Souls and Lost Books

This episode shares a letter from Clara about the beginning of her journey. At least, some of the details anyway. She is still hiding things from the rest of the council, and I think this letter shows us what she might be hiding even from herself.

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Transcript

The Star Jelly Files

Episode Eight

Souls and Lost Books

Hello everyone, and welcome to this week’s episode of the Star Jelly Files. This week I will be sharing Clara’s account of how she met Chester, and the first steps they took to put their plan in motion to open all the doors between worlds. The first steps she took towards destroying the worlds she was supposed to be protecting. This letter does not tell the whole story. Only the parts she wants us to know. Wanted you to know at the beginning. I offered her the chance to share everything, to bring us through step by step but she doesn’t think that approach would be helpful. I think the real reason she didn’t want to share everything is not that it wouldn’t be helpful, but because she is not ready to remember. The following letter is the account she shared with Bert, Hum, Vi, Fall, and Walter that first day before they set out to stop Chester. Clara sent me this letter after some years of living on Earth, Bert confirmed it is the same story she shared with them. The letter was not written on or with Earth materials but the materials of Clara’s home world. It arrived to me in a jar made of pink sea polished glass, written on heliotrope rough woven paper with the royal emblem, a large many legged sea creature, stamped on the bottom of each page. 

Letter from Clara about her visit to the world of new souls, and her first meeting with Chester. 

Greetings Astra, 

Here is the account of the first day that I met Chester, and the world we were on when we first started discussing opening the doors. I know I have taken longer than I should getting this information to you, but I was trying to find the right way to tell it. The right words to place on paper so that you wouldn’t think too poorly about those mentioned. I realized about halfway through that making that kind of effort probably wouldn’t work. I can’t change what we did, I can only share enough information with you to hope that you can prevent the same mistakes from happening again. I can also only hope that those that have remained anonymous in all of this will forgive me for bringing them into the mess I created. I have tried my best not to include them in my mistakes, but I may not be able to do that now. 

In short, I met Chester because I had a fight with one of the council members that day, and instead of trying to work through it I favored walking away from the discussion. I didn’t want to be proven wrong. I was in charge at the time, head beacon, and I wanted to be right above all opinions not because I did not like their ideas but because I knew mine was better. Even those shared by the ones who knew me best, who knew the pitfalls I was beginning to face, seemed unimportant to me. I had been in charge for so long, I had decided I would be able to ride through whatever happened with my own direction, no help. 

So, I walked out of the room and I ran to a small, ancient, planet that encircled a star that Earth has named Epsilon Cassiopeiae. A large white and blue star that hosts a great many old worlds that have seen a great many civilizations come and go throughout the ages. Some are empty now, and the world I went to was almost uninhabited. The civilization small but thriving. I liked to spend my time there because of the quiet, and because I had once had friends there before my time as a beacon. They are a short-lived species so the new generations did not recognize me there, but I still admired how they thrive amongst the changing seasons, cold and not too cold, and wandering rivers that overtook most of the land available to them. Most species would have ignored or left the world thinking it unmanageable, but they adapted. Traveling their world on large boats made of leaves and sap, and never staying in one place long. They had seen more of their world in a lifetime then most would see of their own neighborhood on most worlds. They didn’t have a name that was shared amongst the universes. They preferred to be left alone. Another reason I liked visiting them. I wanted to share their existence so badly with everyone else so they could learn about their ingenuity, and their peaceful lives, they wanted none of that. So, I wandered their rivers instead. Using their home as a place to think, and sometimes making new friends with those who were curious about the stars. 

            When I had run there after the fight, I was planning to use it as an opportunity to Calm down, and an opportunity to analyze my ideas without an audience. I was laying in an old, disintegrated boat staring at the silver lined clouds when doubt about my ideas had started to overtake me. The boat, which I had stolen in my haste to escape the opinions of my brother, rotated slowly in the middle of the silver tinted river as it carried me downstream and towards a small, abandoned settlement I hadn’t seen before. The isolation was pressing upon me as if it was alive, causing my pulse to quicken each time I caught a glimpse of the towering grass that lined the shore of the river. Tall as trees on other worlds, the gray green grass reached towards the sky and swayed with the cool wind that was causing ripples across the water. The grass was making me feel claustrophobic, and I swear it was growing taller as the evening slipped by. The silence wasn’t helping me either. There were no sounds of life on the river that night. The water creatures had tucked themselves in for the evening. The only sounds were that of water lapping against the sides of my boat, and the grass rustling as a cold wind rushed through them. I suppose that silence is what had made it so easy for me to sit there for hours waiting for the crescent moon to come out from behind the clouds. To sit there stewing in self-doubt, and the bitterness of possibly having to admit I might be wrong. 

I shifted my feet up onto the cracked bench to move them out of the puddle of frigid water that was growing in the bottom of the boat. There was a slow leak somewhere, but I couldn’t bring myself to look for it.  The water had leached into my socks and I was shivering, despite my heavy woven cloak given to me by a local being a few years prior. Although I suppose I could have been shivering because I was starting to feel terrified. How could Walter stop talking to me, tell me I was failing, leave me behind? 

I had escaped to the river world after a long fight with Walter that only needed to be two sentences long but was much longer. He thought I was failing at my job. I disagreed.

 Walter and I had been inseparable. Walter and Clara, the siblings that were always in trouble back on our home world. Much to our mother’s dismay, our town had viewed us as wild rebel children almost from birth. We had a nonconforming side that caused us to do things most beings never considered, not wanting to miss a single experience. Rock climbing, surfing, cave diving, wild parties, crazy stunts, and adventures, we loved it all, and yes, I know Earth listeners that those are adventures that are on your world, but other worlds have cliffs and waves too. If anything, the adventures were more dangerous to us, because our bodies designed for living close to the ocean waves didn’t like fresh air as much as yours do. The town probably remembers our childhood most for the day we decided to jump on an aircraft and fly to the closest moon without any training. Even when Walter left to begin his training as future king, we still found time to break from the order of the world to seek out the mysterious and strange. It wasn’t until Walter went missing that I started to calm down a little. Everyone in my family believed he had died when he went out exploring a new section of caves. I didn’t believe it for a second. So, I decided to go looking for him. I figured it he was missing he wasn’t dead but traveled further into the stars.

I knew I was right about my brother, right about how he was just out adventuring. His life, his love for me, is not something he would have abandoned, he just wasn’t home yet. Walter had been nothing but successful. And he had a light in his eyes that gleamed with happiness and energy any time you saw him. The only thing about his life, beyond the normal turmoil, that I don’t think Walter enjoyed was that he seemed bored with having to be a normal adult, a ruler of our world. Bored with the idea of having to follow in Dad’s family traditions of being in charge, putting on a show for the public, and having 20 to 30 kids. But who wasn’t? I didn’t want to follow those traditions either no matter how hard mother pushed me to. But I could see why Walter would have traveled out for more, and how he would not have told the family. They would have stopped him. Walter would not have gone exploring and become lost, and if he was going to go cave exploring, he would have brought me with him.  

I had started researching my brother’s disappearance on my own because my family denied me information, at least any information that was outside of the topic of me training to be the next Queen since Walter was gone. Sometimes I swear my mother was on the verge of giving me answers, but a quick glance at my aunts and uncles always made her stop mid-sentence. They wanted me to move on with my life, and to forget him. But she KNEW where he was. The line they were feeding the community about him disappearing was just that. A lie so everyone would move on and ignore the fact that he had walked away from his job as King. I could tell. 

I hadn’t really turned up much with my research. My brother’s house had been emptied as soon as he was gone. My mother said she donated it all with the help of the family. I spent over a year digging through the hidden spaces of my family’s homes while they were out and about for the day. I was hoping that I would find out something about my brother’s life. Letters or hidden family secrets. All the things that are much more common in the stories of novels than in real life. My mother was too clingy to give away all his stuff so I knew it must be somewhere.

It wasn’t until a few years later, after I had taken on the role of Queen and my parents officially retired, when I had decided to rummage through my mother’s house as a last hope effort. That was when I figured out what had been going on for much longer than Walter’s disappearance. Thinking back on that day, it was a particularly horrible one. My mother and I didn’t get along in the best of times, and the disappearance of my brother hadn’t helped our relationship. My mother had been in the kitchen of her old carved coral house preparing for the party. I usually spent the day of the party hiding from my family, their fake remorse, and my mother’s denial about her grief. The family spent hours every year at these forced events looking at old pictures of Walter, talking about his past achievements, eating his favorite foods, and celebrating his birthday as if he was still here. It was all a show for the general public. A chance for everyone to grieve his loss and perpetuate the lie that he had gone missing. So, I figured hiding in the backroom was as good as any other way to avoid it all. Unfortunately, I was never truly allowed to avoid them. My family was too demanding. But I had somehow had the luxury of a few hours of uninterrupted searching and had made it through all but two age eaten boxes that were tied shut with green string. The two remaining boxes seemed different somehow from the rest. They almost felt warm to the touch as if I was laying my hand on a warm cup of tea. I became eager to search through their contents, but I didn’t have time to explore further before my mother figured out where I was.

Evelynn stormed to the back of the house once she figured out, I was there. Her anger apparent in the slap of her feet and the creak of the old wooden boards beneath her feet. There was no point in hiding, so I stood up and looked at the door as I waited for her grand entrance. She burst through the door yelling before she was even fully in the room. Demanding to know why me the current queen was hiding from the family, and the community.  

I may have been thirty years old, but my mother still had the power to make me fear her if she wanted to. She had always been the enforcer in our home, while my father had been the fun lovable parent. But something was different in that moment. Her hair, normally precisely styled, was only held up in a messy bun. Her typically clean makeup painted face was smeared with cooking grain, probably from the baking she had been doing all morning. Those differences, that most people wouldn’t even notice, caused a different kind of fear in me. Something was wrong with her, and it caused goosebumps across my skin. I involuntarily backed into the corner of the room, pressing my back against the cracked beams, and knocking over one of my two remaining boxes in the process. I meekly replied, “Evelynn. Seeing as I don’t think Walter is missing and I know you don’t think he is, I have no intention of celebrating his memory.”

“Don’t call me Evelynn! I am your mother,” she snarled back. Her flowing white and blue silk dress and the anger in her face made her look like a venomous dragon. Nostrils flaring, and teeth bared as she continued to glare at me. “And let’s drop this argument. Walter abandoned us! You need to stop looking for his ghost and move on with your life. Rule your kingdom. Get a wife. Be normal for once! I didn’t raise you two and put you through all that training so you could wander around and do whatever you wanted. Walter has already messed up his life, don’t let him mess up yours too.”

Tears started to drip down her face, and she continued with a defeated sigh, “All I have ever done is try to give you a perfectly normal and wonderful life so that you could make your father’s family proud when you got older. Your father’s family, your family, is downstairs waiting for you. Come downstairs before they blame me for you not bothering to show up. Or do you not care how this all affects me?”

I looked down at the floor to avoid her gaze. I had never been quite brave enough to confront her when she was angry, or when her grief caused her to lay on the guilt trip. For most of our childhood she wanted us to be normal, to have all the normal things, to do all the normal family stuff. My father pushed her to create a picture-perfect family to the point of silencing her personality, and I felt bad for her sometimes. But I had no interest in being normal for the sake of fitting in, or in the attempt to forget Walter. I took a deep breath and responded as calmly as possible. “Listen, I know you miss him as much as I do. But I also know that you know he isn’t dead. You didn’t even hold a funeral or buy a grave marker. You only hold the ceremonies for the public. All you have done is hold these parties each year. So, stop treating me like a child and tell me where he is. I am not going to live a normal life just so you can impress Dad’s family, or so you can pretend your disappointing son doesn’t exist.” 

Mom’s anger reignited; I hadn’t said what she wanted to hear. The room seemed to grow smaller in that moment, darkness gathering in the corners and making the space feel tight with my fear.  “That is enough. Put all of these boxes back and I expect you to be downstairs in ten minutes.” She strolled across the room towards me and kicked the box that was sitting on the floor by my feet to make her point. We froze in a state of shock as the box burst open as if it had come to life, splitting at the seams, and spilling its glowing contents across the floor.  Pictures, maps, letters wrapped in warn silken ribbon, and old fabric bound journals were strewn about and glowed as if they were illuminated by the soft golden color of our stars. They were not normal family heirlooms. I jerked my head up and looked at my mother in shock. She looked at me, her eyes wide with distress. “Leave now! This is my stuff and I don’t want you going through it.” She said

“Mom! What are these and why are the glowing?” I said in a rush of words as I quickly stepped in front of the box to block her from grabbing it away from me. To prevent her from blocking me from seeing what she knew would prove my point. I could see Walter’ handwriting across the cover of one of the notebooks. 

She didn’t answer me, so I asked again in a more forceful tone, “Mom what is all of this? Why don’t you want me to see it? What does this have to do with Walter?”

She glowered at me and said “I promised your father never to show you any of this. Walter is gone. Just let it go. Go be queen and take care of the speeches you need to give. This is what is best.”

I had to get rid of Evelynn.  If she wasn’t going to answer my questions, I needed time to inspect the boxes myself. She would never understand my need to search for my brother. But there was only one way to get rid of her, or at least buy myself some time to get out of the house. I gathered my courage, looked her directly in the eyes, and whispered, “Evelynn if you really wanted what was best for me you would tell me what happened to my Brother! But we both know you never loved either of us. All you cared about was building the perfect family for Dad to show off around town. So why should I keep asking you what happened? I am not coming to your party. I am staying here.”

Evelynn froze, looking at me as if she was noticing I was in the room for the first time. She was mad, and if I hadn’t known better, I would have also sworn there was disappointment and defeat in her eyes. She turned on the spot and rushed away. I never liked making my mother furious, but sometimes it was the only way to get her out of the room. I gathered up the two remaining boxes, taking care not to damage them further, then took them back to the palace with me. 

I spent the next week pouring over the contents of the boxes, Walter’s notebook, and as it turned out centuries of old family journals, maps, paintings, and photos. The contents seemed otherworldly as they sat on my kitchen counters. Never failing to emit their soft golden glow, or their subtle warmth. At first, I was slightly terrified at what the items were or contained. I couldn’t figure out why they glowed, or why a painting would feel warm, but after a while I began to think there was something otherworldly about the items I had found. They were not the typical family memoirs I expected to find in my family’s home, they were something more, something my mother knew about but didn’t want to acknowledge. Something that felt familiar even though I had never seen them before. As I dove into the contents of the decaying boxes each journal, each photo, each memoir told the story of a family, my mother’s family, and their lives beyond the edges of our world and out into the stars. Traveling the stars was not unknown to our world, we traveled to our moons and in orbit often, but traveling beyond that point was not a priority. Walter, and then I, had tried our best to turn interstellar travel into a goal for our world, but most did not seem all too interested. But as it turned out not everyone was disinterested. Some families were already traveling. My mother’s family for instance. One journal, which had apparently belonged to my great grandmother proved that.

The journal was a large fabric bound book, with plum ribbon hanging out of several pages as if marking the important spots. As I read the slanted but clear handwriting of my grandmother, I was told a story about a family that had for generations investigated and lived within the supernatural world of our own planet, and of a great many others. I was told our family history through her eyes. She talked about dragons, fairies, spirits, teleportation, and beings from all types of worlds imaginable. I was flabbergasted and skeptical to read that she claimed all the creatures of old and myth allegedly still roamed the universe, and our family cared for them. Protected their worlds from extinction. My mother’s family had for centuries worked with a grouping of beings called the beacons. Our family business came into being when the growth of space travel and discovery tried to push safety away from worlds that were not quite ready to take that journey. So, they stepped in to protect all of the creatures and secrets that they could. The beacons helped them travel, and they worked with each world to find solutions to keep them safe or quiet or hidden. The maps were of the planets and of the stars. They showed paths to ancient lands that I had never heard of and held warning of what dangers you may face if you go there. They told you where the dragons still live, where the portals are to jump to different realms. The journals held centuries of information about cures for mysterious ailments, hints for how to deal with unknown creatures, and personal stories of new discoveries that were found. My favorite story was a wild adventure my great grandmother had gone on when she attempted to save a pack of something called yetis from hunters on a newer world. 

The photos were the most fascinating to me. Ghostly figures, blurred balls of light amongst towering trees, winged creatures. They were all documented and labeled with their location and how to care for or avoid them. Needless to say I was skeptical of everything, but the photos started to sway me. My favorites were of my family. Smiling faces, wild hair, and a general sense of joy. They gave off a sense of home that I had never felt before in my life. I became overwhelmed with a need to find them, and to find Walter. He must have gone after them too. Looking to find that feeling of completeness. It wasn’t that hard for him or me to figure out how to find them. All the maps and photos pointed to a home base of operation that could be gotten to through a set of old caves at the edge of our town. It was just a matter of luck that the timing worked out for me. The portal only opened during the crescent moon on a cool night. So off I went. I gathered everything that was important to me, went in search of family, and found them.

It didn’t take me long to find Walter. As soon as I walked through the portal, he was sitting there waiting for me. As it turns out my mother had told him I was coming. Even though she had chosen a different path for her life she had helped Walter and I to find our own. Walter and I stayed close after that. Traveling from world to world with beacons. Learning everything we could about what else is in the universe, and multiverse, and other dimensions. Eventually one thing led to another and Walter became a beacon himself, and eventually I followed suit. Walter found his joy and place in maintaining the records for the bacons. I enjoyed traveling, but eventually worked to get myself placed as head beacon. Although I did not want to rule on my own world, overseeing the beacon’s mission, felt like different life altogether. I wasn’t ruling but leading. Working with my team to keep worlds safe. 

Things were okay for a long while. My council and I didn’t always agree, but we usually worked through things. That was until the fight Walter and I had. He accused me of forgetting what the purpose of being a beacon was you see. I had suggested that we should start introducing worlds proactively, rather than waiting for them to be ready. That way universal knowledge could be shared more effectively, and we could learn more from each other. There were worlds that didn’t even know what they were missing out on. He said that we shouldn’t force a world to share their knowledge or enter the universal community. That they had to decide when the time was right for them. I forced the issue and started making plans to move forward against the councils wishes. He disowned me in front of everyone, and I came to the river world to think. 

Reminiscing aside it was time for me to decide. I had dwelled on my memories of our childhood. Dwelled on how best to move forward. I was starting to think Walter was right. That I couldn’t force a world to travel space until it was ready. Couldn’t invite visitors to their planet without their permission to review their knowledge. I was imagining what it would be like to introduce a grouping of beings to the river world. I don’t know that it would go well for everyone. They liked their peace and quiet. Even if their healing abilities bordered on magic, I couldn’t steal that knowledge from them to benefit other worlds. It was a spiritual piece of their society, not something to be sold or bartered. Even though I loved knowledge for the sake of learning, not all worlds thought like that. I knew better. Walter was probably right. I wasn’t doing my job if I wasn’t protecting those worlds and beings that wished to remain hidden away. That was what I had signed up for.

I sat up in the boat and looked at the dark grass ringed shore. Something had changed as I had daydreamed about the journals. The grass appeared to have grown taller and darker as if it was reaching up to block out the stars, and there were soft golden ripples of light moving across the surface of the river, pulling me towards the abandoned settlement of small grass woven buildings. My boat was almost halfway submerged in the water. The hems of my pants were soaking up the icy water, the water traveling up my legs and transforming my shivering into a steady tremble that shook me from head to toe.  I was debating leaving the river world and going back home to talk to the council and Walter, but why had the golden light just appeared, and why was my boat being pulled towards a dark settlement of houses? I had been there for hours and seen no one. Nothing should have changed.

I came to a sudden decision and decided to allow the water to pull me against the shore and next to the small town. I wanted to see what might be drawing me there. If I had planned better, I would have also brought a change of clothes to wear on land, but I would have to make do with the wet cloak and waterlogged clothing I had on. If I happened to meet someone they probably wouldn’t notice in the dark. The golden ripples on the surface of the water had sped up as if they were moving with the speed of my heartbeat. I looked up and noticed that the sky was dark without a star in sight. Only the moon shined down on the water. The mixture of curiosity and excitement caused me to hurry. I pulled my boat against the shore and prepared to jump to the shore. I placed my foot onto the edge of the boat, took a deep breath, and nearly fell into the water. Someone had reached up and grabbed the rough edge of the boat. Their hand clenched tightly as if holding on for dear life. 

I gathered myself and looked into the face of Walter. No, not Walter but someone who looked as he might at a much older age on our home world. He had the same lavender skin, brown eyes, and white hair, but his face was lined with age, and he had my smile not Walter’s. He was floating in the water, dressed not in the traditional attire of the local towns, but in a cloak of woven gold. He was wearing a dragon’s cloak. Those were never seen outside of the dragon’s home world. They were never supposed to leave the dragon’s home world.  I hadn’t heard him approach, and my mind couldn’t process why someone from my home world was there. 

“Clara, are you sure this is what you want?” he said as he pulled himself out of the water and into my sinking boat. His boots making sloshing sounds as he sat in the puddle of icy water that was overtaking us. “You don’t have to follow Walter’s advice you know. Your ideas are just as good. Most beings don’t want the mystical and strange to be part of the world anymore, and they will do anything to stop it from surviving. That is where the bacons come in. They hide away the magic from worlds. You and I are different. We want to find that magic and share it. Not just learn about it and hide the information away. Anyway, you are in charge. You should get to pick what direction the bacons go in not him” he said.

“Who are you,” I said. Although I knew.  I should have considered that scenario a long time ago. I answered my own question. “Phineas? What are you doing here? You are supposed to be back home married, living your life running the great archive. What are you doing here” I said. I was shaking my head in wonder that somehow, our oldest brother, had followed me to an unknown world. He never traveled anywhere. He was passed over for king because he didn’t want the responsibility. So, he became a keeper of knowledge on the home world. I hadn’t seen him in years. Many, many years. 

We talked then. Talked about how after I disappeared, he eventually followed me. Not because he wanted to, but because our mother had asked him to come check on us. He then decided not to go back but instead to explore. Returning home only occasionally to add to our archives. To add extraterrestrial data to our archives. Something that absolutely wasn’t allowed. He wasn’t helping the beacons as our family vowed to do, but simply harvesting data to keep for himself. He had apparently been following Walter and my argument through the grapevine of rumors that traveled through our family line and decided to seek me out. He liked my plan. Loved the idea of gathering all the data out there and putting it in one place to share. Loved the idea of just leaving the doors open for exploration. We talked for a long time. He didn’t have me convinced completely to abandon Walter’s advice, not until he unveiled his surprise for me. A hidden underwater library the river people had tucked away and forgotten about. Phineas talked about how it was such a shame the data would just be lost forever. We should explore it. I tentatively agreed. Well, if I am honest not too tentatively. The idea of a hidden treasure of history was too much for me to resist. I asked him where we were going, what we would see. He told me we were going to the library of souls. The river world had found a way to retain the memories of those who had passed through magic and spirituality, not science and we could relive their lives from centuries ago. The current generations had forgotten about it, lost the knowledge. So, there was no harm in us exploring it. I asked why we shouldn’t just share the knowledge with them to make sure they wanted it discovered. He convinced me it was forgotten by accident, not on purpose, and that we could show them later. I shouldn’t have listened, but I did. 

We both jumped onto the shore and Phineas reached his hand into the water. His touch caused the ripples of water to turn into full blown waves that arced towards the sky, and release flecks of golden light into the air. Another type of magic he had learned on another abandoned world he claimed. The changing scenery didn’t seem to bother him at all like it would have in his youth. He was always a nervous sibling who preferred to stay out of the chaos the rest of us caused. But then he just looked at the water and shrugged as if that was an everyday occurrence for him. I had seen magic before, but nothing quite like what was happening then. I was getting a small glimpse into the worlds he had seen, and I still had not. Even with all my experience as a beacon. Icy waves splashed against my face effectively breaking me from my inner turmoil and doubts. I had never seen him that happy. It had to be the right decision to go.  I jumped over the edge of the shore and awkwardly plopped into the water. I felt my entire body begin to tingle with cold and anticipation as he pushed me through the waves to the where the moon was showing through the clouds, and the golden light glowed brightest. I could feel the rumble of the currents rushing around us as it pushed its way into a spiral pattern effectively placing us in the eye of chaos. Water pushed against the boat and dragged it beneath the surface. The water began to rapidly spin around us. Silver and golden specks of light spun in circles around our heads, rushing towards the sky as if we were enveloped in a nebula of stars. Phineas turned to look at me and said “Are you sure? Last chance to turn back.”

I didn’t turn back. 

I watched as the light that was emitting from the depths of the water, began to create a radiant tunnel surrounded by dark green water. The cyclone of water building a wall around us that pushed us towards its center. The water was alive, and it had us in its grips. Any thought of being cold had fled my mind as excitement overtook me. It was real. Any fear I had disappeared as I looked at Phineas’ eyes and noticed they were bright with anticipation, and what could have been joy. He grabbed my hand and reached out to touch the light from the moon that lay at the center of the cyclone. As soon as our hands skimmed the surface of the light we were sucked beneath the water. We flew feet first down a tunnel made of glowing silver and yellow sparks that swirled around us like a tornado. The water dissipated, and we floated down on currents of air. It was a sight and feeling so bizarre, breathtaking, and strange that I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think about anything but that moment. Seconds or maybe hours later our feet hit a forest floor. My boots sunk into the soft earth as I looked up and around me. An entire forest sprawled before us with trees that touched the stars, and a golden light radiated from the ground itself.  It looked nothing like the surface of the planet. It was a world beneath a world. 

I didn’t learn till many years later that the beings of the river world knew about the secret archive, knew of it and purposefully never went there. As it turned out the life stories kept there could only be listened to once and were kept for certain family members and events. It was never supposed to be public. It was personal, very personal. Meant for loved ones and private moments. Family histories used for personal growth not the advancement of society. Phineas was wrong on purpose I found out. He knew they didn’t want us going there, wanted that space to stay sacred. He decided to go there anyway to learn what he wanted to learn and keep. Wanting to share knowledge of the past with everyone, even if it was meant for a specific someone. How really could a memory of a great great grandmother teaching a recipe to a great grandchild change the stars more than it would impact that child’s life? That was the question Walter asked me when he found out about what we had done that I couldn’t answer in any way I was satisfied with. But that was years later. After Fall’s world was destroyed. After I was imprisoned. After Phineas’ left me to take the punishment for his ideas. I haven’t been back to the river world. I don’t know how much I harmed them, but I don’t expect they would welcome me back. Nor would any of the worlds Phineas and I traveled to in the many years after that. 

That was just the starting point. Phineas turned my ideas of sharing knowledge and a meeting of the minds, into adventures for plunder and personal gain. I just didn’t realize it at the time that he was using my power as head beacon to manipulate situations to his benefit. Coxing me further and further into looking at new worlds and taking their knowledge to be compiled for everyone to see. Introducing worlds to each other that really were not ready. I was blinded by my ambition for moving things forward. I was blinded to who he was. Even with Walter warning me along the way. Once I was imprisoned Walter sent Phineas back to our home world, with instructions to our mother to never let him off world again. I hadn’t realized those instructions had failed, until I met Chester. Realized he found a way not to go back home. A way to live on another world and take on a new identity no one would recognize. Not even Walter.  Phineas was a danger. He didn’t care who he hurt or how many worlds were involved. Realizing he was still out and exploring is why I decide to go to you Astra. Decided I needed to come clean rather than take the punishment for everything because of my guilt. I really did just want to explore; he wanted to steal and gain power. It was more important to stop him.

I will send you a second part to this account Astra when I can. 

-Clara

I think Clara’s account is interesting. Especially because she spends so much time talking about her time as a sibling with Walter, rather than Phineas. Even though Phineas is the one she followed forward because he told her things she wanted to hear. But I don’t know if that is the whole truth. I have been tracking Phineas’ movements for a long while now and I don’t think he is that convincing, nor does he plan that far in advance. There is more to the story. 

Tune in next week for another letter and episode of The Star Jelly Files. 

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Star Jelly Files podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode and that you are having a great day. The Star Jelly Files is written, produced, voice acted, and created by me, Elizabeth Hamblett. If you would like to support the podcast and gain access to bonus content check out my Patreon at www.patreon.com/starjellyfiles. The link is also in the description.

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