Start here: An Introduction: In Which We Meet the Floating City and Its Poppet Queens

In the mouth of a blue whale there is a sea creature who has set up camp, humming low echoes into the walls of the whale’s belly, knocking bones against harp string baleen. It is the Sea Impervious. It is the drinking well in the center of the city. It is the Fool’s Ocean. It is anywhere.

Once upon a time, there was a homeless heart.

Homeless hearts are like broken blues riffs, like single drum beats, like pieces of words begging for bodies, for places to hold their weight, full of messages erupted from whispers. Homeless hearts nestle into the cradles of coral and coal, they become caught again and again, a base drum muscle. Homeless hearts in seas pump water but are hungry for blood.

This is the beginning.

The beginning is about some nameless sea god building from bones and bits of jellyfish, a body for the heart, a body with ribs and fingers and two eyes and a throat full of songs.

The beginning is about the creature opening her mouth and laughing, about the god cautioning her of many things, but most of all, of her jellyfish skin, like layers of water paper and dreams, fragile.

The beginning is full of beginnings, each lonelier than the last; this is a story about falling in love.

But for falling, there must be gravity. And for a true and barbaric gravity, one must eventually leave the water.

This is a story about gravity. Truly, all stories are eventually about gravity…

More to be found in the second Compendium. Coming soon.