Carnival of the Mind by E.M. Peterson

Author:E.M. Peterson [E.M. Peterson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: E.M. Peterson
Published: 2023-07-07T00:00:00+00:00

The Carnival - The While Isles

Time passes on the While Isles, but sometimes it does so in slightly the wrong order. My first weeks there are marked by exhaustion. There was a heaviness in my spirit that even meeting the local population and learning their customs couldn’t erase. For the most part they let me be—as inhabitants of an island where food is plentiful and conflict scarce, it was no great burden to feed me, put a shelter over my head, and otherwise allow me to roam the island or lounge in the sand as I pleased. They even supplied me with a canoe I could use to paddle between the islands, but during my first week I was pulled so far out to sea on one such venture that the Whileans had to tow me back to shore. No one in these islands can use creative influence to manipulate water, and I’m obviously no exception. The only things that work here are acts of magic that capture something else—perfect facsimiles of faces carved into trees, inscribed tablets that describe historical events in such detail you can actually see them when you read the page—but nothing that changes the existing world in a tangible way. After that outing, I kept my sea voyages to the narrower passages between the three central islands, and let the others remain a mystery.

The Whileans live in circular houses constructed out of driftwood and shaded from the sun with palm fronds. A peculiar pink fungus is omnipresent on the island, growing primarily on the rocks at the water’s edge and giving the shore the perpetual impression of sunset. The Whileans use this fungus for almost all of their furniture, padding their beds and chairs with the springy growth, which fades into a reddish brown once removed from its native substrate. Their villages mirror the construction of the houses, forming concentric (and perfectly circular) rings around a central pavilion. For the most part the Whileans spend their time in the pavilion if they’re not out fishing or foraging. The While Isles are always hot, and I soon take after the local custom and go without a shirt, keeping only a scrap of cloth tucked into my belt loop to wipe the sweat from my brow.

While they are welcoming, the Whileans take some getting used to. They are prone to disappearing from a conversation, getting lost in thought and only re-emerging minutes later with an answer to a now ancient question. I soon came to understand the reason for this: from birth, every Whilean is required to learn the complete history of an entire era of the Carnival. Every major movement within Valdrada, every development made in the steel city, all the political maneuverings of the mountain cities in the north, and of course the history-making wars of the Apocalyptians and Armageddeons. All of this is passed down through generations, with each person focusing on a slightly different era, so every century has a definitive expert. Debates on historical subjects often go deep into the night as the fire burns low beneath their pavilion.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.