The Ossuary of Learning

There was a time, not that long ago, where the Bone Shadows of the UK had a place. It was their place, a tribal place, and whilst it wasn't guarded jealously visitors were watched carefully and closely. This was a place of knowledge and learning. A place of secrets and answers, and a place of death.

Some said that it was nothing more than a library - holding books and scrolls and tablets and carvings. Lore of the tribe, stories of heroes and villains, histories of the people and of the herd, prophecies ancient and fulfilled, old and unknown.

Some would say that it was a resting place for the dead - for knowledge and knowing dies as soon as flesh and bone. A place where things that had passed their time could rest and be remembered. Where tools which were of use no longer could lie in honour. Where skills once essential might be recalled.

Some would say that it was a bone-yard, an ossuary where the bones of predator and prey, hero and villain, ally and enemy could rest with honour and be remembered.

Some would say it was all these and more - a pool where the restless dead can pass onwards to their journey - and where a determined seeker might follow (though never to return). A resting place for knowledge and learning. For people and prey and things. A place of memory.

Where it was, and what it was, is also not really remembered. It was a place - a physical building, around a courtyard with a dank, dark pool surrounded by willow trees. It was in the Shadow, a low building of dark stone where light didn't reach properly, illuminated by the many faces of the Mother shining in the sky through a hole in the roof, reflecting on nothing and surrounded by cobwebs. It was a place that is not - a hole underground, deep and warm, but accessed by any who know the secret paths from any suitable portal (and debate if that was a place of death, of learning, a door made of old oak, or surrounded by ivy) under the moon-lit sky.

What is known is that there was a keeper, one of the Hirafahra Hissu, who maintained the place and kept it safe. That keeper died, or was lost, and did not pass the knowledge to any other - the way to the place was lost. Its very name was lost! Its thought that the keeper was slain during the bombing of Britain by the Germans in the second world war, but in truth it could have been before or after. It could have been Beshilu or Azlu, the Pure or Bale Hounds. It could have been any one of a thousand things.

But the place was lost. The knowledge was lost, and with it, so to the pathways to the place that the Bone Shadows had held dear.

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