A Drabbled History in Knowledge

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. 

From Tennyson's Ulysses

In knowledge we live and die.

 People retreated into distant corners and set up literal walls as the Romans had done many millenia prior. Caravans trekked the lands carrying loads of goods and people as they hurried to safety. Wary of each other of other things. Technology had brought much which was fantastic and forbidden to the forefront.


Shadows of nameless fear. Hidden societies. Secret cults. Inventions gone sour.

Among the chaos came the Druids. From the sky they came, riding upon bulbous clouds. They offered humanity their aid. Led by twin brothers these people from the sky beyond taught humans how to protect themselves from the shadows. They called it alchemy and it followed one sacred rule.

Equivalent exchange. So long as people put in something of equal value to what they wished to create or fix, anything was possible. With possibility in hand, humanity felt safe and in their safety they began to look further. Where did the Druids come from? What other worlds were beyond Earth? What other powers were possible?

The Druids would not tell and so suspicions grew. Just why did the Druids come when they did? Some said. Others stated they knew all along that the Druids were bad business. Technically the lot of insanity was down to a greedy human and a beautiful woman who too many people obssessed over, but that is another story for another day. Either way, what history came to call the Great War erupted and after, the Druids disappeared. Alchemy became outlawed as a new power sought to bring control to the lands. Remember, alchemy and love do not mix.

Under the Emperor Alexander the world prospered once more. Simply, albeit slowly and like life, this comfort was not truly comfort, was not truly felt, strongly and fully, until it was gone. Quickly. A short time it was. Only a hundred years and once again, shadows unknown whispered from the darkness. Alchemy trickled to the surface.

Humanities hunger for knowledge would not long sit starving and soon there was revitalisation of texts and tales. Those who were most hungry for knowledge; the ultimate quest for the truth of existence formed an organisation. The Rosicrucians.

Garbed in red they were. Trapped in gold chains about their wrists and foreheads, in symbol to their devotion to their quest and their duty; the seeking and protecting of all knowledge. As the Great War showed, lesser beings could not be trusted with such power. (Like kings. Or knights. Academics, whether they are alchemists or not, do spend their lives with their heads in towering castles so do try to understand their narrow stair perspective).

Which brings us to a covered wagon that rumbled along a Roman road. Still rutted, winding and narrow after countless millenia. It traveled to the village of Chesterfield, a haven caught between hills, river and forest and segregated from the world's wonders due to a great wall, put up to protect from nameless shadows, that was never felled.

But when the shadows come in human form, what is there to stop them? The human in question was a young man with a neat brown beard and twinkling eyes shaded by a cloth cap. A falcon was perched beside him and a barrel-chested horse pulled his home. Well, home it was to him. To you and me it was a sea of books, loose parchment, ancient scrolls, quill pens, broken clocks and an old gramophone. Caught between the past and the present this young man was admitted, albeit with the narrowed eyes of the gatesman watching him, to one of the last places on Earth to have not yet felt the fear of hungry knowledge.

Oh Chesterfield was full of intelligent people. They didn't lack knowledge. They just didn't have the tower-abiding sort. Or the sort which scrabbled and scrambled, pointing guns and and dropping traps on people for the bits generally belonging in museums. They were the sort who knew the land, knew the seasons and thanked the Earth for its generosity while whipping up in curious chatter when an itinerant tradesman huffed his way in, pushing a broken down lorry full of woven rugs from distant lands or the lady from over the hill came in her donkey cart piled with sweets.

When the alchemist came to Chesterfield this all changed. With him he brought knowledge which the village folk called magic. It simplified things. After all, what else can see a cold cured with a quick mix of a drink, rather than a fortnight of Nan's tangy teas or the your dropped pocketwatch could be fixed with a quick sketch of some symbols and a pile of spare gears to replace the bent ones.

He also brought peeping eyes to his shaded windows, and when he bothered to venture out for a client a wake of gratitude tinged with fear and anger followed his way.

He wasn't particularly polite.

Then again, when one is an alchemist who delights in the puzzle of broken things and can fix them with a quick brow quirk and other necessary bits, who needs to.

He did appreciate Matty's cakes though.

And that is where things went wrong. Well, started too. When she died things when very wrong, but really, haven't humans learned that alchemy and love never mix?

Not my place to interfere. I'm just a spectator. What are you? What will you do? What do you know?

(A/N: Thanks for reading! Just a heads up I am delving more seriously than I yet have in a long time in terms of properly completely a full novel so my blog posts will be relegated to photostory-esque drabbles like what I have been doing on and off. I'll work on fitting in more article-based things but at the moment I am wanting all my focus to go toward writing for the novel directly or expanding the universe it sits within. Hopefully in some months time this will be less of a priority and I will certainly go back to detailing travel-related experiences and tips as usual).

What is Fantasy? Truly?

Athena, the patron goddess of Athens virgins, wisdom and heroes who, fought her way out of Zeus's head at birth.

I am generally a patient person when it comes to respectfully listening to people's opinions and sides to their stories because, hey, I wouldn't be an observer if I couldn't do that.

Except when certain buttons get pushed. Then I go into defender knight mode. Well, there are different levels to it, but essentially, there are a few things that you do not push with me the wrong way; unless you want to get your ear ranted off.

Female empowerment, rights etc, Tolkien as himself, his works, and anyone who plays with it (ie: movies or fanfiction), ancient and modern Greece/Mediterranean culture and anything to do with fantasy or storytelling.

Now, all that quite briefly said, you are perfectly and rightly entitled to your own perspectives, judgements, whatever. Frankly, so long as we coexist without blowing each other into oblivion, then it's a live and let live world. Being impeccable with your word, no judgements, assumptions and always doing your best, remember?

That said, I am no perfect warrior of peace either. I have my fair share of judgments, assumptions and the like but I am human and I am practicing. That is all we can do.

To me, fantasy is a place where a great amount of that practicing can take place. Yes, getting out into this reality, interacting wih others and having experiences is the ultimate and main method, but when you are at home, in bed, about to go to sleep or moping about on a rainy day (if you are that sort), then reading fantasy allows for you to drop another lens over the reality we all live in by taking us to other lands and other persepectives. In short, I see fantasy as the first step to being able to live the Four Agreements, a bit like moving from training wheels to two wheels on bikes.

So following in the points that fantasy is just another lens over our reality (which is already an illusion in and of itself) and that fantasy is like training wheels to the full bike riding life of the Four Agreements then why is do people sneer at it, call it for children, for people afraid of "reality" or as something utterly fake?

First of all, labelling something as fantasy does not give either the author or the reader the right to be disrespectful to the cultures being borrowed from, the histories or people you are flashing a light on, Nor is it perfectly fine to not give any basis in realism because, "hey it's all made-up, for fun!"

Think of literary fiction for a moment. Is that made-up? Yes. Definitely. The only thing you might ever read that is not made-up should be non-fiction or articles of some kind. Then again, even those can have elements of storytelling or "selling" in them. People want you to read their words so they will go to all lengths to ensure you do. Think, click-bait, but in all forms of media.

So then, why, because something has the label of fantasy on it do people sneer at it?

In my opinion it goes right back to fear. People fear what is different, new, has no right or wrong answer, and what, in general, makes them question their belief system.

That is fantasy. It makes you face your fears. It makes you confront the reality that this world we live in is wholly fabricated by our perceived social and cultural values and mores. When really, at heart, we are just creatures of the Universe, beings of light, as much walking sticks of matter as the stars are great balls of it.

So the next time you label something fantasy, don't do so to worm out of your lack of research or respect of the human condition and the Universe.

Always fantastical because reality is the same.
Moony.


PS: Pandora had a jar, not a box, that whole kerfuffle came about because of a basic little mistake in terms of translation between Greek and English back in the 19th century.

Also, see the below image of a fresco once adoring an ancient Greek temple? Yeah, those pretty and austere white columns and statues were originally a playground of prime-colours. Brightly.