At dusk, as the twilight colours gave way to darkness and the pulsing stars, Brook and his guest had sup and continued with their exchange. Dearborne and Boy attentively sat by one another for many of those passing hours. They said very little but listened a great deal.
Lloyd told Brook of a great vault that was uncovered in the centre of Besten by historian scholars, many years ago. The vault contained a great number of books, journals and visual ribbons which showed the dire panic of the masses when the first bombs began to fall upon their cities.
Pictures showed masses in exodus to the mountains just before the escalation. Those people who left early, during the desperately unsuccessful peace negotiations, had made it to the safety of the mountains, where they hopefully found some degree of protection from the deadly fallout. Those who waited and moved too late, perished in the desolation that came to pass. And the world cried, for the final prophesy was not fulfilled. The Son of Man had failed to return and put a stop to the killing, the persecution and the corruption. Some people died from their lack of Faith, while other stayed with the hope that His return was still to come upon them, a little while later.
Their talk lead them into their own historic backgrounds, to the sum of knowledge which was allowed by the original Canon Di'Vaticanus, in the middle of the Twenty Seventh Century. He declared that this two score and eleventh year (2651 C.E.), was the beginning of the long-promised millennium, as heralded by the ancient prophets. His declaration was made after an eleven-year-old girl gave birth to a son. The eleven-year-old was a foundling in an abbess hermitage, left there by someone who could not care for her.
"She was found, wrapped in richly garb and placed in a golden cradle. As the girl grew she became beautiful, like the sun. She shone with inner light. Her hair was white — shiny like snow and iridescent like the moon. Her olive-skin flesh colouring contrasted her naturally reddened mouth and she possessed dark, almost black, almond-shaped eyes. Her beauty was near Holy and many men felt a jealousy within themselves when they just looked upon her. Then, at eleven, she was in size and stature, and appearance, to that of a full-grown woman; she birthed a son. This son, the Canon had proclaimed as a "Saviour" and sought to conduct a sacrifice in honour of the child, but he told the world that nothing was precious enough for this. It was soon determined, however, that there was one thing of great value, in all the land; the boy's own young and beautiful mother. In the shortness of time, and as if for the redemption for her death, the boy became weak and also died. The child's milk of life was taken from him and nothing else would sustain him.
The child's death was hidden from the ignorant masses and all the people believed in a falsity for nearly a half millennia." Lloyd recounted the story about the foundling that came to be called Sunshine by the old Abbess Mariot, in the common year of 2640. This was the same little girl that resulted the subsequent formation of the spiritualism that has been followed for the last four hundred years.
As the twilight evening gave way to the dark of night, Brook told Lloyd about his own lineage, following it as far back as he was able to, and confessed to him the peculiar ancestry that he had with the Canon Blue. He explained that his father's line originated with the woman Dioneza, the half-sister of the Canon. In 2660 C.E., she had agreed to be artificially inseminated with Twentieth Century seamen from a physicist, who was called David Sannstein. He confessed to Lloyd that this wasn't really his own line and that he didn't know from where his line actually stemmed. Brook admitted, truthfully, that he was a foundling.
He spoke about that one day, long ago, when Smith Blue and his wife Miri were returning to Phoride, from the Virgin Mountains. Miri was heavy with child and in that mid-summer's afternoon in 3001 C.E., she gave birth to a son and called his name, Manguino. In a thankful rest, while his wife nursed the newborn, Smith Blue walked in the woods, following a babbling stream and a strange distant sound which was like the crying of a babe. And in his curious search, he came upon a hollow, where there was a child, wrapped in a sackcloth and left within a lion's skull. Smith gave the baby to his wife; seeing the baby abandoned and crying from hunger. And upon seeing the unfortunate child, Miri brought it near to her milk-laden breast and let it suckle beside her own son. Having hearts of gold, they accepted the babe to their bosom as their own, and Smith called his name, Brook Scullion; after the fashion that he had been found — by a stream, lying in a lion's skull.
As midnight approached, they talked of their governments. Lloyd proudly explained to Brook, Dearborn and the quiet Boy, about the Democratic system of government that his people accepted from the ancient Twentieth Century. In Besten, the people found it the most suitable form of rule for a civilized people. And even though, in the beginning there was corruption and immorality, their land had eventually overcome it all and soon gleaned a people of extreme honesty and cooperation. It had made Besten a very powerful, and important, centre on the northeast coast of the continent.
Lloyd became depressed when he thought about the Phoridenes closing their minds to the knowledge that he tried to give to them, and he experienced repeated visions of the monastic guard's electrophoric guns wallop him over and over again with their charges.