08-27-2013, 07:23 PM
Tattered Cover is one of the handful of bookstores Molly comes across in her (re)search.
A stone structure with bones of wooden pillars and steel beams, antique (hear how they creak) floors and bookshelves, tables and chairs, a magnificent staircase connecting its two stories packed with books and walls with tall windows that fill it with a good dash of natural light. She binges on transposed and translated oral histories and myths, folklore and esoterica, separating the wheat from the chaff to get at the practical logic behind the magic they describe.
That magic? Of creatures that feed upon the sometimes-figurative and sometimes-literal lifeblood of the living. Sometimes the wisdom she wrings from the pages comes in drips, and other times in torrents too great to absorb in one sitting. The imagery is as ghastly, ghoulish, and bloody as she might have expected, of creatures painted from indulging in their choice (if only it was a choice) method of sustenance.
What fonts of darkness are reported to spawn them ranges from witchcraft to the excommunicated, from those with bodies violated by animals to possessed by spirits, and some of the myths count them as beings wholly outside the creation of man and woman as many religions understand it. The number of herbs and flowers though to ward off these entities, whatever their true nature, include mustard seed, garlic, hawthorn, roses borne in wild soil. Blessed items such as the crucifix or holy water are also included, and some legends say they are bound from sacred grounds, others that light refuses to touch them and telling it is why they hold no reflection or shadow, burn in the true sunlight of the Lord, and still others saying that mirrors might keep them away.
And their destruction? This must be something she is looking into, and means are many and varied. Staking the most common, various woods given greater or lesser approval by the writers. Mouth, stomach, though the heart seems to be the most common target for sharpened wood. Beheading, as with most living things, also seems an idea attributed with great merit.
All of this seems folklore and oral tradition until the 12th century, which may indicate that if these creatures are indeed real, they fed mainly (or most conspicuously) upon those uneducated and unable to write, because it is only then that recorded accounts become more common. Much of their weaknesses were further codified during the Spanish Inquisition: Beheading, staking, fire, sunlight, dismemberment, and a weakness for religious artifacts when wielded in their direction by those of the faith.
Then and onward during the supposed Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment reports become more frequent, vampires and werewolves the few creatures of folklore surviving the squashing of myth and legend in favor of science and logic. Historians most commonly point to rabies and other misunderstood diseases, as well as mass hysteria and self-fulfilling tests identifying the accused as vampiric.
Africa, Asia, even the Americas with its southern continent's blood gods and mythology, the stories are different, but have common threads that make the idea of this archetype almost universal amongst cultures.
But into the 18th and 19th centuries it finally begins to taper off, other than a marked resurgence in literature, works of fiction and drama, and later television and film. Thankfully for Molly she has avoided the rabid fans, young adults and not-so-young, frequenting the fiction and roleplaying sections.
Of course the occult and antique shelves have their own denizens.
Like that gentleman. The one in the light blue sport coat with suede elbow patches. The one in the cuffed beige shorts with brown brogue shoes – no socks thanks to the heat – that's what really makes him easy to pick out. A mop of unruly brown hair and round glasses that flash with a glare of light at him turning away.
Was he looking at her?
He definitely was.
And wasn't he...
At the mom and mom occult shop she'd just come from? Not in it, no, maybe across the street. That's right. He had definitely been at the coffee shop she'd stopped in before venturing into that den of eccentrics... And possible even at the much smaller (but very fruitful) antique book shop before that?
But it's now she finally picks him out.
And he was definitely just looking at her. That or the book in her hand, but it might as well be an extension of herself as Molly is finishing devouring it and heading with it toward the cashier.
A stone structure with bones of wooden pillars and steel beams, antique (hear how they creak) floors and bookshelves, tables and chairs, a magnificent staircase connecting its two stories packed with books and walls with tall windows that fill it with a good dash of natural light. She binges on transposed and translated oral histories and myths, folklore and esoterica, separating the wheat from the chaff to get at the practical logic behind the magic they describe.
That magic? Of creatures that feed upon the sometimes-figurative and sometimes-literal lifeblood of the living. Sometimes the wisdom she wrings from the pages comes in drips, and other times in torrents too great to absorb in one sitting. The imagery is as ghastly, ghoulish, and bloody as she might have expected, of creatures painted from indulging in their choice (if only it was a choice) method of sustenance.
What fonts of darkness are reported to spawn them ranges from witchcraft to the excommunicated, from those with bodies violated by animals to possessed by spirits, and some of the myths count them as beings wholly outside the creation of man and woman as many religions understand it. The number of herbs and flowers though to ward off these entities, whatever their true nature, include mustard seed, garlic, hawthorn, roses borne in wild soil. Blessed items such as the crucifix or holy water are also included, and some legends say they are bound from sacred grounds, others that light refuses to touch them and telling it is why they hold no reflection or shadow, burn in the true sunlight of the Lord, and still others saying that mirrors might keep them away.
And their destruction? This must be something she is looking into, and means are many and varied. Staking the most common, various woods given greater or lesser approval by the writers. Mouth, stomach, though the heart seems to be the most common target for sharpened wood. Beheading, as with most living things, also seems an idea attributed with great merit.
All of this seems folklore and oral tradition until the 12th century, which may indicate that if these creatures are indeed real, they fed mainly (or most conspicuously) upon those uneducated and unable to write, because it is only then that recorded accounts become more common. Much of their weaknesses were further codified during the Spanish Inquisition: Beheading, staking, fire, sunlight, dismemberment, and a weakness for religious artifacts when wielded in their direction by those of the faith.
Then and onward during the supposed Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment reports become more frequent, vampires and werewolves the few creatures of folklore surviving the squashing of myth and legend in favor of science and logic. Historians most commonly point to rabies and other misunderstood diseases, as well as mass hysteria and self-fulfilling tests identifying the accused as vampiric.
Africa, Asia, even the Americas with its southern continent's blood gods and mythology, the stories are different, but have common threads that make the idea of this archetype almost universal amongst cultures.
But into the 18th and 19th centuries it finally begins to taper off, other than a marked resurgence in literature, works of fiction and drama, and later television and film. Thankfully for Molly she has avoided the rabid fans, young adults and not-so-young, frequenting the fiction and roleplaying sections.
Of course the occult and antique shelves have their own denizens.
Like that gentleman. The one in the light blue sport coat with suede elbow patches. The one in the cuffed beige shorts with brown brogue shoes – no socks thanks to the heat – that's what really makes him easy to pick out. A mop of unruly brown hair and round glasses that flash with a glare of light at him turning away.
Was he looking at her?
He definitely was.
And wasn't he...
At the mom and mom occult shop she'd just come from? Not in it, no, maybe across the street. That's right. He had definitely been at the coffee shop she'd stopped in before venturing into that den of eccentrics... And possible even at the much smaller (but very fruitful) antique book shop before that?
But it's now she finally picks him out.
And he was definitely just looking at her. That or the book in her hand, but it might as well be an extension of herself as Molly is finishing devouring it and heading with it toward the cashier.