Footnotes ( because I can )

1. Pandora's Box was not originally a box, referring to it as such dates back no earlier then Erasmus I believe. The tale itself came from around 700 BC and originally was of a pithos ( greek pot ) that contained all the evils of mankind ( interestingly enough, the Athenian festival of 'pithogoria' (sp?) which was when all the jars of new wine were opened might be related ) that was buried in the ground. Pandora was originally another name for the goddess Rhea and the whole of the myth is a very anti-feminine creation of the Greek poet Hesiod.
2. The greek gibber in front of it was a couple sentence synopsis of the myth I ran through babelfish.altavista.com's English to Greek translator. I lack Greek language skills and could find no source to snag something more appropriate from at the time. If I were to re-write it, I would mock up some bit of dialogue of Prometheus warning Epimetheus about Zeus and feed that through the translator instead.
3. Odin was much more of a warrior god in the earliest tales, the lusty sort of manly-man chieftain. It is in the later tales that became a more instrospective figure. The actual myth of Ragnarok dates from after the introduction of Christainity to the Nordic lands. The assumption being that sense of change in their civilization, the ending of their old ways, was reflected in their myth's in the Hollywood fashion of 'the world is ending, lets have one last big fight!'.
4. The mythic bit before it is Odin (Uoden) and some friends in the forest and someones horse gets hurt and he makes it better. This was me being lazy and using what I had on-hand instead of digging a more proper Edda from one of my Norse mythology books.
5. Bast was originally not a cat goddess. She was originally a lunar goddess which is where her being called 'the lady of the East' ( where the moon rises from ) originates. Her earliest depictions have no feline attributes, and her other positive attributes such as strength, virility, and agility date from her brief dynastic period as the state goddess of Egypt.
6. The prayer at the start is some New Age thing that you say to pray for a dead cat. Don't ask. I couldn't find my Egyptology books among my boxes of books to find something more appropriate.
7. Agbarus, prince of Edessa, was actually a king of Assyria. The bit there is a translated bit from a letter he wrote to Jesus asking for him to come heal him. Jesus wrote back that he was a bit busy at the time, but he'll send an apostle to do the job. It is one of the few non-Bible documentary references to Jesus. Except I cut out the reference to Jesus for this story because it made it more obscure.
8. I got tired of mythology by the time it reached China, so the two bits there were 'mah jong' and the Black Plague. Mah Jong is the modern form of an older game whose name I forget that was played with a sort of proto-playing card. The Black Plague began in Asia and then spread over Europe though while originally thought to have traveled first north into cossack land and then west, it may have come by ship as well since there were isolated outbreaks that happened in Europe before it made its away across the landmass.
9. The 'ring around the rosey' bit is popularly assumed to be about the Black Plague, but honestly couldn't be. No documentary evidence of it from that period exists and it would pre-date Chaucer and be one of the oldest bits of written English around. Plus it would be in middle English and have likely a different rhyming structure. Much more likely it dates from around 1654 and another outbreak of plague in London at that time. 'Ring around the rosey' is referring to the red sores that plague victims would develop, 'pockets full of posies' is one of those strange folk remedies, 'a-tishoo, a-tishoo' is the sound of someone sick the plague sneezing, 'we all fall down' is everyone dying from the plague. Variations exist on the third line like 'Achoo, achoo' which is just another sneezing sounds and 'Ashes, ashes' for the fact plague victims bodies were burned.
10. The great influence outbreak started in Spain and was referred to for a while as the 'Spanish Flu'.
11. The childrens poem here is from that historical period and was printed in a New York newspaper way back when.

Last little thoughts I never did anything with

• Geoffrey wasn't meant to get the box, he just took it.
• The box had been delivered to the front desk on the same day Sarah was to get another box, one with an engagement ring.
• When Sarah had her accident, neither the cat ( with one-eye ), or the gentleman with the black monocle seemed to be around.

- Hythian