tale

> There has been a lot of talk about me. Harsh talk, decrying my work as fraudulent, and accusing me of being a huckster. They call my research shoddy, talk abut jumped conclusions and a myriad of other unpleasant things. Why? I just cannot understand why people don't believe it.

> Stargazing as an art and science has fallen out of favor in recent years. Maybe because there isn't much to see besides the low hanging stars and the blackness, but I respectfully disagree. Looking up to heaven is a way to move forward, and wonder what could lie in the beyond. So as a reward for my enthuiasm for the practice, I often get sent to map out the sky.

> There was a lot of walking. It wore out my boots, socks, and the souls, but I had a mission and was going to do it well. Either I could make maps for the pleasure of others, or the whole field would fade away. Trekking like this went through places like the binding, winding lands of the tollbons, and up the high, puffy hills of Teba. Every night, my scope would be set up and pointed, searching and asking for the answer. But there was only the black, foggy sky, and silence. Usually.


> The first time I saw it was in the hills. This was a spot I had never looked up to before, nobody had. There were entire new systems I could create. But then as I gazed, something was wrong. The stars were twinkling as they did, but some of them were gone... they'd blink out of the patchwork for a minute, then return, like an indecisive seamstress was sowing the thread of the universe.
>
> Then, there wasn't. Looking up, I saw something anew. It was just a sliver at first, a touch of light dancing across the scopes glass eye, a small spirit of new in a dank, indifferent blanket of fog. It seemed to demand my attention, and it grew rapturously as I watched. Extending as though God pulled a flap on the sky, this new world peeled open, and let in a darker night. It wasn't the same dark. This was solid, inky blackness, which swallowed the sky and spread through it, moving across every feature and fixture until it was everything.
>
> Then, it descended onto me.


> I don't know why it decided to spare me. The sky fell around every place except where I had camped, sweeping up around the plains and valleys, swallowing them into a vast sea. Before I could even blink, everything in this new sky began swirling again. This time, towards the old heavens that had taken their place again.
>
> The violent tempest swirled around me, smashing through all barriers and creating a sound comparable to the death of a god. Its typhonous roar grew louder and louder as it was torn asunder, spiraling and entwining itself back through the rip. It came in thousands of miles, shifting and bending until it reached its zenith. Then, it was gone, up to whence it had come.

> I learned in the next weeks. Secrets and informal unknowns were taught to me, showing me how all things were, had been, and would have to be. No stone was left upturned, and no lifetime was not lived. Peering through the haze of sky and sea, the stars bestowed the gift of knowledge upon me. They were up there, waiting for the gaze of one they could trust. They weren't the small, glistening flesh stars I had known, but large glorious charges that would move him to heaven.

> I didn't want to go. I stayed sitting at the lap of this sky for a long, long time. But the knowledge of home kept coming back. There was a responsibility to let the others know, to tell them what I had experienced. So, the trek homeward began. Through the narrow caverns, scraping through the old mines, walking towards old places.

> As this journey continued, I thought about things. The stuff I'd learned was almost overwhelming, but it was important that everyone knew. I crossroad was on the horizon, and it brought times of trouble. The tide was coming.

> Many were surprised to see me, as almost all had surmised my doom or destruction. But I had lived and seen much, more then any of their lifetimes could show. On the restful day I emerged to the Hall, declaring what had been learned. Some sought to listen, but others shut it out. For the majority the words confused them, and I was taken before a trial.

> I'm so sorry. They just don't understand the things I am telling them. Maybe they can't accept where we are. They might one day, but not today,

= //They were in an ark, and the tide was coming.//