BENNAdam wrote:"Hello," Benn says as he walks towards the seated humanoid. "It is good to see someone friendly. I am Bennedict Gehrman, a traveler from...some place far from here. Perhaps you could be so kind as to let me know where I am?"
The youth watches Benn in silence for a moment, and then declares--
"Your speech is gracious and your demeanor pleases me, mortal man. “
He leans to scratch behind the ears of the large gray wolf at the right side of his fungal chair.
“You have leapt into a nightmare not your own. Though these woods seem fair, they hide terrible things. If you wish to leave, you must find and awaken the sleeper. She lies as one dead, buried deep in the black pits below the earth. Go and seek the door to the underworld, by the shores of the poisoned lake. I warn you; if you die in this realm you may
never be able to return to the waking world.''
The stranger rises from his throne amidst a cloud of multihued spores. He speaks in a foreign tongue,
“Facilis descensus Averni:
noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras.
hoc opus, hic labor est.”
He smiles a sad smile as he slowly fades from sight along with the wolf and the chair of mushrooms.
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
-from Moby Dick (Hermann Melville)