A Simple Cup of Melos
written by Saxeus, filius Sarcinator, of House Touccio
What a spare little book this is! Then, what else would one expect from a stone such as Saxeus? A subtly stinging rebuke of plenilunial elementalism, you say? Read on!
It is said that Saxeus took up a pen to write his only book a year to the day before he crawled into his kiln. “I just want to see what goes on in there,” he said, and was never heard from again. —Or so the history kept by Adversaria Maleficii tells us, hinting rather broadly at the inevitable climax of an early twilight. Her elder frater, Socius Necopinatus, wrote in a letter that Saxeus, crushed by the betrayal of his last student, [T56], had “essayed an assay to assuage his autophagic wits”; his essay completed, his filius unreconciled, his wits no less assuaged, perhaps Saxeus went in search of stronger medicine.
But Poculum does not read as the maunderings of a suicide. Nor does it speak dimly, from the portals of twilight. It is a crisp clear book on melos, something we most of us touch and taste every morning, and even now re-reading his “simple” draught has us touching and tasting and seeing it anew. From the oft-quoted opening—
Undo the strings and let the sack’s mouth sag a little, then do nothing but breathe it in, that odor, that essence—at once bitter and sweet, sharp and smokey. Your cup of melos has begun.
—to the beautiful meditation with which he closes (a flawless evocation of the Rhythnorian hills in autumn, a windswept field of melos-bushes blooming from the ash of some unknown devastation), Saxeus writes the whole of this humble plant into the once-thoughtless act of whisking a generous pinch of greyish-purple powder into a cup of water steaming from the kettle.
Yet this crisp clear book is deceptively deep, and braces with an unexpected chill. Silvanus is sometimes cited as a precursor, and one can see in the Poculum an appreciation of Scolopax’ eye for nature. But as the magical associations of this marvelous herb tumble line by line one upon the other—herbam (of course); mentem (its salubrious effects on the intellect); creo (its revivifying properties); but also perdo (its propensity for wildfires) and corpus (its astringent qualities, in heating the body’s humors)—and, yes, ignem and aquam and terram and even auram (“then do nothing but breathe it in,” he reminds us)—and his artistry is such that he does not have to say outright that to associate melos with all is to associate melos with nothing at all, nor need he quote the many plenilunials who’ve done just that. Instead, a final flight of fancy, breathtakingly absurd—bees, little sparks of fire, carrying back through the air the puissant white dust of the melos-bush to their waxen cities, there to brew a liquid honey that when properly decanted may prove the stuff of vis itself—before gently but firmly telling us it is all and only herbam, and ever was: the melos-bush, rustling on the hillside, under that cold blue sky.
That honey makes me think of poor Capella Rutila, as I often have these past few weeks. In these notes I have disparaged the opening act of Illæ benignæ, a mistake I would not make again. Mouth with me these lines and feel with me the shuddering power of her pain there on the steps of the tomb of the man she called her father—
Do not stand there
With your heads bowed.
Tell me! What should I say
As I pour out these cups?
How should I pay tribute to my father?
Shall I say I bring these gifts with love
From a devoted wife to her beloved husband?
I haven’t the strength for that.
As I pour out this honey and this wine
And churn this dust to sticky mud
Should I ask that those who offer up this noble tribute
Be given back the same?
Or should I stand here
Silent
As was my father when he died,
Empty out these cups,
Let the earth drink while I retrace my steps
Head hung as someone sent to carry out the trash?
Tell me! What should I say?
Don’t hide what’s in your mouth.
Speak!
Eleleu! Eleleu! This stone will speak for melos, but who will speak for the lingua viduæ? Eleleu!
Shortly thereafter.
Antrum distributed a note a week or so later, to all the major libraries:
The office of Antrum censor has passed from Milos Martyklos, Procopian, and will, for the foreseeable future, be filled by Adrien filia Allisen of House Manere.
A number of liberties taken.
I do not recall if the history of the Sebasticooks was ever nailed down in conversation to any specific degree, but it nagged me that they apparently sprang from the forehead of Cotswold Sebasticook; shouldn’t the sire himself not have been given the name? Shouldn’t he have wrested it for himself, after his masterwork, and then passed that name on to all his offspring? —And seeing that Cotswold and the Sebasticooks alone of all of Saxeus’ line had ever been named, well. So: we either have more Sebasticooks than previously dreamed, or the middle Sebasticook’s line threw over their patrimony at some point. (Beto, of course, didn’t live long enough to pass it on.)
Or, I can easily enough undo it, if there’s a toe I didn’t manage to see before I stepped.
No, I don’t know why Milos is suddenly ragging on elementalism. Maybe he was a tool? (Maybe?) Adrien will doubtless prove more—discriminating.
And I broke letter and spirit of the referencing rules, and I was so unsure of the translation of Adversaria’s history that I stuck it elsewhere. But otherwise.
I imagine the middle line threw off the name
I have a hard time imagining the Rockroot elementalists named things like Betram Sebasticook (which maybe should be the name of the middle Sebasticook, before he changed it). I'd always thought that Cotswold Sebasticook was simply a fellow with a last name who retained his secular name when he attained magehood, but it doesn't cause me any problems if that isn't the case. Sarah?
So, how did Saexus (by the way, what does it mean?) come by the title which his descendents took on?
Saxeus = stony.
I’d been thinking Saxeus was the one with the secular name Sebasticook, that he revived by passing it on to his descendants as a magical name. —And I like the idea of a Sebasticook line that turned away. Makes family reunions more entertaining.
Cranky Ad Vim conservative is Sebasticook?
Saxeus (T35) is one of the cranky conservative Ad Vim mages whose traditionalism and arrogance led to the founding of Corbis Ovorum (his last student Beto (T56) was one of the founders of Corbis). It seems slightly weird that he was also an advocate of non-mage names, although it is possible to interpret anti-mage name sentiment as being very reactionary Touccian, since the first generation didn't use them and the second generation was slow to pick them up (but then nobody in the first generation except the Elenoreans and Lemmites did use them).
Sarah thinks that you originally had Cotswold being the mage who reclaimed his family name as part of his mage name and that you are pushing it back a generation, although she doesn't have a stake in it one way or the other.
Be sure to add these names to the lists, and probably you should create the minimal wiki entries, just so it doesn't end up getting contradicted later.
I do like the idea of one of the great Plenelunial Elementalists, T44, being saddled with a Sebasticook name.
There’s more than one way to be conservative.
I was thinking his insistence on his offspring “yea, unto the seventh generation” being saddled with the “Sebasticook” name was a fine symptom of his cranky, autocratic, Egg-in-a-Basket–founding ways.
Yes, I really should go update the dam’ lists, shouldn’t I.
Crap.
So this is what I get for trying to read the genealogies in Mozilla on a Mac. The vertical lines are offset from the boxes and the horizontal lines, which makes it all too likely that if you aren’t careful, you’ think Cotswold’s descended from T35, not T28.
So, like I say, crap.
Easiest way to fix will be to remove all references to “the Sebasticook” above and unname Beto. Which I’ll get around to. Later.
Crap.
Damn
A user of Firefox might be led to exactly the same error of interpretation.