I wasn’t quite finished with the story I was telling by the time 2025 ended and so decided to continue it until it reached an ending point. Then I will start a new one. Besides, I kind of want to see where Penelope ends up. And so we have…
Day 232: Penelope explained finding the memories.
Penelope explained finding the memories. The Guardian listened and nodded. “This is not surprising,” she said when Penelope was through. “It was once more common to create such things but that seems to have changed.”
“Do you know why?” Penelope asked. “I certainly appreciated someone leaving a lesson I could follow.”
The guardian frowned in thought for a moment. “People have changed,” she said finally.
“In what way?” Penelope asked.
“I am not certain of the specifics,” the guardian said. “For the most part I interact with them here. Although I have noticed changes to them and to what is added to the whole.”
“You interact with everyone?” Penelope asked.
“Yes although not always in he same manner. Sometimes the setting changes or my appearance changes depending on the person approaching. There is always a lake, but the rest differs.”
Penelope frowned wondering what others saw. She absently reached for the table, picking up a fig and biting into it.
“Would you like to see?” the guardian asked.
“I would,” Penelope said nodding.
She blinked as the world changed. Instead of a winding path through a field of flowers it became and ancient city ruined by time but still showing it’s grandeur. Then the ruins were gone and she and the guardian were sitting in the center of a gleaming white temple made of alabaster and trimmed with gold.
The world continued to shift through a variety of landscapes until finally returning to the one Penelope found familiar.
“The world is shaped by what the magician needs to see to accept or feels comfortable seeing. Sometimes it is based on tales told from elders and other times they come with no expectations,” the guardian told her. “My appearance changes as well. I take on the image that suits them either because they have a certain image of authority or what a guardian should look like or they have their mind set on some mythical tale.”
This time it was the guardian herself that changed. She was by turns a powerful young man wearing what looked like a tiger skin across his chest, an old man with a long beard and a gray robe, then an older woman with kind eyes and a warm smile. She then became beings that were not fully human. They had the bodies of humans but the heads of beasts; cows, eagles, hippopotamuses, coyotes. Then the form shifted again and the human part disappeared. She was a white bull with horns dipped in gold, a giant spider, an owl and a white buffalo.
Finally, she returned to the form Penelope knew.
“Each person comes and sees what they need to see,” the guardian said.
Penelope nodded.
Ten til Midnight 