There are, indeed, geniuses among the Flora. Their legs are weak and useless, their voices muted and muttering, their leaves discolored grey. They scribble endlessly, sketching wheels, and planks, and their interactions.
They hear things, these few wretched, grey souls.
A wind ever crawls along their mind. Onward! Better! More! Wheels and wheels. Describe them! Understand them! Learn. Learn!
They always hear this wind.
Now, though, a new thought does etch along these eccentric minds.
The ponds, the pools, the mirrors there -
-- go out and breathe the cavern air -
-- -- What wheels and webs reflected lie
-- what minds reflected lie...
A pull, an inexorable pull.
How long does it take? Months, years? How long is it before the grey scribblers are able to communicate their desire. They hardly speak, they barely walk. At first, their attempts are misconstrued as a call for fresher linens, or perhaps a summer cold.
But all across the Floran lands, their designs take on a unified appearance. Wheels upon boxes, drills, pulling things, moving things, conveyances. The designers would go. And always would their drawings point east. East, and down.
To the reflected pools.
To the mirrors above them.
And so, a migration. First one, then a few, then several, leave their comfortable homes. Many have not been more then 30 paces from their beds and drafting surfaces in decades.
They go to stare into the pools.
Soon they will find something there.
Ouuaneona, the second blossom of her hold, whose leaves evoked the coming of the chill winds (before they turned grey and fragile), is the first to enter, pulled by her two assistants and sisters upon a gear-wheeled futon of her own design.
The first to see the mirrors and not shriek.
Her mind is not so fragile as those who came before. The winds that pull and carve across it render it mutable, pliable. Able to expand. Her focus has always been on large, serrated wheels; Strong gears to pull the strongest ropes and not buckle. A blessed and unielding focus.
But what will her mind become, when staring into those facets within facets within facets within facets....
Edit: [m] I'm declaring, for the records and for the arbiter, that whatever it is that the Mirrors have to teach will not destroy the mind of the Flora-geniuses, as they have some divine protection. They may become obsessed and consumed by whatever's there, but not catatonic or destroyed. Beyond that I don't know what's in there and that's for someone else.
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[–] ghotioninabarrel ago
Thank you, good Umbralocht. I am grateful for your assistance in bringing me minds which can do my work. Seek a boon, and I shall grant it.
[M]I confirm that their minds won't be completely destroyed. They will be affected, but they are intelligent enough to keep functioning.