The Endless Presence

"There were rumors from the earliest days of the town, in which miners who stayed out too late after dark would on their way home chance an encounter with an odd roving light - which some who saw it said had a strange and vaguely house-like symbol at its centre. Generally such visions were dismissed by those who had not seen such a thing themselves - putting the testimonies of such witnesses down to excesses of strong drink, or else a few too many days working under the sun.

As time went on, the sightings continued - rare but almost regular. Nearly always, the light was seen at night, and then usually in the small hours of the morning. Theories were swapped between believers and debated over bars & dining tables; some said it was a Min-Min light (this one was the most favoured at the beginning), others thought it was a ghost of this lost miner or that, later some also said it was an extratererestrial presence (this one became very popular after the 1950's), or else it had something to do with the army. Unusually for an outback town with such a persistently unexplained phenomena in its history, the locals never thought to give any quaintly special name to it - whenever mentioned, it was simply known as the 'Mine Light'.

Some rumored that a schoolteacher who had worked in the town during the Great Depression had been able to somehow, by chance take a photograph of this elusive light during the day, but he always denied it. Even his own family denied knowledge of such an image, though some said that was only to keep with the more respectable side of the town. The fact that he had suddenly decided to study theology soon after the rumor started - and put school teaching aside to train for the ministry when he left the town - was assumed to be the natural consequence of a restless and moralistic mind.

Eventually there came a day soon after the century next turned, where in a city far to the east of the town, a young bus driver recieved some old boxes & tins containing photos, documents and other oddments that she'd inheriterd from her recently deceased great uncle. In one such tin, she found a book of matches, and a yellowed envelope containing a folded handkerchief, sewn carefully closed at the folds. Cutting the stitches, she found inside some wrapping tissue which had been folded and sealed with wax.

Breaking the seal, she discovered inside that a single photograph - of an unearthly, antlered creature with a light above its head. It seemed to be sitting in scrubland like that near the town where her great uncle's father once worked, with a dark mist around it (...or was that just a shadow in the bushes instead?). On the back of the photo, in longhand, was written: 'Behind the Northern quarry, November 28, 1935. Dissappeared after photo taken' - and below the date a sketch of an odd, house-like symbol.

Something about this symbol made the young woman take another look at the photo - and there it was, though she could barely make it out in the light over the creature's head; the same unfamiliar glyph... and she thought that maybe it was now time to begin asking more questions about her predecessors, and where they lived."

Done with Gimp from a TEF screenshot of one of my Endless Forest stags Catastrophix in one of his pelt/antler sets, with one of my photos used for the background. Presumably he's roaming through a few other dimensions after vanishing from his home one in those little puffs of purple smoke I've seen some other deer do in the game. Restless kind of creature, I think

You can also see the full-colour version of the manip here.

Photo & Deer Image Manipulation by Julia A. Lock 2010
Deer Image by The Endless Forest (@ Tale of Tales.Com), Colour/Body Concept by Lyrak