(Year 0 ~ Year 1)
Commemorating their hundredth winter solstice on The Minuet, the voyaging tribe celebrated with seafood-stuffed paunches and much ado. During the festivities which also marked Aedan’s twentieth year of birth, the unlikely lovers sought their parents’ consent as Lily would turn the same age in six months. However as they had R’Nesto’s trust and ear, Lily’s parents forbade her from coupling with Aedan lest they lose favor with the Archfather, who viewed all this as a distraction.
Busily scouting ahead Arch R’Nesto sighted a flock of red and blue birds towards the sunrise signaling land, and bragged about conquering it to his three pages fishing for food for the tribe. Ten days later the ship reached the shores of Crescendo, ran aground and took its captain and their elders to watery graves within. Mourning the drowned, the divided tribes realized some of their missing kin had reached the river’s other side but could not determine exactly who had survived the shipwreck.
Chinese junk boat under the stars
Swimming to shore as The Minuet ran aground and sank on arrival, Dilian’s hand was bitten by a venomous king lizard hiding in the lilypads. Moaning his missing fingertip and the loss of his family, he shed no tears for Arch R’Nesto. While his mother had tended to his ailing sister below deck that morning, Dilian’s father pleaded the Arch to turn the ship port or starboard. But arrogant R’Nesto insisted on entering at the raging rivermouth, and the captain crashed the damned ship causing their demise.
Cursing R’Nesto as the ship’s mast sank below the sea with Dilian’s family, he did not sense that they had survived. With the other half of the tribe too far away to communicate with, he howled until losing his voice as well. Consoled by the young medicine woman with bandages and an embrace, she bore the sad news that his twin sister and parents were not among the other eighteen survivors on their side of the river.
Nearing their first summer on this new world and his annual day of birth, Dilian set his sites on a smattering of snow-tipped peaks to rest and meditate peacefully. Under the new moon, he proposed to his muse and healer to join him on his adventure east. However Mila, now their medicine woman, reminded him that her doctoral skills and medicinal herbs were needed by their depleted tribe. Mila kissed his cheek and held his one good hand, which Dilian returned in kind while contemplating his path.
On his twentieth birthday Dilian approached the tribe wearing shaded spectacles shielding his eyes from the blinding solstitial sun, and a glove to hide his missing fingertip. Preparing to notify them of his decision to depart for eastern mountains where he may lay in, they announced their majority vote electing Dilian as Arch of their divided tribe. Knowing that the full tribe could not endure a mountainous trek, they settled instead under the largest trees within a fruit-bearing forest able to sustain the tribe
(Year 3 ~ Year 4)
Still nursing his wounded hand and confiding only with his two trusted advisors, Dilian lost the finger entirely. As the infection threatened his hand with gangrene, Mila’s herbs and aloe leaves could not stop the spread. Later the tracker Sho-lin returned from the Nethermore alone minus his fallen pathfinders, and provided the medicine woman a piney flower. While it soothed the poison in Dilian’s hand, the herb was too small in substance to heal him. Dilian and Mila prompted the sage to recount his journey home after his two companions had fallen within Nethermore.
Joshua Tree National Park, California by Sean Russel
With his return route cut off by a landslide and his companions lost to the mountains, Sho-lin forged a new path leaving Nether Mount behind. As he followed a bouscat hare into a fungal thicket, he was captivated by the singular charm of a butterfly. Hungering and slumbering in grass among blue morels, he tested their curious flavour. After he awakened he was unsure if a day had passed, or perhaps longer.
Drifting southeast he lay in a bath of crystallized sand which devoured him in brown mud. Vowing not to return to the sandpit, Sho-lin flattened a fallen papyrus stalk and dipped his finger in a puddle of porcupine ink. Using the ink and paper he inscribed about his excursion, drawing a horizontal line to remember not to revisit the quicksand. Below, he scrawled vertical and horizontal lines combined to denote the plus and minus sides of sampling various fungi.
As a cold rain and snow pushed him eastward and further from home, Sho-lin traveled on foot through cloudy months with no sun nor moon to guide him. Above, the flight paths of a royal blue bird and a scarlet bird converged together near a spiky plant in the desert ahead. Having run out of water, Sho-lin sipped from the spiny dahlia. As the cardinal and bluebird joined him, the avian dyad molded into one with combined colors. During the next three days Sho-lin communicated with the tanager bird, consuming the purple cactus for nourishment.
Reflections of a Psychedelic Desert – Pantporium
The first of the tribes to observe this natural color and communicate with birds, Sho-lin followed the tanager east to a crooked wood of bonsai trees. With only room to crawl inside, he discovered an unlikely sanctuary. Seeking solace in this spiritual den, the sage reclined aside eggplants and a giving tree.
Under a purplish panorama he observed violet mist of atmospheric auroras beyond the realm of birds and fog, and furthermore cosmic clouds of indigo where the stars sparkle within. Inside the nebulous betelgeuse a pair of titian and oceanic planets were locked in cosmogonic conflict mirroring the cycles of our lunar and solar spheres. Between them, a shooting star and distant darkstar crashed in a galactic game, twinkling in colliding flashes of blue and red. As the periwinkle star blinked through the borealis, the wizened sage noticed a pattern in its intermittency.
· · · – – – · · ·
Having never contemplated this cosmic connection Sho-lin absorbed this wisdom within the nexus of earth and space, and blinked back in kind. With porcupine ink he scrawled the sequence of three round dots, three horizontal lines, and another trio of dots unto the other side of the thin papyrus. Meanwhile its only other occupant the chirpy tanager cautioned him to not divulge this serene place, except to those few as wise as he. Responding with an “om” Sho-lin pledged not to reveal the sublime sanctum and universal unrest he perceived.
Bowing to the avian, the giving tree and celestial entities above, he expressed gratitude while crawling out on all fours the way he came. No longer perceiving the sanctuary and the purpureus haze, he silently named the shrine after the snowy rabbit setting him down the road less traveled. Glimpsing the lagomorph as it bounded into the night, Sho-lin meditated to the sound of nearby waves.
At dawn the next day, the sage’s eyes were opened as the sun rose over an uncertain sea. With the Bousca sanctum nowhere in sight, Sho-lin discerned sight of an undiscovered ocean and followed its coastline south for perhaps a week. Passing a deserted log pyramid still smoldering, the thru-hiker was turnt to the right into the canyons with no design on the pyre along the shore.
Treading through prowlers’ lands, a nightcrawler slithered through the stormy night towards the sage. Confronted by a spotted feline, Sho-lin abated the jaguaro nonviolently using a jugular mantra and a meter-long hiking stick. Approaching the Shendoa River valley, he found himself on the other side of the rockslide sending him on this solitary road. Above, a peregrine dropped a pungent pine herb from its talons to the ground at his feet which he later sampled.
Tracking the falcon’s flight path behind him to the highest peak as it soared into a crevice within, Sho-lin could now track a new circuitous path to Nether Mount. Finally returning to Escenda, he jotted a map of all the landmarks from his year-long trip home – excepting the sanctum. Sho-lin revealed his map and visionquest only to Dilian and Mila, merely whispering to the muse about the stellar sanctuary.
Supernova GRB 250314A (ESA/NASA artist’s rendition)
(Year 10 ~ Year 11)
With Dilian’s infected hand fully immobilized from the king lizard’s venom, he secretly embarked to the Nethermore alone with the sage’s map. Referring to Sho-lin as a wise master and leaving him and Mila the muse to manage E’scend in his stead, he kissed Mila and their eight-year old twins goodbye and estimated his return within a year or two. As he left the redwood and tribe’s village in the dead of night under a cold new moon, he told only his partner and their twins along with the master.
Sho-lin gave him the map and his blessing, pointing Dilian northeast to the fungal garden then northwest along the falcons’ flight path to the tryptan blue mountain. Using the map and deductive reasoning while scrawling poetically on another payprus, Dilian peered at the sequence of dots and dashes on the back of the map and forged his own path.
Arriving into Nether Mount he discovered this splendid hall along with its temperate climate, herb gardens, hot whirlpools and the sparkling natural spring. Over several years these combined treatments healed him, other than his missing finger. Various animal predators including wolves and baerres had encroached on him from below his elevated perch. In time as he cohabited with the wild animals, Dilian learned to innately communicate with them as long as his intentions remain pure. Although he does not control the creatures, he can dissuade their demeanor as well as see their point of view.
Once Dilian had recovered and was able to venture outside of the mountain, he prepared to return home to his tribe. However, a pack of mountain lions beyond his control had chased him back inside each time he attempted to leave. He later found the other two eastern trackers encased in ice on a precipice ledge. Carrying them one by one into Wynterlyn, he placed the pair into the hot waterpools where they were soon revived by Shendoa springwater and the healing herb which he called smylia.
(Present = Year 26)
Exhaling in sooty subterranean air approaching the new day, the dyad of lovers bask in the afterglow of their Minuet sonata and forbidden lunar lambada. Spotting a skeleton key on the oubliette floor, Lily unlocks the rooted cell imprisoning them both. As she leads Aedan up a curved stairwell into the furnished base of a broad tree, he finds them within a giant redwood.
Following his rosette into its largest chamber, he glimpses sunlight for the first time in years. Turning to face him, Lily casts aside her gowns and beseeches him to couple with her. As he approaches her wooden bedside, a sudden wail emits from an adjoining room. He halts and turns towards the sound which is clearly an infant’s cry. Exhaling while she redresses, he interrogates if Lily is with child. As she opens the door, she reveals a swaddled bambino in a cradle.
She has named her Lolabi, daughter of Lily and Aedan. Astounded, Aedan gingerly holds his newfound baby in his arms for the first time and she stops crying. Arriving in the nursery are adult twins who do not speak, and a young man with a face resembling his own. Delighted by this abrupt familial reunion, Aedan inquires if he is his son Kaedan, or Paedan? His name is Tilian, he corrects his father, firstborn of Aedan and Lily. Recalling their initial meeting during the Aria and Battle at Lepe Point, Aedan nods and acknowledges Tilian as their son.
As he turns to Lily she showers him with affection, nursing her infant. She announces that Tilian turns twenty-one years old today – the winter solstice – which is Aedan’s own forty-sixth birthday. Showing him with affection and fanfare, Lily demonstrates that they already have a family consisting of their children Tilian and baby Lolabi, and the adopted twins. With their tribes and lands at their command, the two can fulfill their destiny together as the royal Dyad of Crescendo.
For the first time in as long as he can remember, Aedan experiences joy. As there is no need to leave their splendid redwood hideaway and memory of his former life fading, he pledges to be Lily’s husband and father to their family within the wood under the full wolf moon.
Redwood tree in Muir Woods, California by Louis Schocken (edited for context)
A single snowy moonbeam ceases shining through the crevice in Nether Mount, signaling midnight on the Wynterlyn sundial. Their abdomens full as Q’isann’s paunch wound recovers, the guild is astonished by Dilian’s tale (which included all of his and Sho-lin’s separate solo quests except for the Bousca sanctum under the stars).
Revealing his missing finger, the graying Dilian finishes by introducing his empathic companions Su-rin and Xo-nan. He identifies them as Sho-lin’s fellow pathfinders who Dilian had encountered and rescued from their cryogenic iceboxes years ago just east of here. Xo-nan and non-binary Su-rin now used the same methods plus aloe on knitted cloth to heal Q’isann’s baerre claw wound.
Through the eyes of the peregrine falcon soaring above E’scend, Dilian has distantly viewed the tumult. Shocked by this charlatan who usurped him in his absence, he wishes to return to Escenda to set things right and restore peace. However with knowledge of a mystical dark magick far beneath, his conjuring opponent dominates the enchanted tribe. Even if the true Dilian were to return to Escenda, the deceiver and their army are too powerful and they had numbered only three…
But in the here and now they are ten – Q’isann corrects him using his fingers to count – ten of Crescendo’s preeminent warriors with special skills and abilities. If they were to band together, with their combined might they could penetrate the Arch’s domain and rescue Aedan as the seven Wescendants have avowed. If he can confront the chameleon impersonating him with these sworn avengers at his back, Dilian supposes they can impeach these masters of war and halt the bloodshed between the tribes.
There is consensus. They are now a tenfold guild, unified on their mission to depose the impostor Arch, liberate Aedan and restore peace to the land of Crescendo. Resolved and determined, Dilian and the band of pathfinders and paladins embark at dawn on the first day of the new year towards the fateful clash of their time.
CHAPTER EIGHT ~ The Black Bird
Musical accompaniment for context
Ambient Instrumental Score: “Tabula Rasa” ~ Part 6 of 7
“Crescendo Chapters 7 & 8 Score ~ v1” (03:40)
Containing segments of ” Tabula Rasa”
Part VI: Cyberian
“Tabula Rasa” ~ A musical representation of the past, present and future of life on planet Earth
Composed & recorded 2010 by William Kurzenberger; Released on the album Solitary Road © 2010
Created and written by Bill Kurzenberger, December 2025 ~ All Rights Reserved