This is a HeadGum podcast.

Ah, there you are a traveler.

Come inside, hang up your care. You are a traveler.

Come inside, hang up your coat, put your feet by the fire, and I shall bring you what you so desperately

seek. you what you so desperately see.

Rood tales of magic. We fade in as we descend the last few steps of a wrought iron spiral

staircase to find ourselves in a towering white marble hallway.

A group of nine elephants arranged in three by three like a vertical

Sedoku square could comfortably travel through this hallway.

It's that grand.

Fluted columns of alabaster soar a hundred feet above and blossom into Baroque carvings that support a wide and out of focus

it's so far up there vaulted ceiling of aged frescoes depicting morally dubious occult miracles.

Beneath us are thousands of perfectly placed tiles.

The entire place is the kind of clean usually reserved for theoretical math.

Oh, we're on the move. Dollyshot.

On our right and our left are doors of all makes and designs.

There seems to be no guiding design philosophy, but together they form an undeniable whole.

One door of carved, rich tropical wood 10 feet high, another tiny ill-fitting like the door of a

doll's house. One of the doors is screened with tens of thousands of lice on the other side. Some doors are open, some doors

are closed, a few padlocked. As we travel further, we see inside one open door to what

must be a lonely child's bedroom. Then through a mud-caked

stable gate we see miles of verdant grass fields where a vain glory of Griffins run through the early morning fog before taking flight.

...