4-7: FURTHER COLLECTED ANECDOTES MADE READY FOR SHARING WITH PILGRIMS BEFORE THEY COME OF AGE REGARDING THE CITY UNENDING AND THE CULTURE THEREIN INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE MUSICAL ARTS, THE CULINARY ARTS, AND THE ARCHITECTURAL ARTS

In which our first Guide returns to discuss more about The City Unending and the various arts that are created therein including stories about a Trumpet Factory in the Borough Shining, a Pencil Bar in Borough Educational, The Clump, which technically isn't in The City at all, and more.

This episode was written by Monte D. Monteleagre (@mdmonteleagre) and performed by Joseph Sanford IV (@j4xiv).

The City Unending is a collabrative project lead by Monte D. Monteleagre and produced by Wolf Mountain Workshop (@wolfmountainworkshop). 

Go West, Pilgrim.

We have a Patreon now! Join us at the $1, $5, or $10 level to help support our shows and gain access to our exclusive Discord The Caves of Wolf Mountain.

patreon.com/WolfMountainWorkshop

We hope to see you there and thank you for being a listener.

Transcript

FURTHER COLLECTED ANECDOTES MADE READY FOR SHARING WITH PILGRIMS BEFORE THEY COME OF AGE REGARDING THE CITY UNENDING AND THE CULTURE THEREIN INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE MUSICAL ARTS, THE CULINARY ARTS, AND THE ARCHITECTURAL ARTS

THE GUIDE
Many believe that it goes without saying that the journey between our Eastern Settlements and The Horizon is a long one, but it bears repeating for those who have never made a journey of thousands of miles before, and that is just the distance before you reach the city, when the methods of transport we have here are ineffective or entirely outlawed.

This is to say, on your journey West, you will need to rest. More than likely, you will have to rest quite a few times before you ever see the fang-like skyline of The City Unending, and if you feel the need to rest coming on, do not resist it. Embrace it. The Setting Sun will wait for you.

Pilgrims often talk about their rest after first seeing The City’s skyline with awe and reverence. Buildings as tall as mountains cast shadows for many miles to the east. Excited for the night, Pilgrims will set up camp or find a place to stay and say their goodbyes to one another knowing that tomorrow they will enter The City Unending for the first time and be separated. There is laughter and tears, hope that the horizon is coming soon, and fear that they will not see their fellow Pilgrims for a long time.

What they don’t know, as we don’t have buildings like those of The City in the east, is that there is still a week or more of travel before coming to The City’s suburbs, and then several days of travel to reach the edge of The City itself.

When the Pilgrims do finally reach the skyline they’ve been staring at for days, they stand alone before a gleaming metal archway and take their first breath of The City Unending.

An interlude.

THE GUIDE
The Trumpet Factory, the good one that used to be in the District of Factories but has recently moved operations to the District of Brass famously at the heart of the Borough Shining, has become something of an ear sore lately. They’ve just began training their newest Trumpet Tester, a position which is handed down from generation to generation, and Clover never wanted to practice.

Clover, from before she could understand what it meant, was told that when she was old enough, it would be her turn to take over the family business, and that she should start practicing.

The first time she was told this she was, of course, one hour old and could not hold a trumpet. There were still plenty of trumpet-themed toys waiting for her when she got home.

A few years later, when she was starting school, Clover’s father reminded her that after she graduates she would become the next Trumpet Tester and that, if she was feeling up for it, she should join the school band.

Clover was, of course, in kindergarten at the time and band wasn’t available for four more years, not to mention that she had between 12 and 15 years of school before she graduated, depending on if any of her principals went mad with power or not.

The reminders kept coming and coming until it was the first day of her final year of school. Clover’s Mother and Clover’s Father sat her down and told her once again that, very soon, sooner than she probably expected, she would become the latest Trumpet Tester in a long line of Trumpet Testers, just like her Father before her, and that she should probably have started practicing 10 or so years ago, which was her Father’s age when he started practicing, but if she started right now at this very second that would be okay too and also the school band still has a chair in their trumpet section for her.

But Clover knew that a Trumpet Tester didn’t have to be good at the trumpet, and there would be plenty of time to practice later, so why start now? So earlier this week, Clover had her first day on the job as the Trumpet Factory’s latest Trumpet Tester and as soon as all the paperwork was filled out, Clover started to practice the trumpet. Residents in the nearby apartment building say that she is getting better, but add that, “better is the only direction she could possibly go.”

An interlude.

THE GUIDE
“I eat pencils!” Says the escaped gorilla sitting next to you at The Pencil Bar in the District of School Work which you found in the larger Borough Educational. “I love to eat them!” The escaped gorilla continues, waving down a bartender, “more pencils please!”

“And how would you like those pencils, sir?” Says the bartending, who is dressed up like a teacher.

“No need to call me sir,” says the escaped gorilla sitting next to you, “or ma’am or anything like that. You can just refer to me as, ‘escaped gorilla,’ and I like my pencils medium-used.”

“Very well, escaped gorilla, one pack of medium-used pencils coming right up.” When the bartender turns around, an apple and some gold star stickers fall out of his pocket.

“I like a little bit of a point on my pencils, but it’s nice to know someone got a little use out of them before I eat them. I like to wonder what great works they were used for.”

“I’m drawing pictures of butts!” Says the bartender while sharpening and then scribbling with the last pencil in the box. They drop a plate of slightly stubby pencils before the escaped gorilla who was watching the news story playing on the bar TV where an anchor was interviewing a rather desperate zoo keeper about a string of recent escapes all done by one particular primate. “Would you like me to add this pack to your tab?” Asks the bartender as they test all the dry erase markers trying to find one that works. He puts all the markers, working and otherwise, back in the same pile.

“Oh sure,” says the escaped gorilla, “put it on my tab,” and then they turn to you, “so, would you like to try one of my pencils or not?”

An interlude.

THE GUIDE
The Clump is not a part of The City Unending. Through legal loopholes and laissez-faire leadership, The Clump is under the jurisdiction of a different city which is on the other side of the world and also no longer exists.

Surrounded on all sides by The City Unending, a Frankenstein cube of old buildings, houses, parks, heraldry, and roads all tied, knotted, and taped together rises as a plateau towards the sky. Through the numerous cracks in its façade bleed the sounds of an entire new city. Doors at dazzling heights dot the reinforced concrete, all hanging slightly askew to the open air, and any local will tell you to bring your own ladder and keep it on your person at all times.

All of this is to say that, should you come across The Clump on your journey through The City Unending, don’t go in there.

If you do find it, though, and decide to observe the gargantuan structure from a reasonable distance, maybe from the balcony of a nice coffee shop, you will see dozens of knights in shining armor march along the parapets under a dozen different banners that change with the weeks, and you will see the soldiers, sword in hand, swing on ropes down the walls and smash through a door to claim a new hallway for whatever lord they’re serving this week.

And if you find yourself in The Cluster, which again we do not advise, you should try the food, which we cannot guarantee is safe to eat, since the smells alone draw food enthusiasts from all around The City to bring their ladders. Those that return tell of narrow alley-hallways, strange liquids dripping from the exposed-wire-ceilings and bubbling up from the patchwork floors, great courtyards with standing armies a hundred cavalry strong with gardens in full bloom under a warm spring sun, and something that is, quote, “...like a donut, but now every time I have a donut, it’s like I’m eating a shadow of that almost donut thing.”

An interlude.

THE GUIDE
I didn’t hear from anybody on whether or not they would be interested in taking a stretch break instead of just a breathing break, so we’re just going to do a breathing break today, which is more than okay and I would go so far as to say that it’s important. When you’re in The City Unending, it is important to breath. It is also important to stretch, but just breathing today. You know how this goes. In. Hold. Out. In. Hold. Out. In Hold Out. And now we continue.

An interlude.

THE GUIDE
The Mouth That We Feed Babies To is only barely a misnomer. It is, as you may have assumed, a massive mouth lined with shining white teeth that one day opened in the Borough Decadent and swallowed whole the District of Pastries. No one was hurt during the Great Gasping, of course, as everyone was made aware of the event several years in advance by a scientist named of Dr. Forgiveness.

Dr. Forgiveness, who was still between names at the time, was studying spontaneous mouth events for her entire professional life and made a breakthrough while stay-cationing in the District of Pastries, “Obviously if it was going to happen anywhere, it was going to happen here, probably in several years so everyone get a couple dozen months of pastries in and then scram,” which everyone did, because Dr. Forgiveness was a scientist and well respected in her field.

I only say she was a scientist because she is dead now from old age after a long and fulfilling life spent with the people she loved and the work that allowed her to live in the District of Pastries and then later the District of Sweets starting slightly before the Great Gasping occurred.

Today, The Mouth That We Feed Babies To is, in fact the only daycare in The City Unending that is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including holidays, and it just so happens that babies love it there. The staff is calm, even the ones that are tasked with constantly brushing the teeth, and they are loving and they all have a  rigorous Montessori background. The more senior staff members even say that sometimes the mouth coughs up new babies from the back of its throat, and that these babies already know the alphabet. “The oldest baby we’ve seen the mouth spontaneously create was 28, and now she works here,” reads their pamphlet with an asterisk that reads, “They weren’t actually 28, they were brand new and spontaneously created by The Mouth That We Feed Babies To, but you know what we mean.”

An interlude.

THE GUIDE
Of those few Pilgrims who are called by The Rising Sun back East, there are a handful that talk of whole lives lived in The City Unending. They talk of families and careers, of adventures and disaster and the mundane days of waiting for the toaster to finish only to find that it burnt your bread. They talk of their lives as scholars and thieves and doctors and, in one specific case, a professional snapper, like the thing you do with your fingers.

When they all finally left The City Unending, sometimes old, Sometimes young, and sometimes in between, they waved goodbye to the people they knew there and crossed the western border towards the Setting Sun.

When those called by the Rising Sun tell us about their journey back, The City is never waiting for them. Those that lived full lives there, younger in spirit than they are in body, or maybe vise versa in some cases, share their tales mostly to remember, or to forget in some cases, but always to prepare you, those that will come of age soon and forge your own journey West.

And when that time comes, Pilgrim, we can only hope we have prepared you enough, and they you go West, Pilgrim.

END