'Hongsedaunt'

Driving along Glass Gorge Road at a particularly sharp turn you will see a turnout area that is quite big. There you will see one of the stone markers. This one honors hongsedaunt, which is the plural of hongsedaun (or “interpreter village”).

The stone marker is part of Kcymaerxthaere, an art project created by Eames Demetrios. A series of plaques and other markers around the world honor events that have taken place in a parallel universe that, according to Demetrios, “co-exists to some degree with ours.” Most of these installations are bronze or stone plaques inscribed with stories but some are larger, even entire buildings. As of 2021, there are more than 140 sites spread across six continents and 30 countries.

In Kcymaerxthaereal times, what we call the Flinders Ranges was covered by several lichen gwomes (gwome is a cognate word that means “footprint of the nation”). Lichen gwomes were quite subtle but sophisticated cultures that enjoyed their anonymity tremendously.  Lichen poetry and maps were legendary for their beauty–and impenetrability for the uninitiated. In fact, lichen maps often showed the future if you knew how to read them. But the language was so difficult to read it would take an interpreter a lifetime to learn a single word. As a result, interpreter villages formed near the most important lichen gwomes (and this was by no means a simply local phenomenon, hongsedaunt existed all around what we call the world).  Ultimately most were destroyed in the aftermath of the Battle of Some Times.