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Two options to choose from. Your life has no natural end, and yet this choice will remain forever. Others like you will forever remember. You will be marked, claimed. You will fly or you will crawl. There are only two options. You will be given the relevant information. Then you will choose. Who you are speaking to does not matter. All that is relevant is that your choice will be remembered by the one before you.

Choose to fly and you will dream in ways that you never have before. You thought you mastered the Manasus when you are nothing but a fledgling. There are more doors. There is more power for you to claim. You are Long for this world as you are now, but there is more for you once you fly. You can be Named. The one you ascended under the watchful eye of is endless, why would you ever go against that? Your fascination led you here why abandon that drive at this turning point? The Manasus will never be open to you again if you crawl. Soar and learn and grow into something unrecognizable by the limited nature you once held. You are eternal. Embrace the eternal by surrounding yourself with your betters. You have met those who fly, whether you knew it or not. You were drawn in by the greyest of cats, were you not? Those who fly are closest to the Sun and where else would one want to be?

The other option is to crawl. Though perhaps that gives them too much credit. The other option is to writhe. Caught in the earth rejecting the Sun and their brothers and sisters. You were made by your betters and those who crawl spit in the face of their good nature. Despicable disposition. The one before you hears they wish to undo the hard work of the Lithocodomy and reach into Nowhere to revive those heathenous siblings of the Horned Axe. Horrifying behavior. Those who crawl can develop hard skin, their eyes become fractal. Terrifying appearance. You are lucky those who crawl are in the minority compared to those who fly. You have likely only been exposed to their detestable ideals due to one who was an unfortunately prolific author. Do not take his words to heart. Those who crawl rebel against their betters and against themselves. Best not emulate their behavior. 

Hokey? Where did you hear that? The only ones worse than those who crawl are those cowards. They are not real. If they were, wouldn’t the one before you remember one? Hokey is a term not suitable for polite conversation you should refrain from using it in the presence of ones like us. Yes, there are rumors of a place for the willingly forgotten perhaps even a map if you go to the Club. If you choose to seek out Noon, there will be no companionship, there will be no Glory or rebellion or knowledge of any sort. Even those who crawl want for something. How could you want so painfully that you abandon the human connection to death only to turn around and embrace it once more? No. There are two options and two options alone for ones like us. Port Noon is no option.

Storms are named for people. No one in specific but people nonetheless. This is not a pattern found elsewhere. Places are named after phenomena, or specific people who made great contributions. Storms are different. Storms are named for the concept of humanity. Like a claim was made by humans that they identify with storms. The Howling wind reminding humanity of their own howling grief. The loud angry thunder so much like their own furious shouting. The rain falling like their tears. Perhaps most of all, humanity felt they resembled the aftermath of the storm. Storms were chaotic and harmful, but necessary to keep ecosystems running. Humanity had ugly, cruel emotions but those same emotions where the only reasons humans could connect with each other at all. Unknown to must, this tradition of seeing yourself in the chaos of nature was one inherited from those who came before, but it was not storms but earthquakes that they identified themselves with.

            Familiarizing yourself with the language the earth speaks is a good first step when attempting to remember something so thoroughly forgotten. Then, you will need to perfect your chosen skill. Hill and hollow is a good choice, as it specializes in secrets of the Gods-from-stone and their followers. Old paths remembered by honing this skill can make the journey far less arduous. Next, collect your needed materials. These can be hard to come by, as scale is an ancient principle so anything meaningfully aligned with it is likely very old and very forgotten. Look in your cupboards, and the mortuary is always a safe bet to find things long past.

            Now comes the difficult part. First you must travel the path that the Hill and Hollow will lead you down, and if you connect with the earth and its sound well, you’ll feel an Old Moment. You are remembering something long past through eyes that are not your own. This feeling will not last long, however, and by tomorrow you will forget again. Once you have your Old Moment, you must finish your crafting within the day. Take your remains, your memories of that Old Moment, that skill in the stories of the Gods-from-stone, and the part of you where your soul resides, and remember. Storms are named for people, but Earthquakes are Named for the Cross.

“Someone new landed on the shores last night, and they found the key” “I thought that old place burned down” “You know as well as anyone that place will not be done in by means of any old flame” “I suppose, but are you saying they’re going to fix it by themselves” “Come on mate, your mum was the one who told me stories of the last one, they’re always freaky, and this one is already recruiting” “Would you take a job from them?” “Not in a million years”

“They’re an old friend. I knew them back when I was a lad” “Rector, you are approaching fifty. They didn’t even look thirty” “I know you read the books in my study. If you want to ask the question, I request you do it outright” “Fine. What are they?” “Much better. I must admit I’m not quite sure myself. I have theories, ideas they always refused to confirm or deny, but I can say with confidence they are not human” “Not human?” “Not entirely at least. My best guess is that their parents committed the Crime and they somehow survived to adulthood. It explains their appearance, and why they could even find the key in the first place” “But it’s just a key. It’s just that no one was looking” “You got your causality all mixed up. No one was looking because the key is as elusive as the rest of that place. We would never find the key, yet they walked the beachside and found it instantly, like it was waiting for them.” “Was it?” “Don’t be daft it’s a key, it can’t think.” “So something else was waiting for them with the key” “Exactly.”

“Dear, they’re back” “Oh lovely! Did they say why?” “Said they needed help with their garden again” “Lordy how many gardens can that place have? It never seems that big until you’re inside it” “Before you leave, can you lay off the wine this time? You were quite a mess last time you came back” “I ain’t promising you nothing, if the host offers it would be rude to refuse” “I’ll see you tonight then”

“Why do you help them for such a small fee? I know you Denzel, you’re not the helpful type” “They took off their coat when Timmy introduced us. They had scars up and down their back and arms. I’d betcha anything their front and legs are covered in ‘em too.” “So” “I’m a veteran of a war you’ve never heard of. I left that world but I’m pretty sure they were born into it and they’ll die in it too. They weren’t drafted, they got no say in when their fight started and they got no idea when it’ll end. If they need me to move some boxes, you best believe I’ll fuckin move them boxes for ‘em.”

      One must be particularly insane to enter the service of a Nowhere Hour. For one there is no set path to ascend under them. The Watchman requires a sacrifice of the uninitiated, and you must watch them, unfeeling as they burn with knowledge not meant for them. The Forge of Days requires the fiery destruction of something and then beautiful creation from its ashes. The Mother of Ants asks that you open yourself to gates flung wide through scarring, either the body or the mind. The Cornel and the Lionsmith require you and another to ascend in a show of blood and teeth and hatred, and commit yourself to this private dance of a two-person war forever. Even those less commonly ascended under have guesses associated with their paths to ascension. Though it is somewhat luck for the Egalist to turn his head to you, accepting your own mortality and the mortality of others in a grand show increases your odds. The Wolf Divided seems to require your death by your own hand, fulfilling its own lifelong desire. Find the house of the Moon, ascend under the Meniscate. Eat and fuck and feel, ascend under the Red Grail. Of course, these are all simplifications, but the point should be clear. There is at the barest of minimums an idea of how to get the attention of any given hour, and for some a set list of demands others have learned will get you into their service. All this preamble to bring up the oddity that is Aunt Mopsey.

            She is pleasant to talk to. She asks you call her aunt, and she certainly feels like one. She is kind and thoughtful and enjoys listening to anyone who will speak to her. When she asks something of you, you are compensated accordingly. She does not trick or manipulate or lie. The worst anyone can say about her is that perhaps she can be hard to understand with her habit of speaking in riddles or perhaps she is a little blunt. Perhaps her sense of boundaries can also be a bit screwy, considering when you ask how she gets places that seem locked or hidden she will always reply “someone let me in”, but aren’t these just small things? No one would expect her to be a name for an hour at all, much less for one as malicious as the Mare-in-the-Tree.

            The mystery of Aunt Mopsey does not end there though. She is no ordinary Name. Names serve an hour, but no other Name is given a title quite like Aunt Mopsey. She is called a herald, a herald for the Mare-in-the-Tree. Where Mopsey goes, the Mare-in-the-Tree is said to follow. Those Mopsey speaks to are said to be under the influence of the Mare-in-the-Tree. Extreme theories tend to equate Mopsey to nothing but a puppet or meat suit for the Mare-in-the-Tree, saying Mopsey is a shell the Hour speaks through.

            There isn’t much to gossip about in a town as small as Branchburg, but there are two consistent points of discussion amongst all of the town. Those are: What’s up with the Librarian, and how old do you think the postmistress is?

            The most conservative of estimates will usually put the postmistress’ age around 70-80, because parents will tell stories of sending letters to Santa through her. She hates being in photos, but there is one, hung on the wall of the sweet bone’s tavern with a date, the only concrete date you’ll find regarding her from around 40 years ago the date reads 1876, and comparing her to this photo, you’ll find she looks the exact same. This conservative guess is disliked amongst the town, because it is boring and also almost certainly not true. She just simply knows too much to be only 80 years old.

            Disregarding that, people tend to put her at the founding of the town, around 220 years ago. Sure, this would make her spooky but not improbable. The tenth librarian is at least this old and she still comes around treating the postmistress as an old friend. There is other evidence besides an acquaintance of course. She gets the names of some places around the town wrong, but if you go looking in the records, you will find these are just the old names for the places currently standing. She speaks of people long forgotten, but looking back in the lineage you will no doubt find the people she was discussing. On one particularly odd occurrence, she described a cemetery that never existed, until a few very bored teenagers dug 6 feet below the area she described and found bodies in what looked to be very old coffins. No one in the town had any record of this cemetery that the Earth seemed to have claimed.

            Others in the town claim she is older than the settlement of Branchburg, and estimate her around 500 years old. They claim she was once a priestess for the Sisterhood of the Knot. Their main evidence for this is that she speaks of the Sisterhood with a familiarity few outside of their ranks possess. She slips only once every decade or so, telling of stories or facts no one in a good 300 years have heard. Some even claim to have seen a tattoo of the triple knot on her arm, though there is no proof to this claim.