1st of Autumn, 514AV
Light from the wall sconces flickered, flames bending in the slight draft from her chambers' ventilation shaft. The resulting dance of shadows in the corners were an interesting distraction; Sydelle was not in a mood to let herself be distracted.
Her table was strewn with fresh parchment, charcoal sticks and old notes. Over 10 years old, in fact. She had scrawled them herself, when she was a small child, and they were covered in arrows, smudges and misspelled words. Seeing them brought a wistful smile to her face; when her dad had made her sit and write them, she'd never imagined one day she would be willingly undergoing a thorough re-write. Honestly, at the time, she could almost remember swearing to never write another thing as long as she lived. Of course that was a short-lived oath, as Sydelle had actually begun a tarot journal a season or two after that.
But, looking back over her old notes taught her something else - she had started writing just randomly, rushing to get every fact down as it came into her head. The result was this jumbled, cute, funny mess of papers. Syd didn't want her next effort to inspire the same sort of patronizing amusement she felt about her first efforts. She wanted something that would make sense. Something that would... Flow from one subject, one suit into the next. Something that, maybe, someone else might find useful.
The big question was: how was she going to make that happen?
Syd sat back in her chair, propping her feet on its twin, and trying to puzzle through the process. She hadn't had much experience reading books; she knew how to read, but largely from single sheets or her own or her father's handwriting. A book was so much bigger. It couldn't be just a list of facts written in whatever order she happened to remember them; there should be some sort of list, something that gave a hint of what information was where. If someone wanted to look up the meaning of the king of cups or the wheel of fortune or a particular spread for a reading, there should be a clear indication of where to find all of those things.
Grabbing a stick of charcoal and a blank sheet of parchment, Syd wrote down her first few ideas:
must contain:
information to include:
Looking at those few lines, taking up almost no space on the parchment, Sydelle felt a little overwhelmed. When she'd first thought to revisit that chore from her childhood, she had imagined it would be easy. She'd learned so much more, grown so much as a person that she had half-convinced herself the entire process would take no more than a few days. The reality was that she had no idea where to start, and no idea how to put the things she knew onto paper.
Clearly this would take more than a few days.
Light from the wall sconces flickered, flames bending in the slight draft from her chambers' ventilation shaft. The resulting dance of shadows in the corners were an interesting distraction; Sydelle was not in a mood to let herself be distracted.
Her table was strewn with fresh parchment, charcoal sticks and old notes. Over 10 years old, in fact. She had scrawled them herself, when she was a small child, and they were covered in arrows, smudges and misspelled words. Seeing them brought a wistful smile to her face; when her dad had made her sit and write them, she'd never imagined one day she would be willingly undergoing a thorough re-write. Honestly, at the time, she could almost remember swearing to never write another thing as long as she lived. Of course that was a short-lived oath, as Sydelle had actually begun a tarot journal a season or two after that.
But, looking back over her old notes taught her something else - she had started writing just randomly, rushing to get every fact down as it came into her head. The result was this jumbled, cute, funny mess of papers. Syd didn't want her next effort to inspire the same sort of patronizing amusement she felt about her first efforts. She wanted something that would make sense. Something that would... Flow from one subject, one suit into the next. Something that, maybe, someone else might find useful.
The big question was: how was she going to make that happen?
Syd sat back in her chair, propping her feet on its twin, and trying to puzzle through the process. She hadn't had much experience reading books; she knew how to read, but largely from single sheets or her own or her father's handwriting. A book was so much bigger. It couldn't be just a list of facts written in whatever order she happened to remember them; there should be some sort of list, something that gave a hint of what information was where. If someone wanted to look up the meaning of the king of cups or the wheel of fortune or a particular spread for a reading, there should be a clear indication of where to find all of those things.
Grabbing a stick of charcoal and a blank sheet of parchment, Syd wrote down her first few ideas:
must contain:
- list of information
information to include:
- majors - meanings
- minors - meanings
- spreads
Looking at those few lines, taking up almost no space on the parchment, Sydelle felt a little overwhelmed. When she'd first thought to revisit that chore from her childhood, she had imagined it would be easy. She'd learned so much more, grown so much as a person that she had half-convinced herself the entire process would take no more than a few days. The reality was that she had no idea where to start, and no idea how to put the things she knew onto paper.
Clearly this would take more than a few days.
