At the foot of his motte, in catalyst cured fibers affixed an olde grotte, an augurer with chymistry his tasawwuf wrought.

Neophilus bent over the river, counting the glints and noting their locations, those fixed ones especially. The transients he enjoyed, smiling at the prismatic tracers they drew through the clear black water, but he allowed neither his head nor even his eyes to pine for them, keeping instead his focus on those that remained static. In all the river, this place had the most loyal stars, so there it was that he built his well, and nearby his home and place of study, up the bank, between a dark wood guarded by prowling beasts and a small, hollow hill that looked like a crowned king at dawn.

Tall pillars appeared one morning at the ringing of Lucifer's trumpet. Neophilus put on his hooded robe and collected his archeology tools, then went to inspect the curious new sentinels. He chipped a few flakes from each, and in his labratorium he learned that they were made of limestone, enriched by an equal measure of the carbonates calcium and magnesium. They were elegant sentries, tall and slender and strong, not bending to the wind and slow to erode, and they never moved closer to his sanctum nor made so much as a sound, so he tolerated their vigil over his work.

Rain came slowly, swept up by starry eyed Argus in his pacing and thrown in a mist over Neophilus's bailey. The rain persisted, growing from a slowly descending cloud to falling droplets. Neophilus planted a small garden beneath the rain, then cut down a tree from the dark wood and crafted a vessel from its bones. He made the vessel round like a ball, and thought to set it outside to collect the rainwater, when he heard it whispered among the pillars that the water flung from Argus's toes would be sullied with dirt and scat from roving beasts, and it would corrupt the vessel he slew a tree to make. So he made for himself a furnace, a bench, yolks, an annealer, and a selection of rods for the blowing of glass. Now a master of glass, he made four round jars to collect the rainwater in, two and a fourth quarts each, and waited until they were full. Then he sealed them and waited until the soil and feces had settled to the bottom. He cut the wooden ball through the middle so he could see how full the clear water made it, and it rose to a third of its height. He then rested the vessel in a secluded part of his garden at midday, taking care to hide it from the beasts that roamed in the forest, lest they take interest and bar him from his secret work.

While he supped, he cut his lip on a chipped wine glass. Blood dripped into his wine, and as he concocted a way of crafting a stronger glass, he felt impelled to pour the bloodied wine into the precipitation he'd gathered. So he put on his hooded robe and went outside, bringing his horn to blow if the beasts smelled his blood and approached. They did indeed emerge, but they dared not pass through the stone guardians, so Neophilus did not wind his horn.

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He found his wooden vessel unhurt in its quiet place, kneeled down, then tipped his glass until a drop of the bloodied wine fell into it. Nothing happened, and his waiting was interrupted when one of the beasts picked up a stone with its jaws and threw it into the air, disturbing a motley flock of birds who had gathered around an egg that promised to hatch something new. Vesper was now coming to roost, shining her staff into the eyes of the beasts as they returned to their haunt beneath the woods, and there was still no change from the adding of his blood. Neophilus sighed, then went to his cot and read from the journals of Bombastus until he drifted into an agitated sleep.

He woke in a salty mood, and quickly drew his green shades to shield him from the Sunlight piercing his window as he dressed. He emerged novum ex aurora, spilling his vitriol at the sight of a lush jungle of monstrous cowslips, neon colored peppers and cabbage leaves the size of cutter sails. He hurried to the vessel, now thoroughly hidden by corn husks the girth of an elephant's thigh, and looked into the small opening through which he'd poured his bloodstained wine. The water was merely water, with a slight tint of red, but only for an instant, and after that instant all the world went black, and Neophilus stood on an island of lush green vegetation while the heavens wheeled about him. Over the surface of the red tinted water rose a fog, and mingling with the fog a thick darkness, and the two congealed into a sort of undulating clay that took shapes that Neophilus could only almost recognize, but not quite, so that he was reminded of things he'd seen or thought or dreamt, but never did they fully take form.

Neophilus reeled from these visions of the increate, seeing worlds form and explode, cities the size of mountains crumbling into ash, and entire arms of galaxies being flung at each other and scattered into oblivion, then reforming alongside other vagabonds and clustering together so tightly they formed immense gravitic engines of their own, and the constant warring of Oak and Holly overwhelmed Neophilus, but he could not simply look away, so he gripped the rim of the round wooden vessel he'd made and thrust himself backward. When he woke, the vessel was gone, blasted into a thousand and one splinters that had devastated his lush garden. The dark wood had grown in his garden's place, arching over the sky and surrounding everything he'd built. But he could still see the small hill, and it was crowned like a king as the day star rose with its white wings spread. The beasts were atop the hill, laying on the lap of a pale figure, and around them were the limestone watchers. Neophilus tried to rise so he could see the son who had been born in the vessel he made, but the vision of the increate had drained him of all his mortal substance, and as he stood his body was spread as sand to gird the farthest shores.