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The Mythical Meadows
A Region of Threadbare, beyond the shores of Fray's End, where the known world runs out of names
"Some say the Meadows are not a place you travel to. Some say they are a place that travels to you - that it arrives when you are ready, or when you are not, and the difference matters less than you might hope."
Far beyond the shores of Fray's End, long past the Last Lighthouse, across the Sea of Stolen Dreams, there lies a land that few have ever reached, and even less have ever returned from.
This is the Mythical Meadows - the strangest, and most impossibly vast region of Threadbare. A landscape of soft rolling hills stitched with wildflowers of colours that don't have names yet. Ancient forests that get up and move like great migrating herds. Mountains so high they converse with the sky in whispers we would call storms and valleys so impossibly deep they haven’t seen sunlight since the dawn of time. Rivers run in multiple directions at once, and in every colour you can imagine. Rainbows form bridges between mountains, allowing the Fae to pass unseen overhead, while also forming portals in their arc, so that the Giants may move from place to place and avoid crushing the world below their feet while walking.
No one is certain how old or how large this land is. All expeditions sent to map it have returned with completely unique maps, observations, and scientific results. Most trusted has become that of the work of Willomena Wanderweave, Chief Cartographer of the Observatory of the Obscure, whose first expedition was thought to have failed as her ship finally drifted home after years at sea, empty of crew, but holding a library of tattered journals that, among other entries suggested they had indeed made landfall on the Mythical Meadows. Her opening entry read, ”I believe I have left this world and travelled to another entirely. What we have found here is all but impossible to comprehend…am I at home in Frays End and in my bed, asleep and dreaming?”
Wanderweave’s journal aside, rumours, speculation, and tall tales inform most of the information on this mysterious land. What everyone does agree on however, is that the Meadows are alive in a way that the other regions of Threadbare are not. Not alive like an animal, or even a plant, but alive like a dream…and dreams, as any KnitWitch will tell you, dreams have a life of their own.
The Mythical Meadows do not stay still. They are ever changing, and in every way. Landscape and sky, river and lake, flora and fauna. In the way that dreams fade as the morning ages, or as memory rearranges itself even as you’re reminiscing. A grove of paper birches that stood to the north yesterday may stand to the east today, and to the south tomorrow. Mountains in the distance never get nearer, no matter how far you have walked in their direction. Rivers running in one direction in the morning, run the opposite way in the afternoon, chasing a sea that went to lunch. One journal entry tells of a river that got up, yawned, stretched, and lay down again in a completely different position.
The flowers are the most remarked-upon feature, with pages of Wanderweave’s journals dedicated to almost manic scribbles about flowers that lean, get up and walk, or fly, sing, whisper, or even bite, hiss, or puff poison as you pass. They bloom in impossible abundance - creating carpets of ever-shifting colour. Some blooms are familiar - foxgloves, poppies, jasmine, cherry blossom, protea, and lotus. Others are entirely new - flowers that seem to be made of woven thread, or folded paper, with one notable entry of a vibrant lilac bloom made of half-remembered faces. The archivists of the Observatory of the Obscure have catalogued over four thousand species from the journals alone, while the practitioners of the KnitWitch covens pay huge sums for rare petals to create new and powerful spells. There are hills that are hollow and are said to be filled with all manner of magical creatures. There are standing stones inscribed in ancient or fantastical script which, when finally deciphered and read, correct your pronunciation. The sky is never the same colour twice in one day, moving through the spectrum of known and unknown colours, but always in keeping with the mood of the land. Brights and warm colours for lazy days, and dark blues and fierce greys when the land is clearly upset.
"The flowers lean when you walk past. Not toward you - toward where you are going. It is possible they know more about your journey than you do?" - Journal of Willomena Wanderweave
There is a theory that every folktale ever told, from every culture and every corner of every world, becomes real in the Mythical Meadows. Not retold. Not remembered. Real. The trickster spider who owns all the world's stories is there, and his web is larger than a cathedral, and some of the threads are still being spun. The moon rabbit who pounds medicine in a jade mortar, she's there too, and she is very busy, and she will ask for your help if you linger long enough. Wander long enough and you’ll find the three old women arguing over the thread of a life, or the salmon of knowledge in his river, or the fabled minotaur wandering his prison maze. They say there’s even a city of gold and a fountain of youth, a room filled with soldiers turned to stone, a monkey king…and a big bad wolf too.
All there. All real. All waiting.
"Every story from every culture exists here. The Meadows are a kind of living library." - Journal of Willomina Wanderweave
Even the KnitWitches, who know more about the nature of things than most, speak of the Meadows' creatures with a particular reverence. 'We didn't make them,' says High KnitWitch, Noria NeedleNest, who has studied the region since its discovery. 'They were already here. The moment people started telling stories about them they were here. The Meadows is simply where those stories finally had somewhere to take shape.'
If you are reading this and you have never been to the Mythical Meadows - if you are standing at the edge of Fray's End looking with longing out to sea, then perhaps this land is for you. The Meadows are made of stories. Every myth, every folktale, every creature’s name whispered by firelight in every culture that has ever existed. It lives here, and is waiting for you to find it. To retell its story, exactly as it was first told, or with threads and yarns of your own, or completely anew. There are no wrong answers. There is no wrong direction. The flowers already know which way you're going. You only have to make land and start walking.
The Mythical Meadows awaits.