Expedition into the Pale

...of course, she was only distracting herself, with good reason. She had only just, for the lack of a more suitable term, concluded a, by and large, terminally inconclusive relationship. Much like wine of mediocre quality, little was left thereof the next morning but foul, fading traces of bitter regret with subtle notes of time less spent than wasted and the sundry aromas of many an unfulfilled promise. She sighed. She stared at empty space for some time but her stare was not reciprocated. She gently obliged her unresolved stare bereft of reciprocity to resolve itself towards an object of apprehension more fit to be stared at. Surely, there would be something, she thought. There was. "Logbook of the Expedition into the Pale, 19 August 1913", her stare reported back to her, with a certain air of satisfaction. Distraction. She caught herself commencing to sigh and decided to gather her bearings instead, one by one, however many there may be.

Earlier, during an erratic morning walk driven largely by her desire to be somewhere totally different for at least a while, she had succeeded at getting totally and entirely lost. This, at least, offered a temporary refuge of novelty sprinkled with an uncanny air of the remote and forgotten. Oddly enough, by the time she had decided that she wanted to no longer be lost, nobody seemed to know how to get to that particular place she had presumably come from nor, for that matter, anywhere else. In fact, she could but barely recall how she managed to find her way home or how to get back to where she had been anew. Shame, she thought, for all the intriguing boutiques, if slightly shabby, selling, almost somewhat eerily, seemingly useless items and trinkets of no apparent value that nevertheless left an irresistible imprint on some obscure corner of the subconscious mind patiently awaiting an opportunity to impose its dominion over the rest of her mind.

She paused. What a thought, she thought. She stashed all other such thoughts, especially those pertaining to said place, and stashed her stash of thoughts in some remote corner of her mind for later retrieval. For the time being, she had procured an object worthy of apprehension: "Logbook of the Expedition into the Pale, 19 August 1913". Whatever that means. And an orb. Apparently they were connected, somehow. Or so she had been told. Or so she thought she had been told. The salesperson at the boutique she had bought both at only spoke, as she had been told by his equally linguistically impaired attendant, an obscure descendant of 12th century Andalusian Arabic spoken in scattered patches of tribal territories all over the Sahel region. That, and the universal language of wild gesticulation.

One way or another, she was now in possession of an obscure logbook dating to late 1913 and an orb. She liked the orb at first sight. It reminded her of her fascination, obsession even, with kaleidoscopes when she was a child. When she would stare at, into, the orb, a dazzling, swirling, disarray of colours and shapes, constantly shifting and changing, would eventually assemble itself into some indescribable something that almost seemed to behold a secret mystery hidden profoundly within her very being, as remote as familiar, and she felt irresistibly drawn to it. Then, a subtle, bright green radiance emanated from the orb and began to encompass the sudden vastness of her consciousness. She blinked. She had blinked. Was she still there? What a thought, she thought. Apparently, she had all but forgotten of all the reasons that demanded distraction of her, a faint voice remarked somewhere but it went unheard.

She sat down at her desk and began to read the logbook, the orb sat on a worn-out, decorative pillow in front of her.

Logbook of the Expedition into the Pale, 19 August 1913

Earlier this morning, after two long years of preparation, I have concluded assembling a crew suitable for the task at hand, furnishing said crew, myself included, with a longboat suitable for traversing the Pale as well all provisions and equipment required, obtained all permits due, and we offered prayers also to all the deities to whom prayers are due in such circumstances, to Inanna-Ištar, the Mistress of the innumerable me, to Īnkuzén, the Golden-Eyed, Sovereign of Origins, to Ereškigal, and Nisaba. None of the men and women I have contracted to render their duty and, should it come to that, very souls to, are, in the most remote sense of the word, fit for this mission and, I am afraid to say, nor am I. I have not informed them of the true nature of this mission. What little I know of it shall remain my burden, for the time being. Surely, unimaginably cruel punishment would await us were I, were we, to refuse, for the manifold signatures, stamps, seals, and even the very paper they are found on makes the progeny of the bearer of our bleak fate manifestly clear beyond any doubt, the latter being, in the form of a letter:

"You are to launch an expedition into the Pale in order to ascertain

Signed:
High Commissioner José Francisco de Azevedo e Silva
Commonwealth of the Pale
13 August 1911"

I did not dare respond to this letter humbly asking for clarification, for orders of this sort are to be obeyed without question, to the letter indeed, no matter how meaningless they may appear to be. Rumours have it, many indeed confirmed, others less so, that every now and then, orders of this sort descend upon the unsuspecting like sudden calamities whom are afterwards never heard of again and soon forgotten, perhaps out of sheer fright: at one point, it was ordered that everything and everyone that exists be accounted for in order to then substract therefrom everything and everyone that is not so as to obtain an accounting of nothing, and then, it was ordered that a map be drawn that encompassed itself and as such, all other maps that were encompassed by the space it was to occupy in order to thereby locate a, supposedly, most obstinately obscure hole in the very fabric of reality that defied location. And now, this. And along with the letter, an orb of no apparent use or value with a handwritten, or rather scribbled, badly, note attached to it stating plainly: "MAVIGATIONAL AIDE. PALACE IN CENTRE OF GOAT." - which is, of course, most helpful.

As much as little there is to say concerning our ostensible destination. All know the meaning of the idiom "the Pale" and the only very gradually vanishing echoes of tradition passed on since antediluvian times that constitute therefrom, or from there, depending on one's perspective on the inextricable web of notion and reality, an actual place, places of all places, and so on, of rather more metaphysical a nature, as in the expression of profound astonishment, taking its origin in some long-forgotten poem:

Beyond the Pale she cast her eyes
and there she saw
a thousand things.

Over the centuries, much more that has been composed that is of any note concerning the Pale has been lost than remains extant in our day and age. The Pale, the Nothing, the Great Void, the Silence Unseen That Sees, End without End, Erṣetu lā tāri, Kurnugū, and countless others. The subject recurs incessantly across our history, only to wane in vain time after time after the inevitable collapse of the lofty towers of its rigorous reckoning, for its object unceasingly continues to defy all attempts to conceive it. The traces and trails of countless theories, models, accounts, and so on and so forth, thereof now line the speech of the Sea Peoples and their vivid imagination. There are, of course, people that claim to have traversed the Pale and brought through it luxurious goods of great value and priceless delicacies from regions and places none have heard of but upon further enquiry it would turn out that they have no memory of any such place nor how they came to be where they were. Some thus say that the Pale, as tradition holds it, is the place of all places, the place between places, where the very boundaries of being and non-being meet, and beyond. Others say that the Pale is the demesne of dreams and imagination, the well-spring of our very souls, where everything begins and everything ends; of obscure relation, in ancient Babylonia, the Pale was, supposedly, known as Mātnaḫármuṭ, the Vanishing Lands, although this may be apocryphal. And then some say that if one says that something is or lies "beyond the Pale", it cannot be found or retrieved until one has entirely extinguished the very thought of it within themselves. And lastly, others say that none of this is true, or at least that inasmuch as it may be true, it is irrelevant, and that the Pale is simply death itself, nothingness, inexistence, and to avoid it at all cost, wherever one should find it. Of course, curiously, perhaps merely when what is commonly held to be true is apprehended by the discerning eye to discern what is right in front of it, everyone knows how to go there, giving a literal meaning to the expression "they set sail towards the Pale of their days". Although this is taken as manifestly clear and mundane as the sun in the sky and the sea below, it seems to have been, thus far, virtually entirely ignored by all those great, many people we know of that have attempted to study the nature of the Pale. All one has to do is to set sail towards no particular direction - as long as it be towards the horizon - until "all-surrounding nothingness" encompasses "the fading, fading eyes" - as tradition holds, for none would be as foolish to do so.

And thus, it would appear, our expedition into the Pale in order to ascertain, whatever it is there may or may not be to ascertain, shall commence on this day, 19 August 1913 at 05:00 in the morning.

Suddenly, she felt very, very tired. She inexplicably felt compelled to place her palm upon the orb and as she did so, she felt as though an ineffable imprint of herself was left therein, slowly but surely growing from a mere simulacrum into a being independently existing of her, saved sound and safe from whatever harm could possibly come to her in this world, however many other worlds there may be. She continued to feel very, very tired. She resolved to seek out sleep in great measure and found it too, for a while.

The darkest sun of merciful sleep dawned, arose, and drew into its shroud of soothing extinction all that lay beneath. Her breathing slowed. The weight of the world at first was uncomfortably upon her but then vanished. Sleep, the little death. She first faded and waned and then disappeared altogether. Not a single thought nor memory remained, for wherever things perish is where all things arise, and none may venture there, and whatever therein dwells then departs to later return. Sleep, the unknowable genesis of life itself. She drifted further and further into the depths of the unfathomable well that constituted the unchartered lands of her conditions of possibility. All the contradictions that had entailed her existence by and by were sublated and thus she commenced to dream.

Trails and traces of fragments of memories, some mesmerising, some of no greater meaning, flowed forth amidst the capricious streams that at times merged into and then separated out and away out of the nameless great, deep abyss beneath the surface of the manifest and apparent, where everything arranged itself into what it was to become. Narratives, stories untold, encounters, conclusions, and questions therein mingled freely and occasionally engendered the outright bizarre and absurd, to then pass away and find their rightful place and shape and form in some crevice of her consciousness, for later retrieval. And a great deal thereof there was, for she had not properly slept and dreamt in what seemed like years. The shadows of what had lain right in front of her all along appeared and darkness was upon her. Something changed.

In a shadowy mirror within a mirror, reflected therein, an unidentifiable silhouette clad in gleaming green radiant, bright shining splendour of awfully divine Melammu there was bearing an orb, the sight of which made her flesh creep in all-encompassing, primal fear and trembling. She felt compelled to scream but she had no mouth to scream with. Suddenly, the fragmented pair of phrases that had imprinted itself on her subconscious emerged into her immense consciousness possessed of torment:

all-surrounding nothingness
the fading, fading eyes

The innumerable mirrors broke into uncountable shards and each shard burst forth into an endlessly cascading cacophony of endlessly reflected boundlessness and what remained of the emptiness surrounding it, had become a silent sea of terrifyingly recursive infinity. Everywhere that was somewhere beheld more of itself without end, broken up and shattered into smaller and smaller pieces, that maddeningly begat more of the same, so much that her immense consciousness was assailed by the totality of all existence multiplied by itself, then exponentiated, tetrated, and pentated until space and time were no more. Then, nothing but the Void that was not remained. The terrifying silhouette had disappeared along with the orb.

The orb was within her.

She abruptly awoke, drenched in sweat and the suffocating aura of unspeakable terror that knows no name.
Multiple days and nights had passed. Somehow.
The orb was gone.

It was time to leave. At once. Towards: anywhere, that was not here.
She resentfully took a shower, dressed unceremoniously, assembled a reasonably arbitrary but largely useful assemblage of items, stowed them away safely inside her most obsequious purse, put on her most unexacting jacket and an undemanding, warm woolly hat too that provided a measure of comfort, deemed her hastily assembled outfit to be fit for the purpose of communicating to her now forbidding abode that after all these years, and what have you, well, numerous initially cordial and courteous things one is to say to one another that soon turn sourly stern and then eventually descend into exchanges of condescending insults shouted rather too loudly and, oh, well, would you please just sod off and never talk to me again. And, the obligatory slamming of the door, any door, perhaps all of them. Did she just tell her flat to sod off? So be it, she thought.

And off she was.

Do not blame me for blame scarcely touches me
And guide me Lord, for I am lonely

Houses. Buildings. Places, objects. Most of them subtly altered, in the wrong places - or orientations - altogether. Neither of note nor of concern. Not anymore. Sod it all. To hell with it. Or, if proven impossible, let it all remain here. Not much of a difference, anyway. Not as far as she was concerned. The sky, the sun, the moon, and the vast firmament all resounded in agreement, or at least so it seemed. She had been here too long. Whichever place one dwells within for sufficiently long an amount of time, in time it also dwells within oneself. Ghosts, all around. Memories, fading traces thereof. The kind to leave behind and the kind that one is beset by when it is least expected. As if in a dissociated kind of trance, she was walking less so without than within, every step leading further and further into herself. Something waited for her somewhere, but it was not to be. Not yet. She passed past streets shrouded in nothingness but she did not notice. Dreams. A rare thing hardly encountered in way too long. Until last night. Did she pass from one dream into another, she pondered. Or perhaps, did the one lead to the other with both taking place in the same plane of existence? What if one were to stop dreaming and then to slowly cease to exist, anywhere?, her internal monologue plodded along.

In Akkadian, a dream was referred to as Mašarrū, of unclear etymology; related to wind, perhaps? Possibly a locative noun. Or maybe not. And: Šittu: sleep - be it good or bad - Mušuttu - dream-ritual(?) - and also Šuttu: a dream, a reverie. Her new, previously long lost, demesne of preference. A truly ancient word, its origin dating back at least around 6000 years, with cognates in nearly all Semitic languages, reconstructed as *Šinat and *WVšVn- in Proto-Semitic. In Ugaritic: Šnt. Those pesky vowels. In Syriac and in Hebrew, respectively: Šentā and Šēnā. And in Arabic: Sunāt, of course - the original root - W-S-N - retained: Wasina-Yawsanu, Wasnan, inter alia, meaning: to sleep deeply, to slumber; to be stifled by the exhalations of a well; sloth; want; sleepy, and so on and so forth. Her mind had turned into a dictionary reaching back thousands of years and across the branches of space and time. In Arabic, a dream is referred to as Manām: a locative noun, the place of sleep. Dreams, the place of sleep. Or: Ḥulm or Ruʔyā. Both relating to things seen whilst in the state of sleep, whilst dreaming. A vision, something that is hoped or wished for. Etymologically related also to Ḥilm: self-possession, a quality much appreciated amongst Arabs and most sorely lacking in most. Dream-like reality. And: Karan. Sleep, slumber. Etymologically related to digging and particularly, a grave. Sleep, the little death.

"I saw a ghostly shadow in my dreams / And I said: O vision, who has sent for me? / It said: she whom has known you has sent me, she, your certain desire, whom you waste away for in longing" - a poem on Sufism or worldly love, depending on one's point of view. Or he. Was this a vision? She suddenly thought:

To dream with open eyes
is to see the world change
and in silence
the endless paths appear

Her mind felt clear and her heart at ease. Perhaps this ought be written down somewhere, fixed, as it were, and then watered generously, so that it would grow into something pleasant. The faint scent of the Pacific Ocean lingered within her senses. What a pleasant dream. The Pacific Ocean. The origin of the Baltic Sea, enclosing many of the Northern European countries. The second-largest of the world's five oceans, separating the Old World from the New World. Yes. Of course.

Suddenly, her consciousness awoke into the world around her, having something of utmost importance to alert her to: that oddly unlocatable boutique, right in front of her! The Logbook! The orb! She was stood right in front of it, somehow. How could it be? - she wondered, suspended in absolute amazement and stunned by sheer improbability. Whatever you seek you shall find only once you have extinguished the very thought of it within yourself, she thought. Oh, to hell with the thoughts. Time for action.

She entered the boutique and therein perceived words spoken in some language that sounded quite familiar to her which she promptly identified as, oddly enough, Old Ḥijāzi Arabic, a shower of words therein that just as promptly assailed her with much enthusiasm, most of which she actually did get, then came upon her:

Family and plains, that she was most welcome, would she please have the kindness to condescend to come in, and would she like a cup of a beverage of something or two or three, and how was her family, and her health, and the health of her family, and the family of her health, and how was she indeed, and that should she lay her eye upon any object whatsoever at all within his most humble boutique then surely it would be upon his honour for her to take possession of it, upon which - after another hastily assembled assemblage of cordial formalities that would suffice in order not to invite offence - she did reply that yes, in fact, there may very well be such a thing, and that she was in fact looking for the remainder of an obscure "Logbook of the Expedition into the Pale" one part of which she thought to have bought in this very boutique and that she, unfortunately, did not appear to have any money which, apparently, as she rummaged through her purse turned out to be wrong for she was in possession of quite a bit of money, old Chilean pesos as it happened, but no mental resources were to be spent on this peculiarity, which was met with another shower of words and said object of her apprehension and that her command was upon his head, from his above, and out of his eyes and would that he could offer to her fortune and wealth as long as the fortress of Abū Kurayz and as tall and steadfast as Mountain ʕasīb then no joy greater than to serve her command could possibly be upon him but she was already on her way out, cushioned by numerous extemporaneously composed excuses that involved the grave, lethal even, illness of some distant relative that happened to live just around the corner and that it was her duty to attend to her every need for family is the world and off she was - yet not without bidding him farewell - without having caused anyone any amount of offence and in possession of her object of apprehension.

With single-minded resolve, her mind sharply focussed on but one thing. She determined that her next task was to locate and rent a room with her newfound, conveniently so, wealth, with the prospect of having to convince someone that old Chilean pesos did in fact constitute legitimate currency as a secondary task that could surely be addressed by casting various showers of words of long, run-on sentences that seemed to go nowhere at whomever should attempt to prove an obstacle in her glorious path. As she dashed with the fierce facial expression of someone to whom the earth has become but the canvas upon which to cast their indefatigable will through and across people and places and streets, numerous thoughts of increasing urgency she successfully evaded, redirected, sent elsewhere, and eventually simply told to sod off and leave her alone appeared:

The fact that she seemed to have somehow travelled at least 12.386 km in next to no amount of time, that she was wholly unprepared for such an unexpected and sudden voyage, that returning home was beginning to seem a fruitless endeavour - this, she did not mind, for there was nothing left for her there and she had no true intention to go there again nor did she, at this point, seem to feel that home was home and for the time being, she had no more home. Then, after some time spent asking around for a reasonable place, a residencial, to lodge in, the fact that all the newspapers seemed to be oddly specific about today's date: 18 August 1913, which was only off by a century and a decade too - which she brushed off by arguing that when all is said and done, time is but relative and fleeting, and doubly so Chilean time and Arab time even moreso. The fact that the Valparaíso of her recollection did not, in fact, have 77 mountains rather than 42, and that usually, the Pacific Ocean was, in fact, located to the West and the mountains to the East and not, as would appear to be the case, the other way around - this thought she decided to simply intimidate, interrogate, and then lock up in some squalid prison somewhere hidden away within her subconscious so that it would not continue to harass her. And lastly, the rather more severe and most urgent thought that something was very, very seriously wrong. This thought she pretended to actually take seriously and give due consideration and she promised to it that she would revisit it after having found a residencial to lodge in, which proved to be of sufficient distraction to the thought to allow for its unsuspected assassination.

Calle de Azevedo e Silva #7, just past Plaza Echaurren. Residencial "Ni ahí". Perfect. Thought. Perfect. Charming, even. Just what she was looking for. The pinnacle of her accomplishments. Shelter, maybe some food, a cup of tea, and then the Logbook, and then rest. Maybe. A parrot greeted her with vulgar Chilean obscenities. Nothing could possibly stop her now. Her resolve was as steadfast as Mountain ʕasīb. Or something like that. In she marched, exuding enthusiasm of almost mortal proportions, then a brief - much, much briefer than earlier - exchange of formal cordialities and cordial formalities followed, followed by an exchange of money. To her surprise, no amount of words was required in order for her peculiarly out of date currency to be accepted - a quietly murmuring thought about something involving today's date resurged but she ignored it. Shortly after, she found herself inside her new home: four walls, none of which appeared to be missing or about to collapse on her, three inviting, structurally sound windows offering a beautiful vista of the Pacific Ocean to the East and the mountains to the West - a thought appeared and then disappeared again - lovably rustic but sturdy furniture, a very large and comfy bed, a desk, and a clock - that actually seemed to work and showed no signs of suddenly exploding. She breathed in and then out. She made it. All was taken care of. She was home.

She sat down at the desk and began to - or rather, continue - to read from her most treasured possession: "Logbook of the Expedition into the Pale".

Logbook of the Expedition into the Pale, ? ? 19??(?)

It may or may not be any arbitrary day of any arbitrary month of some arbitrary year in the 20th century. Perhaps. Our expedition has, starting with an insurmountable sense of foreboding fright, gained the totality of all that which is subsumed by the words one habitually would describe cataclysmic catastrophes with. There is very little to do at all other than to cast upon the canvas of logbook entries towering words describing less and they but hardly serve to ward off all-encompassing terror. We have been gathered around the orb for a timespan that renders all mundane notions of time beyond meaning. Our eyes do not see nor do our ears hear except for what little the orb provides us with. There is nothing. There is neither space nor is there time beyond the confines of our grim shelter. Only a faint echo reverberating within the shadows of our souls remains in the reflection of the orb. Rarely, the outlines of what then appear to be figments of our respective others bodily presences are carved into my peripheral vision but they fade, fade, fade and pass away. Everything is but passing. There is nothing and it does not end.

I am now reminded, for as long as any memories remain, for I fear that as soon as any of my memories are invoked, they also fade away, by the haunting, humble song of the Sea Peoples in peril that now with much discernment describe our predicament:

The Pale is a sea
where the eye cannot see
where the ear cannot hear
but fear upon fear

The Pale is a star
forbidding and dark
that leads all astray
and doom is their mark

The Pale is a well
that draws from the souls
drawn into its fold
but torment untold

The Pale is a veil
that cannot be assailed
for beginning and end
for perdition and hope
for arising and passing
forever there dwell

The Pale is a bridge
that cannot be crossed
where the endless paths mingle
forever are lost

The Pale is the end
so avert your ambition,
abandon your aim,
for none may return
to their beginning

...and then she abruptly fell into deep sleep.

Darkness descended. Beyond the boundary of the infinitessimal unknowable unknown, beyond the primal effervescence of uncertainty, beyond what gravitation condemned, there dwelt the Void that was not, in silently serene, all-crushing all-destroying impossibility of endless infinity. There was nothing. As awareness ascended, she departed from her senses and in annihilation became extinguished. There was nothing and within the nothingness, beginning came to end and ending was unknown, and thus she began to see without seeing and to hear without hearing and to be without being.
She was within the Pale, she had become the Pale, the Pale had become her, and there was nothing but the Pale.

Beyond the Pale she cast her eyes
and there she saw
a thousand things.

As she opened her eyes within, she crossed a planet transformed. The world was rebuilt. Tens of thousands of incomprehensible roads led to tens of thousands of incomprehensible places that contained tens of thousands of more roads and places and places and roads. The Endless Paths were upon her. Saturn rose high in the sky above her, slowly eclipsing gradually melting clouds of hauntingly unfamiliar shapes with a vast ocean beneath. Bountiful question mark-shaped birds flew past her towards the horizon, placidly carrying forth and away the questions to her innermost answers in perpetuity. She felt at peace even though she knew not why. For a singular moment beyond time and space, everything ceased to be and then began anew. The world had changed. Everything was different. Her right hand bore an orb broken and renewedly recast, her very essence therein was forever to dwell.

She had taken from the Nothing what was not within it

and thus she awoke anew. Bizarre, lucid dreams appeared to have become her new nocturnal companion. For now, it did not matter.
A new day. 19 August 1913, a thought proudly declared somewhere within her nascent consciousness.
The clock read 5:00 AM.
First: food, then more Logbook.

It was still dark.
She was hungry. And disoriented.
No matter, she thought, she had work to do. All else was of no relevance now.

The Logbook lay ahead, bathed in peculiarly gloomy, green radiance. She got out of bed and sat down by the desk, though she could hardly tell either objects were there at all.
Only one single tattered page remained for her to read - she sighed, but then reassured herself that surely this was to lead to something of even greater importance. To her surprise, this one last page was composed in badly and disturbingly scribbled - or hastily carved? - Old Sumerian cuneiform - a language and script that she was familiar with to only a certain degree, a scholar she certainly was not, though driven by her unrelenting resolve she felt up to the task at hand. A great deal of effort it took for her to decipher the fragmentary speech that seemed to almost address her, her in person, directly, and much of it was beyond her comprehension yet in the end she succeeded and thus she read:

(...) where (illegible) (...) (largely illegible) ...and there is no hope.
in (...) (illegible) the Pale (...) (...) vanishing (...) the orb (...)
(...) (...) (...) the orb bears (...) a shard of the Pale (...) who touches it
(illegible) (...) she is within (...) and (...) (...) the orb (...) it leaks madness
(...) (...) standing(?) (illegible) amidst (...) darkness (...) there is
no hope (...) the fading, fading eyes (...) see (...) (illegible) the void(?)

Something changed. Countless thoughts previously given no attention that seemed to be totally unrelated to each other assumed just the right shapes and quietly arranged themselves into something coherent that turned her mind upside down and inside out like some sort of deranged kaleidoscope. Awareness ascended. Vast, boundless terror was upon her and within her, for now she knew whom she was.
She began to cry and tear-sized, liquid orbs flowed from her eyes into the infinite abyss all around her.

One path only was left to speak of.
Beginning arose aflame and ending became known.

In all-surrounding nothingness,
the darkness of the Pale
cast blood-black nothingness upon
her fading, fading eyes.

In a long, forlorn longboat
in the midst of the Pale
a pale, fading orb
cast its pale, fading flame
upon End without End