Hey, guys. Remember how a little over a year ago did magic to help Deeds slay the storm, lost Marty for, like, 24 hours, and brought the Book of Briars through time to unlock it? Yeah. That was a year ago.
Personally, I wish I’d done a little more to recognize the day, but my job in the mundane has been pretty crazy for a couple of months, and by the time I really thought about it, the Equinox had come and gone.
Anyway, in the last year it seems like the magiq here has sort of slowed to a trickle, and I guess I made this topic because I wanted a place to mark the anniversary. I thought it might be nice to have a free-for-all spot to reminisce, talk about magiq we remember making, things we felt cough terroratbeinghuntedbyamalevolentcloudofsouls cough, things we’ve seen in the last year in the mundane that remind us that what we did was real. Even if you weren’t here last year, feel free to share something anyway. Maybe a bit of magiq led you here, or you’ve seen something since that you feel has some magiq in it.
(Also, while I’m sitting here being nostalgic, figure I should plug Rev’s magiqal version of Inktober, which starts tomorrow!)
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A year already? Are you sure it wasn’t just last week? Goodness. Time is happening faster than I thought.
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I often think back to the days leading up to the Day of Change and the opening the Book of Briars. I think about all the preparation that went into it, all the discoveries we made along the way, with Deirdre, with Martin, with Cole. Reading about it in Martin’s books makes it seem like it was all yesterday.
Over this past year, exploring Neithernor with Oracle and searching this mundane world for Woolie’s lost memories have kept magiq close. I think the thing, for me, that has the most magiq left in it is this community - this last enclave of believers. I like to think that as long as we’re together, magiq won’t really ever die in the world.
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I agree. You know, I’ve been thinking of myself as the custodian of this company, waiting for Deirdre to come back, or some magiq force to take over, waiting for The Book of Briars to finally open, but maybe I’ve been wrong. Maybe we have to take what we have, what’s left, and build something new. The new Mountaineers, with you guys as the guild leaders and welcomers of new recruits, like when you all met Endri, Eaves, Itsuki, and Bash. Maybe we need to focus on spreading the word about the Guide and the books Martin wrote. I’m no Ascender, but in the face of so much uncertainty and doubt, maybe it’s time to start again. Not rebuilding. Building something new. We were left with nothing but each other and the ashes of The Little Red House.
But ashes make fertile soil.
I’ve been doing too much waiting.
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@Saberlane I don’t think we need another Ascender. As important as he was, we are not his Mountaineers. We live in a different Book (am I using that word right?) and as such, our needs are different. To me, Ascender seemed like a protector, a guardian of magiq. At the moment, storms quelled and evil corporations dissolved, we don’t need that. We don’t need an Ascender. We need someone to bind us together now, someone to remind us of what brought everyone together and what keeps us here, loyal to the call of magiq. We need a Saberlane. You’re right. This is something new, and while the past was important, it’s not here anymore. We are here, and we are the ones who, at long last, opened The Book of Briars. Clearly we’ve done something right. Let’s not mourn the past, and look wholeheartedly towards whatever comes next.
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Perfectly said, and taken to heart. We get to decide who we are and what we want to do in this new book.
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You’re right, Sabes. When I think about it, all the magiq we ever did was by our own drive to do it. We organized, we came up with spells, we put out new ideas into the world. There was no great revelation after the Book of Briars was opened, so maybe we need to build that new age of magiq for ourselves. Share the books, grow our community, and empower each other to find new paths to magiq. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to do the incredible acts we did previously, but we’ll never know if we don’t try.
I was digging through the archives earlier today, looking up an odd magimystical term that’d been brought up once or twice. It was in Fragment Seven, the Unknown Illiomancer. And I noticed something in one of Sullivan’s notes - “but illiomancy can’t work now…why taught? Passing on useless knowledge?” But, what if it wasn’t useless knowledge? What if there are ways to make it work, somehow? I don’t know, but it feels worthwhile to investigate the old ways, and to make up some new things as well.
I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about this a lot since we learned about Woolie fading away, and the slower frequency of the Ackerly Green ghost posts. We can’t sit around and wait for magiq to beat us over the head with the inspiration stick. We’ve gotta be the change we want to see. For every new era, there has to be people to usher it in, right? I don’t think our work was done with the Book of Briars unlocking. I think that was just the beginning of this journey.
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I don’t think this is related to the Secret Society, but there was a bunch of construction on our office floor yesterday so I took Deirdre up on her offer last year to use the brownstone whenever I wanted. Not only did it look like someone had been there recently, (!!!) but I also found the bottle of ashes Deirdre kept on the mantel, all that was left of The Little Red House.
We were all just discussing how we had to build something new from the ashes…
Well, looks like new beginnings are going around:
I didn’t open the bottle, but there’s a little… berry bush growing inside. Growing from the remnants of a book.
I know how important this is to Deeds so I left it there for now.
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It looks like there is still some magiq in the world, after all.
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