Flashback Literature Mountaineering

[Eridanus]

Eridanus laughed coarsely at her sudden detour from her thesis. Was that her attempt to emphasize her own lack of self-esteem? Or was that depreciating behavior her subconscious method of complimenting him?

"It's all about perspective, ma'am. While to you I may seem perfect, I am far from it. I am but a shadow of my original self. A heavenly being of the divine! How majestic that must be! But yet, I have been damned to mortality, and trapped here with no way of returning to my one true home. I am only but a shadow of who I really am, of who I could be! Would that grant you a sense of worth? Perhaps, if you were to inherit my assets without my flaws, for only then when you have seen what I seen, and been through what I've been through, would you understand such a thing."

These words were spoken with the wisdom and experience of a being who had walked Mizahar for two centuries, and was uncharacteristic in that he usually had a lighter-hearted tone in his words. It was normal for people to consider themselves his elder due to his ageless appearance, so doing so might intimidate them. Realizing this, he quickly smiled dazzlingly to the librarian and switched up his tone of voice to a more conversational one.

"That said, do continue, ma'am. Since you reached the point of helplessness - like in my current state right now - what did you do to pull yourself out of this hole? What was your breakthrough?"

[Philomena]

Minnie lives, of course, in a city full of mystery and exotic sights, of foreign visitors and experienced sailors. She works at a university containing more records of more of the world, perhaps, than any other place in Mizahar. But Minnie, herself, has limits to her cosmopolity.

The long description the man launches into with all the candor and casual seriousness of a man forced to recall his grandmother's funeral leaves Minnie blinking, the eyes clearly searching for some foothold on reality. One does not simply, in casual conversation, learn that one is speaking with an immortal - a Nuit, perhaps, those she had experienced, but the man did not have the black tongue, or the strange eyes. It would be inaccurate, then, to say that Minnie does not consume the information, but her mind takes the data, puts it in a nice dark box, and slips it on a shelf to be consumed and processed later.

Her mood changes, however, subconsciously. Where she had been, more or less, comfortable before - after all, a student in the library, with no particularly agressive behavior about him, who is being respectful and polite, this is a character with whom she has a clear position and role. Now, he is not that, he is an unknown quantity. Her face, quietly candid before, retracts a little, into a cautious, subtle fear - not any profound or awesome fear of a semi-divine being, mind you, simply the habitual fear of a woman who finds humanity a little bit intimidating for its lack of parseable pages.

"That is... yes... I... sorry."

She is unclear what she's apologizing for, so she simply lets the apologize languish vaguely, and continues her story, a bit less condescendingly (or motheringly, depending on one's point of view) a bit more respectfully (or cringingly, depending on one's point of view).

"I... yes, well, I... I gave up, honestly, sir. I went out to the streets, to... there is a place I... I like to go, that is quiet, it wouldn't be... very interesting to you, I imagine, but, I am not a very interesting person in that sense. And I sat there, and it was spring-time, then, and there was this... this woman, a young mother, about my age, across the street, trying to comfort her baby, as she looked at... at the flowers in the garden of the manor... And she... she sang this song, a folk song about Dunegair Stormswallow, the... captain who was the subject of the Valterriad. You know. The epic poem. Of course. Yes. Well, that's all, its not much of a story, just... that going out to see the world where poetry comes from, I saw it very differently. So, that's... what I wrote the thesis... about. How oral history and tradition in Post-Valterrian Mizahar was transformed into the written early poetic tradition. That's all. It was... not a particularly... yes. That's all."

She stares at her book, on the table, and quietly picks it back up, to hold to her chest.

[Eridanus]

The woman's sudden change in attitude upon his unwieldy exposition was not lost on the ethaefal, and he sighed inaudibly, replying in a soothing manner, "Please be at ease, ma'am. Calling me sir sounds weird too, especially considering your superiority in academic station." With that he gave a hearty (though slightly forced) laugh (to put her in a more relaxed state) before he realized that he was doing so in the library, and thus apt to be further chastised by her.

He coughed softly, then mentioned a little awkwardly, "Sorry for that. Ahem. Anyway, so you're saying that you gained your inspiration through a random event? Or perhaps one that may be arranged by fate, or the meddling of gods to induce you to experience such an experience? It is hard to say, isn't it?"

The student faded into silence, thinking about his experience with magecraft, with magic, with Wejerx, and with Resonant Harmonics. Of all the different types of paradigm that he had studied, utilized, and been tested on, he realized that his primary question was regarding the need for so many different types of paradigms. Resonant Harmonics, Impact Smithing, Kinetic Polarity, Ritualized Scripture, they were all vastly different methodologies but ultimately sharing some sort of common core - that was why that all resulted in the same product. What was the core that drives them, that made them similar? Is there a way to unify these ideas?

If Phil had been looking at him, she would have seen the thought processes slowly reaching this conclusion as he reached deep into contemplative thought.

"Perhaps, yes perhaps," He murmured to himself. Then suddenly he turned to Phil and asked abruptly, "However, have you ever felt that your thesis is too big? That it possibly covers something so huge or so complex that it might be unsolvable? What happens if we do reach a point when we suspect that that might be the case?"

[Philomena]

Minnie listens to the man, and watches quietly as his face wanders through his thoughts. Silence is far easier, after all, why would she interrupt him? She sinks back, not a movement so much as a stance, a way of ceasing to assert the necessity of response with her body cues, and simply waits, watching the man's face, examining closely the subtle movements of eye and lip and cheek and brow that come with silent thought. The slight torsions and inclinations of the neck. She does not move, except her eyes, which flit quietly from one part of him to another, to the books, back to him, and which blink, now, more than is normal.

When the man speaks, she stays silent a moment, her own brow furrowing, for perhaps half a minute, just long enough to be uncomfortable,not quite so long as to imply she is not going to eventually respond, "I... you will understand I mean this respectfully, but you confuse the idea of a thesis, with that of a life's work. I... with all due respect have suggested in the past that mages ought to take classes in writing and literature for this very reason. Everyone should have a life's work, something that IS too big, too unwieldly to ever finish. This is how progress is made. A thesis, that's just one specific question, one very small point. IT is the brick from which one builds a life's work. My life's work is the life and writing of Kenabelle Wright and the members of the Circumnavigation. But a thesis is something smaller - my first published thesis, for instance, was on eh... the influence of nautical log-keeping on the writing of Kenabelle Wright. A small question, one that I can approach in an essay, but big enough, and valuable enough to demand answering."