PROLOGUE
A Fireside Telling of The Absurd Abstract Mosaic City
Dear Imaginatan Citizenz
If you sit close enough to the hearth, and if the night is quiet enough that even the wind holds its breath, you might hear the old storytellers speak of a place that exists just beyond the periphral juxtawarp. They say it flickers at the corner of your vision like a half‑remembered dream. They say it is a city built from fractured colour and twisted thought. They say its name is The Absurd Abstract Mosaic City, and that it is older than logic yet younger than imagination.
The tale begins with a soft crackle of flame. The kind that invites you to lean in.
In that strange city, the streets do not run straight. They coil and fold like serpents made of tessellated stone. Every tile carries a memory. Every corner holds a whisper. The People of the Mosaic walk these streets with faces shaped by shifting patterns. Their features rearrange themselves according to mood, weather, or the angle of the sun. They speak in Twistlish, a language that tastes like poetry and feels like a puzzle.
A greeting might drift through the air like a drifting ember.
“Amounge the spirals of your shadow, may your thoughts find gentle symmetry.”
The city itself is divided into districts, each one stranger than the last. The Paradoxal Quarter leans inward as if the buildings are conspiring. The Lexiconclave rises like a cathedral of living words. The Gordian Fold twists upon itself in recursive layers, a neighbourhood where homes are built inside metaphors. And the Juxtawarp Bazaar hums with the trade of bottled emotions and speculative futures.
The fire pops softly. Sparks rise like tiny lanterns.
Now listen closely. This is where the tale deepens.
There was once a cartographer named Zelquint, a quiet thinker whose face resembled a mosaic of calm blues and thoughtful greens. He carried a compass that never pointed north. Instead, it pointed toward unresolved questions. Zelquint wandered the city mapping the landscapes of thought. He charted the valleys of regret. He sketched the mountains of longing. He traced the rivers of forgotten dreams.
One evening, while walking through the Gordian Fold, Zelquint felt the ground shift beneath him. The tiles rearranged themselves into a spiral of crimson and gold. This meant the city was trying to speak. He knelt and placed his hand upon the warm stone.
A whisper rose from the spiral.
“Seek the Subtextual Cavern.”
Zelquint felt a tremor of curiosity. The Subtextual Cavern was a myth whispered by Atmospherists and Archivists. It was said to lie beneath the city, a place where the foundational metaphors of reality were stored. Some believed it was the birthplace of the Mosaic People. Others believed it was a vault of cosmic language. Zelquint believed it was calling to him.
He followed the shifting tiles through narrow alleys and luminous courtyards. He passed Madame Phibula as she danced in impossible angles, her limbs bending like equations in motion. He passed the Archivist of Unsaid Things, who carried a satchel filled with words that had never been spoken. He passed Squire Silverpen, who was scribbling notes for a scandalous tale that would never quite survive the city’s geometrizized gossip.
At last, Zelquint reached a quiet plaza where the air shimmered with subtext. A stone archway stood at the centre, carved with symbols that rearranged themselves whenever he blinked. He stepped through.
The cavern opened beneath him like a vast library of living metaphor. The walls pulsed with colour. The floor rippled like a page turning itself. In the centre of the cavern sat a small folded paper boat. It glowed faintly with a soft blue light.
Zelquint approached it with reverence.
A single line was written upon the boat.
“Madmess is not madness. It is the geometry of truth unshackled.”
The words vibrated with meaning. Zelquint felt them settle into his bones. He understood then that the city was not a place of chaos. It was a place of liberated structure. A realm where thought could twist itself into new forms without breaking. A sanctuary for ideas that refused to remain linear.
The cavern began to hum. The walls brightened. The paper boat unfolded itself into a map. Not a map of streets or districts. A map of possibility. A map of what the city could become if its people embraced the full spectrum of their geometrizized nature.
Zelquint held the map close. He felt the city breathe around him.
When he returned to the surface, the sky had changed. The Atmospherists had painted it with swirling hues of violet and amber. The Chime of Discontinuity rang in a pattern he had never heard before. Citizens gathered around him, their faces shifting with anticipation.
Zelquint raised the map.
The city listened.
He spoke in Twistlish, his voice steady and warm.
“Amounge the folds of our shared thought, let us walk into a future shaped by liberated truth.”
The tiles beneath their feet glowed. The buildings leaned closer. The entire city seemed to inhale.
And then, with a gentle exhale, The Absurd Abstract Mosaic City transformed.
The Paradoxal Quarter straightened just enough to allow clarity. The Lexiconclave released a new word into the air, a word that tasted like dawn. The Gordian Fold untwisted a single layer, revealing a hidden courtyard filled with soft light. The Juxtawarp Bazaar shimmered with new colours.
The people felt the shift. They felt the truth of madmess settling into harmony.
Zelquint smiled. His face rearranged itself into a pattern of quiet triumph.
The fire crackles again. The tale settles like warm ash.
And so, if you ever find yourself walking through a place where the streets spiral and the buildings rhyme, where language feels like a living creature and thought bends into beautiful knots, you may already be closer to The Absurd Abstract Mosaic City than you think.
Fold your thoughts. Trust the geometry. And let the story carry you sideways into wonder.
Until the next unraveling of our beloved city,
Your Mistress Of Gozzyp: Lady Absurdia