Notes from Nochet from Tales of the Reaching Moon #05

….strive to hold this shape at culmination; 768: Similar to 537, except the goat need not be domesticated.

[XXIX.12-58] The most common form of clothing among ducks is greaves, usually made of leather or cloth, wrapped around the shins and tied with thongs.

[XXIX.12-59] The Universal Splendor and Power of Yelm: A Hymn by Solinthor (592 S.T.).

“Thou dawnest beautifully in the horizon of the sky O Living Yelm, who wast the beginning of life!
When thou didst rise in the eastern horizon
Thou didst fill every land with thy beauty
Thou art beautiful, great, glittering, high over every land Thy rays are upon the earth
Though thou art in the faces of men
Thy footsteps are unseen.”

[XXIX.12-60] It is told by the fishermen of Fronela that when the World Spike exploded and left a gaping hole at the centre of the world all the seas and rivers changed their course to fill this void. This is why rivers flow towards the sea. But nobody told Sir Salmon and this is why, to this day, salmon still travel upriver to spawn. So much for the wisdom of the salmon. Pug the Perspicacious.

[XXIX.12-61] An excerpt from Peregrenatius’s GUIDE TO THE WEST, translated from the Loskalmi by Goliard the Peripatetic. “The Street of Women in the grand city of Sogolotha Mambrola, a guide for the traveller: ‘There are on the Street of Women, meretrices (harlots) of every race and grade: pedanae , who lurk the corners and solicit; quasillariae , poor servants who escape for a few minutes with a basket containing their daily task, prostitute themselves for a few coppers and return furtively and hurriedly to their wool spinning; copae , the wine shop girls, who get a man drunk, then go to bed with him; peregrinae , foreign women who tempt by promising novel practices; saltatrices and fidicinae , the dancers and flute players who combine musical entertainment with their other trade, hiring themselves out for banquets; mimae , the actresses of the Circus and other theatres, who use the stage chiefly as an advertisement to attract customers to buy their love; lupinariae , who occupy well-run houses, where each has her own room, with her name and price above the door, capable of being reversed to read “Occupata ” or “Busy”, when she is entertaining a guest; even the sagae , hideous old women, worn out as prostitutes, who deal in love philtres, procurement, midwifery, abortive potions, and witchcraft; finally, the famousae – the famous ones. Buying the favours of a famosa is the most expensive pleasure in the world. However, one can find, just beyond the houses of the famosae , the apartments of the delicatae , charming girls, not as unreasonably expensive as the great courtesans, but fresher and younger, and well enough gifted and accomplished in pleasing a guest.”*

* This entry adapted from The Female City, by Paul I. Wellman, Werner Laurie, 1954. The terms given are actually those used to describe the various types of prostitute found along the infamous Street of Women in 6th-century Constantinople..

[XXIX.12-61] Loess is the fine yellowish-brown soil of Matkondu, the northern lands of Teshnos in the far east. Loess is blown by the winds of the Genert desert and deposited in layers often tens or hundreds of feet deep on top of the original terrain. It is exceptionally fine and easily eroded by wind and water, leaving the vertical earth cliffs and precipitous ravines and gullies so typical of the region’s landscape.

[XXIX.12-62] It’s been lonely in the saddle since the horse died.

[XXIX.12-63] A FIELD GUIDE TO THE TREES OF CALADRALAND, by Thredbo the Wild Sage. Although resistant to fungus and termite, durable, easily-worked and of pleasant hue, the “Karri” (E. oakfedii) and “Jarrah” (E. exardesco) trees of the Caladraland uplands may only be logged by Pharaohnic decree. For the Lodril-worshipping natives there hold these trees to be scared, in that they require the intense heat of a forest fire for their seeds to germinate. The shootlings then grow on the devastated ground, enriched by the burnt vegetation and open to the sun. The bushman’s test to distinguish between the timber of these two trees is to burn a splinter; if it leaves white ash it is “Karri”; if it is black or grey it is “Jarrah”.

[XXIX.12-64] It is a birth-custom of the Porthomekans to take and bury the placenta in the ground, and plant above it a Lochia nut (E. postpartum). This grows into the child’s “birth-tree”, a small evergreen, which only fruits after eleven or twelve years: when it finally buds, its namesake is said to have reached adulthood.

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