To wgp@topica.com, wgp@topica.com From Jeffrey Sean Huo Subject Re [wgp] Visions with the Sibyl, pt 2 Date Mon, 05 Mar 2001 053010 -0800 Message-ID <0.1600017349.285083637-951758591-983799010@topica.com> At 0851 PM 3/4/01 -0800, Kylinn wrote >jeffshuo@umich.edu writes >> >>At 0354 PM 3/4/01 -0800, Kylinn wrote >>>Kylinn wrote >> >>Then a voice...Zhouting's...it is very, very quiet, >>but audible... >> >>["Show me your medallion, Stalks-rhya. Please."] > >"Here's the amulet." She hold it up so >that everyone can see it. On one side >it has a bas-relief of a unicorn; on >the other, a spiral pattern made up of >exquisitely tiny runes winds its way to >the center, while six sigils - a flame, >a rose, a butterfly or moth, a gear, a >sunburst, and an hourglass - mark the >outside edge. > >She looks at Zhouting. "What do you >know about it?" Zhouting appears to examine the amulet for a long time. (Hard to tell, again, with that veil of his.) His mind races --images of many, many places, battles, monsters, and a wolf, racing through vision after vision with a medalion of a burning spiral on it... Zhouting takes a deep breath. ["In the first lifetime after I lost Falls-from-Heaven,"] pronoucing the name with unconcious affection, ["I began to have visions. Visions of a wolf, with a pendant of a burning spiral about her neck...her; it felt like a her. I could never quite make out the shape, the color, the features of her face...I could never tell if I knew that wolf...if that wolf was my beloved...anytime I tried in the dream to tease out the details, I would lose the vision and awaken..."] ["She took me to a place in my dreams --a valley in a place called Cheng-An-Tzu, where a village of silk-makers lived, a place I had passed through some number of times on the road from Xian... over and over, night after night, she took me there..."] ["I knew not what to make of it. I kept the knowledge to myself, fearing I was going mad...finally, some months later, my business took me to that village again...when I arrived, it just happened that same night a horde of Kumo --demon spiders-- attacked the village...I was able to hold them off long enough with my arts for the villagers to flee to safety in the caves above the village...but I did not live to see the dawn."] ["Many lives saved in exchange for mine. A fair trade,"] he says, simply. ["The Wheel turned, I was reborn, lived to become an old man. One autumn night, she returned for me. She took me to a mountain pass on the southern end of the valley in which I and my extended family dwelled...every night for six nights she came and took me there...on the evening of the seventh night, in frustration, I lept out of bed at midnight and made the five-li hike to that pass...where I ran into a rabid Khan who had just slaughtered the village south of us and was coming for mine."] ["The fighting brought awoke others...and they found us both dead."] ["It was again a good day to die,"] he says. ["The next lifetime it was a band of cutthroats with stolen rockets. The one after, a single insane mountain shaman."] ["So it has been, from lifetime to lifetime...once in each lifetime, she takes me to a place...a valley, a mountain, a temple...sometimes I go immediately there...sometimes I wait for decades...sometimes I go to that place, and then she visits me again and takes me somewhere else...but always, always, however long it takes, however many stops there are, at the end of the road, there is my place."] ["My place and time to die."] He pauses to gather his thoughts. ["Bakemono...rogue beasts... mad Wu Lung and Wu Keng... bandits...ninja...dijinn...once it was nothing more supernatural than a breaking levee, the effort of holding the waters back long enough for the villagers to reach high ground breaking my strength. Once it was a giant ground-wyrm which I led away from our temple until I let it eat me --and I destroyed it from the inside in a self-immolatory blast."] ["Once it was a horde of psychotic ceramic resealable dishware saleswomen,"] he says in a slightly "boy-that-was -weird" tone... ["I have tried many times over the centuries to find out more about this mysterious patron, this harbinger of death, this bringer of need, who calls me to a place where my death might give life to others...to discover why it did not matter how long it took for me to answer her summons, that whenever I got there, there would be the cause and time...she has always avoided any attempt to find out her true nature...I call to her in my visions, and seems to recognize but does not reply...and in time I simply came to accept her as part of my Karma. Blessing or curse? Reward or Punishment? Vengeful spirit or guiding patron? I knew --know-- not."] He pauses again. ["In this, most recent lifetime, she came to me...by now, I was more resigned than anything else...I made my goodbyes and set Westward to the greatest temple of our Brotherhood...my mind reeled at what danger might call me to give my life at the very heart of our strength... yet when I arrived, now her visions took me to a land I had never seen..."] ["...when the first reports from our first Walkers to the West, writing back from the Grand Convocation, described the craggy mountains of my visions, I knew that Europe was my destiny. I joined the group... and the rest you know."] ["It was therefore with some shock that I awoke again --alive-- in the Dutchy of Wolverines...sure enough, she came back to me...leading me to this Pub."] ["And here you stand, living incarnation of a vision that has been my guide and bane for longer than any nation in Europe has ever stood."] ["What do I know about your medallion, Stalks-rhya? I know it well...and know nothing at all."] ["In all this time I have never met anyone with a medallion such as yours...such as the one in my visions...and what this now bodes for me, to encounter a waking dream...I know not. When I again sleep tonight, I know not what will await me..."] ["Save that this surely will be an end for me."] ["Perhaps the last."] >>-Zhouting >> One thousand years of waiting and suddenly the answer appears. > >Stalks Hidden >Does that mean you're going to >stop threatening to kill us? -Zhouting Good question. I don't know. To wgp@topica.com From Jeffrey Sean Huo Subject Re [wgp] Visions with the Sibyl, pt 2 Date Mon, 05 Mar 2001 163152 -0800 Message-ID <0.1600017349.1985776743-951758591-983838712@topica.com> Reply-To wgp@topica.com X-Topica-Loop 1600017349 Received (qmail 29532 invoked by alias); 6 Mar 2001 003149 -0000 Received (qmail 29509 invoked by uid 0); 6 Mar 2001 003148 -0000 Received from changeofhabit.mr.itd.umich.edu (141.211.144.17) by inmta004.topica.com with SMTP; 6 Mar 2001 003148 -0000 Received from jeff (pm636-02.dialip.mich.net [207.75.181.108]) by changeofhabit.mr.itd.umich.edu (8.9.3/3.2r) with SMTP id TAA21357 for ; Mon, 5 Mar 2001 193145 -0500 (EST) X-Sender jeffshuo@j.imap.itd.umich.edu X-Mailer QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1 In-Reply-To <0.1600017349.912491414-951758591-983813674@topica.com> Mime-Version 1.0 Content-Type text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Status At 0934 AM 3/5/01 -0800, Kylinn wrote >On 03/05/2001, jeffshuo@umich.edu writes > >> At 0851 PM 3/4/01 -0800, Kylinn wrote >> >jeffshuo@umich.edu writes >> ...and in time I simply came to accept her >> as part of my Karma. Blessing or curse? >> Reward or Punishment? Vengeful spirit or >> guiding patron? I knew --know-- not."] > >"Blessing." Stalks says decisively. > >"To know with certainty that you will die >doing good, accomplishing something worth- >while - surely that's a blessing." ["If I knew that, yes,"] Zhouting agrees. ["But I don't."] ["You see, the real question is, am I being brought to a place that needs rescue from dark enemies...or are the enemies being brought to me?"] ["Are these terrible things threatening innocents on their own accord, and I am being brought to stop them...or were those terrible things summoned and the innocents put in danger *specifically* to force me to stand and die?"] ["After all, one could argue --and the data would convincingly show-- that none of the places I've been to were ever in danger until I showed up...the levee never showed signs of breaking; nobody had ever seen a Kumo in that village...it's not until I get there that suddenly there's something terrible that they need to defend against!"] ["Blessing or curse? Is she seeking to make my death worth it...or is she forcing me to die? She reveals not. And I can only guess..."] ["The only way I could test it is to let the horrors pass me by and see what happens...and that is a risk I cannot and will not take."] ["And perhaps she knows this, and in doing so traps me."] >> ["Save that this surely will be an end for me."] >> >> ["Perhaps the last."] > >"Are you ready for that?" Stalks seems >startled. Zhouting's clinging to guilt >over his wife's death doesn't seem to >her to be a mark of someone who's ready >to step off the Wheel. ["It matters not,"] he says, simply. ["I have the distinct feeling I will not have any say in the matter...that it will not be release from the wheel... but a shattering into an oblivion from which I will not return."] ["It will be the end of the road...not because I have reached my destination... but because the road will *end*, and Oblivion will take me."] ["Fighting and screaming with my very last breath, if it must."] >> >Stalks Hidden >> >Does that mean you're going to >> >stop threatening to kill us? >> >> -Zhouting >> Good question. I don't know. > >Stalks Hidden >What more proofs of our purpose and >intentions could you possibly _need? -Zhouting The White Howlers didn't *start* Wyrm-ridden, either.