Memory I: A Thin Factory-Made Notebook Bound in Cheap Leather

[wontforbidtherain]

Winter Tide: pp. 98-101

Cat is sitting in a reading room in an academic library. The clothing of the people identifies this as mid-20th-century, and the accents place this as America. A male librarian sits off to the side watching the rest of the party: Cat, another woman, and three men. One of the men, the youngest in his early 20s, has Cat’s same distinctive features. The books in front of them appear to be notebooks and sketchbooks. Cat notices the younger man struggling to read the journal, and asks “Can you read that?” At his glare, she offers to read together, and puts down her own book.

The journal is from autumn 1903 and belonged to a woman named Patience Gilman. She was a cook, and her husband was a fisher, and most of it is mundane… but Mrs. Gilman also spoke of visions to seek ‘Alydea Bardsley’s air-born lover who rain away with their son’. And a metamorphosis and that she had to focus on the duties of the land, but had a future life in the water. And that while Reverend Eliot may be the spiritual leader of the town for everyday things, someone named Archpriest Ngalthr outranked him

The younger man identifies the woman as Chulzh’th (her ‘water name’), Archpriest Ngalthr’s acolyte, who had black scales with purple highlights and a spiky crest, and helped with the midsummer ceremonies. Cat says she doesn’t remember Chulzh’th, but that they need to talk to their elders about how to get their books back, which are kept at a place called Miskatonic. They start planning an outing: someone called Trumbull will drive, and Cat asks to bring Neko Koto and Mister Day as ‘kind people on land, as well as cruel’. The younger man suggests that Cat is starting a school and asks about her newest student, but Cat thinks its is too early.

A young woman (a college student) came in, and Cat apologies to her for not going to ‘Hall’ that day. The woman accepts it and asks about how she can help, and if they can have ‘lessons tonight’. Cat decides they can have lessons now, and gets a key from the woman originally in the room. She asks two of the men to join them.

What Cat gets from the emotions:
— The young man is her younger brother. Cat is very angry about why he can’t read well, but doesn’t remember why. It’s not at her brother.
— Talk of a water life and land life, and a metamorphosis and that a woman named Patience Gilman might become Acolyte Chulzh’th is all normal. Chulzh’th’s visions are less so, but more in the ‘that’s an unusual talent’ than shocking. Cat also remembered that Chulzh’th must have gone through metamorphosis younger than average, and that is a very good thing.
— It's not going to occur to her that any of this is weird, though there is the idea that it isn't universal.
— Cat and her brother haven’t seen the elders in a long time, and a lot has changed. Not just with them.
— The books are important.
— Names: Neko Koto, Mister Day, Trumbull (who is the woman with the key), and Mister Specter (the other man). Also Neko’s family is known to Cat. She also has emotion connections: she loves the Kotos, likes Mister Day, is wary of Spector and Trumbull but in different ways.
— The young woman was a newer student than Mister Day, and Cat kind of resents that they have to slow down for her, but being a good teacher is important to her.
— A lot of day-to-day info about the life of her town that she can unpack later.
— It would be good to keep her own journal.