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The Asymmetry

Synthesis Utility Creation ꧪ၇ꧠ

204 · By looking for the origins of things we deceive ourselves about their inevitability. Things that did not happen also have origins.

Jesma Shirancord, “Vectors”

In the workshops of the Asymmetry all essential forms of reality have been hewn and sculpted and forged, in great open chambers set into a cliff face that knows neither ground nor top nor sides. It is simply a wall facing an empty sky, and into the fruitful earth of this wall Grains quarry ever deeper, gathering material for creations that will eventually be delivered into nature or the minds or hands of mortals.

Grains believe that nothing is symmetrical, for even if an object is itself symmetrical, its environment is not, and no object can be considered outside of its environment. And so in any pursuit of symmetry with the environment in total, an object must itself be asymmetrical, further complicating the whole. Despite the impossibility of perfect balance, Grains are forever pursuing the act of balancing: introducing new animals or toolseven new philosophies or deitiesto cardinal worlds in order to tweak and understand discrepancies in the shape of things.

The endless cliff wall of the Asymmetry is composed of all manner of substance, from metals and ores and every consistency of earth to pockets of embers and rivulets of water, and on the cliff face itself grow trees and fruits in vertical latticed orchards. Over aeons caverns and interconnected tunnels have been bored to incredible depths, and in the myths of Grains there is another side to the wall that will eventually be reached, full of new forms of matter and a community of brethren from which they were separated in primordial times.

[This chapter has not yet been translated. Please turn to the Inevitability, the Bloom, or the Unfolding for completed chapters. Recent additions can be found in the Translation Log.]

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