Energal Environment

Sunday 14 April 2013 - Filed under Squibs

At some point in time, there were no energals. Geomancers could point to general lines in a cliffside: a horizon of rock where higher forms vanished, another where wisp spines no longer sifted out, and a final line where the tiny aerolith fossils petered out. Before that, only solarals: plants, fungi, animals. The debates raged in academic circles, but there was no real way to know for certain: was the emergence of energals an accident or was it planned? Did the Gearmaster spark a tiny glowing fragment in the vast meshing of his cogs? Did a colony of tiny algae unlock the talence source while reaching for more sun? Did a rough, brutish ancestor of Man think longingly of his crackling fire one cold, rainy day and accidentally birth the first wisp?

Whatever the logic and ex post factors argued about up the hill at the University, the main necessity of the Husbandry School was nurturing, tending, guarding and processing all important and useful species in the world, and energals were the most useful of such, and also the most perverse in their pathologies. It did no one any good to say that the reason the keltalaxi were ailing was because the small moon was in her first quarter, it was better to know why. Just like you always fed farrowing sows more mineral salts so their litters would stay viable, you could supplant the keltalaxi with more morning torches to balance out the lack of red light during the all-important post-midnight metagenism. Simple things like that, so that paying customers would not suddenly find their mechanisms seizing up.

2013-04-14  »  Edward Semblance