Rough Manuscript

He gazed. His stare playing dead, gormless without a sense of direction or cause. His bright, colourful eyes remained listlessly apathetic, for what he had witnessed drew his senses to a close. It had only been a short number of years since he had been discovered, though in proportion to his lifespan, he might as well have been there for several centuries. Syphil's ears heard naught, seldom a whistling tune of the crackling, spitting flames, eagerly devouring the shelter he had called home right in front of him. The silence was unnerving. What of the other orphans, still trapped within the building? What of them? What of Sister Lute? Syphil's thoughts travelled no further than this. The embers had crawled too close for him to observe without losing his sense of sight, leading him to shut his eyes, fall to the ground, catch his breath, and make a manic dash for safety. His hearing returned to him, and thats when he heard them. The screams, the raw agony of tortured souls. In his mind, he almost felt as though they were chasing him. The faster he ran, the louder they became.

I thought. thats all i can do right, i suppose. my epistemological adventures are an utter mystery to absolutely all but myself. as far as my thought-based hemispheres are aware, there are no books about thinking, just texts describing ideas worth thinking about. none can teach another how to think, as the very act of thinking defines us as living creatures, and serve as a template for our identities and personalities. i remember my first thought, i must not have been wholly sentient prior to that day. it was when the original orphanage, the one in Neustria, burned down. in all honesty, just terrible. my thoughts were pathetic, short, and entirely irrelevant to the situation i was dealing with. i was an complete thinking amateur, and yet, even with almost a 2 full decades of thinking experience under my belt, my mind as of yet cannot settle on a single correct detail about that moment.'

why? i can describe the movements of particles, the behaviour of human cells, the metaphors embedded in every poet's repertoire, and yet, my mind reaches an infinite blank the moment i attempt to tactfully explain the vivid memories haphazardly buried in my subconscious. the priest, father acrod would not accept that, rightfully so. dozens of horrifically burned corpses, barely distinguishable from pitch, that lay dormant within the remains of the orphanage. the embers must have been so furious, i thought. it almost had seemed as though the flames had left a deep, sullied crater where my home of several years once stood. sister lute was not asleep, she had burned in hell to get to heaven. i practically watched the smoke rise, though her soul became difficult to track as the night was frighteningly dark. the fire was so loud, much too loud. it whistled, hissed, and made a manner of other noises my childish interpretations falter to comprehend.

there was no alcohol in the building, only some minor merchant's supplies. travellers often used the building not as a place of worship, but for a less-than-reputable manner of storing money or stock. my favourite traveller was Kolli, who shared with me his collection of books. he was dutchman who was under employment of the Borean Parish, as he was contractually obligated, and therefor responsible, for overseeing horseback transportation between their libraries. he carried large, acrid crates of varying sizes, filled with novels and books, binder-to-binder, stacked as tightly as possible. Kolli, for whatever reason, had an iron grip on every book the parish had confiscated, for disgracing god. i fail to understand how something akin to fermented wood in a binder is capable of committing a sin. sister lute taught me how to read, however kolli taught me how to understand. they had always had a bizarre relationship, as kolli seemed religious only in the sense that he found rituals amusing. he always told me of many different rituals found across our heptant, and the varying cultures who practiced them. listening to him, i was made all but convinced to join an obscure cult in south-western providence. it was obvious kolli worked under priests. his voice was made for singing, and it was perfect for bed-time stories. sister lute hated those stories, possibly because they occasionally clashed with the bible's teachings. i fail to see how knowledge can be hurtful.

as i age, more and more of the stories kolli divulged with me seem to have genuine significance in the political landscape of Eos. if my thoughts permit me to reminisce, i recall kolli regaling me of the noble heritage of children at the orphanage. osher, for instance, was apparently a twice-removed descendant of the luforthers, a short-lived joint noble family of the lutherians and the forthers whom held influence over land in the far east. apparently, following the extinction of the lutherians, osher and his siblings were abandoned in the suburbs of paris out of spite. his heritage mattered to me not, as he refused to abide to the standard of hygiene the rest of us held. in that regard, i felt much more noble than any bastard son. kolli said it was visible in osher's eyes, hair, and manner of speaking. this, as with the rest of kolli's conversations, was held in secret. as explanation, kolli told me the matter could be of an offensive or sensitive nature. osher was taken by a Hochdeutsch-speaking couple a year and 23 days before the fire. kolli speculated on the origins of the other children, as the 'commission' had apparently outlawed a certain degree of child-abandonment, meaning that orphans, street children, and runners were rare. i had understood this, as the chancellor of our dukedom, fudée, had personally confronted me on the details in once him and his forces found me wandering the damp, stained halls of chalres in december of 1900. i had ruined this place. this i knew.

for much of my childhood, Holy Frankia was in the midst of recovering from a viscious natural disaster of incredible scale. kolli never spoke about it, and the books had naught but one mention of it, so it must have been quite recent relative to my adolescence. the only mention, a passage from the introductory author's section of the novella "mon sacré" by mary villiore. the passage contained a "dedicated to the lives lost in the flood of 1900", and included a short list of people, some sharing the author's last name, along with their date of birth. the book itself was an uninteresting piece of science fiction that was riddled with errors, plot holes, and unoriginal characters. it was published in 1902, however kolli told me he had seen a very similar manuscript confiscated in 1901. osher really liked mon sacré, but said he could never quite explain why. to this day, i have faith that he could not understand a word of the text, and simply found it apt to seem far more intellectual than his young capabilities could afford him. i am of the opinion, or rather, paranoid belief, that my birth was exclusively responsible for the apparent deluge that struck the kingdom on the year of my birth. it just occurred to me now that kolli may have attempted to hint at this possibility, as there were many a moment between us wherein he spoke of the old beliefs of the empire.