Aubernoun the Archivist
In which we meet the chronicler of these Tales
The accompanying art piece for this story is a 3-dimensional collage made from watercolor, folded paper, and tree branches.
The musical companion piece is intended to be listened to separately, not while reading the story, but please listen in whatever way you enjoy most.
As Aubernoun put branch to paper, he paused and wondered at the strangeness of the moment. How many times had he done this before? It was beyond counting, just like the infinite realms of Periphony itself. Why, then, should this time be any different? The tip of his branch lingered on the page. After a while, a sticky pool of sap began to form around it, staining the paper in a blot of inky black. Aubernoun raised the branch and saw that it was shaking.
He sighed, and as he did, a great wave of swaying branches billowed out across Candela, the edges of his leaves rippling with iridescent shades of orange and gold. At the same time, reams of blank pages shook loose from the trunks of his trees and filled the air like so many flocks of startled birds. They fluttered and danced in the pillars of light cast through Aubernoun’s upper canopy before settling into the underbrush below. Aubernoun let the page he had been holding fall with them.
From his eyes atop Steward’s Bluff, Aubernoun looked out across Candela. Here was his home, the domain of impossible things: the great Sound, the seed, and the candle to light many worlds. He could see the borders of this domain, and as the candle’s light reached it, the particles of light scattered and rained down through the void, and each particle touched a different world, and all these worlds together formed Periphony. At his vantage, Aubernoun could see the future and the past, and he recorded all that he could see—written in the sap from his many trunks, upon the pages which peeled from his bark in thin, curling sheets like dead skin from a snake. He saw, and he recorded. This was his vocation.
As he gazed out, he witnessed all possibilities spread before him and folded around him before finally converging once again into a single point far, far away. There was another border there, and beyond that border Aubernoun could not see. But all else—all things across Candela and Periphony—fell within his purview.
He surveyed these realms again, searching for anything he had missed. The future was ever unfolding, it was true. There were always new developments to record on that furthermost edge of cascading possibilities. But his master had forbidden him from looking further down that road until all things in the present and past had been documented. His many eyes scoured the sprawling infinite, and all the while he knew in his heart that there was only one story left for him to put to paper.
His own.
But why was he so afraid?
Far from Steward’s Bluff, near the edges of the Plains of Silence, Aubernoun felt something soft press reassuringly against one of his trunks. Turning his attention that way, he saw a vaguely humanoid creature made of gleaming, luminescent moss. Of course, it was Ode. Aubernoun’s closest friend, Ode was always the first to sense when something was troubling him. Because of his work, Aubernoun thought so often in words. He even dreamt in words. But words are imperfect things. They are small, and so often shrink the totality of the truth. With Ode, he could speak the silent language of plant-things. When Aubernoun was at a loss for words, he found that communicating with Ode in the old way brought him clarity.
But Ode was relatively new to Candela. They hadn’t been around during the era of the Six, as Aubernoun had. They hadn’t seen the Great Fire, or felt its fury.
Ode pressed both of their arm-like appendages into Aubernoun’s bark. An infusion of gentle energy passed into Aubernoun, and with it a message: Do you remember when I first came to Candela, and you wrote down my story? It helped me understand myself. It brought me peace.
But how could there be peace for Aubernoun when there was a thick layer of ash deep underground, and charred wood at the hearts of great trees that still felt the flames? This had been no mere forest fire. The candle had toppled that day, and the resulting conflagration was beyond anything any realm had ever seen. Vast swaths of Aubernoun’s body had been razed to the ground, and countless volumes of knowledge were lost. Hosts of creatures that made homes within his shade were displaced or worse. As he thought of it, Aubernoun’s boughs quivered and a gentle rain pattered across the forest floor that did not come from the sky. How could he put that story into words? The hurt was simply too great to be spoken.
Ode responded to the silent question: That is why it must be spoken. Because it is too great to hold within yourself. Get it out. Be free of it.
Aubernoun still hesitated, but he could feel the truth of that message. It resonated from the tips of his roots, all the way up into his highest branches. Even for a vast forest like Aubernoun, the pain was too much to keep inside forever.
Ode’s presence was an anchor of quiet strength. I’ll be right here with you.
Words are imperfect things, and small. But sometimes a truth must be made smaller so that it can be reckoned with—so that it can be contained, before it engulfs your entire being.
Ode stood back from the tree and gave a small nod of their leafy head.
Aubernoun reached down and picked up a fresh sheet of paper from his floor. A deep stillness fell across all his leaves and branches, for many miles across Candela. From the tip of one branch, a small bead of black sap began to form.
He put branch to paper and started to write.
🐦⬛🎶📝
So beautiful! 💜