To my dear Shallamese friends, and other interested parties, magisterial
or otherwise. Heed my story well for in it lies salvation. Elevate your
eyes and mind to the empyrean and what was obscured will be revealed;
what was lost will be found; what was 'prisoned will be freed.

Here, I humbly (most humbly) lay before you a story, a doggerel parable
of sorts in layers triadic. Each layer worthier of study and
consideration than any Codex or Truth (even number four which has the
word "effeminate" in it). Attend then to the literal, metaphorical and
cryptographical nature of what follows... Residing in the Jewel of the
East, a thousand and one Turns ago, there was a priest whose
pronouncements were regarded with the gravest solemnity and the
solemnest gravity by his fellow travellers 'pon the confounding,
double-backing path of the Light. The morning was bright and clear when
he emerged from his ivory tower clutching a bulbous, but perfectly
formed, onion, fit to grace the harvest of any thrice-blessed farmer
(praise the farmer who sows for us all).

"O!" he proclaimed, and also "Lo!" and "Behold! For I have, through
great study wrought a mighty miracle. For regard; in the priest's left
hand were the onion, and in his right a browning, etiolated covering of
slackened onion skin.

"Now, hear me!" quoth the priest, "I have purified said vegetable! Cured
it of its corrupting onionic nature through the careful excision of the
skin which I now hold 'twixt my fingers!". "Onions is onions", said a
passing farmer, "skin or not; they is onions all the way through.".
Xylthus, the Outcast could not have been more glum! Terrible indeed was
the priest's countenance at this most unwelcome intrusion! Rare indeed
were the times that anyone had dared disagree with this paragon of
Light, and Valour, and Justice and Harmony, and the other one (there are
five aren't there... I think so, ancillary, I will continue). A gauntlet
had been thrown, and no mistake.

"Avaunt, horny-handed son of toil and dispute not with thy betters" said
the priest (wielding his high-faluting language with all the dexterity
of the elevated Maran). "But it's an onion, any fool can see it."
replied said doughty farmer (the hero, if doubt remains, of our story).
"I have proclaimed it a purified leguminous ball of Goodness, and by
proclaiming made it so!" exclaimed the priest in a veritable paroxysm of
righteous fury. Duly chastened (or perhaps recalling a poor man's maxim
involving swine and pearls) the farmer departed. Encumbered no longer by
dispute, the priest proclaimed his new truth to the masses who bore him
upon their shoulders and anointed him caliph, pontifex and sultan. So
ends my tale; let those who have ears to hear, Listen.


Penned by My hand on the 2nd of Lupar, in the year 580 AF.