Gemini 29. A biologist doing intensive research on mold.
Myriad beyond counting are the nations of mold through which the biologist wanders. To heal, to digest, to quietly destroy is their love. He attempts to speak to them, and some whisper to him precious secrets pertaining to their uses. Others speak in strange tongues he cannot understand, and still others are so lost in silence they are as if asleep and cannot speak at all.
And within their realms he also discovers kingdoms of poison, each with its own breed of attendant fears, its own army of clouds and nightmares.
Tiring of his work the biologist goes in search of sunlight.
Azoth Oracle
Novelists discussing each others’ works.
The years from 5489 to 5610 were known in Aab as the Golden Age of Novelists, for during that time lived seven of Aab’s greatest fiction writers. Their works are highly diverse, one writing simply and plainly, another full of subtlety and ambiguity, two of them famous for their elaborate plots, another writing plotless works as random as forest landscapes, and another famed for her creation of atmosphere.
These novelists formed a club and met once a month to share their writings with each other. As they discussed their work they came to realize that they were all writing different facets of the same story, that their works were like different rooms in one great mansion. As they explored more deeply they found all sorts of connections between their works: passages and ideas that subtly echoed each other, connections that at first they hadn’t realized but which were eventually recognized as being like hallways and hidden passages connecting the many rooms they had built.
And so gradually and spontaneously a vast work took shape that integrated all of their many works, which is today known as “The Names of Twilight and Dawn,” a text of 179 volumes which readers continue to explore, unearthing many treasures hidden within its pages.