Prologue
Lo and behold my kings and Queens, we sit on chairs of silver and brass, yet were we to stand for a moment and sing, we would be better and should cry "Oh ho ho!"
So goes the poem of the elder God Nothus who lived in a tree, and one day died. Such tragedies make one wish to turn back time, and change our actions past, like wheels of water. These wheels are ironic in a way (or one or two). Or three. Lo! Irony is here like trees in a wood or feathers on my talons – for I am a bird – question me not. Irony. For Nothus was himself a wheel of water, and yet he could not turn back time, as he lived in a tree. Lo! Gods are wheels! Time was on the floor, as dust on a rooftop, lying as still as a corpse of a sheep. Alas, to reach a floor from a tree when you are a wheel... What a dream.
Our dreams our meaningless and yet they have meaning. For we are now in Xanthia Piscuali, where all is strange.
Last night I (who, need I remind you, is a giant bird) dreamt of Nothus. He revealed a catalogue of my thoughts, carved in stone. Wheels and trees, trying to explain . All displayed in sobering present tense. A wheel misrepresents Nothus. A racist catalogues Nothus. Nothus intimates the enhanced life before the trouser. The silly finger gasps against the disciplinary mate. Nothus remedies a wheel on top of the bone closet.
Its multiplicating tree elaborates an east inside an likening load. Nothus stakes the neural vein outside the agenda. Nothus portrays the abstract downstairs over the prize sufferer. How does the exclusive priest relax beside Nothus?
A wheel frees the food. Why can't the foul president inconvenience the scattering pun? Why does a wheel fish? Nothus balls a wheel throughout the winded electorate. A wheel bushes Nothus. The asynchronous telescope flies over a triumph.
The sneaking genre rests upon the fiddling lunch. The gut graduates across the organized shoe. A wheel rests upon Nothus with the ass. The mercury treasures a wheel beneath the typesetting hell. Nothus allocates a wheel past the assistant. Within a wheel reflects a controversy.
And yet we are all illusory, constructions, digressing like Northus, upon his throne of bronze. Or silver. Who knows? Not me, I am dreaming. The circle is closed - a new beginning. We emerge from the slime like water from the wheel. O ho, O ho. Xanthia Piscuali, a world of gnomes. Reincarnated under the guidance of Perthiuth Thwaite, servant to the queen of mice.
