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Three Roses
Feb. 18th, 2016 11:16 pmMoondancer looked much better after lunch. We got up and headed back to the archives in Sub basement D, but on the way I made a point to stop to pick up beet pulp, hay, peppermint tea and a basket of apples for Moondancer. She has to eat!
Near Professor Clarity Quest's office Moondancer showed me some of the other artifacts that Dr. Quest has brought back from the dig. In one tray there were a few of the beads the pony had worn on her tail, made from faceted gem stones, and a silver bell, shaped like a rose bud that's about to open. It was black with tarnish, but in the clasp I could see a few pure white mane hairs. In another tray, four small gold slippers, some with a remnant of a pad inside. She had small hooves.
Moondancer also showed me a cracked dish with a red rose motif and a large magnifying glass, completely intact, with a bite guard handle. The glass has a bend that fits the bridge of the nose. For reading and writing! You could still see the tooth marks and wear from years of use. Also useful but not as spellbinding, Dr. Quest had collected pieces some of the better preserved wood planks. These are to have core samples taken from them and the growth rings compared to archived wood cores from the same area. If a match can be made in the growth pattern of the rings, the wood can be dated.
Finally, Moondancer showed me a picture of the resident pony, the skeleton sleeping peacefully on her bed. I had a sudden flashback to a rumbling mother's call, shaking the snow and ice and filling me with comfort and warmth. I wonder if Moondancer felt the same. But I didn't ask her. Even if she had, we'd been through the same experience, so...
Moondancer was already hungry again, so we sat down to each eat an apple and she told me more of what Dr. Quest had said about this hidden dwelling inside a cave.
It's cool in the cave, the winter cold does not seem to penetrate there. Dr. Quest thinks that the stability of the temperature combined with the dryness has kept the wood and fibers from completely rotting away. Except in the case of elastic fibers, like wool. In the dry air they had almost all crumbled to dust. Here and there she also found tantalizing heaps of colored fibers shattered by the oxidation in the metallic salts used in the dyeing process.
In one room she found a well worn basin carved into the wall. Above it, a simple chevron-shaped hole equipped with a hoof-made clay stopper would have been the water source. The bowl drained into a pony-sized depression in the floor, and that had a hole draining into the ground. Thus, water, a wash basin and a bath, all now bone dry. In the spring, Professor Quest plans on finding the reservoir and why it went dry.
Another area, containing a small broken table and littered with shelves and storage jars, probably served as a kitchen. Nearly everything fell to the ground when the wooden shelves collapsed. Some shelves are carved into the rock and some of the jars are still sealed. Here and there in the dwelling, and on many of the jars, Dr. Quest noted a three rose motif, usually painted, sometimes carved, and a few times picked out in rubies. But carved above doorway to her sleeping quarters there is what looks to be three white keys in a night sky. The keys are carved but the sky is blue-black paint that has mostly cracked and fallen. On what's left Clarity can see a few stars. She said that symbolizes the Keeper of Dreams. No idea why that's there.
After a week of gingerly surveying the find, Dr. Quest carefully packed the gold scrolls and a few other items, and took them to Canterlot. There, archivist ponies unrolled the delicate gold foil, unstuck parts that had melded together over the centuries, and placed them in glass topped trays in storage cabinets. Moondancer has been trying to read them for about two weeks.
Meanwhile, Dr. Quest is back at the excavation, sketching , inventorying, measuring, preserving, sampling and puzzling through rooms which appear to have been lived in for a very long time. It looks like it was all hoof carved out of the rock. The rock walls, doorways, shelves, nooks... are not just carved and polished, they are worn down, as if thousands of restless ponies had lived there for decades. Here and there there is a hint of a painting on a wall, but from so long ago that it had already cracked and the fragments swept away long before the pony had taken her final nap. And yet there is only sign of one, and everywhere a repeating motif: three red roses in a field of white.
After all that it was mid afternoon and Moondancer was champing at the bit to dive into her gold scrolls again. But before I left her to her research she gave me a piece of paper with a little of what she had deciphered. It was this:
Of al catel whit was gentil and smal the Tree hadde in his garden kepte, that he wolde love alderbest wer the litel hors. Of so greet a craft he laboured ther corpus, make he thanne delivere, of fresshe strengthe and parfit science, in al this world neigh was ther noon hem lik. Of alle hors he plein delit, yit loved he best his white mere Epona.
I think it's going to take some time to translate those old runes into plain, modern language!
Near Professor Clarity Quest's office Moondancer showed me some of the other artifacts that Dr. Quest has brought back from the dig. In one tray there were a few of the beads the pony had worn on her tail, made from faceted gem stones, and a silver bell, shaped like a rose bud that's about to open. It was black with tarnish, but in the clasp I could see a few pure white mane hairs. In another tray, four small gold slippers, some with a remnant of a pad inside. She had small hooves.
Moondancer also showed me a cracked dish with a red rose motif and a large magnifying glass, completely intact, with a bite guard handle. The glass has a bend that fits the bridge of the nose. For reading and writing! You could still see the tooth marks and wear from years of use. Also useful but not as spellbinding, Dr. Quest had collected pieces some of the better preserved wood planks. These are to have core samples taken from them and the growth rings compared to archived wood cores from the same area. If a match can be made in the growth pattern of the rings, the wood can be dated.
Finally, Moondancer showed me a picture of the resident pony, the skeleton sleeping peacefully on her bed. I had a sudden flashback to a rumbling mother's call, shaking the snow and ice and filling me with comfort and warmth. I wonder if Moondancer felt the same. But I didn't ask her. Even if she had, we'd been through the same experience, so...
Moondancer was already hungry again, so we sat down to each eat an apple and she told me more of what Dr. Quest had said about this hidden dwelling inside a cave.
It's cool in the cave, the winter cold does not seem to penetrate there. Dr. Quest thinks that the stability of the temperature combined with the dryness has kept the wood and fibers from completely rotting away. Except in the case of elastic fibers, like wool. In the dry air they had almost all crumbled to dust. Here and there she also found tantalizing heaps of colored fibers shattered by the oxidation in the metallic salts used in the dyeing process.
In one room she found a well worn basin carved into the wall. Above it, a simple chevron-shaped hole equipped with a hoof-made clay stopper would have been the water source. The bowl drained into a pony-sized depression in the floor, and that had a hole draining into the ground. Thus, water, a wash basin and a bath, all now bone dry. In the spring, Professor Quest plans on finding the reservoir and why it went dry.
Another area, containing a small broken table and littered with shelves and storage jars, probably served as a kitchen. Nearly everything fell to the ground when the wooden shelves collapsed. Some shelves are carved into the rock and some of the jars are still sealed. Here and there in the dwelling, and on many of the jars, Dr. Quest noted a three rose motif, usually painted, sometimes carved, and a few times picked out in rubies. But carved above doorway to her sleeping quarters there is what looks to be three white keys in a night sky. The keys are carved but the sky is blue-black paint that has mostly cracked and fallen. On what's left Clarity can see a few stars. She said that symbolizes the Keeper of Dreams. No idea why that's there.
After a week of gingerly surveying the find, Dr. Quest carefully packed the gold scrolls and a few other items, and took them to Canterlot. There, archivist ponies unrolled the delicate gold foil, unstuck parts that had melded together over the centuries, and placed them in glass topped trays in storage cabinets. Moondancer has been trying to read them for about two weeks.
Meanwhile, Dr. Quest is back at the excavation, sketching , inventorying, measuring, preserving, sampling and puzzling through rooms which appear to have been lived in for a very long time. It looks like it was all hoof carved out of the rock. The rock walls, doorways, shelves, nooks... are not just carved and polished, they are worn down, as if thousands of restless ponies had lived there for decades. Here and there there is a hint of a painting on a wall, but from so long ago that it had already cracked and the fragments swept away long before the pony had taken her final nap. And yet there is only sign of one, and everywhere a repeating motif: three red roses in a field of white.
After all that it was mid afternoon and Moondancer was champing at the bit to dive into her gold scrolls again. But before I left her to her research she gave me a piece of paper with a little of what she had deciphered. It was this:
Of al catel whit was gentil and smal the Tree hadde in his garden kepte, that he wolde love alderbest wer the litel hors. Of so greet a craft he laboured ther corpus, make he thanne delivere, of fresshe strengthe and parfit science, in al this world neigh was ther noon hem lik. Of alle hors he plein delit, yit loved he best his white mere Epona.
I think it's going to take some time to translate those old runes into plain, modern language!
