Entry 3
The letter that arrived bearing my name was the one I wanted to see least of all.
No response yet from Idda-var of course, even after three weeks. No, it has to be this letter instead. To look at it, it seems to normal, so perfectly mundane. But I would recognise my birth-parent's handwriting anywhere - and the name that I left behind in the Breaks.
The people here never really let me forget I'm a foreigner. Ami is the kindest about it but even he has his moments. He is baffled at the thought that the person who birthed me might spare more than a passing thought towards me, so he doesn't understand my complaints. It's all a quaint sort of novelty to him.
In the week since the letter made it to my desk, unopened, I've dreamed about Mast almost every day. There used to be a canopy over one of the mast arms, I could have sworn it was red but during my last visit it was yellow and I think this confusion has entrenched the sight of it in my mind. Unless perhaps the sun has faded it (I think this is the case).
Mast is a dead end backwater with no redeeming features. I hate the sight of my name in that handwriting, I can't stand to see it. Who is Kedinnan, these days? If I were to write about myself, when I lived in Mast, as though I were a historical figure from my studies like Rikil, or Kin, I would surely begin the story at the moment I chose to leave.
"Kedinnan was a young harpy who knew nothing of the world whatsoever, and thus thought himself the most intelligent of all living beings. History has shown the folly of his solipsistic mindset, and we record his history so that future peoples may look back and learn from his hubris."
Well, that's a bit dramatic, but sometimes you have to gouge a conclusion out of text that has none; my students excel at this wordplay, but really they are just presenting information without synthesis. They should really - no, I should keep that for the lesson plans.
I didn't even know about the other masts. I thought mine was unique in the world. I can credit my great master Timna-vay for the information - which was, to him, so mundane as to be almost unspeakable, just as no one ever really comments that the water is wet - that there are masts scattered all over the world. And some even had their own villages, and some of those were even called 'Mast'.
I owe him more than anyone else in this world. When he returns from his survey, I should have more than a half-remembered map and a dead artifact cylinder to show him. The only thing he deserves no credit for is my name.
I'll open this letter. Just to get it out of the way.
It is done. My parent wants to know what days would be good for a visit. At this point, I cannot possibly speculate. I wish
No, I am not a coward. I wish I could visit Mast again. When haven't I been tempted by the launching perch at the top of the Spire? I could point it south and see, once and for all, if it could make me fly. Mast is a dreary place but it's somewhere that isn't here. Everyone else has to visit me, I can't just fly out and
Ami-var interrupted my writing. He brought Idda-var's letter, accused me of despicable manoeuvring to advance my own academic career, and sat to read it with me. Idda-var sounds like an average sort of person, and I think they would have been highly embarrassed to have blundered Ami-var's name. See the letter attached below.
Esteemed Colleague Qedi-var, thank you for your informative letter. I would like to express my deepest well-wishes to Master Gania-vay for his achievements, and of course to Ami-vas as well.
I have some news regarding your enclosed map and the request you sent. I am an aquatic sort and this seemed like an interesting diversion while my work here has stalled somewhat (the village I wished to visit has barred my entry, unfortunately). So while I apologise for the lengthy delay in response, it was for good reason. I swam through the route of steep-sided valleys so emblematic of the West (you must visit them to truly appreciate the scale! 'A day's flight away', as you said, is reductive), and approached your headland.
But it was my surprise to find the waterway run dry at the coastline of your map. In fact, the sea had pulled back roughly a hundred spans from where it should have been. This I ascertained from the locals; a small fishing village at the sacrum of the Spiral. I inquired about an impending tide and the elderly phocid weather-watcher told me the tide had come and gone, and the water had not pulled back in its wake. Judging by historical maps of the region, I can conclude that this shifting coastline is an established factor, and the headland has changed its shape dramatically over the past few centuries; sometimes larger, sometimes smaller. Anyway, it meant I could walk to the shallows, roughly in the region of the red spot on your map. Although I saw nothing unusual in the precise location indicated, I did find a large Precursor structure at the base of the headland cliffs (see sketch 1).
I do not believe this structure would have been hidden and submerged prior to the latest tidal event. The locals had not seen it until recently, either; it must have been cast against the cliff by the tide itself. It was encrusted with fauna and its form matches some familiar objects I have seen at the Hall of Faces, though I cannot know off the top of my head exactly what. As this is your area of expertise, my esteemed colleague, I hope the sketch is illuminating.
The drag-marks on the mud-plains show clearly the path taken by the structure as it washed onto land. I followed them a while, under the water, until I found the most interesting feature; a stone pillar, naturally formed, with Precursor scaffolds spanning one side. This was roughly a hundred spans tall from the seafloor, and, again, highly colonised by fauna. I swam around it for a time but it did not seem structurally sound enough to be safely explored. From a distance it appeared as in sketch 2.
I could not dally there much longer. But for those of you with an interest in Precursors, it is certainly worth further exploration. Upon returning to the swamp inland once more (no luck on getting into that village…) I was met by a postal worker who had chosen to fly with his visor open. This is the part I believe you may find most intriguing; he described a high-pitched wailing noise that had filled his visor, and he had to keep it open to find some relief. He is waiting for my letter now so I must be quick but it seems his visor, and those of several other longwings stationed at the Hall of Faces nearby the site on the map, experienced similar disruptions and disturbances simultaneously to the recent tide and the appearance of the object washed up on shore.
Should you publish any work which contains elements of my contributions, I would politely request partial credit for the discovery of these points of interest.
The above written personal communication was prepared for Qedi-am-o-var by Idda-pem-o-var studying under Master Gania-o-vay of the Spire.
Melancholy be damned. I don't remember it at all; Mast is a fleeting memory and I never want to return. THIS deserves my full attention. The sketches attached by Idda-var are serviceable enough but while I struggle to understand the first - it looks like a lot of flat resin surfaces crumpled together and fouled by epifauna - the second is truly interesting to me. Reading the letter, I thought a mast. But it's clear this is no mast. It is anchored up and down its length to the rock, it seems, and in the middle of the cylinder of scaffolding, a second inner structure.
Idda-var is right and Ami agrees. It warrants further investigation. I suspect it has some mast-like properties given the visor malfunctions. I wonder if the mechanical action of the tide somehow induced the event? If it was a change of state, such that I induced in my own cylinder here by contacting it with Signaswun, it must have happened on a large scale to reach the Hall of Faces.
I need to be more serious with this journal. I wouldn't want my discoveries stolen out from under me by just anybody - I may scrub my name from the cover. And I'll need to take more detailed notes.
Ami-var seems cheered by Idda-var's mistaken attempt at naming him. He tells me that it is some form of proof that Gania-vay mistreated him, as an objective outsider has assumed a graduation has occurred when one clearly hasn't. Ami plans to appeal the decision so we'll see how that goes. I am optimistic, and so is he.
"It could be that my own parts need to be edited and published separately, which takes time," he said to me as we discussed Idda-var's letter. "And they wanted to give Master Gania-vay a speedier track to a mastery. He's getting old, after all. Would be a shame to die without it."
I'm not wholly convinced of this. I reminded him about my own first thesis. Every ridiculous excuse the faculty invented to delay its publishing over and over, until it was so obscenely perfect that they could no longer find the ghost of a flaw to throw in my face. Ami-var hasn't known anything like that before. It's only the foreigners who usually get treated like this.
He concurs, though not in the way I hoped. "It makes sense that we would have especially high standards for those who haven't grown up here," he told me. I challenged that, and the implication that he had been getting by just because of low standar
He just came back to challenge me to a debate. Wait for me, journal.
He won, but it wasn't fair in my opinion; backhanding me when I'm not looking is hardly sporting.