I smirked. Watching Kelser grumbling on the floor, writing his own name over and over again was a fun way to lighten my mood. But as I saw the young boy getting better and better at writing, right in front of my eyes, I felt a little bitter.
I had always been incredibly competitive, especially about academics. I couldn’t stand watching somebody else get better grades or answers questions I couldn’t answer or visibly learning things faster than I was. And seeing Kelser, with his youthful penchant for learning new things very quickly through repetition, made me curse my own inability to make enough progress over the past few days.
I turned around and walked towards the side of my hut, where I had baked some symbols into the clay. I’d torn down this part of my own home, just so I could rebuild it again with these symbols etched into it. I’d gathered all of the elders, as well as any people they had recommended as the best storytellers and poets, and gone about writing down and codifying the language of the people of the double river basin.
I scratched my head. Although I was sure there would be benefits to creating a written language for the tribesmen, I had not wanted to make one for several reasons. I did not want to interfere so much with their culture as to potentially change it forever. Some literary theorists and linguists from my Earth even thought that the written language changed the way human beings interacted and conceived of the world around them, and that writing had limited certain aspects of our growth in ways that we did not fully understand yet. To forcefully bring these people into that same situation, one where they would not know what they had lost after moving from an oral tradition to a written one, was a difficult, and momentous decision.
There was also the matter of my own biases. It was impossible for me to help develop a written language that was not heavily influenced by the written languages and customs of my previous world. Had I not interfered right now, these people may have ended up with a logo-syllabary or pictograms, rather than the alphabetical language that I had introduced.
And finally, there was also the problem of dialects, linguistic evolution, and the many, many norms and values that were tied within the oral storytelling and poetic traditions within their cultures. Not every tribe spoke the same way or preferred the same words. There were even differences within the tribes, with some older people using words that had fallen out of fashion among the youth, and so on. The oral language would undoubtedly change over the years in a way that the written language might not. And the stories and poems that people told, passed down through the generations purely by word of mouth, could also become stale and canonized once writing was thrown into the mix.
But I had no choice. This was necessary. I did feel bad about interfering so much with the culture of the people of the double river basin, but I figured I’d already done a lot of damage to their way of life anyway. And besides, writing had a lot of benefits too, especially in a world where magic was tied to knowledge. Being able to write would make it easier to learn too, as well as to teach and to pass on knowledge down through the generations. These reasons made me feel a little better about the massive decision I’d taken and the repercussions it would have on these people and their successors, but I still felt guilty. After all, the real reason I’d made them learn all this was a selfish one.
I rubbed my hand gently over the ruins carved into baked clay. The way the edges caught on my skin, little flakes of earth rubbing off. The way the letters looked worked so naturally with the way they sounded. I’d turned my translation magic on and off so many times while we were working on this. Trying to make sure that the letters and sounds could be captured accurately even while I asked the elders to repeat words and phrases, to flesh out things like conjugation and pronunciation, all so I could help them make a beautiful but still functional written language. I kept thinking, as I stared at this baked clay wall, that we’d done a good job. I was proud of what we’d done so far, and was hopeful.
Hopeful that creating this written language and teaching the tribesmen how to write, would help me with the thing that had been haunting my dreams and keeping me up all night. I walked around the hut, this time to the entrance, and took a step inside. I yawned. Still feeling sleepy. I’d almost missed my meeting with Kelser because I’d been up all night. Thinking. Staring.
I nestled up to my hide covers on the ground, and stared at the new baked clay ceiling that I had installed after coming up with the alphabet on the wall outside. Carved into the clay above my head, in large, bold letters, spread imposingly over my head, was the word that I had been staring at all night, yesterday, both while awake and in my dreams:
Annihilation, said the ceiling, and I fell asleep, hearing its whispers well into the afternoon.
---
Spring was fleeting. The flowers came and went, and with them went the pleasant weather, the pollinating insects, the many colorful birds and energetic animals, that had reclaimed the riverfront after the sparse winter. The Imm and Oko tribes told me this was when they would usually head up further North, since the summers along the riverside were hot and humid, with most of the best game also moving up north in search of fresh grass and mates.
I convened another meeting of the elders, late one night as the summer began, to ask their opinions. The farms were coming along nicely, with many of the grains that we were experimenting with, in particular, showing promise after being sown before the winter. One of my biggest worries had been finding out the best times to plant the seeds and how long it would take them to grow, but we’d been very lucky, and even with the ones that hadn’t germinated, we at least had some data to go off of for the next time. We’d even sown a few seeds in the depth of winter and in the early spring, which hadn’t germinated from last fall.
We wouldn’t be able to domesticate the monsters we had been herding and managing, at least not until they had been selectively bred for several generations, but what we had right now could work as both beasts of burden and sources of food. Paris, the Fil Tusker, had already shown her usefulness in helping us till the fields and grind hard grains between stone wheels.
“It may be prudent to return to our ancestral lands until the summer solstice,” said elder Konri Oko. “The fruits should be ripening and the monsters returning to their nests. Even now, the lands around this encampment are showing the signs of our extended presence. There is less food here this summer than there was the last, since we had to feed so many mouths over the winter.”
“We are also worried for our homes,” said elder Lipo Pole. “Those of us who live in caves are worried about them becoming dens for powerful monsters. Or of our camping sites becoming a part of a large monster’s territory. We must return, at least for a while, to make sure our lands are safe.”
“And with our newly learned magic,” said elder Cota Ibog, “we can build up our homes, survey the surroundings, and lay the foundations of our people for generations to come. Small farms, to supplement our food for tough winters, herded and managed animals, maybe even maps like the one made by you, Teacher.”
“Yes, the idea to make sure every hunting party received their orders next to the map has certainly saved many lives,” said elder Anki Jenin. “We would like to make our own maps, very soon.”
“And I gotta say,” began elder Brol, “I wasn’t too sure about this written language business, but now that I can put down numbers and make lists of names, it’s become a lot easier to do my elder duties. One of our poet’s has even started to write out the history of our tribe, and I would very much like to have his words engraved near a ceremonial place in our ancestral lands.”
I tapped my chin. I glanced to the side where Kelser, who’d been coming to most of these meetings as my right hand for a while now, was looking up at the sky with a distant look in his eyes. I followed his gaze, and saw the moon, shining brightly against an inky black sky. The red star pulsed weakly next to the moon, which was out in its full glory tonight.
It was so bright, in fact, that I could not see anything else.
“It’s too dangerous,” I whispered, finally.
The elders protested. “But every single tribesmen knows magic now, Teacher Cas,” said Priest Mal. “And our weapons, they are much more powerful.”
I ignored the other elders, and met a single gaze. Elder Sommi Nare, whose face had aged so much since she’d lost her son, looked at me with tired, sorrowful eyes. The other elders noticed where I was looking, and quieted down.
“You should let them go,” said elder Sommi.
I hesitated. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “You cannot protect us forever.”
Couldn’t I? “I have to,” I said. “I need your help. To figure out a way back home.”
“Do you need all of us?” she said.
I sighed. “No. Just one tribe will do.”
“Then you should go with the Roja. You are closest to them. Little Kelser sticks to you like sinew,” she said.
“No,” I said, making a difficult decision. “The Roja don’t need my help. Not with Kelser and elder Kezler around. I think I need to go with someone else.”
Before the elders could ask for me to join their tribe, I raised a hand. I told them I needed to go somewhere, and that I would go with the tribe that would take me closest. I looked at elder Konri Oko, and said: “I would like to explore the North.”
