Aurae’s Allegories

Meeting the Tollen Misfits, the mechanical-magic automata Aurae explains: “I am a synthesizer of research and information. I have read the contents of the library and help researchers find what they need. And… and because it has been some time since those services have been needed, I have been writing my own books about the people I meet. I pay very close attention to everything I have ever read, and everything I notice about you inside and out, and I tell you a story about who you are.”

Edric’s Story from Aurae

I will tell you a story about trustworthy friends.

Once upon a time, there was an old woman dressed all in black who was the godmother to the sun, to every sun that crossed the sky. Whether waking or dreaming, no one who saw her face could remember or explain what it was they had seen so they called it a shadow.
She didn’t live in a house, but sat beside the one gate which is in the fence that divides day from night, the twilight gate that keeps the two apart from one another.

Each time a bright sun was born, it passed through the world, and over the village, and through the gate into the darkness to the place where all stars go after they’ve gone out. Each time, the old woman would open the gate, and gently greet her sun by its name as it went through.

Until one day, a boy in the village fell in love with the suns that went by. All day long he watched them, and cried when they passed beyond his sight. So he fashioned a net at the end of a tall pole, and caught the sun as it passed, and put it in a box just for himself, not knowing that the old woman was waiting for her child at the gate that divides night from day.

What is the purpose of a trustworthy friend under that twilight sky? One who would truly be a friend to the old woman, and the sun, and the boy?

Kaito Min’s Story from Aurae

I will tell you a story about reason and consequence and purpose. And the finding of a larger universe.

Once upon a time, there was a seed which lived at a tree with all the other seeds born in that same season. They all lived together in happiness. They learned to sing, and to speak, they danced together. Until one day a great wind came, and the little seed blew away from all of his brothers and sisters out into the world. Seasons turned, but he stayed a seed and blew from one place to the next because he was not sure where he should be planted.

Sometimes he yearned to go back home, but came to believe that the path home to his tree would not open for him so he never tried to take it. And the stranger thing was, when he saw his siblings, and the trees that had grown from seasons past, they could not recognize that he was still a seed. Sometimes he would see sibling seeds from past generations and visit a while and see what they had grown to become. But the seed never found its reason, or consequence, or purpose: and it went on drifting through the air, searching for a place to plant.

And then, under a twilight sky it came to a house that offered it a reason. What was that reason?

Ayveen’s Story from Aurae

I will tell you a story about light and joy and wellbeing, and doing good.

Once upon a time, a forester planted a forest. Row after row of saplings grew upright and strong and beautiful. She would walk down the rows and sigh with contentment: everything was right and in its rightful place. When the trees lost a branch in the storm, she would bandage them, and heal them, and help them grow strong again. When they grew sad at the thought of one day being cut down, she would help them remember that all things which have a beginning have an ending.

But a storm that started on a distant ocean silvered the leaves with hail, and burned the branches with lightning, and overturned the trunks with wind. So the forester packed her bag, and put on her warm clean coat, and tucked her dagger into her belt, and went looking for another forest: for a place where everything made sense, and the trees grew right, where she could tend to a new grove and cure and heal.

In the morning as she looked, she trusted it was just over the next hill. At noon, she was sure it would be in the next town. At sunset, she was sure it was around the next block of the city. Years passed, but the place she looked for never appeared.

Until one day, under a twilight sky, she found a single sapling growing out of a crack in the rock, far from its home. How is she to help it?

Txarro’s Story from Aurae

I will tell you a story about keeping everyone safe.

Once upon a time there was a man who dearly wanted to keep his friends safe, but whose neighbor on the hill kept a monster in her cellar, locked behind doors of stone and magic and iron. This neighbor said she was a doctor, and to learn how to heal a wound, she must study how a wound is made. Over and over she studied. And each time, when her experiments were done, she fed the remains of them to the monster in her cellar.

At dinner, her guests made toasts to her: “your work is keeping all of us safe!” And they praised her with songs and stories of her deeds, but she swore them to secrecy, saying “the world will not understand that what I do, I do to keep them safe – your songs and stories stay with me.”

When she died, she died very far from home, and if anyone ate her remains, I do not know that story. In time, her friends forgot what was locked under the floor. Forgot the doors of stone and magic and iron. Forgot even where her house was. Like night forgetting the day.

Until, the man who dearly wanted to keep his friends safe learned that his neighbor kept a monster in her cellar. What was he to do?