The Salt House

[You receive on salt crusted parchment, crinkled and cracking, wreaking of the sea a shakily handwritten letter. ]

This morning, as the sun rose to meet the sky, I saw twelve sea birds, and isn’t that just wonderful. You know they say that The Salt-House corrodes one’s soul; I think that accurate. This morning I saw twelve sea birds swooping and diving along the surf so far below. Perhaps, one may have found its breakfast among the fish which Iclastonese sometimes secrets to us. I admit I was surprised when the monks brought be pen and parchment, they said I have been good and proper…have I?

I write to you now with so very little to say, so much less than is deserved. For that paucity I can only offer my apologies, though selfishly I hope you may forgive an old friend such an offense. Perhaps what is warranted is an explanation; perhaps an apology. I think though I will simply start at that place where all things do and begin at some beginning.

I saw twelve sea birds this morning and, as I had not seen the outside of this wretched paupers home in so many years, I cried. I cried and I screamed in elation and pain and I should have known better. I should have known better. Of course the monks came. Iclsatonese’s sometimes gentle hand now the wielder of the crop. Again I cried, though now only in that so muted pain I know too well and, of course, I found myself in the cellar.

I think I shall tell you of the cellar, for it is far too ordinary a bowel to expect. One enters the cellar through a small wooden hatchway; elevated some two feet from the ground. Those new to The House often find themselves being pushed through and subsequently making the all too natural mistake of, upon finding themselves on firm footing, attempting to stand. This is however, and of course, the less pleasant of the options provided to us. The ceiling of the cellar is, like all things in The House, most corrosive to our fragility. Many a gash, recently wrenched open and upon meeting the ceiling of the cellar, will scream at their owners of futures lost and chaos incarnate. We learn quickly to kneel, but of course we have been well conditioned.

This morning I saw a gull, two cormorants, and nine other sea birds and in seeing such beasts I found myself in the cellar and I saw the cellar. I will note, as I think it important that I do, I also have seen Iclastonese’s, or that whom I take to be Iclastonese, face. He is a broad faced man with concerningly narrow features; The Salt-House does corrode ones soul after all. I think, in another time, he would have made an adequate teller.

Occupation is a liminal thing in this Tartarus for Iclastonese the teller fills his role with fever — counting the ones debts and credits without ever a mistake — while finding such a tenderness in his heart for we the downtrodden. I have been a cook, I think you would stand a gape at the meals which I now can prepare. A distant cousin, but blood bound nonetheless to the meals we remember. I have spent time as both a painter and the sculptor — for someone must — though never have the monks let me find art in these games. Iclastonese the teller has told me of when he was a condemned, he says he was like me and that “If only you come to it” I could be damned.

I saw the cellar for but a moment. Darkness being the ever-present background of the light, I did not notice when the hatchway shuttered close behind me. I know not to stand, we learn quickly to kneel. I do not know the number of hours which I knelt in the cellar, yet I do know the time could be counted in hours and not days. When the sun was low and the distant waves grew nearer I was subjected to a lance of radiance as the hatchway creaked open. Perhaps I will never know who retrieved me so soon, though I would wish well upon them. Such light, being unaccustomed to it you see, dazzled my mind while the stranger of the hatch lead me to a Thebian nook, presumably set parchment and quill before me, and was gone.

I saw twelve birds this morning, while weeping at the most radiant sun I saw twelve sea birds fly in from across the horizon. Many times I have thought on what I would see first upon waking from this life. Our sun, she flew high across my mind; however, between the magnificent and the mundane, from buckets to kings, I never imagined I would break my fast to a play of birds dancing through the morning sky.

I sit in my nook and I wonder why I write you. All I have been given is some parchment and an ever drying quill; and yet, with no indication of ability, I write you a letter in my old tung while leaning on the eyes so long dormant. Perhaps you think me a monster, perhaps not, the monks do not know much of the soothing land. If you do not however, I use what ink and hope I have left and I beg you, render what assistance you can.

Truly,

-Flaniea

Authors Note. This is the first part of a cooperative story telling exercises I am doing with Keighley Rockcliffe.