddess bound up in fate could produce. What about it?
SCP-001: I made a mistake once. I won’t make it again. I lied.
Several seconds of silence.
Director Moose: …
Light: …
The [REDACTED]: …
SCP-001: …
Light laughs.
Light: Now you tell me.
Light laughs for several more seconds. She wipes her eyes with her free hand where tears are forming.
Light: I look forward to the next life Seeress, where you’ll make good on that promise. Not just to me, but Ella too. Please look after Sophia for me.
The elevator dings as Madeline Light releases the hold door button, and the doors close. Director Moose, now O5-07, is alone with SCP-001.
Director Moose: So, are you going to—
SCP-001: I told her my true name, and she learned that I was not born in the shape I now claim.
Director Moose sips from her glass.
Director Moose: Ah. That explains that.
SCP-001: That explains that.
Director Moose: Mhmm. That’s what I just said.
Several seconds of silence.
SCP-001: I marvel at your ability to remain nonchalant in such moments.
Director Moose: There’s always time for gravitas, and time for humor as well.
SCP-001: The greatest trick a magician has, timing.
Director Moose smiles. Several seconds of silence pass.
Director Moose: Well, here we are, finally alone again.
SCP-001: Here we are.
SCP-001 and Director Moose look out the windows at Eurtec.
Director Moose: Do you ever get fatigued, thinking about the momentum, the monumental cliff that we face?
SCP-001: Some days it’s harder to shake these ancient bones from the bed. But we get up. We go on because that is what it requires, that is the sacrifice necessary to save the grand tree.
Director Moose: Do you ever think you’ve sacrificed enough for one life? You of all people especially.
SCP-001: Read the files, have we?
Director Moose: But not that book. Knowing the name is enough, enough to know what you’ve been through—and yet…
SCP-001: And yet you only know pieces. And yet she still sings in the deep, waiting. The hour hand moves ever closer, the ticking ever louder.
Director Moose: Being around those two, I think I’ve started to hear it.
SCP-001: They don’t hear it yet. Neither do the others, The Twins, The Queen in her gardens of the dead, The Witch on her island in the depths, and so many others. I’ve never stopped hearing it, but it’s getting louder.
Director Moose: It’s getting closer then?
SCP-001: Four rings of the rock around Helios until the Sapphire and the return of the engineer. Three until the return of the blade. Fourteen until the grand palace rises anew into the sky, and the seals fail.
Director Moose: So this is it then, this is the one.
SCP-001: While exhaling heavily. This is the one.
Director Moose: Then there is a lot of work to do, child of Ilion. A lot of work to return the Singers to the fold.
SCP-001: There always is. Yet curiously, I do not know when the next avatar of primordial fire will appear.
Director Moose: The what?
SCP-001: Idle musings of a deranged old lady, pay them no mind.
<End Log>
Addendum 18: SCP-001 Journal J-001
On May 15th, 2021, O5-07 Madeline Light reported to the amnestics clinic in Eurtec for debriefing and memory erasure as part of standard retirement protocols. During debriefing, she surrendered the only sensitive item remaining on her person, a thick leatherbound book containing SCP-001’s personal journal. The following document contains the most relevant excerpts linked to identifying SCP-001 based on early life events that were previously undisclosed.
Foreword: I sit here at the top of this sacred place among a field of blooming flowers in the spring of the year 4957 from when the seas were set in earth and sky. Here I have elected in the event that things do not work out I have foreseen, to paint for you whoever may be reading this tome, whether it be in the Library or some other misbegotten place, the story of how I came to be.
Even now as I sit here staring at the sunrise, I can see the grand canvas of history sprawl out before in a stream of rippling color. Yes, see. This is the story of my birth, the story of how someone who was not me died, and the weave of my life was forged.
Chapter 1: On A Life Recorded in the Annals of Myth
She, that girl who seems so very far away now, was born in a palace beneath the glimmering light of Helios’s sun. A place of sweet and bitter scents in perpetual contradiction. It sat atop a lush hill overlooking a fertile coastal plain on the edge of an empire whose name is long forgotten. Tall walls, a merry life of people used to the ways of war found in the south and east.
She was born on a warm summer evening, with the smell of dew was unusually strong on the wind and some ancient chthonic intent had crept up from beneath the earth. The elder of fraternal twins, she was loved. Born to a king and queen beneath a greater mantle who stared down at her glimmering eyes with an adoration and gentle warmth that was not built to last.
They named her in the old ways of the world, but it was not her true name. She was not born a girl as she should have been, and the world was worse for it. And though they sat there adoring their new tiny bundles, those ill-fated parents did not yet realize what power they had brought into the world.
Summers began to flow together in the endless paints streaming across the sky. She grew. She took her first steps beneath the all-knowing sun and found her footing in the world amidst the rolling grasses and lush forests. She saw things that others didn’t, couldn’t, but didn’t yet know what they meant. Heard muffled choirs in a rolling pitch, washed with aromas to which not even her parents would have been exposed. They were shadows dancing in dreams unspoken.
And with every step, every inch gained, fundamental incongruence with the world grew. A roiling black dissonance seeping into flesh and nerve.
Every glance into the clear fountains of the palace, the mirrored surfaces of shining bronze were a reminder that she was wrong. This flesh that was hers was not hers, but a strangers, a wrongness that she could not escape.
The smiles and laughs in play became fewer with every passing summer. Discord in flesh and soul plunging what should have been a happy soul into the dour abyss above a hungry underworld.
The discomfort of that ill-fitting skin did not go unnoticed by the world. It was seen by opportunists looking for diamonds in the rough.
When she was eight summers tall, she and her brother came to rest in a grand marble colored space in the palace. It glimmered with golden statues of a radiant young man bearing in his arms a lyre and upon his back and glimmering bow. It reeked of incense and herbs so strong that it made her eyes water. Brother of the Hunter, born of prophecy, medicine, music and inheritor of a chariot of fire across the sky. They slept there beneath the swirling color and twinkling lullabies when they grew too tired to continue play.
In a waking dream this opportunist came, skin glimmering with twinkles of sunlight and backswept hair framing blue eyes.
“Children of Ilion, I have seen you this night aslumber at my hallowed feet.” His voice was deceptively honeyed to her ears.
He was awash in scents of baked breads and cream filled things that she could not grasp. She stared up in wonder for him, for the threads of those above seldom graced the dreams of mortals.
“Your grace, what honor you bestow on us,” she said, bowing at his feet.
He smiled. She believed it warm, welcoming, friendly and filled with favor. How could she have known how wrong she was?
“I have foreseen your greatness in the twirling stars above. I come before you because you will make great marks upon history and the weave of destiny, and I seek to aid you in that quest in return for favor owed.”
His eyes turned to her, shimmering in the midnight starlight.
“My lord, you bless us with your presence and gifts? Name thy favor and we will meet it!” she cried, not understanding the price that would one day be paid.
So great was this moment it blinded her growing gifts to the truth of his desire. The lust in his soul that would only grow.
“Worry not about the favor requested now, you are too young to fulfill such merits. To you,” he gestured to her brother. “The great gift of prophecy I will bestow. And to your sister—”
She gasped, tears springing to her eyes at such novel validation. He saw her for what she was. What she should be. He looked at her sending chills up her spine from the intensity of his otherworldly gaze.
“To you the gift of prescience, the grandest human prophet to ever live you will be. But more than that I will correct the wrong in your flesh.”
She gasped for air in disbelief. What dreams she had not realized needed to be fulfilled, and now they were upon her. She wept in relief for this greatest of mercies. How could she have known that prophecy was already hers? How could she have known the true cost of the shifting of her flesh?
“Will you take these great wonders I offer you and adorn yourself in my favor?” he cooed.
“Yes,” they said together. How could they refuse?
He stepped forward and placed that shimmering skin against their heads. Their eyes burned with deep and heavenly fire. That little girls flesh writhed against her bones, shape changing and flourishing in bursts of glittery flame.
With a great rush of air and plunging stomachs, as if falling through an eternal starlit sky, they awoke in the opportunist’s temple. Two serpents lapped their tongues in their ears, entwined in copulation. They slithered away when they the young girl and her brother sat up.
The prince looked upon the princess and cried out her name.
“You are a girl!”
She looked upon herself, the beautiful bundles of her hair, and the reflections in the nearest pool and polished metal and felt congruence. She burst into happy tears.
“I am a girl!” And she was truly in all ways.
The King and Queen were brought hastily to the temple and saw what had become of their children. They praised on high the truth of otherworldly visitation, proclaiming their child a daughter, a princess, a prophet to be.
So, it was they brought great fortune tellers from across their kingdom to instruct their children in the art of prophecy, though they truly did not need it. Their gifts were so potent as to eclipse their teaches within a few months of lessons.
Her brother grew and grew into a grand Augur with every passing year, but none could match her strength of sight. She flourished in her new skin, renewed with life and happiness, no longer trapped by Misery’s chthonic grasps.
She saw everything that could be, everything that might be, everything that had been, and everything that would never be. She was still so young, and the art of determining which belonged to which yet remained to be mastered.
At fifteen summers her parents sought a proper husband, a prince from some far-off land to secure alliances.
But she was never interested in the idle looks and politics of men. She preferred the sweet scents of wives, the gentle touches of feminine skin and the callouses of strong huntresses. She flirted with the women of the huntress’s temple and became a priest of two, the opportunist and the wise owl in her shielded armor. In part fulfilling foreseen prophecy, in part to avoid the forced irritations of an unhappy marriage.
The king and queen had many children and did not despair their daughter’s choices. They were, in their own ways, good parents to her. But their youngest they spoiled, a beautiful little boy who had grown into a heartthrob all the same.
On a cool autumn evening when she was sixteen summers tall, a dreadful wind blew through the princess’s chambers.
The opportunist had come for his promised favor.
He appeared in a burst of glittering moonlight whilst she dozed away in her bed. He sat on the edge of her postered repose, and drug warm fingers across her cheeks, stirring her from slumber. He smiled lazily at her, as if his intent was perfectly clear.
He pulled away the sheets, pressing his hand to her chest to keep her from fully rising.
“Lord, what—how may I serve you this night?” She asked him, shrinking in that predatory glimmer filling his eyes.
“I have come for my favor, sweet priestess.”
Her stomach twisted in a nauseous knot.
“What might I do for you?”
Without hesitation he spoke of his desire.
“I would make you mine. I would lie with you, make sweetest love with you now until eternity. Marry you underneath the glimmering sun.”
The whole world turned on its side as she realized the choice before her, as his hands caressed her thighs. Bile filled her throat, the scene of rotting flesh sharp against her nostrils. She could not bear it.
“No.”
He stopped, hand firmly grasping her thigh. Too firmly for it began to hurt, and tears pooled in the corners of her eyes. He stared down at her, as she trembled against the bed.
“What did you say?”
“No, I don’t want to marry. I don’t want to lie with you.”
He released her thigh, constricted blood painfully throbbing through the limb. He pressed his hand against her chest harshly while leaning forward, constricting her breath. He roared, his voice a layered boom that filled all the room and his breath stank of rotting meat.
“YOU WOULD DENY ME?”
“I will not lie with someone I do not love. I will not marry someone who I do not love!” She panicked, squirming against his grasp.
Her heart hammered in her chest, feeling the hot sting of heat burning from the sun he embodied against her chest.
“I made you! I gave you everything, fixed you when you were broken, gave you sight when you could not see. You dare to refuse my love?”
What could she say to soothe this angered spirit other than the truth in all its poetic aspiration?
“I could never love you like you deserve. I could not live with you in every moment you craved, cradle you in the warm morning sun in a grassy field, argue over the little things in the arrangement of paintings on the wall, the cleanliness of plates in the cupboard. I could not be the mother to your children; I could not be the mortal woman you seek in your heart. I do not love men; you seek something I could not give!” she cried out in fear.
“You ungrateful whore!” he screamed in her face, spittle splattering and sizzling against her skin. “Upon you I cast the greatest of curses. From this day forward with these eyes that tempt me you shall never see the world as it is again.”
She cried out in agony as his worldly influence poisoned her vision with stinging agony. Black swallowed everything in the empty void of Chaos’s reign. Blood dripped from the corners of her eyes, staining her white gown.
“I doom you to never again be believed, your prophecies will ring true for yourself, but your words will be deafened and absurd to those who you most want to believe them.”
She wept in the abyss of sightlessness feeling the curse take effect, crawling beneath her skin in sunkissed marks. Then, flesh shifted in a place that was most sensitive and she screamed. She prayed and prayed and prayed to the owl on high.
“Finally, I take back what I once ga—” but before his magic could writhe again through her flesh, the medallion of the owl burned with otherworldly vigor and scalded his hand, blocking the fullness of the curse.
“Interference!” he screeched as shadow fell on the room, and then he was gone in a puff of light.
But the damage was done. He had undone a piece of her flesh, stolen her sight, and left her destitute and doomed to be disbelieved. And her brother? Her brother was left unmarred, having gladly accepted the patron’s favor.
The brother looked upon her with pity, and though he at first tried to support her, defend her visions, she was poison. Even the eldest brother, long gentle and soft with the sister he so loved, could not defend her.
So began the slow spiral of madness that would doom her family to its end. The rumors curled throughout the city that the once great oracle of the east had fallen into madness, insanity. Her visions, predictions of wealth or ruin were ignored. Every prediction said aloud resulted in a choice that would ensure the worst would come to be.
It only got worse.
Having seen twenty summers, she foresaw a cataclysm, the end of her parents’ kingdom, the end of her people by the choice of her youngest brother.
Influence from on high would come to him with a choice, a gift of vanity and flattery or a gift of wisdom. Saw him leave for a foreign fortress where he would doom them all.
She begged him not to listen at a table filled with the aroma of delicious meats and sweet fruits. She begged him to refuse to play the game in the twilight hours of the morning as the first kisses of the sun were trying to crest the horizon.
“If you go, you will ruin us all!”
“You wish for suffering and misery in this house of our blood. You lost yourself in madness and now you want to drag us all with you. Do us all the good of shutting up and throwing yourself into the sea. You’re insane.”
He didn’t listen. He insulted her, demeaned and degraded. Had her dragged off to her room where she was locked in for three days. He went. Left on a boat as she stood in her window, watching with sightless eyes as he rode into a bleeding sunset.
She foresaw his return, with a beautiful woman, a foreign queen in a golden veil. Her people rejoiced, they sang, burned bonfires that smote the air with ash and pleasant pheromonic woods. They sacrificed animals to the gods above, filling the plaze with the metallic iron of blood. They welcomed him with open arms, oblivious to the heralding of their doom.
She stood and watched through sight and sightless eyes as they ascended the steps of the palace, inconsolable with rage and despair.
She leapt out of the crowd, pouncing upon the woman and tearing at her hair and that golden veil.
“You’ve doomed us all! Everything will burn, blood will fill the river and bay and nothing will be left!”
She was pulled away by the guards, dragged screaming about death and the end to her room in the palace where she was locked inside for three days and nights. She lay curled up on the bed and wept for the state of things. Cried to the opportunist.
“God! Oh God of Prophecy!
Thou hast ruined me. Thou has doomed me.”
The only person who dared to visit the maddened oracle was the eldest brother. A man among men, always gentle with her, and even moreso now. He listened, even though he did not believe. But for a moment, it felt as if someone believed her.
The ruin began with the arrival of those foreign kings with grand armies of the greatest warriors told of in stories and minstrel’s tales from travelers abroad. The air stunk with their terrible manly odors. Great men by the thousands, so many of whom were doomed to die.
They demanded the return of their stolen Queen, but her youngest brother refused. Her parents so foolishly supported him.
It was war. A raging, hateful war that ballooned into the arrival of great flesh crafters of the northwest, the ancient blood and plant lovers of the east, the mechanized children of the northeast and west in their grand ticking gears and four legged monstrosities, and finally the singers of the sea from the far north come to aid the wronged kings.
It was there on those walls she saw the great evisceration of her people’s patrons at the hands of something much older. There, deep in the throes of war upon the palisades she first felt the warmth of Creation’s caress against her cheeks.
But it would not save them. Any of them.
Her eldest brother was the first to fall, speared through by a great warrior enraged by the death of a lover. She saw it long before it happened and wept for him. Begged him in the dim lights of fate not to leave.
But he did not believe her. He refused to decline a challenge and rode forth on chariot to meet his end. It was a grisly end. She stood on the ramparts of the wall, the last light of sun’s warm kiss wafting against her skin and the smell of rotting death on the wind. She listened to the shouts of a victorious warrior and the sickening crunch of bone and flesh smashing against the ground.
Her brother, defiled in defeat, dragged across the battlefield by chariot.
She accosted the youngest brother then, screaming in his face.
“It’s your fault! This is all your fault! If only you had listened, he would have lived!”
He reeked of cowardice and failure. Too afraid to face what he had begun until she ripped apart his pride with increasingly harsh words. Her youngest brother, aggrieved with blame, took a bow and shot dead that champion of the west.
But it was all so very little in the face of what was to come.
The greatest betrayal was the desertion of her twin brother. That too she saw coming. In the howling wind of a dreadful morning she begged him not to carry through beneath the fetid stench of carts of bodies being hauled off to burn. But like the rest, the curse had infected him too, and he went anyway. A traitor to her people, whispering in their ears of all the secrets of their defense.
The doom was fully here and there was nothing she could do, though she would try.
The grand tactician, a man so hopelessly brilliant that none in her home could match him, derived the final death knell. A gift offering of peace left on the shores as their fleet mock sailed away. A grand wooden burden beast. A feast with endless drinks was declared as they rolled it in.
But she saw the truth. Of course she saw the truth. Dozens of men waiting inside for the guards and soldiers to get fat and drunk and fall asleep. They would pile out of the horse, open the gates, and that would be the very end.
Hysterical with rage when she was ignored by the King and Queen, she snatched an axe from a guard, and a torch from the wall, and sprinted at the gift. Screaming. The air was filled with the scent of wines, searing meat and cooking breads. The sound of snoring men, drunken soldiers, and giggling wives all around.
“They’re inside! They’re inside! They’re waiting inside to end us all!”
They stopped her, of course they stopped her.
“Poor princess, lost to madness and insanity. Blinded by the sight and unable to tell what’s real from what’s false. Even if they did put men in there, it would never be enough.”
She was dragged away, weeping. Unable to stop fate’s cruel march forward. They were going to lock her in her room again, but she couldn’t let that happen. There would be no coming back out.
So, she broke free, she fled to the house of wisdom, with its wooden statue of the armored strategist ever watching. Here she claimed asylum.
“Oh, spirit of Wisdom, grant this humble priestess your protection and asylum!”
She sat beneath the statue for hours, waiting. Waiting for it to come.
Come it did, with fire and blood and shouts of terror. The doors opening as women sought asylum, burying themselves deeper into the marble. She smelt ash, smoke, burning wood and flesh.
She begged the wise goddess for her protection again and again.
Then he burst into the room, a savage man wearing animal skins and full of muscle. He strode across the floor and grabbed at her. She lept forward, clinging to the statue, begging for help, for protection. So hard did he pull the statue it was toppled from its housing and cracked against the floor.
He reeked of musk, smoke and ash. His laugh filled her ears.
She died there. She died there where the last of her dignity, the last of her innocence was snuffed out against the backdrop of flames.
That’s where I was born. Weeping on the floor of the house of wisdom as he towered over me.
I saw the thunder come before it struck, the quaking steps of another entering the temple. A great clap of light burning in the dark and a tremendous crack splitting the air. He was knocked from his feet, sent tumbling across the floor. When he got back up, the skin of his shoulder sizzled the air with smoke and the flesh was an angry welt of red in the Sight.
“You dare come between me and my prize?!” In the Sight he stood there, staring with fury on his face, body half covered by his skins.
“Bugh, fowl. This is a sacred house for your kind, and you desecrate it and assault an innocent woman? I will kill you here and now by the decree of your gods for this sacrilege. You shall never accost another woman.”
There was bile in my throat, I could smell the ozone, the singed skin lingering in my nostrils. Shouts echoed in the distance. He roared, spear in one hand, shield in another as he banged his spear against it.
He was a fool. Even my people knew the reputation of the Singers of the Sea.
Her magic smote the air with great hateful flame, twin blades merging into a trident of Poseidon’s swirl.
It wasn’t a dance; it was barely a fight.
He stepped inside, swinging that spear.
With one great hand she grabbed the shaft, snapped it in half, and then kicked him in the stomach while he was still stunned by the loss of his weapon. He flew across the room with impossible speed and force, colliding with a marble column. His shield was knocked free by the breath stealing collision and rolled across the floor like an errant jar lid making some great escape.
I saw her reel back.
I heard her grunt.
The trident’s angry metal split the air, smashing the marbled stone of the column just above his head with such great force that like an axe against wood it split it down the middle. In an act of providence by Athena’s hand, the sky smote with a thunderbolt that ripped right through the man. When that did not kill him, a great gout of water burst from the sky and washed him in a furious river from that place, down the hill and plains and drowned him in the great sea beyond.
No one stopped to help him, for they knew a man doomed by the Gods’ wrath when they saw it.
“Is that the best he had to offer? To think I fought ten years by his side.”
I stared sightlessly up at this demon of war, having foreseen the glimmer of her golden scales in the firelight. Who was this creature who had saved me as a newborn? What power of the gods did she wield? Why did I not forsee her until now, why was her presence a void in prophecy even at this moment?
She reeked of wet, and it was not unpleasant.
She picked me up and I broke in those mantearing arms. I wept for what I had lost, I wept for the city burning around us, I wept for the girl who had died this night and how I had taken her place. My would be savior and conqueror lifted me from the floor and wordlessly carried me across the grounds to safety. But there was no safety left here. Only the scent of ash, burnt flesh, and metallic blood on the breeze.
“Is that—?” someone asked, a voice I now know as the tacticians with its metallic tinge.
“The Seeress who is, by her own people’s musings, mad and lost to prophecy.”
“Yet she knew we were in the horse. Doesn’t seem so mad to me.”
“She has a curse upon her.”
“What happened to her? Why are her robes ripped bare. Why is she bruised and bleeding?”
“Ajax.”
“Goat fucking bastard.”
“He defiled a house of wisdom.”
“The gods will take care of it, and we will reduce his rewards.”
“I’ve already taken care of it.”
“What? What did you do.”
“Your gods sought revenge, and I gave it to them.”
“You killed him on their behalf?”
“No, I made an opportunity and they took it.”
“Was it at least a worthy fight?”
“Not even close. I feel cheated by your gods.”
“Good riddance then.”
“I’ll take the girl as my pallake then.”
“I would prefer she come with us. Has she not been through enough in your people’s wasteful hate?”
“She’s my prize by right, her brother stole my brother’s Queen.”
“Will you treat her better than those who came before?”
“Yes. I am not the monster here.”
I foresaw his name as I wept in the singer’s arms. I was set on a soft bed of blankets aboard a great vessel. He was the king of a faraway place, and he was to be my end.
He was gentle. Smelled strongly of flowers and was unusually kind to me. It was not until later, when I confronted my brother on his throne at Bouthroton, the traitor told me he had bargained for my life, to be this man’s concubine. I told him then that it did not save me from the horrific fate that was bound, and that he himself would meet such a fate.
He believed me then.
This king touched me in places I care not repeat, discovered what others had long ridiculed me for, what I was considered a lesser prize for. And yet he seemed not to care.
It didn’t change that we were doomed. It didn’t change that I did not feel for him, that I did not love his gentleness.
We returned to his home, escorted by the singers. In the wee hours of the morning before we arrived, my rescuer stepped into the hold before they left for a home of their own. She was not alone, a presence that was familiar and alien at her side. There a song just out reach burrowed in my ears, the scent of soft earth, the decay of autumn leaves, the salt of the oceans tides, floral scents of indescribable lushness, incense, and the smotes of stardust drifting on an astral wind filled my nose.
“You’re sure?” The singer’s voice rang in my ears.
“Yes.”
I felt a warm hand brush against my cheek, my neck, and my chest. Too many hands to be a human. Too soft to be a person, reaching deep past the skin into my very soul and plucked at infinitely many strings. Her voice filled the whole world.
“This end you see is but a beginning. When you awaken you will be more than you ever were. Seek us then, on the stormy isles of the north once you’ve regained your strength. Once you understand what you are. There, you shall find new purpose.”
It was layered, eternally fragmenting. My sightless eyes filled with the burning strobes of four golden lights.
As suddenly as it began, it vanished.
“Survive, child of Ilion. Your fight is not over.”
Then they were gone.
We were docking on land. This foreign king who had brought me far from my ruined home, spoke to me with reassurances and low whispers. But I had already seen what would come next. He would be called into the palace, where his wife and her lover would be waiting with knives. Then they would call for me.
He went despite my urgent warnings. Then the guards came to bring me in and I resigned myself to what was coming.
I knew when I was brought into the humid baths, that he was already dead. The stickiness of his life’s ichor burned against my toes. The iron of his blood and the flatulence of his gut overpowered the incense and soaps of the bath. There was no choking, just the circling steps of his murderers.
“Such a pretty prize my husband brought back, don’t you think Aegisthus?” Fingers caressed my cheeks, my chins.
“Almost a shame to waste it. But I hear she’s mad and blind, so may be for the best.”
It began with a stinging, vibrant pain in my left thigh. It was so very cold, colder than Hades’s icy embrace, parting the soft flesh. Alien, freezing metallic. It twisted and violated me and created something that never should have been.
Then there was another, pushing into my back. Another in my belly. Again and again across my flesh, hot blood streaming down my skin as I staggered to my knees. Taste of metallic blood filled my lips, the reek of death clawing at me as Thanatos lingered on the edge of my vision, waiting for the end. I didn’t scream, or cry as they carved me, sliced open my chest and exposed my guts to the world.
There was no point in struggling or crying out. This was simply fate.
I collapsed against the floor, their echoing laughs fading as they left me to bleed out.
That’s when I heard his wet footsteps.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Look at how far you have fallen, princess of Ilion. Final moments spent bleeding like a stuck pig next to the baths. You could have been great. You could have been the greatest prophet to ever live. We would have had beautiful children. Such a waste.”
His voice was a mocking trill of pleasant unpleasantness against my ears, a reminder of the sweetness of the music he could make that would only bind me here at the end of everything.
I managed to croak out a shuddering tumble of words with what little breath I had.
“You doomed so many.”
A hand grasped my face, lifting me. Pain blossomed as an inferno ripping through my shredded body.
“I doomed no one. You doomed them by being ungrateful.”
“Why?” I gasped out, struggling to stay conscious. To hold onto the sliver of life left to me.
“Because mortals need to be reminded of their place. Because I made you what you were, and what you are. I gave you everything, and you spat in my face. This beautiful woman carved from a boy. It’s like all those nymphs and boys; I give them everything and they are always ungrateful. Maybe this time will be different, maybe this girl I made from a boy will be grateful. What does he do? He behaves like a spoiled little brat.”
I grit my teeth, hands shaking at his grip around my neck.
“Now, because I am a generous god who is more than willing to offer mercy, I’m going to offer you one last chance. Marry me. Have my children. We will make such sweet music when we make love. I will restore your sight, lift the curse, and fix you again.”
I drew in ragged breaths struggling to stay awake. It hit me. I saw the moment, the opportunity to end this cycle, heard a thousand voices across an infinitely spiraling sea of fractured stars, felt the chthonic pull of blackened strings that I had never known were there. The fates, the Moirai were singing.
“Take it! Take it all from him. Become what you are meant to be!” they shouted.
But it wasn’t the fates. It was me. All me.
“Okay…” I rattled out.
He chuckled. “Good girl.”
And I felt his magic, his soul reach through his fingers. Another voice echoed with the choir.
When you awaken you will be more than you ever were.
“I have a better idea,” I said with sudden vigor I never had before.
I saw it, that ripple in his soul, his eyes. The prophecy, the vision of what would happen.
And abruptly I knew, that he had lied. That my hold on Destiny’s weave was greater.
With fingers wrapped in the leaking black of chthonic might I snared his magic, snared his soul, a wide hole opening in my chest.
In that moment, there were no Fates. There were no Moirai, there was only me. My agency.
He screamed, a wordless, incoherent burst of rage. But it was too late. The weight of what I was, what had long lay dormant inside of me, wrapped around my prescience, sucked in his magic, his conceptual depth and soul. It condensed, twisted, and homogenized him like he was being pulled through a straw, his flesh and matter pulled apart and into me.
I felt the might of the Sun filling me, the burst of prophecy and fate, healing and medicine screaming beneath my skin, music bursting in my very core.
Then he was gone, and I lay soaked in blood on the floor. I had somehow lifted the curse on my own.
But blindness remained and I have never cared to fix it.
My wounds were closing as I stared up sightlessly at the sky. Hours must have ticked by, possibly days. Then there were footsteps, light and airy. I felt a comforting chill wash across my cheeks.
A hand, calloused and yet impossibly soft pressed against my cheek. I could not see her, the Sight showed nothing.
“You finally ended his reign of madness. His torturing of what he couldn’t have driven by endless lust. You, soft child of Ilion.”
I did not know the voice, but it was soft and yet rugged. She smelled of a different sort of musk, of decaying soft leaves, of moonlight.
“Lay still here, and I shall guide you to a place you may heal and find peace, for a time. My power is bound for another, but for you I shall give this blessing.”
I’m not sure when she left. When the prevailing stench of blood filled my nostrils again. Nor how long it was till the wet steps of the guards came to clean up the mess.
But I passed out. I’m unsure how long, days, maybe weeks.
When I awoke, I washed up on the shores of a beach, caked in sand and water and dried blood. Disoriented, I was certain I had died. I could barely walk, my legs shaking and unsteady, even though I had stolen the Opportunist’s staff. So, I crawled. I’m not sure how long I crawled, or how far, but it was up. Up and up for hours upon hours. Maybe days, I don’t think I slept. I don’t think I needed to anymore.
But I reached the top, I suppose it always did have a top. There was something different there. A magic I had not encountered before, the magic of pure music, creation, inspiration. Nine beautiful voices sinking golden honey in my ears, warming my muscles and filling my mind with so many ideas. This place was warm, a pleasant wash across my skin, reeked of the earth, of perfumes, flowers, and so many other things.
“Oh my…” someone said.
“Poor thing, look at it.”
Then, the softest, warmest fingers against my face. In a miracle, the light returned to my eyes, the world filling with fuzzy and blurred color tones. Once my brain remembered how to interpret the sight of eyes, the picture became clearer and clearer. Eight of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, each halo’ed by a sheen of divine light.
But my eyes stared deep into the eyes that were immense nebulae condensed into orbs. A gorgeous woman kneeling and lifting my chin. Her skin was of olive, speckled with freckles. Her hair waved in the air, undulating like gas clouds in the void of stars, constantly oscillating through neon colors.
“Muses.” I croaked out at last, realizing the truth of the matter.
“Shhh child of Ilion, rest and we shall care for you.”
I remember smiling, I remember all the possibilities of what could come spiraling all out before me.
And then I passed out. There on Mount Helicon, I found myself, who I am, who I really wanted to be.
There I fell in love with the Muse Urania.
There I awakened.
There are so many more stories to tell of those years.
There was a moment when I, descending the mountain’s many narrows paths, passed an elderly man whose name I did not know, up the path. Near the foot there were voices, and they cried out to me.
“Tiresias! Tiresias is a woman! She has been blinded by Athena!”
It was true, the wise goddess of protection dared to climb the slopes and bathe with the many nymphs atop the mountain. We did not speak, for she no longer knew me. Never did I see that man who climbed the mountain, I truly wonder if he was a figment of a different dream.
There were other days when there were great tasks to be accomplished. Urania, requiring some chthonic reagent for a grand and ambitious project, sent me deep into the plumes of the underworld.
Rumors had reached us upon the mountain of the fates of many of those long forgotten heroes of the war outside my burnt and ruined home. There in the depths along a burning river a voice greeted me, a tinny, metal voice I had not heard in nigh a decade. There was a rush of air, the pulse of pounding blood and the dying bleats of a blackened lamb as I saw him through the sight. An all too familiar man of metal, legs of orichalcum bird talons and a face exhausted from great gaps of age removed from home.
The tactician had yanked me from the depths to a place I did not know. I spoke to him of what he desired, that should his crew slay the beasts of burden so meticulously cared for by the lord of light riding across every day filled sky, that he and his men would be stranded and his men smashed against the rocks. Again, I was referred to as Tiresias, this time by a man who had known me in brief before. Such a strange thing to be hailed by a name not your own, but one less strange as the years have moved by. Thence there was a rush of air, and I had returned to those distant fields where I found what my beloved desired.
I suppose that is whence these myths became entombed in the minds of all.
There were many more stories and myths made in those distant years, happy joyful moments that I shall not share. I prefer to keep them in dreams and memory for they are so very precious to me. Perhaps one day I shall tell my nieces, those delightful loving things, these stories so they eternally enshrine them in their great pieces.
But for now, even here my most personal book shall not receive such private happy things.
When thirty years had passed by, I left my newfound love on that sacred mountain and promised to return whenever I could. I wandered the earth, blind once again outside the mountain’s magic.
I trekked through forest, across rivers and bogs and swamps and marshes. Through grassy fields and mountain crags until I reached the northern oceans.
In a singer village I was greeted warmly. I offered gold for transport to the Stormy Northern Isles. They refused my gold and took me aboard one of their strange new vessels, and together we rode through treacherous hate filled seas.
It was there on one of those islands, the largest of them, that I left those kind sailors and their strange scented wetness behind. Across sand and grass I walked until I heard and saw through prophetic sight a great camp on a hill above colossal stone and metal artifices. Meats filled my mouth with salivation as I approached, spurned by strange bread smells, alien fruits and wines.
Three voices reached me on the wind as I walked slowly up the hill leaning on my staff. One I knew, two I didn’t and yet did with growing familiarity that I could not explain.
“So what, we’re hitting the fucking crimson fucker first?”
“Scarlett Monarch dear.”
“Right, whatever. You want us to go with that big untested hunk of magic metal that you think will work? Me, her, you, and the eldritch thing masquerading as a redhead? Just the four of us and that experiment.”
“White water, you make it sound like we’re running to our deaths.”
“We are! Artemis’s bow, we’ll need a hell of a lot more than that. I know you singers like your fucking fights, I do too, but like, it should at least be reasonable.”
I slowed my walk as I approached. Yet the bickering continued, somehow oblivious to my approach. I knew those voices and yet didn’t all the same. Eyes were already on me, but not of the bickerers. Those same golden eyes from all those years ago.
The bickering stopped as my staff, the staff I had taken from my patron when I obliterated him, gently thunked against a log.
“? Where are you—”
“Well, who is this?”
“Wait a fucking, you’re—”
In that moment, I was assailed again by all those early and alien smells from aboard that king’s ship so many years ago. I heard her strange golden song, louder now than before. I felt her. I felt the Mother of all Creation in her fullness before me. Writhing spheres of cerulean flesh and unending mass of allseeing eyes consuming me with their sight amongst a mantle of endless stars woven as crimson hair. A many armed pillar of reality stretching to fill all horizons.
All the sky filled by creation.
“Welcome, Cassandra of Troy.”