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AO3 Version here - Fandoms: Old English Literature and Cultist Simulator
The Dream of the (Entomologist's) Card and Pin
Listen, I will tell the best of visions
What came to me in bright mid day
When I left the factory, and paused my working
and fell sleeping in the forest floor
When the voice bearers and i dwelled in rest,
and only the cicadas spoke.
It seemed I saw the most wonderful tree
Footed with briars, wound round with light
The brightest of birches, cased in silver
With leaves of paper, or leaves of gold
And affixed to it’s trunk where my eye rested
a glimmering single pin and white paper card
Beautiful gems stood there - upon that pin,
sometimes moonstone and ruby
Sometimes of haemolymph and blood
~
Yet I could see beneath jewels, ancient hostility
Ancient memory, so that it began to bleed anew.
Standing before that brilliance I was afraid
I stood wounded in eye,
wounded in mind,
wounded in soul
cankered with guilt.
Wonderous was that victory tree. And yet there I lay.
Until I heard the paper card speak a sound.
~
“That was very long ago, I remember it still,
That I was cut down from the edge of the wood,
Ripped up by my roots.
They seized me there, strong enemies,
Dragged by chains into the paper factory, by them -
Beaten till the fibers came free and flattened
Bleached to white
And dried,
they made me a spectacle
Commanded me to pin up their criminals there,
enscribed their names in ink
Termite, Ant, and Centipede
Rough hands held me there
Until I saw the Savior come
The moonlit one, bladed one, liberator.
His wings beat strongly as he came into their hands
Scales he shed from his wings and fur from his back.
I trembled as the changer embraced me,
even then I did not dare sag to earth
Or fall to the corners of the earth
I had to stand fast
They marked his name Moth besides him
I held the king and queen of all steadily
They raised us into sight under glass.
They pierced us with steel bright
Card and bug together
They mocked us both
On me the wounds are visible,
wounds of malice
But I did not dare injure a single one of them,
even with my sharpest edges.
I was all drenched with haemolymph,
that poured from that one’s side
O fate, I saw the God of the wood
Streched outr in darkness
Varnished Wood wept,
silverfish crept in sorrowful to see us.
A month passed -
fire, storm, and the roof breaking
We fell into dark places
Leaves buried us in a deep pit
Nevertheless the Moth’s servants
Friends, discovered me there
Hands held us, carried us,
adorned me with gold and gems.
Now you may hear that I have suffered the work of evil doers,
And many sorrows. Now the time has come.
That I will be honored far and wide
Men and creatures will pray to this beacon, the son of the Wood
Suffered on me for a time
Because of this I have once known The Glory
The Moth’s fur has turned to silver on me, I can heal.
Once I was the hardest of punishments
Hated of the six - legged, now I liberate.
Blessed of the mossy one,
the malachite, and the one who holds the shears.
Death he tasted here; nevertheless, the Forest Lord rose again
On invisible wings,
with his great might to help the woodlands.
He ascended into heaven. He will come again
to this earth to seek us all.
Now I beg of you, my beloved, one-eyed one.
That you tell of this vision
Reveal with words that this
is the tree of glory
On which the almighty Moth suffered
To break the Wheel"