What did I do today? I had my ass thoroughly kicked by the Sunday crossword. I went to see Thor, which I quite enjoyed. And I wrote this in my semi-regular writing group:
The prophet killed the poisoned man, but the poisoned man refused to die.
Every schoolchild knows the story, has heard a thousand times how the poisoned man tricked the prophet into revealing his false god’s name and, through his magics, how evil came to be exiled from our land. There are some texts that still name the man by the old traditions, Ibrahim el Fadil, although the name of the god, whatever it might have been, has long been lost to the dusts of time. Scholars have long debated and conjectured, but, then, that is the nature — is it not? — of scholarship. You and I have no need to know the name, my little one, or in the end even to believe in the stories of the poisoned man. The shipwreck in the guarded wastes. The seven demon brides. The slaying of the giant’s sister. These may all be true, or they may just be parables, more fancies for a young mind like yours than the true history of what once was. We have no need to know the truth, so long as the laws that have grown out of those traditions continue to keep us safe. There is your truth, young daughter, the only truth you will need upon your long journey. The knowledge that, if given law, men can be good; moreover, men will strive to be good, will seek out law even as the other half of their nature may seek to undermine and escape from it. Even if the poisoned man is just a myth and you do not, as your grandmother has suggested, encounter his spirit upon the road, take comfort and strength in the existence of the law he has bequeathed to us. It is durable stuff, that law, and it is the wall that keeps evil’s exile still in place.
Though I would be remiss if I did not instruct you in at least a few additional magics…
All in all, not a bad Sunday. Though no fortune cookies.