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We continued to follow the path they had taken and the Territory turned quite dangerous indeed. A man in a black hat hovered nearby and a number of various other characters were attracted to us. We interacted with quite a few and barely escaped with our sense of self still somewhat intact. Luckily though the Dangerous Ghosts took us in to their Hostel that night. They didn't speak but we came to know that the Lost Expedition had certainly been there some time ago. They'd climbed down the hole in the Hostel one night so the Dangerous Ghosts helped us prepare to go climbing too. They lowered us down from the top of the hole and into the empty domain down below and inside the Territory. We met the Empty Circle there, but we didn't stay long and we came back up from the hole again before we forgot who we were.
Six months later we all went back to the Territory to follow the path of the Lost Expedition and discover some more of their story. It was a difficult time. Many of the boaters that came along began to fall asleep and forget who they were and where we were going. The more we became a part of the story of the Lost Expedition, the more we felt in a personal way the action of their experience. Many of the crew just wandered away, and although we found out a number of things about the Lost Expedition that day we finally lost the path altogether and forgot our intent entirely, at least for a while. Still, even so, we managed to reach the Isle Of Glass and found the remains of the last meeting place the Lost Expedition had used together before they all finally fell asleep and wandered away from each other.
We returned again the following year to meet and continue on again from this last rendezvous at the Isle Of Glass. The path became more individual now and we found ourselves following the story of how each of the members of the Lost Expedition finally let go and forgot themselves. One by one, one after the other they unravelled themselves from their intertwined path and dropped away to disappear into the Territory. At each of the places where one moved away and left themselves and the others behind, we were able to find something special that marked the path of their passage. We collected all eleven of these special tokens and a twelfth empty one that was there as well. After some thought we all agreed that they seemed to be the seeds of each of the members of the Lost Expedition. And each time we found a seed that day the story of how we moved toward it gave us a way to partially see that member of the Lost Expedition.
The first seed was hidden deep in the grass of a small and desolate island we passed as we left the Isle Of Glass. Hard to find, impossible even, we dowsed and searched for almost an hour before we finally found it at last. It looked very much like the inside shaft of a pocket knife. The metal was rusted, the screws were too, but the strength of the energy still came through so we knew right away that we'd found the right thing. We pulled a card from our tarot deck. The Queen Of Wands.
The second seed was washed up and left on a lonely stretch of a windy sand bar. It slipped right into someone's pocket without really causing a stir. None of us knew we had found it at all until afterwards when we came to land. The seed itself was a small plastic curve, light and blue and unassuming, something you wouldn't know that you had until after you had it a while. The Star was the card we pulled.
The third seed was a very emotional story, we knew it was near and sure to appear as we passed past a carnival island. We landed there and walked about through the empty midway and abandoned rides. A strong and pervasive melancholy hung in the air with the mist. We sifted debris individually and one of us finally picked up the insides of a small round watch. The face was gone but the gears and mechanics were still very much alive. Great love lost and tossed away, some of us had a few tears as we drew The Lovers from the deck.
The fourth seed was found unexpectedly. It happened to me so I remember it well. I was paddling along down a small canal that ran past a number of boathouses. A buzz of energy suddenly sounded around my head. I stopped and looked. Nothing there, except a wooden boathouse. Whatever it was it was surely inside, but I felt very timid so it took a while to finally go in. Nothing to see, but my ears still buzzed and the back of my head felt a bit prickly. Then all at once I looked up in the rafters as if someone else had just turned my head. A small wasp nest was hanging there, about the size of a walnut I guessed, though it took some time for me to be able to get it down into my hands. It was grey and light, it seemed made of air, yet so powerfully strong it made me aware there was something amazingly empty inside. This seed called up the Eight Of Pentacles from our tarot deck.
The fifth seed came with a belly laugh. We were passing by a small off-shore island when we got drawn into a Hungry Ghost lawn sale. No seeds there, it was very threadbare and completely forlorn, but we saw a way leading out of the place and down a worn rocky path. We were walking head down with our eyes open wide, ready to find some hidden thing when the seed appeared quite brazenly right out in the open beneath our feet underneath a hemlock tree. It looked just exactly like a hockey puck, only completely different, especially so when we picked it up. It was light and porous and amusingly free, it was almost as if it stuck itself out so we'd be sure to see it. We laughed and pulled out the Seven Of Swords.