Pots

When Ert had first insisted that the pot hadn’t had writhing on nor contained documents but that it had actually spoken to him her suspicions that he was delirious had grown.

Still just suspicion though, that was the thing about a world with magic she was learning, you could never be sure. Enoth people had though her and Ert insane when fleeing the ruin of there village for them to stop telling of the nature of its destruction, and then there were the poor soles on the edge of The Marsh who even though themselves insane for seeing the stick beasts that elsewhere were known to be a very real pain in the ass, or the jabbering men on the streets of the Cites who had no idea they talked only to themselves rather that to magical saviors.

She had heard young Soromen talking longingly of The World Before where things were simpler and truths absolute. She throughout they must be very shortsighted in there definition of absolute, if things worked differently in this world than to the last then why not other worlds where things worked differently still? And how could a truth that applied to only one of even two worlds be considered absolute?
Anyway she had bean tort in school that while magic could be used to do grate and terrible things it was also magic that stopped many equally terrible things from happening, decease, drought and famine only occurred when the strength of magic failed so that the laws of nature could override the desigh of the Crator she had bean tort, the Soromans themselves clamed magic was initially the tool the Maker used to stop the world falling apart so why would anyone especially a Soroman ever which to be rid of it?

Hear in the deep jungle more then anywhere your mind could play tricks on you but so could reality itself, how could she attempt to judge the sanity of her loved one when she could not tell herself which events of yesterday happened and which were hallucinated? The longer her travels continued the less she felt sure that the life she remebered as a child in a village where talking fungi, demon vegetables and seeing ponds weren’t normal events was the mad illusion not this.

Now she was hear she found herself believing his story. He had started leading her down cave tunnels lit with bright sun, airy from slits out to the side of some cliff and richly painted with animal symbols. As they neared the base of the stone corridor these symbols seamed to jump and dance in what shifting, greened light was allowed through from the forest canopy. There bold outlines, were so vivid in the dimness that more than once Peap almost jumped back at the sudden barks or stretches of jungle creatures outside momentarily convinced they had come from the characters on the rock next to her.

Then he had taken her into the cave where the pots stood and the music played.

At first she couldn’t hear it only the wind howling through the caves and corridors. She looked at Ert and tried to think what to tell him but he put his thinger to his lips and she held her toung a while longer until suddenly she became aware that she had bean hearing it all along. That was where it was, amid the moaning of the wind as it changed its route through the wawen of caves and changed tone. Percussioned by distant drips and splashing it formed a slow mournful tune that she didn’t drought had bean playing for a thousand years or more. Judging by the ruins outside they were the first living people to hear it in most of that time, this one though made the wind music sadder and more haunting than any ghostly disembodied howl.

She listened fascinated to it’s sad, crawling melody and her eyes fell, they rested again upon the pots that were so covered with symbolisms and wrightings she still couldn’t read but now, listening to the music she knew what they must be. They were the last products of a dyeing civilization, placed safely in a sacred place of morning by sorrowful people who had realized that even the greatest culture of mortal men could not in the end be anything more than mortal itself. Like a grate but sick man who ,driven by the ancient urge to leave some lasting reminder he had ever existed and perhaps warn those who followed of mistakes discovered the hard way, spends his last hours ordering a headstone and finishing his bibliographphy the last people of this culture had desperately left its final mark and hurried tails sprawled around its sacred place of remembrance.

And it was sacred, she could feel that with intangible senses more clearly than in any of the grate cathedrals, as clearly as the priests who tended this place must have done. But the music, and the ruins told without words a story of a civilization collapsing, not only had its people died but so had there idea’s, there legacy evething they held dear, only death and morning remained in the end and Peep’s mind felt like it was falling into a dark hole. She though of the Hord and realized the same forgotten fate would soon befall all the cultures she had met.

Just as her thoughs were at there darkest Ert put a walm comforting hand upon her sholder, he picked up one pot stood in the middle of the room, the only one with no writhing on it and lead the way back up to the sunshine.