Sinister symbols (monocrome)

Things are getting spooky this month.

story time below:

Cliffnote from a Grim journal:

I am by profession a tour guide. And a storyteller by trade. And manny are the places where i have shown to tourists the remnants of this old and fabeled land. One of these locations is neither runin nor tempel. But the old caverns of the ‘Cave of lost echos’.

Those cave does not echo no more. ‘Thats why they are lost’ me and my colleges use to joke. Still, what one does not find in the way of bouncing voices is instead remarked by the way of a series of peculiar carvings in the walls. Carvings whos peculiarity only increases the further down into the earth one ventures. Walking down there is like walking back through time, tracing the markings of old civilications, telling tales that our ancestors have left for us. Like echos from the past. (perhaps thats what the true name of this caves come from.)

Eventually these markings grow quaint and simple, and their meaning harder to diciper. My favorite are a set of old markings who experts have dated back to tribal days, whos meaning has been the debate of much speculation.

I like to speculate a little myself, as i tell these tales back to my audience, like they had once been told to me by my tour-mentors and teachers.

Of how the enquines of old must shurely have looked uppon the forces of the world and the sky like someting of great worshipp. And there is little to be found more awe inspiring then the great yellow orb of the sun, or more mysterious then the stars that twinkle in the dark, or indeed the vast oceans, who to the land living seem as strange as anny could imagine.

Its even spinn these tales as how the symbols might be the very first depictions of Celestia and Luna. The mere mentioning of these living deities is enough to grabb the atention of any tourist – coming here from central equestria to hear about how their reviered empresses’s influences stretches back throuought the ages. But I have no doubht that these living deities, even through their thousands of years of living and countless achivements, pale in comparison to the vastness of our history, for this world existed long before they did. And hold tales of eaqual or possibly greater legend.

But when the guided tour was over, and the last of the vissitors departed back upp through the caves. I found Glyphmark – my dearest friend and lover, an expert of all manners of obscure symbold and master of dead laungages – to be staring from her corner of the wall. Her jet black hide almost alowing her tomelt into the shadows.

It was with a most somber expression that she shook her head, and told me then that I, even in my wildest speculation, was wrong as to the nature of these symbols.

That was not a sun. She said. Now was it the stars or the moon, or even the ocean. Celestias sun has eight points, this had more. Nor was it even meant to be as sun, those tendrils were not the suns rays. It was a swirling mas of chaos. The nuculur chaos. And that was not the stars. The points were all wrong. Theye were facing inwards, like a jagged hole full of teeth. And that was not the depiction of waves. It was the mark of some ancient being that must not be named, They all were, less their name might summon them. Creatures from a time before time. Before life. Things that dwelled out there amongst the stars, things older then the very planet we existed on, and that might have a hand in the creation of life as we knew it, directly of indirectly.

For some time she spoke of these things, venting like the steam of a vat whos lid had blown clear, filling my mind with nightmarish suggestions. It was only fortunate that it was only sugestions, as even she could only guess as to the true implications of most of it. Yet it was clear that these things had weight on her mind since she ever laid eyes on those markings. And how desperately she wanted someone to shere the burden with.

I guess we are bouth storytellers by heart, but some storries are not meant for the common ear, and are only spoken of in hushed tones, when all other voices are gone.

Note: Sorry (not sorry) for my poor attempt to mimic Lovecraft’s writing style.