Tag Archives: storytelling

#2564

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1

You have questions, little scribe. I can tell. 

I can hear the clicking of the Nameless’ long nails all around me and when She speaks I imagine, incongruously, canine jawbones clacking and grinning where they float in the head of a woman-shaped darkness. Asking questions of such an entity isn’t something I want to make a habit of, but after a hesitation I find myself saying, “Why me? I know I’m the scribe, but it doesn’t seem like you have a story to tell so I’m not quite sure why you waste your time with me. No offense.”

Every story is mine, the Nameless replies, beginning to end. Stories are chaos. Chaos drives stories. And besides,  She spreads Her taloned hands wide, time has no meaning to the void. I exist everywhere and always.

“So that’s it? You just want to make sure they’re recorded?” That seems too simple – and far too benevolent for the Nameless. She likes games, after all, and She always wins. I just haven’t figured out what one we’re playing.

I don’t care about records. Your words will last only as long as the methods with which they are documented, and those methods will only last as long as technology and human civilization do. Which won’t be much longer. ‘No offense.’ She laughs, the sound echoing like flowing water in a cavern.

“Then why me?” I know I won’t get a straight answer but I can’t help asking anyway.

Oh, I’m not going to hand you all the answers, the Nameless purrs. Where’s the fun in that?

#2342

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Forgive me for the years I spent stumbling toward understanding. Humans process in stories; we need a framework, an archetype, a beginning and ending, something to shape what we experience. We crave stories and you made me your scribe, so how could I have known that for you there simply isn’t a story? That you transcend cause and effect, have neither a creation nor a destruction? You exist outside of any framework I could put to words; of course I couldn’t understand that as a child. I don’t even understand it now, I just have a better grasp of how little I truly know. So much of what you have presented me is theater, right down to the sets and costumes and metaphor. Only now am I starting to glimpse the endless totality within, like peeking backstage and finding no actors, no props, only darkness. And how do you capture darkness in words when words are meant to illuminate?

#1848

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A scribe should know her place. A scribe does not create, she copies. A scribe does not take liberties, she writes only what she is dictated. A scribe does not tell the story, she merely records it. A scribe is but the extension of the pen, and to imagine otherwise is to rise above her station; she is necessary, yes, but like a broken stylus she can be replaced. A scribe would be wise to remember her role and not dare to move beyond its restrictions.