Ghyll:Forbidden Tom

Blabbermouths and their spouses simply do not understand the full intricacies and subtleties behind the whole Forbidden Tom scene. A "Forbidden Tom" is a couple both of whom are female; they are recumbent upon one another in social spirit mainly, but often physically too. The full details are doubtless unsuitable for this encyclopedia, but we will reveal what we may through the medium of fiction.

On -20/7/7 EC, a play was performed at the Amphitheatre in Folktown that revealed at least the elementary parts of the truth behind the entire Forbidden Tom ethos. The play, performed in two separate installments, was intended to demonstrate the ethics and morals behind the seeming intertwisting of female persons of the Tom persuasion. The plot reveals that ceremonies set in the Elminster Mire are central to the procession, since imbued in sultrification with the beginnings of the love which laughs between the Tom-bidden lovers.

In Act I, the heroine took the stage playing the Obovox, and surely her sapphistry and protocol cried out to the well-nigh unhinged crowd; thereupon a raven-fair maiden emerged from the audience and, vanquished by the natural idolatry of the actors' guild, she hoofed it and carried herself not in fear but perhaps in the desire made suitable to her by the very action of the play.

In Act II, a hundred (!) years later, love has passed into familiarity, familiarity into order, order into kindness, and kindness into ritual; the ritual then expresses itself through the play, and love again follows as the winter the spring. The play now moves unmitigatedly into that wondrous love between Pholius and Efflessa (?), memorably lived and documented as well as it could ever be. The crowd was filled with rapture, and most naturally performed Act III for themselves that very evening.

And so it was, that doubtless magniloquent event set in the Mire; Forbidden Toms today, however, must unforcedly avoid and trick each other (?) as much as they can. The popular sophistry seen in the files of the Folktown Records and even the craziest symbols of the Houvers are merely the rudiments of the Mire's illusions.

Citations: Baleman, Folktown Amphitheatre, Obovox.

--John Cowan 22:38, 24 Jun 2005 (EDT),
     reconstructed from a barely intelligible palimpsest written by Sean B. Palmer and dated 17:02, 15 Oct 2004 (EDT)