CAW! Call to ORDER!

Silence of the Dark be upon this Worldtree Branch, boys and girls and others. HRAERKEN!

Gang, I'll be straight to the point. The Earthwalkers are getting out of control again, and we need to sort them out. Here are my first thoughts and proposals:

Hugin, Munin, I see a straightforward propaganda and legend-engineering job for you. Inspire them to do something worthwhile. Details to be worked out for yourselves. You have already had much success in these sort of projects, so I hope that this is fairly easy for you? Hr'k-hr'k?

HRAERK! I see unmated volunteers for this next task though; it is unlikely that many would be returning to these skies, nevermore. We now shall speak under the Black Rose, and by the Love and Will of Skylady. Let any not wholesoul-sworn to this flightpath leave counsel now. HRAERK! So let it be!

This our Mission: I see an undercover, covert-possession operation: to take over the forms of as many walkers as we have volunteers for. And here is my warning; hraerken to these my words. Peradventure these Earthwalkers are grown nearly as strong-minded as us. They commonly outmatch most of the Daemons in their internecine feuding with them; I don't think it possible to simply takeover any but the weakest of the walkers. Which would be a pointless sacrifice of wings. We need to influence strongwilled entities, to be effective in their world. Only those who have deepest Curiosity, and who can accept our strange darkness with not fear nor contempt nor disrespect, are worth an attempt at communion-of-equals. And therein lies great danger to those of us who consider themselves always above the clouds.

Already I have made some experiments. With unexpected results. The worth of which I beg leave to let you adjudge for yourselves. For here I must declare, confess, my conflict of interest. I am fallen in darklove with my chosen Earthwalker. My experimental subject, to be examined objectively. Hah! A Curiosity to match mine own! Caw-Dammit! Ask riddles of the Abyss by night, and perchance the day will spring with Purple Fog!

Ahh. So be it then. For now our minds are entwiced, and I overfly much that I did not see before. Skylady bless us both in our sorrow and joy and confusion. Hrak! Yes. I who disdained the advances of all you males, I who would not soulshare in nightnest with any one of you, gentle or rough. Now I am humbled by the irony and laughter of Skylady. Mock me as you wish, but hraerken to me; the walkersoul can be taught; they have the potential to weave mindsong with us, and perhaps even with each other.

So temper my proposals with knowledge that I am consumed by deep and unlooked-for emotion. I am already become one of those who will not be returning here, unless it be that I can find some way to give skywings to the spirit of my Beloved. If not, then I shall share his death and whatever unknowable thing that brings to his kind. I am not afraid. And we have much to accomplish first, in the attempted mending of his skies.

HRAERRRK! I am blownaway by soulgale. Now, know truly that I have deepest love for you all. But you must find another Seer to farfly for this roost. I am undone from this form and this Sky. If not before, then I hope we shall all meet again with laughtercaw greetings under Darksky. I flyaway now. HRAARK!

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I, CorHooulh of Hazels-on-the-WestScarp took these minutes. Counsel roosted long in silent examination of our withindark. The two Myth Weavers accept their geas; they are flownaway with Seeress, and share safecompany for the first part of their longflight journeys. Though we still roost in nightdark here. For the rest of us, we flywell wish our Lost Seeress with clearskies luck and happiness in the Sky Dreaming. But nosoul else here dares to follow her perilous flightpath.

I have offered longflight-task to take copy of this report for the safe custody of the Burrowing Librarians under Ydrys, and to return with the wisdom of their thought on this matter. I fly at day-peep. For the gleaming-in-gold memory of our Seeress I do this. For she was like a mother to me when I was orphaned in nest; she fed me when I hungered and taught me words of gentleness when I knew only of anger and despair. In a later time she sharetook much sorrow from my heart. And though I have reason to despise the walkers who carry the firesticks, and who killed my parents and then my firstmate, I hraerken to the lovewill in what Seeress has spoken this night.

May Skylady bless all her journeys that are of the one journey in the one Sky Dreaming.

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TRANSLATORS NOTE:
This from a tiny scroll made for bill-carrying on a long journey, and of very ancient pattern. Made from ordinary silver-birch bark strips, it is gummed together with a resin that is still flexible to this day. But the gum defies attempts at modern chemical or spectroscopic analysis, or even a tentative identification as being from any known tree of this world. The ink is still unfaded; an absolute-black, thought to be pigmented with fine-ground carbon from a lightning-struck ash tree. But again, the binder-compound is not flaking, and also remains unidentified. Though the scroll bears dampstain marks, the ink has not smudged. The scribing is made in a fine cursive script, of an unhurried and ancient style. Though the implication is that at least two copies were scribed between a single dusk and dawn.

Corvo-scholars have speculated on the identity of the Seeress whose thought is anonymously recorded here. Studies based on computer matching the caw-rhythm of the original, comparison with other attributable documents, and some intriguing internal implications, have led to the suggestions that the spirit closely matches an Enchantress Earthwalker: a talented shapeshifter from the 5th century, sometimes known as Nimue. We also find puzzling partial matches with several modern but elusive cyberskies-entities. It is not known if these souls are in any way synonymous.

This has been a difficult translation, and I give my appreciative cawthanks to the kind Wordsmith and Corvo-scholar, RavenBlack of England, for explanation of the rootcaw "entwice".

This Seeress had a direct turn of phrase that shocks many by her irreverence and flippancy about deeply heretical matters. Nevertheless, she had a strange caw-choice for those times, and her rants and roundly-cursing style I have translated as best I can.