wayside-parliament

from Richards, L. “Antecyclonic Narrative in Modern Literature.“ Firialite Journal of Recovery. North Metropolis University Press: Sprout 518 ed. pp. 36-38.

Records retained by the Order of St. Fay suggest that the Twofold Quest was one of the foundational narrative structures of antecyclonic Onumbrica. In reconstruction, the story concerns a hero seeking something, usually impossible or very difficult to obtain; at their wits’ end, they seek out Firial in a ritualized journey structure usually culminating in an encounter on a mountaintop at the full moon, during which Firial grants our hero a partial answer that sends them on a second quest, often to the home of another god, often featuring intermediate intervention by yet other gods. Whether or not the hero ultimately reaches their goal, lessons are learned along the way that, with few exceptions, align with familiar Onumbrican values.

Among the most common variants of the Twofold Quest is one nicknamed the Search for Dusk, or Journey to the West, in which the hero has lost someone dear to them and seeks a means of returning them to life. Their encounter with Firial sends them toward Mistelin, who consoles the hero and, most commonly, teaches them that while death may not be reversible, grief is temporary, and that memories of lost loved ones are inevitably a blessing.

Variants in which the hero ignores Mistelin’s advice, and journeys on to seek out Feruoc and demand the return of their beloved, nearly always end disastrously, most often with the hero entering the land of the dead well before their lost love leaves Mistelin’s domain and can be reunited with them.

As tales of the gods were banished altogether to the realm of obscure folklore during the Senate era, few written variants of this tale can be found outside Fayite archives. The one that may be familiar to readers of this chapter is the epistolary novel Black Dog, published in serial form in the mid-380s in the North Metropolis Gazette under the byline Staniel Hill (almost certainly a pseudonym—see Section IV, Werewolves in Urban Fiction), and read to this day by introductory literature classes at all three universities. The story concerns the journey of Shade carpenter Perseverance Greenway from Huntswood to Mistelins following the death of her spouse, a loss from which she never truly recovers.

The structure of the second quest is clear in the text: her goal is the ancient home of Mistelin, which bore his name throughout the Senate era; the unnamed elderly boardinghouse keeper who takes her in and dispenses his wisdom about mortality at great length (Hill was almost certainly paid by the word) clearly representing the god himself; and the uncertainty in the ending about whether Greenway will return home mirroring the lack of closure often found in Search for Dusk tales. Various secondary characters encountered throughout the novel can be mapped to Revived gods (for a full analysis, see the Appendix).

The presence of the first quest in the novel is much less clear to the casual reader; in fact, it is entirely contained within the first installment. Greenway’s sibling, the only person in whom she confides about her plan to travel west, and in fact the person to whom every installment of the novel is addressed, is an archivist at Huntswood’s town hall, and by extension a member of the Order of St. Fay. Firial is, therefore, represented by the tradition which has represented her throughout postcyclonic history.