Rhydderck’s Journal #2

I wrote Rhydderck’s Journal #1 when I was worldbuilding for a game I run on a play-by-post gaming site. It’s 25 years or more in the past from the current time the players are playing in, but it really helped me figure out some of the oddities which were great ideas, just not designed to go together. I hope you enjoy part two! (There are further entries, so you may get to see more at some point.)

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8th of Winterwane

Every time I think I understand some aspect of the vision, more questions arise. As the phoenix-sun moves across the sky, it reveals the life cycle of the phoenix, powerful at high noon, aging until sunset. The beach, too, is a symbol of beginnings and endings, depending on how you look at it. The entire vision seems to be telling me that something is beginning or ending, and I need to take note… but I have no idea what “it” could be. Is this a warning? If so, it’s not a particularly good one, for I’ve no idea what I must look out for.

In trance earlier I spent what seemed like several hours looking at all the details in the beach scene. The students at their desks. The projects they are seemingly working on. The lady’s appearance. The books on the shelves of her small bookcase. The notes she has made on scraps of paper which she does allow me to read. I am unsure why I am unable to unravel this vision, whether I am not meant to or if there is something here which will occur to me later on.  I think there is a rune in the doilies spread across the pair of armchairs that form the white lady’s “parlor”, but it toys with my mind, not coming to anything.

Goodness. ‘White Lady’ has more meanings than the obvious. But which meaning applies here? Sometimes a good witch, sometimes a spirit or fae seeking aid… she has not asked anything of me except that first request to hand her some graded papers. Perhaps I ought to seek those papers and see what they are in reference to, it might reject the spirit seeking aid definition. What a fool I am. La dame blanche shows up in my visions and I don’t recognize her as such… I am a sorry excuse for a diviner. She does not seem to reside in a sacred place, unless this beach has other meanings than the obvious transition between sea and land. Of course, if she resides in the astral, that would explain a certain amount of the traditional folklore linking to them to sacred places. Is it foolish of me to hope she falls into the spirit of a wise woman category? The others all tend to have a less benevolent side to them. Yet… coming upon her in the etheric would also indicate some synergy with the powers of prophecy typically attributed to the wise women. Is that what she writes? Prophecy? If so, I might be coming upon her by accident, linked by the divinatory parts of each of our characters. No meeting in trance or vision can ever be truly coincidence, that I’m sure would be foolishness.

A transition, a beginning, an end, and the etheric echo of a powerful seer’s astral body. If I am being warned of a transition, what is it that is ending? That setting phoenix-sun reaching the horizon and exploding into a rainbow elegy of light will remain with me forever, I believe. It was not something I would choose to forget, and could I paint I would attempt to reproduce it to share it with others. That rune, I will have to research it. Even copying it down now does not produce the desired rune, there’s something blocking my recall. It could be the rune itself, or it could be something that won’t unlock in my perceptions until I understand more. With my luck lately, it will be the latter, a cyclical process in which I need the rune to learn more, but I must learn more to gain the rune. The variety of options even within memory and future categorizations will take me some time, and I may well end up asking the White Woman questions before I find anything. I can only hope that it does not anger her to have a stranger prying into her business.

Notes:
– Are there any seaside communities with lore of white women? There’s so much that could be buried in these symbols.
– That rune, if I can find it. Memory, future, time? Prophecy, perhaps.
– Do white women have any crossover with other spirits? Am I jumping to conclusions, and she is really a fae trickster?
– Could an astral-dwelling soul reach into the etheric to find or chance upon etheric bodies of diviners?