A Tale of Crescendo ~ Chapter 7: The Flashback; Chapter 8: The Black Bird
A Tale of Crescendo ~ Chapter 7: The Flashback; Chapter 8: The Black Bird
In this penultimate installment of A Tale of Crescendo time rewinds to Aedan and Lily’s seafaring love affair on The Minuet, Sho-lin’s hallucinogenic visionquest, and Dilian’s expedition to Wynterlyn as long-concealed events come into focus. While the antagonist’s identity and motivations are unveiled to the keenest readers, literary allusions recall J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of The Rings, Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, and a biblical character omitted from the Old Testament.
A fictional novella making its published debut in Psychedelic Scene Books, A Tale of Crescendo blends Earth’s evolutionary prehistory with an Aquarian motif and references to Golden Age psychedelia.
A Tale of Crescendo ~ A New World Created by Bill Kurzenberger
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Flashback
(Year 0 ~ Year 1)
Commemorating their hundredth winter solstice on The Minuet, the voyaging tribe celebrated with seafood-stuffed paunches and much ado. During the festivities which also marked Aedan’s twentieth year of birth, the unlikely lovers sought their parents’ consent as Lily would turn the same age in six months time. However as they had R’Nesto’s trust and ear, Lily’s parents forbade her from coupling with Aedan lest they lose favor with the Archfather, who viewed all this as a distraction.
Busily scouting ahead Arch R’Nesto sighted a flock of red and blue birds towards the sunrise signaling land, and bragged about conquering it to his three pages fishing for food for the tribe. Ten days later the ship reached the shores of Crescendo, ran aground and took its captain and their elders to watery graves within. Mourning the drowned, the divided tribes realized some of their missing kin had reached the river’s other side but could not determine exactly who had survived the shipwreck.
Swimming to shore as The Minuet ran aground and sank on arrival, Dilian’s hand was bitten by a venomous king lizard hiding in the lilypads. Moaning his missing fingertip and the loss of his family, he shed no tears for Arch R’Nesto. While his mother had tended to his ailing sister below deck that morning, Dilian’s father pleaded the Arch to turn the ship port or starboard. But arrogant R’Nesto insisted on entering at the raging rivermouth, and the captain crashed the damned ship causing their demise.
Cursing R’Nesto as the ship’s mast sank below the sea with Dilian’s family, he did not sense that they had survived. With the other half of the tribe too far away to communicate with, he howled until losing his voice as well. Consoled by the young medicine woman with bandages and an embrace, she bore the sad news that his twin sister and parents were not among the other eighteen survivors on their side of the river.
Nearing their first summer on this new world and his annual day of birth, Dilian set his sites on a smattering of snow-tipped peaks to rest and meditate peacefully. Under the new moon, he proposed to his muse and healer to join him on his adventure east. However Mila, now their medicine woman, reminded him that her doctoral skills and medicinal herbs were needed by their depleted tribe. Mila kissed his cheek and held his one good hand, which Dilian returned in kind while contemplating his path.
On his twentieth birthday Dilian approached the tribe wearing shaded spectacles shielding his eyes from the blinding solstitial sun, and a glove to hide his missing fingertip. Preparing to notify them of his decision to depart for eastern mountains where he may lay in, they announced their majority vote electing Dilian as Arch of their divided tribe. Knowing that the full tribe could not endure a mountainous trek, they settled instead under the largest trees within a fruit-bearing forest able to sustain the tribe
(Year 3 ~ Year 4)
Still nursing his wounded hand and confiding only with his two trusted advisors, Dilian lost the finger entirely. As the infection threatened his hand with gangrene, Mila’s herbs and aloe leaves could not stop the spread. Later the tracker Sho-lin returned from the Nethermore alone minus his fallen pathfinders, and provided the medicine woman a piney flower. While it soothed the poison in Dilian’s hand, the herb was too small in substance to heal him. Dilian and Mila prompted the sage to recount his journey home after his two companions had fallen within Nethermore.
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Joshua Tree National Park, California by Sean Russel
With his return route cut off by a landslide and his companions lost to the mountains, Sho-lin forged a new path leaving Nether Mount behind. As he followed a bouscat hare into a fungal thicket, he was captivated by the singular charm of a butterfly. Hungering and slumbering in grass among blue morels, he tested their curious flavour. After he awakened he was unsure if a day had passed, or perhaps longer.
Drifting southeast he lay in a bath of crystallized sand which devoured him in brown mud. Vowing not to return to the sandpit, Sho-lin flattened a fallen papyrus stalk and dipped his finger in a puddle of porcupine ink. Using the ink and paper he inscribed about his excursion, drawing a horizontal line to remember not to revisit the quicksand. Below, he scrawled vertical and horizontal lines combined to denote the plus and minus sides of sampling various fungi.
As a cold rain and snow pushed him eastward and further from home, Sho-lin traveled on foot through cloudy months with no sun nor moon to guide him. Above, the flight paths of a royal blue bird and a scarlet bird converged together near a spiky plant in the desert ahead. Having run out of water, Sho-lin sipped from the spiny dahlia. As the cardinal and bluebird joined him, the avian dyad molded into one with combined colors. During the next three days Sho-lin communicated with the tanager bird, consuming the purple cactus for nourishment.
The first of the tribes to observe this natural color and communicate with birds, Sho-lin followed the tanager east to a crooked wood of bonsai trees. With only room to crawl inside, he discovered an unlikely sanctuary. Seeking solace in this spiritual den, the sage reclined aside eggplants and a giving tree.
Under a purplish panorama he observed violet mist of atmospheric auroras beyond the realm of birds and fog, and furthermore cosmic clouds of indigo where the stars sparkle within. Inside the nebulous betelgeuse a pair of titian and oceanic planets were locked in cosmogonic conflict mirroring the cycles of our lunar and solar spheres. Between them, a shooting star and distant darkstar crashed in a galactic game, twinkling in colliding flashes of blue and red. As the periwinkle star blinked through the borealis, the wizened sage noticed a pattern in its intermittency.
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Having never contemplated this cosmic connection Sho-lin absorbed this wisdom within the nexus of earth and space, and blinked back in kind. With porcupine ink he scrawled the sequence of three round dots, three horizontal lines, and another trio of dots unto the other side of the thin papyrus. Meanwhile its only other occupant the chirpy tanager cautioned him to not divulge this serene place, except to those few as wise as he. Responding with an “om” Sho-lin pledged not to reveal the sublime sanctum and universal unrest he perceived.
Bowing to the avian, the giving tree and celestial entities above, he expressed gratitude while crawling out on all fours the way he came. No longer perceiving the sanctuary and the purpureus haze, he silently named the shrine after the snowy rabbit setting him down the road less traveled. Glimpsing the lagomorph as it bounded into the night, Sho-lin meditated to the sound of nearby waves.
At dawn the next day, the sage’s eyes were opened as the sun rose over an uncertain sea. With the Bousca sanctum nowhere in sight, Sho-lin discerned sight of an undiscovered ocean and followed its coastline south for perhaps a week. Passing a deserted log pyramid still smoldering, the thru-hiker was turnt to the right into the canyons with no design on the pyre along the shore.
Treading through prowlers’ lands, a nightcrawler slithered through the stormy night towards the sage. Confronted by a spotted feline, Sho-lin abated the jaguaro nonviolently using a jugular mantra and a meter-long hiking stick. Approaching the Shendoa River valley, he found himself on the other side of the rockslide sending him on this solitary road. Above, a peregrine dropped a pungent pine herb from its talons to the ground at his feet which he later sampled.
Tracking the falcon’s flight path behind him to the highest peak as it soared into a crevice within, Sho-lin could now track a new circuitous path to Nether Mount. Finally returning to Escenda, he jotted a map of all the landmarks from his year-long trip home – excepting the sanctum. Sho-lin revealed his map and visionquest only to Dilian and Mila, merely whispering to the muse about the stellar sanctuary.
Supernova GRB 250314A (ESA/NASA artist's rendition)
(Year 10 ~ Year 11)
With Dilian’s infected hand fully immobilized from the king lizard’s venom, he secretly embarked to the Nethermore alone with the sage’s map. Referring to Sho-lin as a wise master and leaving him and Mila the muse to manage E’scend in his stead, he kissed Mila and their eight-year old twins goodbye and estimated his return within a year or two. As he left the redwood and tribe’s village in the dead of night under a cold new moon, he told only his partner and their twins along with the master.
Sho-lin gave him the map and his blessing, pointing Dilian northeast to the fungal garden then northwest along the falcons’ flight path to the tryptan blue mountain. Using the map and deductive reasoning while scrawling poetically on another payprus, Dilian peered at the sequence of dots and dashes on the back of the map and forged his own path.
Arriving into Nether Mount he discovered this splendid hall along with its temperate climate, herb gardens, hot whirlpools and the sparkling natural spring. Over several years these combined treatments healed him, other than his missing finger. Various animal predators including wolves and baerres had encroached on him from below his elevated perch. In time as he cohabited with the wild animals, Dilian learned to innately communicate with them as long as his intentions remain pure. Although he does not control the creatures, he can dissuade their demeanor as well as see their point of view.
Once Dilian had recovered and was able to venture outside of the mountain, he prepared to return home to his tribe. However, a pack of mountain lions beyond his control had chased him back inside each time he attempted to leave. He later found the other two eastern trackers encased in ice on a precipice ledge. Carrying them one by one into Wynterlyn, he placed the pair into the hot waterpools where they were soon revived by Shendoa springwater and the healing herb which he called smylia.
(Present = Year 26)
Exhaling in sooty subterranean air approaching the new day, the dyad of lovers bask in the afterglow of their Minuet sonata and forbidden lunar lambada. Spotting a skeleton key on the oubliette floor, Lily unlocks the rooted cell imprisoning them both. As she leads Aedan up a curved stairwell into the furnished base of a broad tree, he finds them within a giant redwood.
Following his rosette into its largest chamber, he glimpses sunlight for the first time in years. Turning to face him, Lily casts aside her gowns and beseeches him to couple with her. As he approaches her wooden bedside, a sudden wail emits from an adjoining room. He halts and turns towards the sound which is clearly an infant’s cry. Exhaling while she redresses, he interrogates if Lily is with child. As she opens the door, she reveals a swaddled bambino in a cradle.
She has named her Lolabi, daughter of Lily and Aedan. Astounded, Aedan gingerly holds his newfound baby in his arms for the first time and she stops crying. Arriving in the nursery are adult twins who do not speak, and a young man with a face resembling his own. Delighted by this abrupt familial reunion, Aedan inquires if he is his son Kaedan, or Paedan? His name is Tilian, he corrects his father, firstborn of Aedan and Lily. Recalling their initial meeting during the Aria and Battle at Lepe Point, Aedan nods and acknowledges Tilian as their son.
As he turns to Lily she showers him with affection, nursing her infant. She announces that Tilian turns twenty-one years old today – the winter solstice – which is Aedan’s own forty-sixth birthday. Showing him with affection and fanfare, Lily demonstrates that they already have a family consisting of their children Tilian and baby Lolabi, and the adopted twins. With their tribes and lands at their command, the two can fulfill their destiny together as the royal Dyad of Crescendo.
For the first time in as long as he can remember, Aedan experiences joy. As there is no need to leave their splendid redwood hideaway and memory of his former life fading, he pledges to be Lily’s husband and father to their family within the wood under the full wolf moon.
Redwood tree in Muir Woods by Louis Schocken – edited for context
A single snowy moonbeam ceases shining through the crevice in Nether Mount, signaling midnight on the Wynterlyn sundial. Their abdomens full as Q’isann’s paunch wound recovers, the guild is astonished by Dilian’s tale (which included all of his and Sho-lin’s separate solo quests except for the Bousca sanctum under the stars).
Revealing his missing finger, the graying Dilian finishes by introducing his empathic companions Su-rin and Xo-nan. He identifies them as Sho-lin’s fellow pathfinders who Dilian had encountered and rescued from their cryogenic iceboxes years ago just east of here. Xo-nan and non-binary Su-rin now used the same methods plus aloe on knitted cloth to heal Q’isann’s baerre claw wound.
Through the eyes of the peregrine falcon soaring above E’scend, Dilian has distantly viewed the tumult. Shocked by this charlatan who usurped him in his absence, he wishes to return to Escenda to set things right and restore peace. However with knowledge of a mystical dark magick far beneath, his conjuring opponent dominates the enchanted tribe. Even if the true Dilian were to return to Escenda, the deceiver and their army are too powerful and they had numbered only three…
But in the here and now they are ten – Q’isann corrects him using his fingers to count – ten of Crescendo’s preeminent warriors with special skills and abilities. If they were to band together, with their combined might they could penetrate the Arch’s domain and rescue Aedan as the seven Wescendants have avowed. If he can confront the chameleon impersonating him with these sworn avengers at his back, Dilian supposes they can impeach these masters of war and halt the bloodshed between the tribes.
There is consensus. They are now a tenfold guild, unified on their mission to depose the impostor Arch, liberate Aedan and restore peace to the land of Crescendo. Resolved and determined, Dilian and the band of pathfinders and paladins embark at dawn on the first day of the new year towards the fateful clash of their time.
Ash Cave, Hocking Hills, Ohio
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Black Bird
Year Twenty-Seven
In We’scend the tribe is continually restless and discontent, as their noble leader Aedan has now been held captive in E’scend for four years. Officially becoming Arch of the tribe on his twentieth birthday the previous year, few had survived the deadly war to attend and applaud his chiefdom. Hearing no word from the guild Kaedan has given up hope of saving the Archfather, with no hint whether or not he still lives.
Distraught that his paternal lineage is broken, Kaedan sulks in his royal cave having failed at every venture. His younger brother Paedan is gone, lost to the sea. An androgynous Arch now largely controls Crescendo with his own tribe largely defeated and family splintered. Arch Kaedan stands as his paternal grandpa R’Nesto’s and father Aedan’s only male heir to their enduring legacy.
Seeking his mother’s counsel, she advises him wisely but sternly. The tribe matriarch’s distinguished demeanor never betrays her conflicted emotions about her husband’s supposed captivity. Ivera and Kaedan do not speak of Aedan’s illegitimate son with the nameless jezebel, but she silently remembers the other vixen Lily who caught his eye before Ivera on The Minuet. Frowning, she cannot help but wonder if he has rekindled his moonlit fling with the sibling of the eastern Arch. Speaking none of this to tribe nor her adult children, she settles on the Wescenda outskirts in a morose cavern shell grotto matching her mood to protect from the elements and the sweltering sun. Naming it Lound’a where she gathers the children to soothe and tutor them, Ivera does not trust the black bird outside that reminds her of the nameless Archess.
Her eldest child, who has never taken a mate during the war, visits the matriarch at the new Lound’a school. Juna embraces her mother and shares with the children a musical lesson set to a cardinal’s birdsong, while Ivera prefers the bluebird’s tune. The singalong settles the hyperactive teens, including several whose elders never returned from the atrocities along the river. As the adolescent lads and damsels join in, they hum “la’s” “li’s” and “da’s” while composing new songs in the process. Juna and couturier Me`lyn fiddle to construct a wooden lute, while two yutes chase each other around in circles and soon twirl and dance.
Dancing Deadheads in Golden Gate Park
Year Twenty-Eight
In the uncharted lands to the northeast, the guild has secretly infiltrated E’scend. Boldly venturing into the bellicose eastern continent over the past year, they gradually near its capital village. Led by noble Q’isann and greybeard Dilian the ten knight-errants are endeavored to liberate Aedan, confront the impostor and re-seat Dilian as Arch. However, the deceiver ‘Dilian’ has fortified the forests surrounding the capital. Rock slides and giant redwood logs now block all possible paths from the Nevermore. They are prevented from entering Escenda from the north, and they cannot travel along the eastern bank of the Shendoa without being ambushed by archers on constant watch. Instead, the troupe has taken a longer route southeast from the mountains to slowly enter Escenda from the opposite end unseen.
In this traveling tenfold band with two leaders, the most capable and learned warriors and trackers from the west and east have coalesced in a unified cause for the first time since their arrival in this land. Their kin avenged, the Wescendant pathfinder family and four Paladins follow Q’isann’s lead, while the Escendant trackers are loyal to Dilian as their rightful Arch. However, there is no argument between them as the two leaders are in agreement at every turn.
Charting the guild’s daring route a few meters ahead are the ruddish-faced Xo-nan, and close-shorn Su-rin who chooses not to labeled by gender. They are followed by Dilian with a pair of lynxes on either side, and Q’yn whose new wolfling pet has not left her side since Wynterlyn. Dilian has formed a friendship with the younger, shy pathfinder, who previously only ever spoke with her parents behind them. As he shows Q’yn how to control her timber wolf’s aggressive tendencies, Q’yn has taught Dilian how to sing – which is unprecedented as until now only those born on Crescendo are able to. At times during their journey, they quietly sing together as the group rests under a lean-to bungalo.
A mutual musical lesson
Dilian’s peregrine falcon is his eyes in the skies scanning for dangers ahead, joined at times by an ebony bird. Following he and Q’yn are her parents Lyla and Q’isann, debating how best to approach and rescue their tribe’s Arch from his captor. Presenting four fingers to convey as many years have passed since Aedan’s arrest, the huntress suggests that if he still breaths, Aedan may not be still imprisoned. However Q’isann dismisses that possibility and submits a brute-force plan of attack.
Following a few meters behind the bickering couple are the four noble swordsmen whose elders were cousins to R’Nesto and drowned along with him on the sunken Minuet. Obeying Q’isann and Lyla as the group’s eldest Wescendants their swordsman of highest rank is Pah’lud, ensuring they are not pursued by predators as he holds up the rear. Hiking single-file to conceal their numbers, the guild travels purposefully around E’scend’s outlying lands. Along the way they are confronted by undisciplined baerres, a rabid pack of coyotes and the gigantic swooping hawk that had divebombed them in We’scend the year before.
Turning their compass from east to south the travelers near a garden of wild honey with bees, a raccoon and antelop resting within, leaving them undisturbed considering their plentiful rations of food and sparkling water. Nearing autumn the tenfold troupe approaches vast canyonlands, previously explored only by a few eastern trackers including Xo-nen and Su-rin. Cautioning the group of the dangerous terrain and prowlers ahead, they proceed guardedly before being attacked by a jaguaro pack.
The vicious, agile felines assail the travelers, fatally mauling one of the paladins. During the bloody fracas the huntress and swordsmen joust with the jaguaros aided by Dilian’s lynxes and Qyn’s wolf, slaying several until the rest run off. However the youngest paladin is dead, and Lyla and Xo-nen were badly scratched by the felines’ sharp claws. Dilian shares a canteen of Shendoa spring water while Su-rin applies her aloe on a cloth, which combined stop the bleeding and prevent infection. As the group mourns and buries their Paladin in a funeral dirge, they steel for battle and forge towards Escenda as a guild numbering nine.
Eurasian Blackbird by Le poidesans
At the Wescendant tribe’s most desperate hour, a birdsong unexpectedly brightens Juna’s doorstep at dawn. The chirpy nightbird musically transmits a pertinent message, which only she can comprehend through its rapid warbling. Her nearby mother declining to join her, Juna rushes to the capital village with the avian dispatch. Arriving at the Arch’s domicile deep within the Wescenda cavern, she relays to her brother Kaedan the airborne transmission received from Q’isann.
After three years of navigating around Crescendo, their pathfinders and elite warriors have infiltrated E’scend through the Nethermore as ordered by Kaedan. Although one paladin is dead, the others are secretly nearing Escenda to liberate it and return Aedan home. Along the way in Nether Mount they encountered the true Arch Dilian and his benevolent trackers, who have joined them on their quest to Escenda.
However, they only number nine. Numbering nine prudent and armed, the soldiers would be no match for the fifty well-armed Escendant warriors and the conjurer of dark magick awaiting them. The group requires the military support of the Wescendant tribe to somehow penetrate Escenda from the river, engage and distract their forces while they advance from the east.
Juna, having spent much time along the impenetrable Shendoa, suggests to her brother Kaedan a strategy to cross it. As the Arch assembles the royal guard outside the cavern complex and prepares to implement her plan, he instructs her to spread the word. By way of song, Juna vocalizes the Arch’s directive only to the tribe west of the river. As if by command, her blackbird and all birds west of the great river join her and trill the message across We’scend.
Hearing Juna’s opera, a small flock of falcons who had flown from E’scend arrive above outside the cavern capital upon hearing the blackbird’s call. From their clutches, they drop branches of unfamiliar plants into the tribe’s hands before settling next to Juna. Kaedan and the tribe have never seen these esoteric herbs, however Juna recognizes their medicinal properties. As the Wescendants arm their platoon and prepare to penetrate the fortified beachhead, they now have the means to heal themselves while liberating E’scend and Aedan.
Far across the river in E’scend while all are unawares, Aedan has become Lily’s husband and father to their two children together. Contented as his bride provides for the family he never leaves their lavish compound within the redwood tree, having forgotten his captivity and previous life with Ivera as Arch of We’scend. He dotes on his wedded lily and first love, who appears virtuous and devout to him.
Outside of the serene redwood the Archess continues her totalitarian dominion of the lands, using an iron glove adorned with splinters from the Minuet. As she rules the Escendants they obey her commands under enchantment, no longer modifying her appearance to resemble Dilian as her long hair grows proportionally to her dark magick. The raven guiding her path communicates with her, permitting it to see through its eyes. In time, the Archess uses this power to influence the birds and predatory mammals to do her bidding.
With the eyes of the giant hawk, she is well aware that a guild of Wescendant warriors has infiltrated her homeland to overthrow and depose her. However, she has lost sight of them in the canyonlands and can no longer track their clandestine approach. She orders her trusted lieutenant Pai-san to closely guard her family within the redwood compound.
A kilometer eastward, the guild numbering nine has covertly made their way through the unbridled canyonlands. Approaching the western edge while hiding out of sight, they can now view the capital Escenda in the distance. As they prepare to charge the treetop village at speed, they are halted by a voice imploring them not to pass. From a hidden gap in the canyon emerge the master Sho-lin and healer Mila. Reuniting with his companion trackers Su-rin and Xo-nan after two decades, Sho-lin is gratified that they had not perished during their fall in the Nethermore Mountains after all and the three sages chant an “om.”
Dilian rushes jubilantly to his muse Mila. Embracing elatedly, he asks her if their children are safe. Mila and Sho-lin reply that he and his apprentice Pai-san found the pair in a panthera den after the impostor ‘Dilian’ kidnapped Mila and her twins long ago. While Pai-san returned the duo safely home, Sho-lin had tracked and scoured for their mother. Killing the panthera that had trapped her, he was mauled in the process. After she healed him with aloe they planned to return to Escenda, reveal and depose the deceiver. However bolstered by dark magick through the years and the now-enchanted armed tribe, the Arch had grown too powerful for the two of them to face…
But now they go to eleven Q’isann interjects running out of fingers to count, while Dilian introduces the band to master Sho-lin and medicine woman Mila. Scouting the area ahead using a hollow branch with glass on either end, the tracker spots the conjurer within a large tree. Xo-nan tells the troupe that Dilian’s impostor is not dwelling in the main Escenda treetown, but within the broadest redwood in sight between the arbor village and the canyonlands. They are very close to their destination and await the absence of moonlight to advance; however, they cannot continue without being ambushed by treetop archers protecting the redwood compound.
To Be Continued
Stay Tuned for the final installment in Psychedelic Scene Books!
A Tale of Crescendo ~ Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4 ~ eBook PDF download
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A Tale of Crescendo ~ Chapters 5 & 6 ~ eBook PDF download
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Created and Written By William Kurzenberger ~ All Rights Reserved
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Musical Accompaniment for context
Ambient Instrumental Score: “Tabula Rasa” ~ Part 6 of 7
“Crescendo Chapters 7 & 8 Score ~ v1” (03:40)
Containing segments of ” Tabula Rasa”
Part VI: Cyberian
“Tabula Rasa” ~ A musical representation of the past, present and future of life on planet Earth
Composed & recorded 2010 by William Kurzenberger; Released on the album Solitary Road © 2010
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A Tale of Crescendo
The epic conclusion
Chapter Nine: The Clash
Chapter Ten: The Reckoning
Publication Date: Sunday January 18th, 2026
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