Pale 16.4: "Left In the Dust" bonus content ("100 Years Lost, Excerpts")

This ultra-pedantic excruciatingly detailed autistic review was fast lane comissioned by [USER=5472]@Aris Katsaris[/USER]

Time for more Pale extras! This one picks up fairly directly from the last Pale blurbs I looked at, going into more depth about Finding magic. "100 Years Lost" is an in-universe text assembled from the notes of a legendary Finder named Hazel. Which Hazel? Witch Hazel, probably, since they did magic and stuff. The author's note suggests that the publishing was done by descendants of Hazel, but it's not clear if we're talking biological descent or just traditional descent. IE, the inheritors of Hazel's Finder techniques may or may not also be her blood relatives.

I'm guessing Avery has just gotten her hands on this book in the main story.

Also, it appears to be its own entire long short story or short novella length story-within-a-story for Pale. This might take multiple posts.

I find before me the daunting task of revising, annotating, and producing the ninth edition of 100 Years Lost, with the bar for quality set high by my predecessors, my father, grandfather, and my grandfather's mentor.

100 Years Lost may be the most contentious and important text in the Finder community, and provoked a metamorphosis across the community that continues even today.  Without Hazel and her work, Finding might still yet be relegated to a select few, dismissed as madmen and gamblers, plumbing the realms of Dream.  My father once drew comparisons between our Hazel, last name unknown, and the pilot Amelia Earhart, with the distinction that our version of Amelia Earhart happened to do the equivalent of taking her plane to the moon, spent a lifetime there, brought back proof and incomplete knowledge of the journey and survival, and only then did she disappear.  The rest of us were left to scramble in a mad dash to make sense of it all, adapt, and advance.

I'm guessing Hazel spent 100 years in the warp finding stuff, and ended up floating back to the physical world atop a raft of kludged-together mini-dimensions? Granted, it might have also been 100 years for HER, in subjective time, rather than it having been a century that passed for Earth while she was gone. Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey, etc.

The ninth edition editor is not a great writer, I must say. This intro feels like deliberately mediocre writing meant to characterize the in-universe author as such.

The changes Hazel catalyzed continue today, which is one reason why we maintain editions of 100 Years Lost.  As our base of knowledge improves, so do our annotations and subsections exploring the passages, the curation of which is a difficult task laid before my fingertips.  The lovely Latimore family, the Gadsens, and the Inconnue enclave have kindly contributed knowledge and assistance that I certainly hope will be treasured for the coming centuries, and they have certainly and graciously made my job easier with their open communication.  Still, much happens and is revealed in the five years between editions and I hope my efforts are up to the task of tying those revelations back to Hazel's journey without taking away from the reader's ability to read Hazel's thoughts.

Like I said. The sentence composition here is Not Great, and a very different kind of Not Greatness than the issues I have with Pale's prose in general. Feels intentional.

But perhaps the most difficult thing before me is the reality my father would allude to but not say directly: that the changes Hazel brought us were not all good.  Hazel's disappearance and the furor that followed led to lines being drawn and family fighting family.  In the past, my father and grandfather used the Foreword and Afterword as a pulpit by which they would admonish other families or make their stances on the current state of practitioner family politics clear.  I have no interest in doing this.  With that in mind, I wish to make it clear that any omission of mention of any family or family discovery is not an intentional slight.  I bear no ill will, and as we approach the fifty year mark since Hazel found her way back to reality, I hope we can find our way to peace.

We will also avoid wasting page space on niche philosophy and considerations, such as the Dreamer Traditionalist, Absurdist, Giant Head, and Disintegrating Reality notions.  Some small mention is made of the Architect theory but this is largely due to the fact that it forms a tidy shorthand for referencing those key figures so many Finders encounter in their travels.

As a final note, I'll stress I've taken pains to soften the language of this text surrounding Hazel.  Much debate was had within the Wray family over this, as it constitutes erasure of my own father's words and judgments, without which we wouldn't be where we are today.  In making the final decision, I pinned a great deal on the fact my father softened my grandfather's words, and in writing for a modern audience I can and should do the same.  Where my father removed my grandfather's tirades and judgmental words to add in the somewhat kinder references to Hazel as a flighty twit, a woman prone to hysterics, and a scattered idiot, I've removed many of these, reserving my unkind words for only a handful of pointed incidents.

-Paris J. Wray

So, this book is a family drama compendium just as much as an actual grimoire. :/

True, Paris says that they're trying to *avoid* letting it be that. But then, they called out multiple people and seemed to snidely gesture at several others in the process of claiming that. The book's intro is fifty percent drama by mass.

Not really impressing me with your impartial scholarship here, Paris.

Well, hopefully the actual Hazel texts don't have too many layers of political bullshit scrawled on top of them.

Hazel notes: These first twenty or thirty parts I transcribe from an old notebook I'd found that was unfortunately damaged by water and soiled with blood.  A fortuitous find of a new book, though small, proved to have endless pages, resistant to the climate.  I make my revisions and add additional thoughts.

Editor's Note: It is unfortunate our lost damsel did this and did not keep the old book.  Later notes make reference to pages and parts that we believe were removed in the revision.  We likely lost valuable information here and someone's memories a month after the fact are prone to self-editing.

I'll restrain my words here and say only that this is the first of many such unfortunate decisions our heroine made.

Alright, the peanut gallery is confined to *between* the original texts, that's good. Paris' decision to omit the previous generation or two's worth of notes instead of cross-examining them in the margin was probably the best call, even if they had to go and undermine that by being all catty in the author's note.

I'm not sure I understand what Paris is saying here. Are they criticizing Hazel for doing an incomplete job at transferring her early notes into the magic infinite notebook, or for doing an incomplete transfer from *that* notebook to whatever she ended up distributing this in?

Hazel's own words make it sound like the original water-damaged notebook was something she discarded completely, so I don't know why she'd have left allusions to specific pages in it in her new one. That's the most obvious reading though, so yeah, I don't know.

Anyway, Hazel now begins recounting the beginning of her "year zero."

Year Zero, Day Zero:

What is the use of a sanctuary without protection?  What is the use of a sisterhood without love?  What is the use of practice if I cannot do anything in the face of the greatest pain I have ever felt?

Minnie my daughter was dead and the reasons for her death were already fiction before the dirt had been thrown over her.  The church supports that fiction for I have told them the truth yet I was casually dismissed and urged to return home.  The coven who taught me the practice had no succor to offer me.  The practice, scattered hedge magics taught to me by local women, cannot bring my child back to me.

Mindless spirits have already given me more comfort than all the rest of these people together.  More than the church, than the coven, more than those I healed, at expense to myself.

Most of all, more than my husband, who shook the priest's hand and thanked him for a lovely ceremony.  My husband, who my coven sisters feared enough they would not speak to me.  My husband, who I had to keep my practice from.

He had never liked that Minnie was a child from my first marriage.

I was shattered in my own mind when I saw the life leave her.  I remember the events and the handshake with the head of the city police.  The man was one we had invited over to dinner twice.  I remember the service but I do not remember the words.  Throughout that day I felt and thought little but a sentiment endured, foolish as it was, that my husband must be wracked with guilt in his silence.  A detestable part of myself even harbored hope that at least now his concern was removed and the house could be peaceful and quiet.

It was not.  The day had been full and with all of the days stresses pent up he had struck out.

Well fuck.

I guess all the magic in the world isn't going to help you if you lack the backbone and nerve to use it against your well-connected abusive husband.

The vagueness about Minnie's death does make me wonder, though. However awful Hazel's husband is, we're not given any evidence for him having killed her daughter. He might have had motive, and he might have abused Hazel badly enough to make her think he'd be capable of murder, but did he actually do it? It's a bit of ambiguity that makes you wonder from the start how reliable our narrator is, and thus recontextualizes Paris and their predescessors' frustrations with her account.

Injured and bleeding, I retreated to use the outhouse when I was suddenly struck by the recollection he had rolled his ankle early in the day.  I might never have run otherwise, but that thought in my mind gave me a spark of courage and I carried on past the outhouse, into fields and woods.  My husband saw from the window and he gave prompt chase, limping behind.

He had made it clear I would not or should not survive his anger.  Church, coven, and every soul I had seen or talked to made it clear that if I did not survive the rest of the world would not care in any substantial way.  They hadn't for Minnie.

I ran, attempting to flee him, but my husband was a hunter and he knew things of tracking I never could.  It was only by running until I couldn't run any longer that I could put distance between us.  I collapsed and crawled to water to drink, unable to stand with even my life on the line.  Drained and broken, awash in grief, I heard his shouts grow louder.  It is there, at the river's side, that the spirits paid me heed, one warning me by accident, the other drawing branches closer around us.  Hiding by the water's edge, I stared at my reflection and I thought back to the practices I had learned.  Herbalism and potions were much of it, but we had attempted the healing of women with the coven, to get them through childbirth when doctors could not or would not come.  A transfer of something in ourselves to something else.

I so wished to be away from it all, staring at my reflection in the water, at moon and star.  With will alone I poured my being into the world on the other side.  I did not want to exist in this world any longer.

But a reflection is only a reflection.  I fell through.  I arrived at the opening of a place I would call The Broken Road.  A straight path led up an increasing slope, with shops and homes on either side.  Cracks and pits in the road made progress impossible.

Editor's Note: Two outstanding points demand attention here, and I'll reserve the second for the end of this section.  Many attempts have been made to decipher how Hazel was able to enter the Paths, and none have been exactly replicated.  Debates on whether an innocent might be able to enter the Paths and become Aware or Awakened by her mechanism are ongoing.  For further reading on this, I suggest B. Gadsen's Elusive Lake, PSBN 9106359107202.

Well, I guess she had very limited actual magic mixed in with a bunch of folk-superstition and herbalism. Not the kind of power that would help one escape this situation even without the psychological barriers. Though seemingly enough power to - perhaps accidentally - slip away onto the Paths when push came to shove, through a method that modern mages are apparently still trying to work out the exact details of.

I wonder if we'll ever find out the truth about Minnie? Not that it matters much to Hazel's legacy, but my mind can't help but linger on that question.

Soon after I had caught my bearings, I heard the crash, followed by my husband's raised voice.  I've since thought to how he made his way through, and I believe he searched until morning, when the sun came through to reveal the path I'd taken, and he followed in my wake.

I chose to stumble through a shop, in through the front, past the displays, and out the back door into another place entirely, where the stone path was a ribbon stretching across the sky, all parts but the one I stood on flapping about madly in the strong wind.  I had to move back and forth to let the wind move the path before hurrying forward to freeze it.  In my panic, I passed through three worlds in short order, before my tired legs could no longer bear me.

Editor's Note: Two things to note as we close chapter one.  The nature of Hazel's Wolf of a husband has led to several theories, but Wonderkand released information suggesting another theory while buying books through Wray publishers: that there is a group (predominantly French-speaking or French-accented) calling themselves Little Wolves, where the boons they gain are different, they have protections from certain practitioner-facing hazards on the Paths, and they have exceedingly aggressive relationships with any Finder they run into.  In brief, the only times they don't attack on sight is when they can confound, trap, disarm, rob, or cause a practitioner to be Lost.  They function much as Finders do, though some may be Aware, and if they have a presence on Earth we don't know where they are rooted or how we might contact them.

There are no especially firm links drawn between the Little Wolves and what Hazel will refer to as her Wolf of a husband, but the loose parallels leave the question open, where it joins theories such as the idea that Hazel's husband never reached the Paths and the entity that chased her was something Abyssal (the broken road does have ties to the Abyss), that there are multiple signs Hazel was addled and he could have been a delusion of a stressed mind, (facts discourage this reading but don't disprove it), or that he was actually the Wolf, as she would have seen it on the Forest Ribbon Trail, and that he chased her.

Second, as I alluded to in the last editor's note, I'll stress that the Latimores have made a point of inducting their children into the Paths by way of the Broken Road, rather than the customary Forest Ribbon Trail.  While others have done this here and there, the Wrays included, the Latimores have remained a close partner of ours and made pointed efforts in attempts to trace Hazel's route.  By starting at or near the same point, the dedicated Latimore approach means they have the opportunity to gain the same unwritten, unstated boons and benefits she did.  Their research over years and generations helps us a great deal in striking things off the list of possibilities.  We'll note their recent successes and discoveries in upcoming instalments.

Hah, okay, that annotation really helped me out there. I thought her husband had somehow actually chased her out of realspace and onto the Paths, implying that she either pulled him with her or that he was a latent wizard himself. But of course, the Wolf doesn't have to take the form of a literal wolf, and if you enter the Forest Ribbon Path to get away from something then it makes perfect sense that the Wolf would manifest as a simulacrum of the thing you were already fleeing.

...battered wife runs away, only to be confronted by a supernatural being wearing her husband's face. I'm pretty sure that this happened in not just one, but multiple Stephen King stories. Definitely a likely source of inspiration for the author, heh.

Paris points out that the details don't properly align with the Wolf of the Ribbon Path, and that this may therefore have been something else and someplace else. On the other hand, as they also point out, even Hazel's first set of notes would have only been written hours or days later, in the wake of exhaustion and trauma, so who even knows what details got left out or altered. Good point, Paris. You're good at this when you aren't wasting pagespace on passive-aggressive potshots.

Next we have a bit of a timeskip, bringing us to a version of Hazel who has started to learn how to manipulate the Paths and the realm they pass through, and befriended a handful of the entities known to most as Lost.

Year One, Day Fifteen

As we entered a washing area in the broader Keyways, the dull scholar, the marzipan ape, and I were all engaged in passionate conversation, with me as the one who had raised the topic at hand.  The thought had struck me in the early hours of the morning and once we were all gathered, washed and ready, I had asked them whether the natives of these nonsense places were incomplete and in need of something singular to make them whole.  To illustrate my point in a most perfect way I indicated a young woman with an upper body akin to the frame of a painting, with the painting not yet installed.  She noticed me pointing at her and pressed a key into my hand, as the natives of this place were so fond of doing.

Oddly enough, it was our dear dull scholar who was the most talkative for once, "—I dare say that any living thing is incomplete.  All of us want for love, a next meal, a brighter tomorrow.  Without such a wanting we wouldn't be alive, would we?"

Straight from Stephen King to Lewis Caroll! The imagery and the character dialogue both. This could easily be a scene from "Through the Looking Glass."

The Marzipan Ape then said something I won't repeat on paper, while taking pains to demonstrate with the key and the keyhole in the water's surface.  I scolded him and made him insert the key so we might have access past the water's surface.  I used a key for the clothesline and adjusted its position, and another for the bag we had bought, which did promise to be secure but required a key of its own.  I thought myself quite a fair hand at the key business.  In fact, that very morning I had  barely batted an eyelash on waking when I had needed to, for the fourth time, put a keyhole to the right spot in the air to unlock my ability to breathe my first waking breath of the day.  I knew that to the natives I was still little better than a fumbling infant, fiddling with the four hundred odd keys on six different keyrings that I had accrued over my five days in the Keyways, but I was still proud at my dexterity and system.

The Keyways. Seemingly a realm in which you need a dedicated key to do absolutely anything, including breathing. Sounds frustrating.

Is this where lost keys end up? Or at least, where a conceptual manifestation of lost keys end up? Wonder if the keys are missing any intrinsic properties like most Lost objects, in addition to having acquired the ability to unlock random insane shit.

Hmm. The abilities or places that the keys unlock. Is there any relationship between that, and the doors that each key was made to unlock in realspace? Or...with the door that their realspace templates open, if they aren't literally the same object but rather symbolic representations of the real object?

"Dear scholar—" I addressed the man, ready to launch into a speech.

"I am not a dear scholar but a dull scholar," he corrected me, "and I must beg you to mind that, for I am not very good at minding anything of importance myself.  If you were to suggest I was anything but dull I'd worry circumstance would contrive to correct you.  It would likely do so by denting my head further, as it has done all my life."

With that, he touched his bandaged, dented skull.  I apologized, and I assured him he was an idiot and that I was in fact about to correct him.  I even poked fun at how he, a man, was helping me with the wash, as I carefully extracted my extra set of clothes and put them to the water.  Mollified, he let me continue.

"—I do think there is a flaw in your theory.  You think every living thing is defined by wanting?"

To this he agreed.

All life is fire, and to burn is to want for fuel. We are all Ys-Aesma, Hazel.

I went on.  "—What of a baby, mere months old?  Let us assume it is warm, it is fed, it is clean.  It does not yet know enough of the world to want for more.  At this stage, this is all it knows."

"Perhaps the baby feels a desire to grow old?  Something drives its need to see more, try more speech."

I mean, I don't think you need to be actively wanting for something at every moment in order for it to be a big part of your existence.

Something in me was so excited to talk like this, which I had rarely done before, except with my father years before.  I imagined it was how the University students talked with one another.  I was overjoyed to be cleaning my clothes, knowing they would be fresh and unsoiled on next wear, when I so rarely had the chance to look after such things, out in these nonsense lands.

Then suddenly and terribly I was interrupted from my thoughts of children and wanting by the knowledge that Minnie, my dear daughter, would never grow old.  I made myself pretend I was deep in thought, bowing my head over the clothes I washed in the bath-like basin, but tears betrayed me and dripped into the water, prompting the Marzipan Ape to point and laugh.  This in turn aroused the notice of the dull scholar, who became alarmed, apologizing bitterly.

Still mourning her daughter, even as she gets used to life in reality's shadow and buries herself in survival and study. On the bright side, getting to talk philosophy seems to be a ray of light in her dismal life. I get the impression that Hazel got pressured out of going to college by her family and community, and never stopped resenting this.

The Marzipan Ape sounds like it might be a Lost goblin. The profanity and seemingly compulsive unpleasantness, the apelike appearance, it fits. We were told that other types of Other can get turned into Lost, so that seems likely.

Well, if Hazel tolerated that husband for however long, asshole ape-goblin shouldn't be too much of a trial for her.

Then, as if all of that wasn't enough to truly put me on the spot, the natives of the area noticed as well.  A little girl with keyholes for eyes approached to pat me on the back, and a burly matron of a woman with a need for keys to get her body properly moving set to work, pushing up sleeves, inserting and turning necessary keys, and taking over with my washing, to my protest.  Others still gathered, concerned, some young men thinking it was the dull scholar who had brought me to this state.  Matters were not helped by the fact the dull scholar had in fact led me to the state I was in but was not truly at fault and I was in no state to find the careful wording I needed.

Way too much context missing for me to guess at how the head-dented scholar was responsible for Hazel being in keyworld, heh.

Eventually I was able to stammer my way through my explanation and pacify matters.  The distressingly awkward moments after were cut short by the Marzipan Ape, now stripped of his overalls and underthings, jumping naked into the water of the washbasin, splashing everyone present.  Past the initial sputters of outrage, many of us were brought to laughter, and it was in these sorts of circumstances that the maddening and ribald Marzipan Ape was such a good and lovely companion to have.

Hmm, yeah. I'm more sure than before that this thing is a Lostblin. The kind of charm and likeability that it manages to achieve through its violation of taboos is distinctly goblinish.

Some efforts were made to push keys into my hand.  Every third day the shuttered window of the bakery could be opened by this one key to get a pie that would heal the heart, I was told, then before I could even set eyes firmly on the key, two more were set down over it.

The little girl with keyholes for eyes told me in the most rushed and excited voice that one would move a little door aside in a pile of litter and garbage, over by the park with the tree of violets and the tree of various reds, but no trees with oranges, and it would be disastrous if I were to go to the litter pile in the park with the tree of violets and trees of various reds but also no trees with blue fruit.  She went on to warn me I had to be careful to open the square door with the round window and the twisted handle and not the square door with only the twisted handle or the round door with the square handle, or I could die in a most horrible way, and could I remember that?

I assured her that I was certain I would if my skull wasn't dented in the interim like the dull scholar's was, and that I wasn't good at many things but I had a sharp memory.  She told me that the door hid a kitten that would be the sweetest and most noble of kittens, a loyal companion for a long time, and that there wasn't much extraordinary about it except that it would bring keys and small treasures to its master instead of dead rats, which she and I both agreed was a very fine improvement on matters.  She went on to tell me she wished so dearly she could collect it but her mother wouldn't allow it, and I promised that if I could get to the kitten I would ensure it was given love and kindness.

Editor's Note: Yet another example of Hazel's facility with the Lost of the Paths.  It bears noting that the Keyway has been found, though the residents were more recalcitrant and proved more stingy with the keys than they were in Hazel's experience.  Much of this is attributed to the fact a Finder finds navigating the paths an easier affair as they accumulate experience there, and Hazel had already spent more time in the paths than some would in a lifetime.

As an aside, though we sometimes bemoan Hazel's priorities and scattered behavior, Hazel does not lie in this case, and her memory is indeed sharp.  What she put to paper proved accurate and there was a door exactly as described, square with a rounded window and a twisted handle, in a park with trees of violets and reds but no oranges.  The kitten, however, was not there- Hazel returns to the Keyways in year 16, day two hundred and ninety seven, and even though there is not a detailed diary entry, she does indeed have the kitten after the fact.  Oddly enough, it is still a kitten and remains so until year 49, day one hundred and ninety.  The broken key in the lock suggests the kitten was a one-time reward available for claim.

Alright. That kitten has got to be someone's guide animal (like what Snowdrop is for Avery) that got lost to the Paths and is looking for another wizard to help. And that seemingly gained and/or lost an interesting set of traits as a result of being in this environment for so long. It seems to have gained more than it lost; pretty sure that might make it technically fall under the "compound spirit" category as well as being Lost.

Those doors with trees by them seem like portals that connect the Keyway to other mini-dimensions and paths. I think? Either that, or the Keyway is just bigger and more varied than it initially seemed.

Damn, Hazel really did this for a hundred years, didn't she? How human was she anymore, by the time she came out?

...or, DID she even come out? Maybe she just sent her notes back into realspace, while she herself remains in the void as a perpetually evolving demigod of lost and found elements.

♪ Loyal Luane remains, and remains, and remains, and remains... ♪

The other key was being explained to me when my attention was drawn to commotion untoward for the Keyways.

I knew it must be my Wolf of a husband and warned the natives and my traveling companions.  The matron ushered us through a gate, locking it behind us, and we hurried on.

I'm ever so loathe to get into any detail of my husband and his attacks, or the times he's captured me, and that remains true here.  I'll only state what must be stated to make events clear.  He didn't unlock the doors and gates, but kicked or battered them down.  The Marzipan Ape attacked him, attempting to buy the dull scholar and I time to get away, and the last I saw of him before we fled was that he was being beaten fiercely.

I had to fumble with keys to adjust the stairwell that led up the hill, to get the stairs to stop collapsing under our weight, and I had to use keys on other gates, doors, the bridge, and other things.  My Wolf of a husband pursued and he wasn't slowed or stopped by much of this.

He caught up, and he cast the dull scholar down the stairs, causing a terrible fall.  As he passed a window, I saw a scene reflected in glass that wasn't for where we were.  I began whistling, a thing I knew my husband was on the lookout for, ever since I'd crossed the Tortoise Stampede.  Ever since, I'd found that I could whistle and spirit up a burst of speed, and I often used it to try to escape him.  I do believe I surprised him by charging him, instead.

I drove him through the window and tumbled after him, taking us out of the Keyways and into a new place, a twisting corridor with antlers, animal heads, and animal skulls mounted on each wall.  I was able to run to the hallway's end, and my Wolf of a husband made it barely three steps before some of those beasts proved to be much less dead than they had been, with a bear and a stag lunging out of the wall to assault him.

I seized the opportunity and ran until I thought I was far enough away, then used a key meant for unlocking the heat of a fire, and inserted it into a stately fireplace, turning it backward.  I crawled through the roaring flame, now unable to burn me, and up through the chimney, to another Path.  Then I fled through a forest of chimneys and rooftops with no homes below them, weeping bitterly at the fact I had lost the company of the Marzipan Ape and the dull scholar.

In writing this entry and attempting to make sense of the day, I do believe I have worked out one nuance of these nonsense places.  I dare not think my husband has truly stopped, for he has come out of worse situations to track me shortly after, but I do think the fact was that I was the one to follow him onto the path.  It is curious then that I was not so bothered by the difficulties on the path.

Something to think about another day, after my mind is less busy with mourning.  I have left another two good friends behind and I cannot know if they have survived knowing me and meeting the Wolf of a man who pursues me.

Jesus Christ and I'm not even Christian.

So, that's one absolute beast of a Wolf. Maybe they're always that relentless and powerful if you don't do the right things to appease/escape them early on, but damn. Decades of pursuit, collateral damage up to and including multiple friendly Others, and I'm not sure I want to know what it does on the (apparently multiple) occasions when it catches her :I.

Yeah, starting to see Paris' point about how this might not just be the standard Path-guarding wolf. Pretty sure that thing just kills you if you cross it. Either it took a lot more traits from her (human) husband than the Wolf usually takes from its source material, or it literally is her husband who chased her into the Upside-Down and turned into a monster.

She lost the ape and scholar because of it. Not sure if they're actually dead, or just left behind in another realm she's unlikely to find her way back to. I wonder...maybe that's actually the Wolf's *thing,* for Hazel? When she fell into the ethereal, she was fleeing the man who she believed (rightly or wrongly) to have taken her daughter from her. Now, the thing that she flees takes away anyone who she comes to love. Any companion or friend she makes in the warp, it tries to deprive her of.

And she had to survive this thing for decades, maybe even a full century. Holy shit.

Editor's Note:  A famous installment for the conundrums it has presented the Finder community.  This year we have some new findings.

Let us begin with the Coursing Mounts, the location referenced by Hazel.  It was visited six years ago and mentioned in the eighth edition, but it certainly wasn't entered by passage through a window.  Our attempts to find the window in question in the Keyways wasn't any more fortuitous.  However, this year, the Inconnue enclave traded with a new Finder based in Egypt, who had found the way in.  Contact the Inconnue enclave for more information, as they are currently preparing an in-depth examination of the Coursing Mounts.  Expect a release from them in the coming few years and a fuller examination in the next edition of 100 Years Lost.  It proves a very useful if double-edged option for the Finder on Earth who is fleeing trouble.  If one is fleeing, the Path can make itself known, with a higher likelihood as one carries more Lost things.  It quietly enacts a tax of some of the items one is carrying, which are promptly lost to the Paths.

Second.  Many of you readers will know what I'm about to reference.  This chapter marks the origination of Hazel's thoughts that will later become statements, one of the few things she clearly explained after leaving the Paths and joining us.  Hazel's Paradox.

So she did come back to realspace in person. At least temporarily, if not permanently.

I'll outline this in brief but I'll expand on it later as it comes up further on in this text, with references to relevant material and explorations.  Hazel comes to believe that forcing someone onto a Path and following after them allows one to let the other individual shoulder the hazards.  This is a fantastic notion with a breadth of application, it helps make sense of many events Hazel describes, and it could be a way to bring less experienced subordinates and apprentices onto the path.  Even if it were a purely aggressive measure, it's one many of us would want to keep in mind, for self-defense or forcing an enemy on Earth onto the Paths and immediately following them to capitalize on a skewed home field advantage.

Now for the point of confusion.  Finders haven't been able to replicate this practice.  There are meant to be no preconditions, no required boons, and she even described it as something 'fundamental'.  Unfortunately, this description comes later in the work, when her writing style turns and she writes to herself more than she writes for an imagined audience.  At this time she leans heavily into assumptions, doesn't complete her thoughts, and doesn't explain the conclusions she reached.  This is one.

In the entry for year 73, day three hundred and twelve, she even makes a definitive statement and oath, with the intent of strengthening her words and her ability to use this practice, driving her Wolf of a husband into a Path where she intends to trap him indefinitely.  She even swears it true.  We do not have access to Hazel and so we've turned to the use of other practices and we have verified it is True.

Hazel's Paradox: There is something fundamental to what the Paths are, leading and following, fleeing and pursuing, that tips the hazards of the Path and other qualities of a Path toward or away from individuals.  This is fundamental, it is True and we have yet to reproduce it.

Maddening.

So it took her at least 73 years to get rid of husbandwolf.

I'm not sure what's paradoxical about "Hazel's Paradox." Unless the paradox is that it is true and yet non-reproducible, which um...if it's not reproducible, then doesn't that mean that it's only true sometimes? If not, then yeah, I guess that IS a paradox, but I don't understand how this paradox would even manifest in a way that would be recognizable as paradoxical. From an outside observer's perspective either this thing happens, or it doesn't.

Year Thirty-Nine, Day Seventy-Six

It was a queer thing, to be alone and experiencing the quiet.  I had developed a habit of collecting friends along the way and the recent paths had not afforded me that opportunity.  It had been nearly a week since my last encounter with my Wolf of a husband, and I had barely seen a soul, unless I counted Key.

The incident weeks ago had been sobering, and I was not yet recovered, if I were to speak purely in terms of inner fortitude.  I should have very much liked a shoulder to cry on, yet there was none available, and I was not accustomed to that.  I resolved myself to turn my focus outward, for I had entered strange territories and I was mindful of the fact I was in something of a desert or a briar patch.

The paths I found myself walking were dense with riddles and patterns and progress proved slow, yet at the same time, there were scarce opportunities to resupply or find new food.  I had filled up every container I had with water three days earlier, and half of those containers were now empty.  I had to imagine I was forging forward through a desert not of grains of sand, but of riddles.  Here and there I would find reprieve, a new path, a new set of particulars and patterns, but the oasis would prove to be little more than a mirage.  Soon enough, however, I inevitably encountered the first barrier to progression, locked behind a fiendish riddle with the question spelled out in patterns and themes.

Key is that magic kitten she adopted, I think.

Two questions occur to me at this point. The first is how often her "wolf of a husband" is catching up to her again, over the course of these decades? The first time it seemed to only take him a couple of weeks, but I don't believe it's been happening every couple of weeks for thirty-nine years. She couldn't still be this sane, otherwise. Though granted, is this a century of time as she experiences it, or as Earth experiences it, assuming there's a difference between the two?

The other question I have is about food, water, and sleep. How much food even is there in the Paths? Do the Lost even need that kind of nourishment? And in that case, how Lost is she, at this point? How much water is there, and how much does she need? How much oxygen? Unclear what state of being she's even in and what her material needs are, after decades in the deep ethereal?

The evening prior I had arrived here, at a place I tentatively term the Settling Stir.  On first arrival, given I was in no hurry, I was very careful to observe.  I felt and still feel now that the entryway is nearly always safe, and these nonsense places like to wait until a visitors steps forward onto it before things set into motion.

The world I saw appeared to be a quaint town, indulging the evening hours where doors were shut and everyone was inside.  In certain places, chalky snow settled on black construction, black signs, and piled up high.  In some places it stuck on, mottled, and in others it fell away, leaving symbols and messages on the sign – a quill in a cauldron, a brush, a pair of scissors.  I saw no danger, but Key took interest in fat crows and one black cat sitting leisurely on rooftops and clotheslines, letting the snow pile above them.

When I did venture forward, however, the world waited until I had taken five paces before abruptly changing.  My hair and dress were sent astir in a way I very much would have minded, had I any male company, and snow was replaced with black soot, and those constructions and signs that had been black had become white instead, bearing different symbols.  Where the cold had numbed, the soot made me choke, and I had to cover my lower face.  Birds and cats were gone, but now I heard dogs barking madly and angrily, and I do admit I felt some trepidation.

A quick and careful peering through windows I had to wipe clean suggested there were marks on the wall, as if objects had been held there and the soot thrown against the wall, before the object was pulled away, leaving black smudges surrounding clean spots on the wall, including a knife, a doll, a goblet, and scissors.

Once I realized to my abject dismay that it was yet another place I must decipher, I retraced my steps, experiencing that startled shift into the snowy world, seated myself very slowly and carefully.  I kept my inside-out coat on, which still carried its protection and summer warmth, then wrapped myself in blankets, knees drawn up to my chest, and placed my angry lantern beneath my arched knees, where it warmed me up, and drew Key close to me.  I did not sleep for many hours, and thought to myself for quite a while before deciding this path wasn't one that changed on its own.  If I did not give it an excuse, it most likely would not harm me.

There must be categories for these places.  I'm certainly not the type of person who could come up with a set of clever and scientific terms but because I don't have a scientist with me, I must make do myself.  Here I must imagine that there are places that run, places that walk, places that stalk, and places that demand a sit and a think.

The Settling Stir is a sitting and thinking place.  I do not imagine it will come alive and eat me.  I would have to go back and read to remind myself, but I do believe that for all the places that looked like they required a sit and a think but they were really stalking, there must surely have been signs.

That queer protection that had been given to me by the Statue Narrows settled around me, and my skin did slowly turn to stone, protecting me further from the chill.  Only my one eye remained open for a short time longer, breaking the stone when I blinked.

Editor's Note:  Hazel's instincts are one of her strengths and despite the fact she is not a Finder by creed and was not tutored by one, she has firmly developed the manner of system that many families and mentors will pass on to children and apprentices.  Finding oneself on a strange Path to which one doesn't know the rules is always a danger of the highest order, and one of Hazel's most remarkable achievements is that she was able to encounter so many new locations and survive throughout.

Hazel here begins to construct another one of her systems that she'll later be using as a set of shorthand terms to quickly assess new locations and explain them to others.  These terms or ones like it are in use by Finder families across the world today, as a way of instructing children and quickly grasping the nature of the Paths.

This also continues a growing trend of anthropomorphizing the Paths or parts of the Paths, something that some groups and families have taken to heart.

This realm sounds very Silent Hill. Especially with Paris' reminder that "places" and "entities" on the Paths are a sliding scale.

The list of objects she picked up is definitely close to the littany from the Ribbon Path instruction manual.

And yeah, that's a good question Paris. How did Hazel survive all of this?

I guess the most obvious answer to that question would be that she *didn't* survive it, in the sense that wizards usually think about the Paths and Finding in. That older document about the ribbon trail kept saying "fail to do X, and you will become Lost." So, she failed to do X many times, and became Lost, but being Lost isn't the same thing as being dead, and in Hazel's case it turned out that Lostness was aa reversible condition.

Which, I mean...we already kind of knew that Lostness was reversible. The entire Finder school of magic is based on recovering things (or at least fragments of things) from the ethereal and stabilizing them. If you can do that to a pen or a notebook, you can do it to a person. The person might have changed due to gaining or losing some aspects, but they're still alive and conscious.

Now, having woken and provided Key with some food and water, I was left with little to do except decipher this place so I might carry on down the path.  In my notebook, I made careful note of everything I could find.  I noted the signs and the impressions on the wall, tabulated everything, and I found my first parallel.  In the white winter, there was a store with scissors on the sign, and a home in black soot had a scissors-shaped break in the glass, which allowed the soot to blow in and stain much of that kitchen.

"What a curious kitchen," I remarked gaily to myself, to fill the silence.  Soot and snow did much to dampen many sounds, and Key, sweet as she was, did not carry much of a conversation.  I spoke to myself more than I usually did as I explored, remarking on that kitchen that was unlike any I'd seen before, so tidy and wild in decoration at the same time.  Not far from the kitchen, sharing the same pipes for water, the indoor bathroom had fixtures of the sort I might expect in a hotel or an upscale home, but the home itself wasn't anything too special.

"Don't forget the scissors, Hazel dear," I scolded myself.

On one hand, the talking to herself really illustrates the toll that being lost and often alone so much has taken on her sanity.

On the other hand, the voice the story is giving her feels like it's leaning a little too hard on Lewis Caroll. Kind of tips the author's hand.

Then again, I'm not sure why Hazel would be bothering to write about her talking to herself in her notebook, but those kinds of details are always a problem with epistolary stories, so eh.

Sure now that I had to find scissors to fit the gap in the window, I returned to the store.  Every set number of full steps I took outside a building made the world turn inside out, black to white, soot to snow, or back again.  It was amusing at first, clothing and hair flying, Key hiding inside the front flap of my coat, but after several stubbed toes and falls, I must admit it lost its whimsical charm.  Here and there, things were different in one world over another.  Both worlds had their impressions on walls and both worlds had their signage.  I began with the scissors, and I venture to say that I searched that house with vigor, top to bottom, emptying every drawer.  It wasn't until I was walking around the property that I saw the bird perched on a clothesline.  The snow was too dazzling to allow a shadow to be cast, sparkling in the gas flames of streetlamps, but when I ducked under the clothesline, the shadow of the bird fell against the surface of my dress, and it certainly wasn't a bird, but scissors!  Imagine that.

"Hazel, you silly woman," I remarked.  "You must pay attention to the whole picture."

On my next circuit through the area, I made note of animals and other odd items that differed from one world to another.  What I soon discovered was that each property had objects and animals inside the bounds defined by fences or hedgerow.  Each object belonging to a property, such as the one with the scissors on the signboard, would cast a shadow appropriate to that sign.

"It's a subtle trick to be playing on a visitor!" I find myself exclaiming, with only my kitten Key there to hear me.  "Inside the houses this tends to be hard to see and outside everything is layered in soot or snow!"

I knew I could bring 'scissors' over to the one house, yet I recalled my ongoing suspicion that scissors were a bad omen that preceded loss, in the same manner that ribbons, the moon, the sun, and stars tend to mean things out here.

Editor's Note: Hazel's instincts and attention to details hold true here.  All of this is established knowledge of symbols among Finders or practitioners in general.

A stuffed toy in one house casts a shadow of an ink pot and feather, and I then have to find a place to put the toy so it meets the spot on the wall.  In the doing, I tear the wall asunder, and clear away wall, hedgerow, footpath, fence, and the signpost with the inkpot.

This neatly unravels our riddle.  Two properties are now joined together, bounded in now by the same fences and hedgerows, with a skull on a pedestal out front.  The next placement of an item so the shadow meets an imprint on the wall casts away another sign, and puts two properties under the banner of the scissors.  Now fully aware I want to eliminate the scissors, I busied myself finding what I needed.  Edged things like scissors and axe mean different forms of danger, however, and I do take the extra care, laying out some preparations and tools.  A wolf trap I meant for my husband, a wire snare, and a bit of destructive practice I came upon when trying to map out that city street that demolished itself around me.

The paper trembled so fiercely as I set it down I was afraid of it.  I knew I was taking excessive caution for only a suspicion, but who was there to judge me except Key?  Even if Key had been able to speak, holding her tongue out of feline reluctance, which I very much doubt, I do think she liked the warm interior of my jacket to snuggle within, for I had turned it inside out on a sunny Path and I had trapped the warmth and sun within.

If a reader of these words might think me foolish, I can say I was not.  If they would call me victorious instead, I did not and do not feel that way.  All of which is to say that my instinct proved right.  Not very long after I started trying to find the right position by the window for a candlestick, a man with skin like stained glass came up behind me, ready to bludgeon me.  He was stopped short by the snare of razor wire, which dug into his neck, but the glass and the fine metal that framed it would not cut as a throat should.  I threw my arms around him and hugged his arms against his side, weighing him down, in vain and foolish hope that I could choke him or make the wire draw tight enough he could not free himself.  Yet he threw me aside and down to the ground.

The paper I had laid down felt that disturbance and it acted.  Walls, ceiling, floor, and every object in the room proceeded to dash themselves to pieces.  I kicked out at his leg to disturb his balance, and my leg was gouged as punishment, but it did knock him over, and a moment later, a half of a bookshelf that was hurling itself across the room collided with him.  The wire ensured that the collision took his head from his body.

I feel compelled to say there is no joy in violence.  Yet, at the same time, I feel there is no shame in defending oneself.  I felt very calm as I picked myself up, found the wall which had the scissors mark on it, and positioned the stuffed animal so it would cast the right shadow.  With so much destruction already done, the sign of the scissors needed to do little else except fall over and crack in two.

I carried on in much that manner, with the goal of being in snow when the last place remained.  Each shadow I introduced to a matching impression on the wall stripped that place of its signage and identity, and made it part of one of its neighbours.  I much preferred the idea of cold to that of choking on soot, so I put my all into ensuring a winter sign remained standing.

Using some of those tricks Avery wrote about in her Finding notes. The wire-grenade that binds Lost monsters to conventional physics in particular. Ditto the way she's using sympathetic magic to lash different parts of the realm together into a new shape that better suits her purposes.

The stained-glass man who attacked her seems to NOT be a manifestation of the Wolf, or she'd probably recognize it as such. Just some random Lost, less talkative than the ones she befriended before and attacking her for its own reasons. Well, sucks to be it I guess.

Presently my activities brought me to the end of town, and I did see an ominous figure that was standing by the side of the road with arms folded.  I did think to myself that from the manner by which he carried himself he might be a weary fellow traveler, but that his style of dress felt more noble to me.  He was dressed mostly in blues, with lapels and collar painted with the clouds and blues of a sunny midday, but the remainder of his coat, vest, and pants were the dark blue of an evening sky, sparkling with studs to mark the stars.

In my decades traveling these nonsense places, I had seen many natives with odd characteristics, yet it was the fellow before me that left me most dumbfounded.  His head was absent, and in its place was a glaring orb of fire, many times brighter than at torch.  Tongues of flame did regularly curl away from that sphere and failed to ignite what they touched, but they most certainly were hot.  I stood nowhere close to him yet I was forced to lean away from him to avoid allowing the heat to singe my skin, and the appearance of a tongue of flame in my direction gave me but a moment's notice to expect the wash of hot air.  When we stood so far apart a quaint home could be placed between us without us having to step out of the way, no less!

Oh? What the hell is this thing, now?

The headlessness made me think that it was a second phase of the stained glass man's boss fight, since she used her trap to cut its head off. But no, with the rest of the description I think that was coincidence. Either that, or decapitating someone in this realm causes the Headless Fire God to appear.

If it really is just coincidence, then I think the author might have been better off having her kill the glass thing a different way.

He bowed slightly upon seeing me, and as he rose to a standing position he withdrew a decorated disc from within his coat jacket and doffed it as a mask.  It was a sun, steel painted in chipped, gay orange and yellow.  The front sported two eyeholes and a wide smile with many overlarge but ordinary teeth.  The sun's rays were mounted at the disc's edges, each one bent into wavy lines with sharp points.  No string tied that mask to the front of his neckless head, yet it stubbornly remained in place.  The heat of the metal was sufficient to make the thinnest parts of the painted metal mask glow bright.

Editor's Note:  The Page of Suns.  When discussing the Architect theory of the Paths and the variations on that theory, the Page of Suns often appears.  He may appear on many Paths, separate from the rules, always male with the sun motif, and the demeanor Hazel describes here.  When so many things on the Paths are subject to the eye of the beholder, the Page of Suns almost always has the same mask.  The Page of Suns appears on as many lists of Architects as the Wolf.

Ominous indeed.  Hazel's word choice is apt indeed.  The Page of Suns is theorized to appear when someone approaches the unprecedented or when one is about to fall victim to the Paths.  The unprecedented action may be an action with wide-reaching implications, a discovery, a record, or a force defeated.

Huhhhhhh.

Dunno what this "Architect" business is about, but the Page of Suns seems to be one of the proper gods within Paleverse's pantheon. Seemingly a more universal one than the local gods, like the regional pantheon that the late Carmine Beast was a member of.

Or else, maybe the Paths are just another "region" as far as that system goes, and has its own gods in the same way that inland Canada has its own gods.

Anyway, a guiding light in the chaos of the paths. A point of orientation - a reference to guide travelers on their way, and a gravity well to hold worlds in place. In the context of the Paths and their chaotic surroundings, I can see why this thing would be a mostly benevolent deity (at least from the human perspective).

It is the understanding of the practitioner community, supported by some scrying and other details, on making it to year thirty-nine, day seventy-six, Hazel becomes the one free practitioner who has spent the longest time on the Paths.  This of course emphasizes the free part of that, as many others have been stuck on the Paths, unable to progress or leave an area, and it emphasizes the label practitioner, as yet more practitioners have become something Other and thus no longer qualify as practitioners.

So she's still mostly human, at this point. Somehow. Her willpower must be truly indefatigable for her to have survived this long while still having human biological and emotional limits.

The theory that this is about Hazel's time on the Paths is backed by what the Page of Suns actually says when he addresses Hazel.

"Hazel," he greeted me from afar, making no attempt to draw near.  I did find his voice remarkable in its ordinariness, considering his appearance.  "You have been at this for a while."

Upon hearing that I did feel affronted for reasons I couldn't specify, and I pulled my coat off, turning it back right side out, to poor Key's dismay.  The full warmth of a summer's day did reach out around me, melting the snow that the masked man's heat didn't touch.  I went one step further and I did slide my hands into the pockets.

A faint part of me did worry that this man's presence would overwhelm the benefits I had gathered up around me as I'd traveled these realms.  But the protections did hold, and as stinging cold winds flirted with the steady blast of heat that poured off this man, I could walk through it with little inconvenience, except that my hair flew madly around me as the rapidly changing temperatures whipped up the wind.  The world around us became soot and then snow again.

"I dare say I am making fine time considering I know so little of this particular place of soot and snow," I replied, in an arch tone.

"I dare say you're right," he replied, and I felt he might be mocking me.  Then he went on to tell me, "You've been walking through these dreaming paths for thirty-nine years."

Mollified, I told him, "and I've slept and woken seventy-six times, I believe."

"Let's say it is so," he answered, with that same tone that I couldn't help but interpret as him having a private laugh at my expense.

Either she's not been keeping count, or time really isn't passing the same way for her, or her biology has indeed been changed.

"Would you like to return home?"

I was startled by the idea, as I had left home far behind me, and I hadn't even allowed myself to think of it.

What use a home, after all of this?  What could every fixture, nail and board of that house and home represent, that wouldn't be overshadowed by a spot of blood on the floor by the door leading to my Minnie's bedroom.

I looked away, unable to form a response, with the full knowledge I was doing so rudely.  I told myself he had been rude first.

"The house no longer stands."

I swiftly turned to look at him, startled.

"Time has passed," he did elaborate.

"I should imagine," I replied, trying to seem composed but finding myself breathless instead.  I'd heard so many fanciful stories of those who had been spirited away to places and who returned to find no time had passed.  I'd told Minnie such stories.  "I would not go home.  Not yet, I do think.  Would you instead help me find a way to bring my daughter to me?  I should love to show her so many of these places and fantastical people."

"I would not," he answered me.  "I could not, for that matter, and you should know that in all these varied places, I know of more than a hundred different Lost who would promise you that they can bring your daughter back to you, and there isn't a single such offer you should accept."

"Not a one?"

"None that I know, and I know most if not all."

In light of this, I think it's the time dilation one. To still be thinking about her daughter as a primary motivation after forty years of subjective time seems unlikely, even with the wolf-husband constantly tearing that wound open again.

This also makes me think that at least part of the thing keeping her Lost might be a refusal to accept reality, in terms of her dead child. If she could accept it, maybe she'd be able to return to realspace.

...huh. With what the husbandwolf represents, maybe her having this breakthrough would culminate in her either killing him, or assimilating him. I suspect the latter, given the way these things seem to work in general in Pale.

This is starting to remind me a lot of "Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath," all the way down to the Page of Suns playing the role of that story's more-helpful-than-usual Nyarlathotep.

In a weird way, I think I'm also seeing some thematic callbacks to Worm. The trauma of losing a close family member being what condemns both the hero and the villain of that story into a kind of underworld that they either succeed or fail at growing back out of.

I felt a tear slip its way down my cheek, faster than I could pull my hand from my pocket to stop it or hide it, and the wind around me carried it aside, so it did not touch me or my coat.  It touched the ground instead, and there, it rippled outward as a glowing circle that expanded to a radius about two paces across.  It held firm for several seconds, blocking the splinters and chips of wood from nearby buildings my puzzle-solving had demolished.

How queer, a tattered scrap of magic I hadn't known I had collected, that I'd carried away with me.  From what location had that been derived?  I now wonder.  But that line of thought certainly wasn't foremost in my mind at that moment.

"But you do not know all of those creatures or powers in these places who could grant me such a wish, sun-faced man?"

"I do not."

"Then I do think I shall carry on," I told him.

"When you meet such a thing, you could ask them if they know the Page of Suns.  If they do not, then that is no guarantee at all that the wish will give you what you desire."

"If they do not know you and I ask them to bring Minnie back to me, only to regret it, do you think you could remember to tell the next person in my circumstance?"

"You are the only one in your specific circumstance, but I grasp the essence of what you want.  You may make your attempt and if you fail, it will make the next person's task easier.  But you should know I do not appear before everyone, Hazel."

"Why then did you appear before me?"

"In part because I wanted to see what you might do."

Didn't really understand what he said about Others who know him or don't know him and what that means about their trustworthiness. It seems like he's saying that any of them that DON'T know him can't be trusted, but all the ones that DO know him are not capable of raising the dead? I think so? In which case, he's saying "maybe there's an entity that can raise the dead somewhere out here, but I don't know about them, so I can't vouch for any promises of such that you hear." I think that's about right.

He's curious about human visitors. Interesting. I wonder what his motives really are? And, once again, how independent of an existence from human belief and expectation an entity like him has in the first place? The subjective experience of Others (and the question of how much of it they actually have) continues to fascinate me.

With that said, he stepped aside.  The shimmer of heated air that wept away from him, the stir of dust and wind, and the clouds in the sky all moved with him.  I stood on a path with snow on either side of me, a path stretching into the horizon, the landscape flat on either side.  Sitting high and heavy in the sky was a great cube with dull gray sides, turning slowly, and it made a dull low sound like a rumble deep in the earth, its corners and sides scraping against the sky.

I did not know how I hadn't heard it before.

"I intend to continue my journey, Page of Suns."

"To find someone who might be able to bring Minnie to you?" he asked.  "This specific conviction didn't exist before your conversation with me."

"Not spoken out loud, even to trusted traveling companions, but I've held it in my heart, I believe.  It feels as though traveling forward to that… construction, it would be the end of the journey."

"It would be the midpoint of a journey."

"Then I suspect my journey will be considerably longer than it has been, fortune allowing, if it includes that thing.  I do not feel comfortable approaching that thing, and I do not think I will feel comfortable doing so anytime soon.  I'll carry on as I have been, at least for now."

"Very well."

I went back down the path to pick up Key, and when I turned back to tell the Page of Suns that he wasn't nearly as odious a person as I had initially thought he was, I found him gone.

I carried on, carrying Key as she protested at the lack of summer day's warmth inside my coat.  I completed the puzzle, removing the last obstacles that kept me from carrying on down the road, but instead of walking down the straight road that pointed directly to that construction, I found a side path and turned aside, wading through knee deep snow.

Editor's Note: Much has been made of the construction, as Hazel calls it, and the fact it is the midpoint of a journey.

There is little to elaborate on here.  Commentary on Hazel's decision is better fit elsewhere, and discussion of the Page of Suns is more thoroughly covered in other works, including Architects and Gadsen's Page of Suns, PSBN: 9029819018435.

Perhaps one day I or one of the people to pick up my work as I picked up my father's will be able to elaborate on this section, and make sense of this.  The number of Finders who have seen these constructions number by the handful, and as far as we know, none but Hazel have actually reached one.  But that comes later.

The Page of Suns has a spaceship type thing, I guess? And moving toward it would have ensured that this would be the midpoint of "a" journey, though not necessarily "the" journey that began with Hazel entering the ethereal and would end with her leaving.

A baffling combination of elements, this mechanical-looking "lighthouse" of the Page's that fills the sky.

In any case, Hazel isn't ready to deal with reality again yet. Or even to admit that it's time to start working toward being able to deal with reality.

Splitting it here, since we're at around the halfway point of "100 Years Lost." Really, this could have been an entire webnovel, and frankly I think that maybe it should have been. It has a much stronger hook than "Pale" itself did.

I think I'm going to have a lot to say about it at the end.