A Tale of Crescendo ~ Epilogue
A Tale of Crescendo ~ Epilogue
Chapter 11: The Spheres and The Sea
As a bonus for readers who have absorbed A Tale of Crescendo in entirety in its Psychedelic Scene debut, enjoy this easter egg epilogue which picks up the story one year following the clash and reckoning.
This creatively written novella was inspired by a veritable cornucopia of allegorical references to conflicts caused by lack of communication, division resulting from varying views and appearances, Golden Age psychedelia, an Aquarian leitmotif, biblical references including The Book of Lilith, evolutionary and historical precedents, current events, and pop-culture literary references to J.R.R. Tolkien, L. Frank Baum, Lewis Carroll, Isaac Asimov, Gene Roddenberry, George Lucas and James Cameron.
Thank you for taking the time to read it.
A Tale of Crescendo ~ Epilogue - Chapter 11: The Spheres And The Sea
EPILOGUE 
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Spheres And The Sea
Year 29
EPILOGUE Thee hands of time and the tribe have counted one year since the calamitous clash of Crescendo. For the past year the land remains at peace and harmony, with its inhabitants reunited as one tribe after three decades of segregation. As their elders gracefully fade, the next generation rebuilds the world anew, never to take up arms against each other again. The children born on this world – many of them orphaned – now outnumber the adults who survived the Great War. As Arch Kaedan and Q’yn welcome Crescendo’s first grandchild to a peaceful planet with much ado, the circle of life begins anew.
On the winter solstice, the unified Crescendant tribe had exchanged gifts on the newly built bridges across the Shendoa. For the next ten days, they solemnly observed their traditions and their elders in reverence. As the tribe gathered around the cypress maypole on the new year’s first day, Masters Sho-lin and Mila stood atop the tree stump soapbox stage to tell their distant origin story.
· · · – – – · · ·
Eons ago in a faraway land, their ancestors prospered in harmony for centuries, communicating with each other melodiously by way of song. Sho-lin explains that one millennium ago, the tribespeople witnessed the simultaneous collision of their two moons, two neighboring planets, and a duo of distant stars.
“Binary Suns” by Zacic Volkshed
As a sign of distress, their astronomers broadcast multi-directional solar flashes of light in a series of dots and dashes. Divided into two tribes who decided to flee or face their impending doom, multiple vessels containing the voyaging Ascendant tribe departed their lands. After seven years a single starlit ship, named after their dialect’s word for ‘Interpret,’ reached a vibrant world with a breathable atmosphere and endless land and water.
Sho-lin explains that as their tribe originated from afar, their ancestral lineage exists not simply within their blood but through providence and good fortune. No individuals in the tribe are divinely chosen for nobility; yet together with goodwill and perseverance, each and every one of them are.
· · · – – – · · ·
Mila, who retrieved Captain R’Nesto’s log from the shoreline one hour after it sank, reveals its contents to the tribe as the only person who has read it.
One hundred years ago, the ancestors of their tribe fled their homeland on a sinking archipelago. Although the disaster occurred naturally and gradually, the divided tribe had been preoccupied by a conflict between two royal families. The civil war was initiated by the joining of a combustible dyad of Brilian born on the summer solstice, and Maedan born on the winter solstice. As the land the tribe had called home for centuries sank into the ocean, several ships set sail with only The Minuet and its seafarers known to survive.
Mila concludes by commenting that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, lamenting not sharing this precious knowledge until now.
"The Fleet of Zhèng Shì" by Brenda van Vugt
The unified tribe will soon mark thirty years since The Minuet first brought the tribe to the land of Crescendo, led by Arch R’Nesto and their gallant forebearers. Attending the birth of her granddaughter Q’isa in the royal clinic, the guild’s doyenne huntress Lyla and trackers Su-rin and Xo-nan prepare to set out on a new quest to circumnavigate the continent. While endeavoring to chart the remote edges of the undiscovered country, they also hope to locate Pai-san and the missing gladiator during their expedition.
Celebrating the first new year of their Aquarian age of peace, the musically inclined remnant band including new mother Q’yn, Lyla, Xo-nan, Juna and her beau gathered at the rocks at Minuet Point. Conveying their gratitude by way of songs based on Dilian’s poems, new groups are formed, taking their names from the silver beetles nesting in the tree stumps and the immovable stones nearby.
At the southern shore, Juna contemplates her aria and her role in the events that set the clash in motion. Reminiscing about her young brother, lost to the river as the war began, she often pays her respects to Paedan with songs to the whispering wind. From time to time her blackbird visits her and a stationary cardinal while sending news to and from afar, along with half-brother Tilian. The beeping blackbird R’To and the chirpy cardinal Nest-o – both named after her grandfather – rest on her shoulders, trilling new songs together.
"Cardinal" (artist unknown)
Over the past year Juna, aged twenty-three, has wed an Escendant pathfinder in a ceremony of the free tribe, with music and dancing along a Shendoa tributary valley between blue ridged mountains and the southern sea. The couple will soon welcome their first child; finally a grandchild for Ivera and Aedan, first great-grandchild of forefather R’Nesto. As her unborn child (Zefra if it’s a girl, Zefram if it’s a boy) nudges from within, Juna peers at the Sythirin Sea through a looking glass once fashioned from a hollow branch and pieces of volcanic glass. Hoping together they can one day build a new sailing vessel, on clear days she barely glimpses the edge of a remote island in the distance.
Across the river in Escenda, Lilian abides by her solitary confinement within the giant redwood, a prisoner of her own demise. She has not left the bedside of her daughter Lolabi, spoken nor slept in the year since her day of reckoning. She can no longer conjure dark magick nor enchant the Crescendants, and no longer desires to. Visited twice by her troubadour brother, they shared only a glance as he quietly sang to her and her baby in the cradle.
Silently she perpetually mourns her ill-fated firstborn with Aedan, born below deck on The Minuet as it crashed ashore, presumably lost to the sea. Having never spoken of her first daughter Loria who was unknown to the tribe, Lilian now shields her two-year-old baby girl Lolabi within the wood to remain forevermore, sleeplessly awaiting each day’s rising sun.
______
"Raven in Pine Tree Branches" by Laura Iverson
Nearing summertime, the graybeard Dilian hearkens throughout the land to organize a tribute to all of their dead slain in the clash, whose souls are grateful to be memorialized. Starting a new tradition, he beckons the tribe to join him for an annual gathering within Nether Mount, now safely accessible using established footpaths undisturbed by baerres and wolves.
As the exodus completes the first annual pilgrimage north to the mountains on the first day of summer, they stand in awe in the great hall of Wynterlyn with its menagerie and natural splendor. On the solstice and day of jubilation, the tribe celebrates their fallen forebearers with a grand banquet, and a symphonic concert overseen by Dilian that lasts until dawn.
_____
The End
. . .
"The Last Waltz" Dylan & The Band 11/25/1976 Winterland Music Hall - Photo courtesy David Gans, WYSO, Wikimedia Commons
Appreciation to you, the reader, for taking the time to read my first creatively written book.
The story never ends.
. . .
A Tale of Crescendo eBook PDF download
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Written by William M. Kurzenberger
December 2025 – January 2026
All Rights Reserved
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“As they sing under the treetown, they often chant in a Crescendo.”
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