Keep on the Borderlands

In this series we will assemble a vast and terrible mythology. It will take a very long time.



I.

The foundation, to begin, was uncertain. Timber and hastily quarried granite formed intercessional vaultings of repeated post and lintel design. Depressions were shorn up with shim and mud plaster in generous amalgam. The various basement recesses held still incidents of original flaws in both workmanship and enthusiasm. These competed with newer, buttressed descendents and galvanized cinctures in necessary metal. The soil was dark. As testament to the great pockets of water, gone now, that once riddled this underworld, moisture crept into joist and connective tissue. A solemn permanence held board to board and stone to stone.

The cadence of support was revisited through root systems. Greedy fingers blindly tunneling for superior position; proof that the surface was near. In the center, though, in the geometric center of these puzzled halls there were no such intrusions. Here was a different type of earth, alluvial deposit descended from some forgotten waterway. The roots that cracked these walls were different. Above this place was something wholly other.

The something had ascended through these subterranea. There was no clear delineation between built and hewn, grown and ground. There was no method by which to index one thing from another thing or to separate accident from purpose. It was simply clearer somehow, here in the center, that there was something up there, vast and portentous. A weight. A very great weight.