 The Chuthlu Crush |
 The Magpie’s Bird Room |
| There was once a woman born Abigail Frost who thought she saw a very strange creature when she was just a child. This fateful event put her on a path that would slowly cause her to become more and more dedicated to the task of proving the reality of what she thought she saw. This task became an obsession and this obsession would finally be satisfied, only the reward for her driven pursuit was not exactly what she was looking for. Abigail was transformed into a creature known as a Taurean and her immortal name became the Magpie. In the mythology of the Taureans and Saturnines the Magpie became a well known figure. Her fabled bird room housed countless species of bird or rumored to exist. This was her passion for decades until a chance introduction to a book about Lovecraft’s old gods caused her to make a sudden and sharp turn. Her crush on the old thing named Cthulhu found strange changes taking place in the Magpie… |
Of the many subjects that the eccentric shopkeep and researcher Etta Diem occupied her free time with, the topic of the Taureans and Saturnines fascinated her the most. If Etta was capable of falling prey to obsession these two entities would be that obsession. The suggestion of this is rather ironic, but only if you understand the nature of Taureans and Saturnines. Each of these titles is a quick identifier of a type of person who followed a certain course of action somewhere in their life and suffered the consequences. The most simple way to sum of these actions is to say the phrase curiosity killed the cat, although death is not the outcome in this case but rather a strange brand of unwanted immortality.
A Taurean is a woman who has a burning need to find out the truth of something arcane. The Saturnine is her male counterpart. Each allow their quest for knowledge to consume them till the word obsession is a noun far from strong enough to describe them. When the quest is accomplished the individual’s manner of sight changes. Only those who experience this phenomenon can describe to you how this feels and what takes place. Those on the outside looking in notice the big changes. They witness the madness that comes over the person, they see the physical change in their eyes. And if you spend enough time with the person you see how time stops for them. A day is no longer a day, an hour is no longer sixty minutes. It all changes as if the person is pulled from the thread of time and set somewhere along side of it. Their eyes glow and are capable of seeing not just their own reality, but the reality of all plains that exist together at one time. They can see the Akashik Record, they can see the glowing strands of a person’s life line, they can see the dead and the spirits of the living not yet born. They become something not quite human and defiantly not mortal. They graduate to a new existence and can never go back to the lives they lived before they found the truth they sought in the arcane. This explanation sounds terribly simple when the more detailed and elaborate explanation is quite profound in a way I have no words for.
Very few know the nature of the Taureans and Saturnines, but those who do seek them out. These creatures are a living doorway to knowledge mortals are not meant to have. They are a bridge to real magic, to the plain of knowledge of all things, to death and life, and the most coveted of all things; the answers to the mysteries of the arcane. They are flukes of nature and there are any number of people and societies in this world who would do just about anything to be in possession of just one of these creatures. Think of it in terms of a great writer or artist who stumbles across a real live muse, like the ones spoken of in Greek mythology. Eight our of ten of such creative types would steal away that muse and strive to keep them under their control at all costs. Researchers of the arcane would do just the same to a Taurean or Saturnine.
In Etta’s research she was able to discover societies devoted to these creatures. She was able to single out individuals of great importance, she documented their names, their histories and created rough sketches of what they look like in their mortal form and their immortal form. She fleshed out the fairy tale and the actual facts of their nature. Etta managed to create the first written account of the Taurean and Saturnine, their history and their secrets. As the Taurean is a doorway to the arcane, Etta became a doorway to the Taurean. The book she created is hard to find, and though she is proud of her work and a trader of dry-goods, you won’t be able to buy the book from her. In researching these immortals and understanding the dangers of their obsessions, she was able to see and acknowledge her own. Etta has no desire to encourage this behavior in anyone else. The book is titled A Nocturne for My Saturnine and can be found if one knows where to look. The cost, however, is set at a rate few people can afford. Etta would charge you a riddle and the answer would be the proper payment. But there is the trick. The riddle she might ask has an answer only known by the dead. It takes a certain type of person to procure answers from the dead. Those types might be able to handle what the dead would tell them. * Bethalynne Bajema
A Nocturne for My Saturnine is my second Bajema’s Web collection and should be available fairly soon, the art gods be willing. This collection contains the complete collection of Nocturnes art and my mechanical insects, presented along side of a new Etta Diem story. Pop by here or my website time to time for more information.
