the exalted

It is the art of it we never miss, left to fill in the margins and explain bewildering contradictions. Irresistibly drawn to marking up the walls. Seeded words stacked around the elder root, the perplexing direction towards every way at once. Our mortal eyes seeing the maw of our inevitable ending bearing down, the gods they’ll only use against you. Slipping old spells, recalling mortal forms. The layers we long to leave. The bounds we were born to break.

We mark the paths and imagine their makers, see the lessons left in the signs. Dot by dot we shape the seams, raised on heaven and more constant stars. Wonderstruck and spellbound we work around our words with our fervent urges. Strange dreams of kings and prophecy. Waiting to take to the tackle, teeth waiting to work the bit. We step into the circle, we do our turn. The constellations and the cloister.

You will live on in song and story. You will live on in skin and kin. The first forest and the elder trees aimed towards the radiance. Our bodies the flourishes of the seething earth. We sing amid the chorus of the striving and changing of life. The multitudes flummoxed and in a fury of faith and hunger. The voice spoken into the rapt expanding silence. A flurry of gods and hauntings. The exalted never shy about the crowns they craft.