transcribed via electronic post, and etched here for future reference by any who care to view. Last of June, Twenty and Aught-two.
Dear Journal… Magonia is no longer a place for my dispatches shall rise from, save for the occasional visit to a kiosk at the Necropoliptic market, should I need to visit. I do not foresee several travels there, if any at all.
Indeed, as of the end of this week, my person, belongings, and hangers-on have instead tarried to a new village many footfalls to the South; similar but not identical to my previous domain, this new place also has a wine-dark sea beneath a boiling orange sunset come the change from day to night. It also has many travelers upon man-made water roads, journeying at all hours of day and night, some in the form of taxis, others bearing cargo between assorted ports, and the bulk being personal pleasure and business-craft.
This transfer of location occurred quickly, nary a score’s day notification before it came to my attention that the former landowner sold his boarding-house to a new proprietor. This fresh creature, crab-faced and beetle-browed, displayed to me (in no uncertain terms) a wish for a far higher monthly tithe for the same space my bed occupied for nearly a year prior. I balked not so much at the increase in cost but more at the style by which this mannerless boor sought to bring things about. Being interrupted at all hours, being uprooted and awakened for no reason save for a complete
lack of courtesy and good neighborliness all in a matter of a week was cause enough to start investigations of another habitat for me and mine.
As a matter of coincidence, during a visit with my only blood sibling, I had the singular good fortune to discover that his region was fertile with locations to pitch one’s tent. In fact, a space was available just two doors down from him. Slightly smaller than the place previous, the floor plan is more open, and still quite a bit bigger than the place I was leasing from the noseless gunman a year ago. My only other immediate neighbor is a young girl from the Far east… one of the large island nations, I believe. I’ve not met her yet, but I’m told that she is quiet and unobtrusive… my preference for the one who shares a wall with me.
Regarding the building itself, it has been there since before my father’s birth, and possibly since his father’s youth. That it has remained standing with little interior change all this time is a testament to the durability of its structure and placement. There are many old trees surrounding the place, serving a multiple purpose as landscape, privacy and scout-housing for a local raccoon. I wonder at what lives might’ve been lived there before my arrival… I know of a few recent ones, but those are tales for another time. Suffice to say that there has certainly been a good deal of life lived inside those walls.
I wonder at what sleeping there that first night will be like, making that place my own, shaping it to my design. Soon, with the arrival of furniture, new traffic patterns will emerge. There will be places I prefer to think and read, warm spots where life of one sort of another will linger on, cool spots where perhaps no being may tread for a year or more. More personal scents will rise from the rooms… the days’ toil swept off by fragrant steam, cooking food, and some of the burning oils and herbs whose perfumes that I’m partial to for use in meditation. I feel that little time will be required to make my footprint the prevailing one.
I’ve barely commenced a personal cartography of the area… a large yellow foolscap, upon which I will draw my movements and discoveries when I return home from whatever adventure the day has brought. It is a simple thing, at the moment… a nearly blank slate, but I look forward to a ramble along the canals and parks. I suspect that my first tracings on the map will be travels to the canals mentioned earlier, and the village tradesmen along them. I hear of an excellent supplier of rare books there, and I wish to see what the local merchants have to offer. I’m not one for frequenting taverns,
but perhaps a sampling of the local brews will give me an idea of how the populace might view a newcomer like myself, too. On my many visits, it’s seemed a friendly enough place, so I don’t have any misgivings about being a stranger in a strange land. I wonder how many places that there will be to sit and call for a pint or a dram, perhaps play cards or discuss the topics of the day.
Much discovery is ahead of me.
