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// 48 pieces, 4 seasons, 83,434 words

The Morkinstar Journals

as of 2026-10-06

Fourteen gods. Fourteen monsters. Thirteen names.

A correspondent visits worlds that cannot yet leave them, and writes down the story each one tells about its own weather. Every world he has ever surveyed independently reports fourteen gods and fourteen monsters, the same count, worlds apart, with no contact between them. Nobody, on any of them, can name the fourteenth.

Works separately, together, or in any order.

About 6 hours of reading, in four objects: a Directory survey form, a page in a wooden case, a fire, and a public wall he pastes notices onto.

If you would rather be pointed somewhere: The Legend Of K'öæluæ's Scales is where it starts, and The World With No Number is the shortest way in at 1,283 words.

The Canon

Ten entries off the Directory beat. One world each: its legend, and the phenomenon the legend was built to explain.

Thirteen sigils in a ring, and one empty slot where a fourteenth should be.
Thirteen sigils and one empty slot. Every world he has surveyed reports the same fourteen, and nobody, on any of them, can name the fourteenth.
ENTRY #2245

The Legend Of K'öæluæ's Scales

Exxobar · Alpha Axmoiri

A galactic field reporter transcribes why it snows on a frozen planet — a fire serpent, a water god, and the fisherwoman who talked one of them out of giving up.

ENTRY #2250

The Ninety-Nine Names Of Silence

Grïnjdarlay · Alpha Axmoiri

On the coldest world in Alpha Axmoiri, everything has ninety-nine names, and once a click ninety-eight of them are gone. A deaf child, a god with no name of his own, and the invention of writing as an act of war.

ENTRY #2259

The Tide That Owes

Vædrun · Alpha Axmoiri

A queen borrowed nine days of ocean to end a famine. Nobody wrote down the terms. Four thousand clicks later, the sea is still collecting.

ENTRY #2263

The Word Marltains Do Not Have

Marlt · Brixby

The Directory logged the Marltain binary wrong, and I repeated the error. Here is the correction, and the story of the first Marltain to be one.

ENTRY #2269

The Arm Shake

Killuga Var · Killuga

I made a joke about this system in Entry #2245. Then I came here and found out that the hug is not a greeting. It is a test, it has been running for four thousand clicks, and it has never been switched off.

ENTRY #2277

The Standing Dead

Jötunheimr · Ymirsgald

On Jötunheimr the dead do not lie down. They are surveyed, aimed, and set into a line four thousand clicks long, and the line is still being extended, and I made the mistake of asking what it points at.

ENTRY #2284

The Kindling

Cendre · Cendrewake

Every ninth generation, an entire civilisation burns everything it has ever written. They keep one page. A child writes it. I read the oldest one and then I did something I have never done in 2284 entries.

ENTRY #2291

Two Suns, One Shadow

Solvei · Dvær Binary

On Solvei the word for god and the word for monster are the same word, inflected by which way you are standing. I went to file a linguistic curiosity. I came back with an arithmetic problem.

ENTRY #2296

The World With No Number

[unnamed] · [unassigned]

I found a world that is not in the Directory. It has people on it. They are well. They have no gods, no monsters, and no word for why. This is the shortest entry I have ever filed.

ENTRY #2300

Why We Measure Time In Hells

The Galactic Directory

Four hundred entries of filing complaints about a conversion table that does not multiply out. I finally went and asked in person. The error is not an error. It is a headstone.