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--- item:text:confession_of_imperfection [2024/01/17 13:57] – ↷ Links adapted because of a move operation shyriath
+++ item:text:confession_of_imperfection [2024/12/17 09:08] (current) – shyriath
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 ====== Confession of Imperfection ======
-The **//Confession of Imperfection//** is an informal name given to a document found in 74 [[history:cloud_era:|Cloud]] in the city of [[geopolitical:hanessin]] in the western [[avishraa:geography:sekhaa:region:Velestrin]], on the [[avishraa:geography:sekhaa:marine:gulf_of_shaad|Shaadic]] coast near the southern terminus of the trade route through [[avishraa:geography:sekhaa:region:tavaths_gap|Tavath's Gap]]. Its apparent author was a jeweler named [[person:Tavass]], a pioneer in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemstone#Cutting_and_polishing|faceting]] techniques, and in form is somewhere between a diary entry and an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_letter|open letter]].
+The **//Confession of Imperfection//** is an informal name given to a document found in 74 [[history:cloud_era:|Cloud]] in the city of [[geopolitical:Hanessin]] in the western [[geography:sekhaa:region:Velestrin]], on the [[geography:sekhaa:marine:gulf_of_shaad|Shaadic]] coast near the southern terminus of the trade route through [[geography:sekhaa:region:tavaths_gap|Tavath's Gap]]. Its apparent author was a jeweler named [[person:Tavass]], a pioneer in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemstone#Cutting_and_polishing|faceting]] techniques, and in form is somewhere between a diary entry and an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_letter|open letter]].
 It purports to describe - or, by the author's own admission, imperfectly attempt to describe - a brief but exceptionally vivid dream sequence in which Tavass found himself transported to the heart of [[universe:seluurins_palace|Seluurin's Palace]] and found himself facing the [[mythology:imperial_religion:lamnar:seluurin|Fateweaver]] Herself.
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 <blockquote>What is the price of perfection? Is it worth it?
-In my art there are few strangers to the pursuit of perfection. An uneven cut, a lazy polish, can turn what could have been a brilliant gem into a stone little better than colored glass. Care, patience, and meticulousness are a necessity, backed by practice and training and a steady hand. For cycles I have cultivated these traits in myself, and grown skilled in their exercise. And I have benefitted; I have wrought emeralds that glittered like the morning dew among the leaves of the [[avishraa:geography:sekhaa:region:cerulean_tangle|Tangle]], and rubies that burned like the setting sun. I have received praise and wealth for my works. And having surpassed so many of my peers, I found it natural to wonder how much more I could improve.
+In my art there are few strangers to the pursuit of perfection. An uneven cut, a lazy polish, can turn what could have been a brilliant gem into a stone little better than colored glass. Care, patience, and meticulousness are a necessity, backed by practice and training and a steady hand. For cycles I have cultivated these traits in myself, and grown skilled in their exercise. And I have benefitted; I have wrought emeralds that glittered like the morning dew among the leaves of the [[geography:sekhaa:region:cerulean_tangle|Tangle]], and rubies that burned like the setting sun. I have received praise and wealth for my works. And having surpassed so many of my peers, I found it natural to wonder how much more I could improve.
 For my friends and fellow jewelers who might read this, I ask: is it not natural, having developed a thing to a high point, to wonder how much higher one can go? How finely the skill can be honed, how straight the edge can be made, how flat and mirror-like the facet can be polished? Where is the point beyond which there is no improvement? Where can one say: here is perfection?
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 And I was not alone in the chamber. For all around me were [[takma:|takmar]], or at least things of takma-shape; for they were not made of flesh and blood, but of gems or other colored stones, and they did not act as people do; they moved in file, one after the other, across the floor, murmuring in repetitious unison to themselves. They did not speak to one another, nor pay any attention to one another except to follow the one in front of them. There was enough space between each one that, when the lines crossed, those in one would pass between members of the other; and the lines themselves moved slowly according to some great design that I could not see.
-As my eyes followed the movements of these beings, they were drawn to what seemed to me to be the center and focus of this place, to which the silent beings went and from which they came, and from which I found it hard to look away. And as my eyes were drawn, so too were my feet, so that I might more clearly see; for it seemed that the more directly I looked upon in, the more my eyes failed me, or perhaps it was the mind that lay behind them. The nearer to it I looked, the less I could interpret what I saw, for it seemed that there the light was greatest, and all the color and edges and the strange inhabitants merged together in a great harmony.
+As my eyes followed the movements of these beings, they were drawn to what seemed to me to be the center and focus of this place, to which the silent beings went and from which they came, and from which I found it hard to look away. And as my eyes were drawn, so too were my feet, so that I might more clearly see; for it seemed that the more directly I looked upon it, the more my eyes failed me, or perhaps it was the mind that lay behind them. The nearer to it I looked, the less I could interpret what I saw, for it seemed that there the light was greatest, and all the color and edges and the strange inhabitants merged together in a great harmony.
 Was this, then, not the perfection I sought? Could I not partake of it - become one with it, as all else here was? Yet the closer I came, the more out of place I felt. I was a discordant note in a symphony, a blot in a written work, a chip in a gem's surface. And the very weight of divergence slowed my shuffling gait, and at last brought me to a stop.