Ke’elo’ob
Xibalba
Emma Masters is not one to shy away from intrepid inquisitiveness, too many scholars stay indoors and ponder over the same words for eternity. Whereas, haunting the dark corners of Earth, there are things that have dodged the shovels of man for far too long for Emma’s taste…
This lovely piece of mine has yet to find a home!
Feel free to sample the first two pages…
Harold Polle, Director of Admissions for Miskatonic University,
This planet holds secrets, Harold; old and unknown are the facts lost to time. We desperately look upwards to try and comprehend the heavens; but how can we hope to understand the twinkling lights that litter our night sky if we know so little of the soil we stand on? I believe it is all too likely that creatures dwelled in our home’s dark corners, nesting in hoary cobwebs, to stalk and anticipate their opportunity to do as they please after emerging from forest, tundra, ocean, cave and swamp alike. The we might fall upon the day in which such an opportunity might present itself is the fear of man, whether we realize it or not. These forces that reside amongst the bush whisper to primeval entities that we have yet to stumble clumsily into. Fossils have been excavated and corpses expunged from Egyptian tombs, but what of the things that managed to remain unseen and unknown over the centuries…the millennia? Aeons? Eluding the ever-curious, haphazard hand of humanity, dodging the shovels and tools of men by mere meters; delicate walls serving as the only barrier between Earth and the demons of Hell.
I fear that you take my words too lightly and mistake them as drivel. That you misconstrue my sentiment as inane or dismissible would be nothing short of naïve of you. Should you grant me just one semester among your student body you will see my value and that I speak from a place of sincerity and self-assuredness, not vanity and arrogance. There is no need for us to be victims of ignorance and it is my intent to coax truth from forgotten corners and cracks.
Sincerely,
Emma Hasher
I
My widowed mother was given child by an unkind man, she only discovered me after his sins had come back to bury him. Burdened with grief and hardship, she managed to maintain a youthful knack for urging the hidden vibrant colors and fragrant scents from the grey crests and troughs of the vast, rolling hills of the New England countryside. She was no scientist or philosopher, nor could she even read or write; proper education was a silly thing to her as she recognized the world as it was and connected to it on a level that I could never fathom, but altogether revered.
Per her account: after bringing me into the world she became a bit of a reformist; she did all she could to kindle and tend my fiery passion for knowledge and discovery in a world that did not welcome academic women. She refused failure to provide me with all the resources she did not desire as a child, but certainly would not have been afforded—a sort of sentinel who took an eternal position at my side with orders to protect, guide and scavenge cheap or abandoned books.
Although the books were for me, they benefited us both. I read them aloud while we tread her prudently crafted paths through the forests and meadows that she could blindly draw with eerie accuracy. She favored nature’s market for her produce and herbs, even if the selection was scant and repetitive. There is not one memory that I can recall in which we passed a dangerous or unwanted plant that went unnoticed and unexplained. I only wish I had expressed how much I cherished our time learning and teaching together.
She died peacefully in the curiously cold spring of April in 1833 from severe pneumonia and left me forlorn at fifteen without the unabashed love that she unwittingly necessitated.
Story Subject To Change*