Afterword
I believe that the work of any author should stand by itself, so I decided to withhold one particular about the discovery of this manuscript until the end.
Among the loose pages at the bottom of the box which contained this manuscript, I found a singular object, flattened as if it had been used as a bookmark for decades, and now bent and damaged from being knocked about loosely in the box. It is a feather, eight inches in length, and dusky orange in color, streaked with yellow. It has been cut for use as a pen and the shaft is blackened with dried ink. I have compared the tip with the writing on the last few pages, and have little doubt that it was used at least in part to compose the work.
I have not shown it to any ornithologists. I know that they would find it had not belonged to any earthly bird, and I do not wish to present them with a riddle that they can never answer. Such things rest easier in the hearts of poets and fools.
For, as the years pass, the Lands of Dream grow more and more remote. Even within Dunsany’s lifetime, he reported difficulty in repeating his attempts at access. I think the doorway that he found to that land is barred forever, so that while its light may still reach us in some manner, direct passage may never again be regained. We as a species have sought other ways to reach beyond the fields we know, and these paths may lead to strange worlds among the distant stars, but only across silent gulfs separated by times that span many human lives. We have exchanged our familiar dreams for a stranger but unreachable reality.
Of course, it may be that the prophesied doom has come to pass, and our comprehensive star-searching instruments, or the rising skepticism of her subjects, have undone the work of the celestial mare and ended her realm of dream like a burst bubble, and what reports we now receive are simply the photonic ghosts of what happened in impossible years past. During the times when I am convinced that this is so, I grieve for what has been lost...
And yet, as I write, pressing buttons on an electro-mechanical contrivance to record my words, my eyes return to the feather. I take it up at times and feel its powdery dryness, and perceive the smell of a remote summer still detectable despite the odor of age-browned paper. It had its own tale to tell in its own way, and though it shall not fly again save in fancy, it did what it had to do in the time allotted to it, and its presence tells me that perhaps, like the ever-propagating lights in the sky, my own efforts may last for a time beyond my span.
And perhaps the fact of our awareness, the existence of a new generation being fed upon wonder, is itself a sign of hope. I cannot tell, and perhaps it is not my place to say.
Lord Dunsany had but a decade before my birth begun his long silence, a silence in which I shall join him in but a handful of decades hence. It is a sort of inverse choir in which we all shall eventually take a part. With this in mind, I encourage you, reader, however vainly you do so: make noise, make noise while you can.
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So maybe there was some truth in the Story. ""The King of Elf Lands Daughter"...
A work of true beauty. Thank you for it. And remember, wonder and knowledge are not mutually exclusive.
Ow, you've made my heart ache in a most pleasant manner. That I inspired even a small part of this is something special. If it's not featured, then I can truly say there is no justice.
5746765
bitter mumblings to that effect
I can't help being sciencey. I didn't wanna kill anyone's magic dreams.
Can anyone capable of translating the Greek tell the rest of us what the puns are?
What a wonderful, special thing you have created for us. It will be a very long time before I read something written as well.
Very nice!
5748012
Don't you want to figure it all out yourself? Just keep in mind that hippopotamus means horse of the river, and you'll be most of the way there...
Okay, fine.
Glossary [Now added to the story as a chapter.]
I am no student of Greek, or Swahili; I used online resources to research and assemble these names. Note that some names in the story are made up or have no translation, and thus are not listed here.
Eocharis - Dawn's Grace
Hespericles - Evening's Glory
Ippoli - Horse town
Pterippi - The winged horses
Monokeri - The one-horns
Khthonoi - The folk of the land
Hephaesta - Feminisation of Hephaestus, Smith of the Gods.
Mageía - Magic
Punda-Miliamji - Zebra town
Tarassoi - Those who flutter
Nephelia - Cloud, with a feminine ending. In mythology, Nephelia was the name of a cloud nymph.
Acrokastra - High castle
And Hippocratic stems from the name Hippocrates, literally horsepower.
Truthfully a criminally underviewed story, and definitely appreciate the care you put into this yarn
This is a magnificent work of art.
It's kind of funny / odd / interesting that it implies that we ourselves shape the rules of the universe, and that we have chosen to put more faith in a system of universal rules of physics over gods, and by the power of that faith, have removed the gods, and have replaced them with endless space, too far to ever truly reach out to
I love this story.
I can't rightfully say why, I can't pinpoint a single moment that particularly stood out to me, but as a whole this resonated with me, and engaged me all the way through.
You can bet I will.
Thanks for such a great story.
6036414 Sorry about the cat. My mistake.
The King James does have servants thou their masters: "And I was afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou hast that is thine." That's to maintain a distinction made in Greek.
However, the KJV uses "thy" vs. "thine" and word-order inversion correctly. Those things I quoted are just gratingly wrong, and I'm afraid that if I recommend this to people who don't read fan-fiction they'll never read past that part.
6041710 Re. the river, my problem visualizing it is that this is indicates the width of the Thames around London:
c8.alamy.com/comp/DGMN2F/tower-bridge-on-the-river-thames-london-great-britain-historical-book-DGMN2F.jpg
It's a big damn river at that point. The idea that there's a branch of it being hidden by a glamour just doesn't work for me, and it threw me out of the story. YMMV.
That said, I heard the rest of it today, from the Ilya Leonov reading, and it's marvellous.
- It's a perfect crossover, combining the best elements of pony with the wonder of Dunsany without ever compromising either.
- The ending was clever, having Celestia cast one distrustful eye on the human, because we know from his vision that she sees him as a serious threat to her rule; with a few careless words he could set ponies on the path to destroying her.
- The afterword is brilliant. It's very hard to end this type of story! There's no real plot; once the visitor has returned from Equestria, how do you wrap it up? The afterword doesn't do anything at all plotwise, or characterwise; it's entirely a kind of summing up that, if writers' books nowadays mentioned, it would only be to warn you not to do it. Yet it's dense with meaning, quotable, and did what this kind of story is supposed to do: Make the connection between the fantastic and our lives.
5748615
Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
5749327
Thank you.
It does seem that we are being hoist by our own petard of intellectual curiosity, doesn't it?
5770833
You're very welcome. Thank you!
6090267
I'm pleased to receive such kind words from an author I admire so much. Thank you.
I very thoroughly enjoyed this. I suspect I should probably read some actually Dunsany someday. Lovecraft's dream stories are some of my favorites (I actually have a half-written attempt at a Luna Kadath story kicking around) and this was very delightful!