The Libraries of Smyrna-on-Neo-Aegea

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Dear Readers,

  It's been some time since I visited neo-Aegea with you, and I feel that it's time I returned.  It is one of my chief academic interests, and I feel almost as if I've cheated on it a little by avoiding it for so long.

  So it is time that I returned to my work on that little world.  There are some references in past posts that will help you get up to speed with their culture and technology, all under the neo-Aegea label.

   Today I want to talk to you about the neo-Aegean City Smyrna, a city-state known as a center of religious and cultural learning.  Smyrna's libraries will be renowned throughout neo-Aegea, both for books as well as the librarians.

  It is not my work specifically, but it is thought that the Librarians of Smyrna were a unique cult of Aphrodite that placed her as the queen of the nine Muses.  They chose young men and women from among the commoners to rise to their rank.  This concept mixed several of the stranger parts of neo-Aegean society, and I warn readers who proceed that this will push some cultural boundaries for you.

  Still, though, the short narrative that appears below should be enlightening as to just how different neo-Aegea will really be from the world that you are used to.  This one is a diary entry (primary source!) from a newly initiated male Librarian of Smyrna, from the morning after the ritual.  After the jump.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

"I, Flax, am inducted as Flax the Librarian of Smyrna.


I wish I could bring myself to sound more excited about this, but it just feels so bittersweet.  All in one night, I have gotten what I feel I worked so hard for, displayed a knowledge that could warp the very borders of culture, and been given the right to spread that knowledge in the way that the gods mandated.

Yet it means that my apprenticeship is over, forever.  Five years of work, completed.  Five years of the most beautiful experience I have ever had, over.  While I have known this day would come since I was sixteen years old, I have no way to silence the emotions that build within me.  By our rules, I can never look at Dove in the same way as I have.

There is no person who I am more deeply indebted to than she.  She introduced me to the central pillars of our culture, as a teacher and hetaera.  My life has never been filled with so much love and knowledge, which in turn gave birth to the inspiration that led to my trial.

For Calliope, I wrote my epic, and the Tale of Alec-Kenobi has never been better told.  This I did in my first six months.

For Thalia, I wrote a stage play about the Library.  No one laughed harder than Dove, but then, I wrote it so that in the end she turned into one of Eros's darts and shot a bull that afterwards would not leave the Head Librarian alone.

The song for Euterpe was a challenge, but I wrote it for the Kithara and got extra recognition because that is Erato's symbol and I used another student's poem for the lyrics, helping her to pass her trial.

My work for Erato, a love poem, I still feel could be better, but Dove keeps it next to her bed.  Now it hurts when I think of that.  I will never join her between those sheets again, and she must take a new student.  I must take a student myself!  This scares me.  My heart tears in two.  Perhaps I will modify poem.  Later.  I must finish this.

For Clio, a new history of the Syracuse Slave Revolt, where a leader named Captain Kangaroo rebelled against his colonial masters and set the city-state free.  No other histories covered the lesser goddess, Sydney, who helped the Captain in his efforts.

I worked in a group for Polyhymnia, and the song we produced told the tale of two selkie lovers.  It makes me smile when I think of it.  In some late night sessions, my partners and I got especially into character.

My project for Urania was a song for the emotional ideal woman who every common man of Smyrna seeks.  It likened this woman to the Star; ever present, ever necessary, and with so much power that she could sustain a world.  The combination of love and astronomy won me special recognition.

I was a dancer before I ever came here, and so Terpsichore was my entry test.  I was then called on to judge the many Terpsichore trials of other students, and that has been the second most rewarding experience of my time here.  My time with Dove, of course, the first.

As with most students, I finished with Melpomene, because in some sense to finish is a tragedy.  I retold the story of Jason Alexandros and his failed quest to gain a nest of golden hair upon his head.  I could not help but take a classic comedy and retell it as a tragedy.  They cried when he learned he could not regain his hair, and I passed my final trial.

And now, my bed is empty.  I will have to find a new student to fill it.  He or she will be someone so different from Dove, someone so inexperienced.  I will have to show this new person both how to learn and how to love, and I will no longer have my guide.  There will also, be, of course, the daily patrons of the library, who will need help with books and otherwise.  It is what I always wanted, and yet it will never be the same as what I loved.  I will do it for Aphrodite, in all her forms."