The Map
The Never Ending Quest - Episode 42042
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The map was painted on yellowing parchment. It was written in a language she did not
know and showed a peninsula surrounded on three sides with oceans. At the lower left-
hand corner of the map was written the legend, in a language she could not understand.
Near it was a compass of four intersecting lines within the symbol of the serpent ring. In
the ocean were sea-monsters and mermaids--Astra had no idea whether this was creative
licence or not. Near the coasts, the terrain seemed to be relatively temparate, with a fairly
large number of cities. Moving inward, there were a sparse desert in the south, a
comparatively small mountain range, a small belt with a fair number of cities in the middle,
and a dense forest to the north. There were no cities near the forest, only a few scattered
villages near the outer edges of it. A much larger and more forbidding mountain range
bordered the north of the map.
The strangest feature, though, was four astrological symbols--those for Mars, Venus, Mercury, and Jupiter--scattered throughout the map. The one for Mars was red and the others were black. The Mars symbol was in the forest but not all that far from the coast. The Venus symbol was in a city on the other side of the peninsula. The Mercury symbol was in a city slightly to the north and west of the Mars symbol. (Presuming that maps in this world had the same orientation as those in hers.) And the Jupiter symbol was near the mountains. Even more strangely, several of these symbols were changing directions and moving slightly. Experimentally, Astra turned around. The Mars symbol turned around as well. So apparently it represented her. This amused her-after all, the Mars symbol was traditionally used to represent maleness. She wondered briefly if the other symbols represented Fred and Velus, but there were four of these symbols. Astra was still uncertain, but at least she had some idea of what this world was like and what her place was. And although she had no compass, since the symbol pointed in the same direction she did, she could use the map to navigate. Her best option to understand what was going on would be to seek out the other four symbols--these serpent-ring people were probably going after them, too. The Mercury symbol was in a city that didn't seem to be that far from her on the map, but she had no idea of the scale. There was a village near her that might be a shorter walk than the city, but she wanted to get to this other symbol before her enemies (or were they her enemies?) did.
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Knight Random
5/16/2004 1:12:52 PM
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