A CENTURY OF CLIMATE SICKNESS.

         The Glacial Century, was a geologically brief (130 ± 40 years) period of torrential storms and cold climatic conditions which occurred on the corners of West Eos.  It is believed to have been caused by the disintegration of one or several ice sheets separating the earth and sky, although rival theories have been proposed.
          While debate remains concerning the scope and origin of the Glacial Century, there is notable consensus regarding its role in the collapse of cloud agriculture.  Previous to the Glacial Century, numerous and varied forms of atmospheric cultivation were well recorded, including convective lifting, cyclonic circulation and condensation dispersal.  Through the implementation of these and similar sustenance strategies a lasting surplus of nutrients and nourishment was established on nearly every continent.  By the later years of the Glacial Century, evidence of these processes is almost entirely non-existent, rapidly and noticeably abandoned by cave settlers, hunter gatherers,  and tribal villages alike.
          A further consequence of the Glacier Century of which there exists no dispute was the spread and transmission of an assortment of maladies and infections collectively known as climate sickness.  Primarily carried by viral precipitation (or less commonly rainmaking bacteria) and spread to humans via cloud and vapor carcasses, the diseases were notorious throughout Eos, due to the countless settlements they contaminated, corrupted or completely destroyed.  

          It was our century of climate sickness.  The cold was youngest inside the cave, it came without warning and then it colored through the rest.  I wore two layers of skin, one fur side in, the other facing out.  Jillison used stone tools to soften her touch, her own way of wearing the glaciers down.  We watched for warring states and waited for an animal king to call our own.  
          The sky was small and starved of steam.  Jillison said her ancestors lived inside there, but I never saw what she meant. We were alone and outliving the continent I had come to know.  Jillison huddled next to me and we hunted for ropes to hold the thunder down.
          When the weather was hollow the harvests had fallen around us.  It wasn't work, we rotated crops in every cloud and each season gave us more than enough.  Since the sickness started it was just the least of everything, sometimes less.
          We were children but I knew Jillison would take care of me.  She covered me in clay, careful recitations, crash remains.  Her hands were white blooded and unblinded by the ice.  She gave me a handful of raptor talons and said they would protect us.

          We were living in the same cave that gave the sickness a name.  When the fire was full, I sharpened arrowheads against my skeleton.  Every escape started at the spine and shone d0wn from there.   In the overhang, Jillison stamped her handprints on the cave walls.  They were almost as thin as those of a new born.  Half were worn over and half glowed orange if I looked at them right. 
          When the dark was too strong to see I unwrapped my skin and Jillison whispered to me.  The story was always the same.  An animal king with halos with in its eyelids, a cloud garden with crops that never gave in, a season where the ice was see through and still breathing. 
          The glaciation was growing inside of us in ways I couldn't always understand.  I could speak it as a kind of language and lose my words inside of it.  Sometimes my mouth was useless for weeks. 

          The weaker we got, the more work we had to do, the climate kept cornering the clouds, the ice was in my eyes and then it was a scar between me and the sky.  My skin shook on and off like the switch had been severed in two.  The sickness had done this to me before.  Jillison taught me a to do list and how to blackout right through it.
          Extinctions were early and often.  Elk, bears, cats, mice, migratory birds, deer.  Some went north of the sky and couldn't be found anymore.  Some stayed under the ice and tried to get a revenge on us.  We never knew which ones the sickness would let live. 
          We searched for paper and bark and rootstalks and starch.  I woke up kill pits and planted warning flags.  We took turns guarding the cave from below.  Jillison prepared a cremation for a pack of clouds that never came. 

          I wanted to ask her how many animal kings had lived too slow for the sky to keep?  How many had chose their cave and come already?  It had been a century since the climate left us.  I knew how to fill the sled and carry the wood and drag the rope away.  When my hands were weak, I got under the cloth with Jillison and we counted backwards from the cave. 
          We asked the ancestors for a tar pit, a trap, a crate and grains.  The ornaments couldn't keep the weather down.   We pulled the ground open and searched for clouds to swallow.  We undressed our eyes and pulled the permafrost out of their place.  Jillison said when the king came we could take the hide and heal the sickness with it.  We could chew the marrow and be made strong.  She said it was coming.
          Every breath built a blister inside of me.  I wasn't old enough to know how afraid to be.  I watched Jillison remove the skulls and stretch out the spines of our smallest prey.  Back in the cave the cold cut us out of our only clothes.  When they were gone, we were there still, scrubbed together and shivering.
          I held tightly to the talons Jillison gave me.  I prayed for the wind to whisper the plague away.   There wasn't another choice. I promised I wouldn't mistake a cured sky for the reoccuring kind. 

CRYOSPHERE ULTIMA.

         The Cryosphere Ultimate represented those portions of the atmospheric anatomy where water existed in solid form, including sea ice, lake ice, river ice, snow cover, glaciers, ice caps, ice sheets, and frozen ground.   Associated physiological symptoms of cryosphere exposure included clenched hands, wrinkled brow, legs pulled up to the stomach, and a flushed face.

          Thus, there was a wide overlap with the Century of Climate Sickness. The cryosphere was often an integral part of the chronological drift system with important linkages and feedbacks generated through its influence on surface energy and moisture fluxes, clouds, precipitation, tear duct, atmospheric and oceanic circulation. 

          Through these feedback processes, the cryosphere played a significant role in the emotional climate and in empathy model response to chronological drift.  The term Cryosphere Ultima describes those episodes of atmosphere exposure for more than three hours a day, for more than three days a week for a continent.  By contrast, a typical cryosphere extended an average of just two hours a day, with the duration peaking at six weeks.  Within the perimeter of the Cryosphere Ultima, periods of crying were frequent throughout the day, the evening, and often occurred for no obvious or intentional reason.

          Listen.  Atmosphere was coming down now.  Either way you looked at the controls, the pollutants.  We wore the same cloth over and over, day after day, season after season, creature after creature, and it was coming down now.  

          Inside out again, if the sky was not color blind, but sense blind entirely.

          You threw up on Stranger’s Day.  I remember Jillison.  How it started, the shade of ozone, the holes in our pores.

          A year or so ago, when you worked without a face.  Do you remember why you told me you loved me?

          Stomach spilled out over the floor.  How do you tell real from fake?  Jillison?  What did it feel like on your side too?

          Numb.  Paresthesia.  Wore three layers to leave out my own organs.  Drank clear water.  Cloth was an enemy and an ocean of toxins.  Put on the old clothes (pollution) so the atmosphere would be unrecognizable again.

          Colorless gives up too.  Eventually.

          Did you know I thought of you too?  

          So Jillison, when you wore that.  Every hole in the atompshere showed.  Is that what you wanted to spread?  That kind of coughing, sickness, atmospheric decay?  Try.  Try to arrange it in any other way.

          Jillison.  Courage is not in hiding cloth, it's in never showing bones.

          It wasn’t common for everyone.  I hope you know that now.  To come to know cloth as a kind of pollutant, as a sickness, a virus.  To watch it cover the body as a cold exoskeleton.  Decorative shame, manic symptoms, small engravings in white and gray.

          Jillison, did I make you ashamed too?  On your side of sky?  Did you ask to heave and turn your world around?  Open fire when the fabric hit the shore?

          I remember you told me you had that much of enough.  I remember you said, numbness was the same above.

MIRACLE/MISTAKES OF MINERAL RAIN.

          The Mistakes of Mineral Rain was a type of miracle rehearsal that may have occurred upon burial of a fossil born or alternative relief form, such as the halogen born or hollow born, or less commonly, the occupied corpse.   Through the allowance of erosion therapy, the empty spaces within these organisms (filled with liquids or gas during life) became repossessed by a mineral-rich groundwater, known as the first or final forgiveness.  This process could take place in very small spaces, such as within the eyes or heart or fingers of a fossil born, and the resulting form may often have been mistaken for an animate body and its condition (a near-life object).  The oldest records of these specimens dated to East Eos, where they were believed to to represent a perfect type of preservation, paralysis, or purification. 
          For the mistakes of mineral rain to be properly appropriated, the organism must be placed within an underground atonement (such as a tear box, wishing well, or coffin of the flood) soon after burial or shortly after the initial interment process. The degree to which the specimen decayed when exposed to previous precipitation determined the later details of its replacement.  Many miracle rehearsals consisted only of vague skeletal remains or teeth; other contained traces of skin, feathers or even soft tissue.  
  If requisite subterranean conditions were met, the specimen could act as a nucleus for the precipitation of minerals such as remorse, regret, and reparation, resulting in a family forming around it.  Conversely, in alternative cases the original remains of the organism may have been completely dissolved or otherwise destroyed by the mercy of mineral rain. This remaining organism-shaped hole in the groundwater was called an external apology.  If this hole was later filled by a corporeal body, it became known as a half-life, a pass-through (slipstream) anatomy, or in certain instances, an attempt to tip the scales.  

THE TROPICS OF CARTILAGE.

         The Tropics of Cartilage were a barren area on the latitudinal body of time where little precipitatory entanglement occurs and consequently living conditions are hostile for animal and particle life.  About one third of surface of Hestia was composed of this unprotected cartilaginous or cartilaginous strata, which was sometimes called "pre-adolescent deserts".  Due to lack of momentum, position, spin, and polarization, this temporal tissue was commonly exposed to the processes of erosion and denudation.
           Typically, wildlife in the Tropics of Cartilage needed special adaptations to survive in the harsh environment. The composition of particles tended to be tough and wiry with small or no points, water-resistant shells and often spines to deter observation. Some animals underwent connective decay, bred and died in the course of a few weeks, while other long-lived species survived for years and developed sensory radiation systems able to locate sources of underground entanglement. 
          Nomads long struggled to live in the Tropics of Cartilage, moving their flocks and herds in search of superimposed oases or wherever grazing opportunities were available. Much of the area remained uninhabited until the advent of hidden variable irrigation, a process by which outside or distant streams of entanglement are coaxed through a matrix of small channels in the soil. Throughout Hestia, this artificial application of indefinite material would come to have many uses, including dormancy suppression, disposal of consolidated loneliness, as well as maintenance of social activity in drought cycles and during periods of immediate reclusivity.

JAWLINE ISLANDS/ARCHIPELAGO.

A jawline archipelago is an chain, cluster or collection of physical cues and tells (islands) that may be found isolated in large amounts of water or neighboring a large land mass. Archipelagos are often shame triggering and volcanic, forming along arcs generated by subduction zones or hotspots, but may also be the result of emotional erosion or hormonal elevation.
Sets of islands close to the coast of a continent are considered jawline archipelagos when they form independent landforms and may no longer be seen as exposed continental shelf.  Often the combination of behavioral attributes and physical location of these islands will be far more important than their inherent composition.
Ocean basins that are being reduced by the process of subduction may be called 'remnant tells’, ‘phantom clocks’ and ’blank reads’, as they will slowly be shrunken out of existence and crushed in the subsequent archipelago collision. This process has happened repeatedly in the geological history of the continents.

Jillison said it was a means of men control.  Security (physical, mental) versus severity of punishment.  Properties of knocking an ocean down, one by one, over and over. 

I know you're tired, he said.

Just leave, he said.

Some oceans grow domestic by their own hand.   If they raise their islands that way, if the archipelago stays alive long enough to let us know.  One day, I tried to stop worrying what I looked like to bodies of water (phlegm, spit, spots of medicated behavior.)

You told the neighbors what was going on.  You said, I would grow out of it, or you would find yourself gone.
Searched for shallow land at the back of the attic.  Listened for a whispering of things you wouldn't find impossible to forgive.
Call it an archipelago of tells, the same impostor syndrome we shared all along.  Call it whatever you want. Jillison, denial is not a way to be happier here.

Start a neck, shoulders, a collarbone clearly visible, a jawline thick and shallow, rings of bone overexposed and interconnected by what they lack.
Islands, broken into squared blocks and shards of comprehension.

You looked me up and down, got to my jaw and stopped there.  Like the whole thing was sunken into itself.  A scrape of trespass, an impermanence holding up half of my face.
After that I did my best not to ask what you think.  What good was an acknowledgement?  It still wouldn’t change things.

AUTUMN ON THE RADIO FARM.

          Radio farming was a form of agricultural broadcast dating back as far as West Hestia.  In many developing and early electric continents, techniques such as static and burn, seed saving, and seasonal pitch shifting were used to connect and share resources amongst communities.  
          Through the process of radio farming, crops and livestock could be carried across great distances by systematically changing (modulating) some property of their radiated waves, such as their amplitude, stance, fur and skin, pulse width, and frequency. By attuning to the appropriate station, the information in these radiated waves could then be extracted and restored back to its original form, thus refilling a near or faraway farm with a fresh and plentiful harvest.
          Though radio farming  was a common means of resource management in early electric settlements, to create a comprehensible exchange in this era required a demanding degree of precision and fidelity.  Depending on climate, slope, and distance to broadcast tower, the process could take hours or sometimes days.  White noise was a constant obstacle and wreaked havoc upon horses and cattle, as well as the hands of the laborer.  Often radio farmers were those with a high tolerance for atonal pain or an ability to withstand the physical strains of continuous, extended, and often incomprehensible static.

          Our radio farm was owned by old-time ploughmen and program harvesters.  The golden age had broke their bare hands long ago, there wasn't a horizon they hadn't heard already.  They stayed in the house or told stories on the porch.  They left us to work the broadcast spreader and drive the truck by ourselves.  
          Jillison said it was good for us.  It was the only way we would get the training right.  It was simple if you didn't think about it.  Touch,  motion, heat, vibration, sound.  The afterlifes weren't out loud anymore, we didn't need them to take care of us.  
          All the same, we were alone in our own way.  When we made a mistake they didn't even try to tell us what to do next.

          I rode in the back seat through the antennae gardens.  There were rows and rows of them, thin and silver and taller than the standing trees.  Sometimes a charge would jump across the tops of them and we could see a trail it left in the air.  I didn't know what the current was reaching for, it talked in sparks I couldn't read.  
          It was a brand new night and there was no on else around.  Jillison said there was repair work to do.  Her hair was thick with dirt and black dust and dig site remains.  It always looked heavier without the daylight in the way, like a pile of plaster had been put in it's place.
          The bruises were still under there somewhere, but they only showed when the suns were too used up to see. 

          We spent the hours fixing the filters and amplifiers and transistors and tubes. I knew what the current extracted and how to control the livestock that came out.  It was the kind of work that started a sweat and left you to your second instincts.  I was getting better at it.
          Jillison replaced the ranged circuits and I tried to get the fields clear.  Some nights it never changed.  Whether we were planting or pitch shifting or pulling the crops from the conductor, I didn't want to leave and never thought we would.  We had control of the static, we could keep it small and slow and steady or create symmetries in the storm, whatever station was waiting for a signal, we were ready.  We stayed awake until the wires frayed and the animals came and then we kept working.
          The buildings were far away, the blister cities were far away, the only things I could see were safe and near and straightforward.  We were as close to the original recordings as we could get.   Someone had to draw the resonance down and the radio farm was teaching us how.  
          I could barely remember the way the weather wore into the soil.  It could have given up underground again for all I knew.  When the days were done, we buried everything blank and broken with the broadcast spreader.  We brought the dirt right over it.  No one watched us and no one told us where to go.   There were acres of current we could alternate all on our own.  
          It was all I ever needed, Jillison and me, searching the static for herds to shepherd and harvests to seed.  It was our autumn on the radio farm, the only resolution I reached for when my hands were red and hard-earned and all the crops and livestock were coming in clear and alive.

MURDER THE WREN DAY.

          Also known as Hollow Born Day, Capture Day, or First Martyr's Day.  Traditionally taking place the morning of the Vagabond Month, Murder the Wren Day commemorates the first killing of the storm bird by the North Hestia children. Participants carry wooden boxes under their arms, sing the executor's chords, chase trails through a torn rain.  They wear feathers around their necks and masks of wet skin to keep the skies from breaking them.
          At the abandoned Clancy House their boxes are offered as burial plots for the storm to come.  Prayers are provided to keep the bones of the bird from burning the boxes from within.  A child may plea for a clear victory or costless season.  They may recite the names of the Clancy's before them and a list of the clouds they have captured or killed.
          The holiday is opposed by those who wish to overrun the town, command the wind, wreck at the nest until the children are naked and aching to be anonymous in the storm again.

          The herd of them stayed a half sun ahead of us.  The older ones were there, Carver, McInnis, Cota, and others. When they walled together the wind was warm blooded and whispering behind us. When I knocked down the nest they threw the seeds around me.
          We followed the fence until the houses fell.  Cota was the weakest, a crease they came to trust.  Jillison held a box and so did McInnis and Carver and me.  The strongest ones carried poles decorated with ribbons and wreaths, and positioned them where the wren would sleep.  Some wore suits of straw and bricks over their eyes.
          I held my box until I was one-armed in the dark.  It hurt to hold it there. Jillison stopped and showed me how to blindfold my body in two places at once, he took off his clothes to keep the shadows warm and sharpened his hands so the smaller ones would stay away.

          They were a herd, but they were never completely together.  Scavengers came and were given blank skin and bare names. A child would push his fingers through the air to tell them when to walk and when to stop.  Jillison and I stayed off to the sides and said little.
          The strongest ones had to haul the sky in front.  The rest of them held their handles and stood and looked.  If the eyes of the wren were red and white, they would whip the pole and pierce it there.
          When we reached the town they wrote the animals laws on their hands.  They were the last words of the wren before, a marytrology recited to reach the nest again.  Every prayer was target pratice and then the past would catch back up again.      
          There were other warnings I could have worn for them.  I tore my box in two and hung the halves around my neck.  I told them the wren wasn't what they thought, I said there was hair and skin hidden inside it.  My eyes were wide and egg white.  Jillison tried to talk to them and his lips started to sting.

          Cota was first.  He stood in the corner of the road, skeleton out, open handed.  Even his hidden teeth were showing.  He told them they could reach the other world hunting animals like this.  His mouth mottled, off-color, molding over.  Jillison looked at me and I knew he was thinking the same thing.  Every herd has a black hole they've chose to believe in.
          The shortest of them gathered around Cota and loaded the boxes around his legs.  The rest formed circles around them.  Their heads were pulled back, eyes and lips pointed up.  I could see Jillison's outsides inflating and deflating.  His nervous system was losing size of him.
          What started as sinews soon was sharper than a storm.  A clattering of kill chords and children's chants.  Their faces were fake white, shining with sweat, scarred open by scales and overtones.  Cota kept the sound growing.  I watched one sun short circuit and then another and then another.  Jillison reached in his pocket and they were pale black in there too.
          The huntings songs were shuddering through them.  I tried to cover my ears.  Jillison guarded a rope in the dirt and dug it around us.

          When they struck the matches, Cota stayed in place.  The black air was building a picture in him.  Jillison's rope kept me there, crouched over, knotted down. I tried to run and I couldn't.
          I couldn't move.  My pulse was pulled away from me.  There was an erasure where my muscles  had been.
          The boxes didn't burn slow, smoke rose from them like snakes growing legs.  The herd threw the wood closer.  The fire was past Cota's knees, his face was a fautline of forgotten pieces.  The smell was charred and leather and I couldn't come closer.  Jillison tightened the rope and put me on the other side for good.
          If they left him as cinders then I knew the wren had come.  It was the only way they could have taken the new air away.  If the grass was ash and gray then they had done what it had asked.  Only the wren could kill a call that loud.
          A solstice would pass, the suns would start over, the last of the shivering would understand where they had been.   The wren would find fresh sticks to stack over the body.  A  new nest would be built and a new brood would hatch.  The herd would find another leader and bring them there again.  It was an animal law the wren made them write on their hands, a trap to keep every one of their prayers as empty as it planned.

MAMMALIAN LAW.

          Thermodemocracy was an evolutionary political system of Themis that included elements of mammalian law, multi-chambered assembly and the endothermic code.  In accordance with the Warm Blooded Movement, free (mammalian or their immediate synapsid ancestors) inhabitants of the continent took a major and direct part in the management of the affairs of evolution, such as declaring war, dispatching breeding expeditions and ratifying adaptation agreements.  These activities were often handled by a form of punctuated equilibrium, an assembly based on popular hereditary advantage. 
          Although thermodemocracy predated cladistic imperialism by over a third of the continent, they are often associated with each other.  For much of Western Themis the ethics of mammalian law were enforced by a majority rule of biased mutations and representative instincts.  Such developments lead to the abolishment of sympatric speciazation as well as the decision to execute the entire scaled and hairless population of North Themis and sell off their traits and lineage simply for refusing to accept the dominant authority of the crown group (sometimes called "true mammals").
          As the evolutionary system advanced through Themis, it matured to take the form of a direct thermodemocracy, with two distinguishing features: the random selection of ordinary adaptations to fill the existing morphological (shape, structure, colour, pattern) and phylogenetic offices, as well as a full legislative assembly consisting of all major and minor blooded parties of the continent, including warm, weak, blue, white, broken and others.

SEEDLING OF A SEDIMENTARY SCAR.

         Sedimentary or seedling scars were those that formed only at the high temperatures and pressures associated with the process of anatomical displacement. These cross-linked lesions were referred to as index injuries, and may have been found in animal, mineral, bark, crystal, or bone.  However, many trauma markers were stable only within certain limits, and scars of sedimentary strata were not necessarily an indication of evolution or decay.
       Composition and development of seedling scars was a highly variable process and depended greatly on continental conditions at time of their creation.  For instance, small particles in the terrestrial surface may have evolved into larger scars, if layers of sleep were applied, or may have been obliterated upon contact by thermal conditions, or may even have their shape preserved, still visible, but their contents obscured by soil and shadows that were not originally present.  
       After numerous trauma markers were discovered sharing a common design, it was proposed that the process of anatomical displacement may not have been determined entirely at random, but could potentially represent a type of primitive index or attempt at documentation.   While this concept was relatively straightforward, years of additional work were required to reach a point where a lasting vocabulary of scars could be accurately translated.  The final key to the decipherment of this deep seeded or substrated terrain was made by scholars in West Themis and would come to be known by a variety of names, most notably: “the specific epithet”, “the craven fault system”, “the apicle hook“, or “the nightmare hatching.”

OCTAVE/ALL VOWEL CASTLE.

          A mid-Themis innovation, Octave, the All Vowel Castle (the "basic miracle of musical fortification") evolved to serve a range of purposes throughout the continent, the most significant of which were military, administrative, and domestic.  Although primarily a defensive structure, this eightfold fortification also featured offensive tools (such as half or double frequency towers and the harmonic keep) which could be used as a base for launching raids into enemy territory.  In continental Eris, the All Vowel Castle begun to lose it’s military significance due to the emergence of the Echoes-in-Exile and the advent of permanent acoustic artillery, as a result, Octave became more important as a statement of power and a secure location for the outcast aristocracy to entertain their peers.
          As the Echoes-in-Exile established their rule, the appearance and acoustics of Octave begun to reflect the prestige of its occupying parties, and a comfortable pitch (also referred to as the “just intonation” or “perfect interval“) was often fashioned with the walls.  At it’s peak, the castle was an influential social center for articulatory members of the culture (those fluent in raised and nucleic speech, the self-professed “All Vowel Class”), as well as a resonating structure for pronounced demonstrations and phonetic displays. Although the structure still provided protection from low levels of violence and aided in control of important routes of acoustic exchange, it’s essential and symbolic purpose was to evoke the sense of open vocal harmony that was aspired to among the Echoes-in-Exile and other representatives of the expelled aristocracy.
          To distinguish Octave from similar structures of the continent, it is important to emphasize not only the structure's rich cultural legacy, but its architectural accomplishments as well.  Due to inharmonicity caused by contours of the surrounding landscape, the thickness and tension of Octave arrowslits and walls could be adjusted to widen or shrink interior intervals very slightly, a restorative constant which allowed for particularly strong acoustic towers.  In addition, the conceptualization of pitch as having three dimensions and the concentric cardinal design were first introduced by the castle’s construction.  The term “concentric” is somewhat misleading however, as it was not meant to imply that Octave was circular, rather that it was a cross-partition of circularity itself.  This castle nested within castle architecture was an attempt to represent the true conviction of equivalences, and the Echoes-in-Exile would come to control it without visible hesitation or vulnerable horizon.

          Never would pass with a voice like that.  Not at that pitch, starting from scratch and dying on contact,  a fortification of control needed to keep it in key.  
          We had to be careful, spent enough of our life listening for emergencies, could even hear the echoes of them in our sleep.  What gets mistaken for paranoia can often become a recurring chorus.  
          It was a fortress coming down, every time we opened our mouth.  Not a tell, an eternity of tells.  Too many octaves thick, like a fortification built barely above ground, no way else around it.

          Didn’t give them a name, didn’t even try to fake one.  Whispered only to remind myself the castle had the highest turnover of any afterlife (excluding Heaven).  
          Exile was not a location, it was our only chance.
          We made sure the rooms were clear of cratering sounds.  Climbed up and down a crowd of stairs, listened for any kind of echolocation to force our way forward.   Kept it one floor at a time, caved in what acoustics we could, imagined reconstructing ourselves from decaying corridors and dismantled harmony.  
          Just kept hoping, maybe by the next room, maybe by the next room.
          Covered our throat in cut black cloth.  It was almost easy to forget the way an afterlife finds its mark. 

          Architecture was broken down by amplitude of aftermath, altered pitch and octave correction. 
          On either side of speech, there were levels of hesitation to be cleared out, tossed from the closet, or rephrased entirely.   We practiced alone, in asymmetrical scales, obtuse angles, and unequal temperament.  We recited the same empty notes until we had control of what made them whole.
          Respiration (power source).  Phonation (sound source). Resonance (sound modifier).  Articulation (speech modifier). Prosody (melodic aspects of speech). 
          Prisons beneath a new keep, often artificial or without origin and purpose.  Locked there, alone and no one listening, I taught myself the phonetics of war.

           If echoes darkened before we were ready, and they were, what else was there to do?  Arrowslits, curtain walls, under construction could only hold on so long.
          Spoke as soft as we could, still sounded like a construction site crashing down, tooth and nail clearly showing.  Still left us unprotected, naked, vulnerable to attack.  Mostly, we didn’t speak at all.
          Wasn’t enough to form a new octave defense, we had to make it work through effect, deflections, edgework.   We had to assemble material at an elevation we could hardly reach. 
          How do you attack a castle?  Slowly.  Carefully.  Not all at once.  A siege from inside, ongoing in silence, echoes of exile alive and on your side.  

THE IMPALEMENT ARTS.

          1. Registrative system of many Eris religions and reaches of habit. It occurs after the underdwelling stage, when the island is thin and whisperless. The choreography of the knife is to instruct a target and a retreat, until every standstill has been sharpened and killed again.
          2. Incidence of scrap organs. It is leftover from the first or last storm. It may be cornered and carved and torn. The eyes may be rewound and erased.  Whispers inside stretch the mouth and open the removed skin.

        At last, another Heaven.  Pins and needles the size of skyscrapers, a yolky aftertaste, a bed spilled on granite.  Vowels with their veils in disguise.  Blue ribbons in my hair.  Home.
        Outside, Jillison whittles fingerholes into cork.  He scripts static defense into star charts.  Scratches bruises shaped like trapezoids.  He spends his nights nailing frog legs to the leftover planks of wood.  Anything else feels too much like starting over again.
        He sheds and shivers and I balance him.  He is nervous.  I brace his circumference with warm temperatures.  I brush poison sumac off this truth and that.  
        Syllables blink and I hide him.    I know my words are like ticker tape.  Thin.  Flimsy.  Tasteless.  Jillison could rip them to their filaments and stomp them out.  But now, he won't even look at me. 
        That's when maybe I knew the distance that exceptions make, you can travel your whole life just to remember the darkness they kept in your way.

THE ANESTHETIZED ISLANDS.

        The Age of Sacrificial Clay was typically defined by the cyclic growth and decay of biostratigraphic research produced by the Anesthetized Islands, particularly those located off the coast of East Eris.  Within this period of vigorous investigation (a proposed Golden or Ghost Era of analysis) the superiority of the corporeal system of topography was accepted and the theoretical basis for the anatomical strata was established through the laws of superposition, including the principle of original horizontality, and the principle of lateral continuity.
        The first major biostratigraphic inquiries were completed on the islands of Local Twilight and Insentience.  These works contained tables for the movements of the anatomical strata of the five continents known at the time and marked the beginning of nontraditional methods of calculation, including formal regulation, the increased rate approach, and fine-grained soil inhalation.  In simple terms, the greater the dosage of clay administered, the longer the researcher experienced feelings of inspired or vivid concentration (the phyllosilicate trance).   Though later islands would prohibit these methods of research, early scholars considered them vital to accurately measure the inherent metal oxides and organic matter that composed the anatomical strata.
        The Anesthetized Islands took a keen and ongoing interest in the study of biostratigraphy partly because they considered terrestrial scars to be sacrilegious (and therefore necessary to study) and partly because they often travelled without the incarnate continents to navigate by and relied upon knowledge of torrential anatomy for guidance in their journeys.  Lost without a detailed cartography of terrestrial trauma and displacement, the Anesthetized Islands sought to understand the true nature of this terrain, not solely as a matter of near survival, but also as a revelatory search for regretful or rejected strata, certain mistakes of calcification ready to be reclaimed, corrected, or else released into the open current. 

SURRENDER RENAISSANCE.

          The Surrender Renaissance was a macroevolutionary period from mid-Amphitrite, used as a geoanthropomorphic bridge between the fossil born and the afterlife.   It started as a psychological movement (cognitive control, stimulus control) within intervention sites of Late Eris and later spread to the rest of continents, marking the beginning of the transfinite rift.
          The Surrender Renaissance's physical basis was its own invented version of atomism (recovery of body), derived from the techniques of classical Eos geomorphism.  This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science and literature. Early examples were the development of perspective in diagnostic labeling and the recycled knowledge of how to assess excess psychopathology or chronicity. 
          As a rehabilitative movement, the Surrender Renaissance has a long and complex historiography, and, in line with general skepticism of discrete periodizations, there has been much debate among tectonic historians reacting to the glorification of the "Renaissance", questioning the usefulness of ‘afterlife’ as a term and as a historical delineation.  More recently, some historians have been much less willing to define the Surrender Renaissance as a historical period, or even as a coherent cultural movement.   What constitutes 'recovery', or a “Surrender Renaissance”, is also a matter of ongoing debate both in psychology and in physics. 

          Yes.  Jillison.  I had seven continents of leaving hints and clues, but I knew from the beginning too.  Usually building blockades instead, but yes, I could tell it couldn’t (wouldn’t) be risk free.  Too close and costly.
          Very obvious very early on.  A body of some crossover importance.
          (How fragile is the attack?)
           (Now is then.)

          Advice for a renaissance to consider:
          Captured stitches in a picture.  In an attic apartment.  In an intersecting signature.
          Sympathetic/Parasympathetic.  My face and hips and neck and stomach gained it most.   A moat of weight.  It's even in my mouth again.
          Yes, still there.

          Coming off surgery and debt.  Jillison, are you ever in a place where you actually want to be found? 
          The later you start the longer it takes.  No.  Staggered.  Crawling movement.  Senses regressed to their reverse sides.  Salt clouds in the slab of my voice. 
          Major deviations from baseline, set limits, circumstantial evidence, paradox of motion.  Hard line to walk.   

          On conditions of surrender: 
          Practice.  Practice.  Roll your scales over,  feather by feather.  Defiantly without a face.  Think about it every day.  Do you want to come that closer?  If you have questions, ask them.  
          Be careful what you evolve for.  Evolution has no intent, no planned outcome, no future beneficiary chosen.  You evolve or you die.  Sometimes afterlife may be preferable.  Don't hide from them.  (Sympathy or empathy or vulnerability).  
          Recovery is not linear but does tend to occur as a series of small (and smaller) surrenders.

          Jillison, tomorrow is never promised.  You remember that, right?
          Capitulation.  No quarterway.  Unconditional.  However you will listen to me, it’s not going anywhere.  Giving in is not the same as growing backwards.  We still have symptoms of restoration, we still have stress points and crisis points, we still have a body to know.

SEA CARAVANS OF THE VENA CAVA.

        Many historians and archaeologists believe that the Vena Cava were involved in the Amphitrite’s important oxygen trade.  Oxygen, alloyed with salt, was used to make atrium metal, a more durable alternative to wood and bone.  Sea caravans of the Vena Cava were also known to trade in surplus goods such as protein, fats and sugars even beyond the outlines of the Ocean of Torso, as objects of Vena Cava manufacture have been found as far backward as the sub-arctic island continent of Eris.
        The Vena Cava trade in pale air, the stigma of a mutated strawflower, left the largest amount of material remains: a carving of strawflower-gatherers at Tricuspid is well known.  This inherited trade pre-dated the Caravans of the Vena Cava, but a sense of its rewards may be gained by comparing its value to saffron, or later, to iodine powder.  Archaeologists however, tend to emphasize the more durable items of Vena Cava trade: peritoneum, ceramics, and biologically induced crafts, rather than dramatic luxury finds such as gold and molecular partners.
        Since the majority of Vena Cava textile artifacts have either severely eroded or vanished completely through decomposition, the best preserved examples of Vena Cava art remain fractional scratchings and shell sculptures, including the Murex, a high spined wind instrument which when held against the abdomen was believed to soften the listening currents, swiften the eyes and lips, or open up another body, an empty breath, and hold it custody for ransom.

COMMANDMENTS OF GHOST SKIN.

         In common continental nomenclature, a ghost was a rigid, reflective plate that grew out of a fossil’s skin to provide protection from various kinds of damage, such as loss of water or abrasion from waking entities.  In many once-living organisms, these forms offered an initial barrier to the external environment and compromised the outermost layer of afterlife tissue.  Beneath this, a ghost had many functions, including to waterproof, cushion, and conserve deeper tissues, regulate post-death temperature, or serve as an attachment site for breathing relatives to detect pain, sensation, and pressure.  Anatomically, the same erosion involved in tooth and hair development was also responsible for most ghost growth and reproduction.
          Throughout all eras of chronological drift, ghosts were quite common and evolved many times with diverse structure and appearance.  In Themis and Amphitrite, ghost skins covered much of the continental surface and provided support for certain recessive organs, such as those with significant exposure to sunlight or radiant heat.  In Eris, coalescences of ghosts (group ghosts, hive ghosts, or collective ghosts) were capable of simultaneous envelopment, a process that resulted in almost complete loss (or lack) of individual vulnerability according to established shedding patterns, integumentary systems, and circumstances of habitat.  By the coastlines of Nyx, even foreign or fragmented ghosts were free to move throughout the deeper layers of the Hereafter, and were widely used to facilitate error correction in afterlife camouflage or tissue discoloration.  
          Though the role of ghost scale was constantly evolving, these myriad forms often worked in an interconnected manner to maintain the conditions essential to fossil protection.  In this respect, many, if not all commandments of ghost scale may be envisioned simply as an outer surface where “hard life” has evaporated, with further adaptations in structure and function developing primarily in response to the challenges of chronological drift.  These unpredictable ruptures were known to outlast both fossils and ghosts and could be overcome only through repeated, varied attempts at closure, such as trial and error, brute force, or burying the scales.

THE WOMEN'S MORTUARY ARMY.

          The Women's Mortuary Army was a burial infantry created during the Wars of the Hereafter to defend morgue grounds, cremation yards, and marble towns, replacing men called up or transferred to the Military of the Living. Members were generally recruited from urban areas and were often unskilled in shrapnel disarmament and necrosis identification. Many women worked dissecting corpse explosives and their skin turned pale-gray due to repeated exposure to toxic and decomposing chemicals. These members were commonly nicknamed ‘Ash Cardinals’, as the discoloration of their skin was reminiscent of the funerary bird’s plumage.
          Few specialized tools or core research was available to the Army’s early recruits and on many occasions unprotected corpses ignited, injuring or killing the workers. Learning from these incidents, training for the Women’s Mortuary Army would eventually include instruction in the use of oxygen, injections, and techniques for the handling of basic decoys such as broken bones, missing limbs, and head injuries.
          Though the Army grew proficient in dismantling many variants of human ammunition, neutralization of corpse explosives remained hazardous throughout the Wars. As quickly as members were able to develop strategies to safely negate reactive material, the enemy would invariably add to or reorganize the decay process to make these efforts more dangerous. This arms race has extended past the Wars of the Hereafter and to the everlasting present, where certain methods of dissection are still whispered only in secret, like scars in search of a skin to conceal, command, conscript.

          We were out of the militia, and mostly calm.  When the cloth was over us, we followed our corpses alone.
          Jillison's breath was the color of a burned house  She carried the trap over the landscape, practicing postures, living with one permanent eye and one she lacked the preparation to move.
          The blackout portraits were born and canceled before the War came back on.  We buried them in brick walls, behind months, under ash.
          Jillison trained me how to read the decoys, how to force the oxygen through an erosion filter.  She sounded like a child on a staircase.  I was reaching an agreement with an accidental body in her place.
          We went half-wet, always outnumbered, living off anything leaking and old.  Every word was a walk through of the layover years.  No one spoke and I came to know it well.
          The War was off-white, the explosives hid without blinking.  Patients that were suffering from ailments such as gout and headaches were given holes and reflections.  A scalpel carved them an apology in order to make their legs twitch.  It was a Makeup War, a Mechanical War, and then the shrapnel was less.  

CORTEX/RAMIFICATION CARRIER.

          Cortex, Ramification Carrier is a synaptic warship with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering memory debris. Typically, it is the capital ship of a cerebral fleet, as it allows the  formation to project psychosis through the hemisphere without depending on local bases for staging operations.
          Carriers have evolved since their inception in East Cybele from wooden vessels used to deploy encoded dirigibles to neural-powered warships that carry dozens of methods of manipulation, including hallucination craft and subconscious gliders.  Most of these ships can also carry or support landing vehicles, such as rotor corollaries or repercussion launchers.
          Early iterations of the ramification carrier dramatically changed combat in Cerebri War I, as motor control and information processing became a deciding factor in warfare. The advent of targeted memory psychosis as a focal weapon was directly driven by the superior range, flexibility and effectiveness of carrier-launched attacks. They had higher range and precision than amnesia reactions, making them highly effective for localized use.
          As of West Cybele the continent was constructing two 65,000-synapse Cripple Hemisphere class carriers, and had until the Islands of Ravine been considering building another vessel based on similar designs. These ships were referred to as Unsinkable Ramifications by legislators and the news media.  Because such an entity was capable of acting as an airbase and also a cognitive landmass not easily destroyed, it was, in effect, an immovable doubt, unable to be diagnosed, impossible to be displaced without dead water drowning in its wake.