Qara

7-642 Late Harvest 33rd
Botanist Council, Duchy of Issqara, Kingdom of Tergaled   Your grace   You will suffer me to dispense with pleasantries, as I am wont to do, and not add another title to yon dozen which foilow thee as if young waifs a famed fiddler. You ask my advice on whether you would, a man of science, be best partaking in this volatile argument on the Dogma of the Soil.   Harik, do not. We live in a time which sees great advances in the Arts, and as you quite astutely put it: there is more to existance than the question if 'it' exists, but also the description of which. You understand this. You understand man, as I do birds and samples of hop centuries old. You would have a say in how a paradigm is felled, and be part of the new one. Ought man sail the sea, and leave behind the comfort of earth - for profit? Pleasure? Compulsion? Yet one to take a side on this matter will likely taken a side whence it comes to politics, as well.   Our land is harsh. The Land-Empire is ever tied unto her irrigation - the Mihurite must trade much of her metal, and iron goods with others, and we have our freezing vigil in winter. I blame not those who would seek the stars for answers: is the priest not right to say heresy, for all are scions to God and his children-- I do not know. If we are wrong - if around our sun habit no other men other planets. It may be so! It is as if I were to flip a coin in order to decide if my child were to live or die. As if I were to partake in a decision which could tear the sky asunder, split the heavens, one side to stand between the sea and those who would sail it. For where does man arrive from? Where do we descend from, if dogs from wolves, and porcine from boars? No common ancestor for the Qaran human. One may consider this sign of a 'Divine Birth' and the eldest blood-lines in our world to be equally godly. Or, it could well mean-- You know well.   So I seek. Few subscribe to my theories, yet I have more than faith, I have proof. I have chosen a life of science, which means the internalization of the method with which one seeks - what? Others have taken it unto themselves to become *close* with their ideas, as well. And this worries me. The entire world feels as if a sphere of gunpowder waiting for a spark to burst.   So my advice, your grace, is to refrain, for now, from placing foot on either side of yon fence on which we all sit.
Yours truly tar-Khaerlemmen, Countess Eberyt