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My keyboard is doing funny things now, which is always good amounts of fun. So this will likely be the last update tonight as I don't feel like resetting my computer. Ah well.

Read, Review and Enjoy.




“Way beyond ancient,” Mari scribbled down on her pad, variations of the first symbol, “it will take time to translate them into a language we can read, and then more to decode it and place what it means. This first symbol here almost looks like Harella-shay’s symbol, however, there are four extra lines and a swirl. The second… I don’t know. I’ve studied symbols but nothing to this extent, this would require a… a PHD in them or something. And Paw has no recollection of where it came from?”

“Not quite. Desert area, a cave in the desert area, when this was written the cave was surrounded by forest.”

“Minsho area. Only place in Norash where once there was forest and now there is sand. Call it up in the laptop, that area is hailed as the cradle of our civilization.”

“What?”

“I’m not joking. Look. Scientists tell us that we travelled here from the eastern continents over an ice bed or something. But our civilization as we know it started in the Minsho area, three hundred kilometres south of Cayallista. Cayallista being the place where Whisper and Deaths and the Lovers and the Aniege evolved, the university of our civilization so to speak.”

“Let me guess. Minsho is where the Cayallistans originally lived?”

“The bone fragments found in Cayallista are comparable to those found in Minsho, more so than those found in other areas. So… Cayallista had the direct descendants from Minsho and everywhere else…” Mari shrugged, “not direct descendants. I don’t know how it works, I don’t do genetics. They traced it, they published it.”

Mik retrieved the laptop from under the television set. He turned it on and flicked through several web pages, looking up ancient languages. Nothing significant came up.

“The issue here being that I don’t know the name of any of these symbols and being an entirely online world. I mean… even you can’t have any like. Listing of the symbols.”

“The symbol library is passed on mother to daughter to grandchild. It is fairly extensive and there are writings on the various symbols, made by those who learned from their mothers but were not chosen to pass on the information. A familial job,” Mari responded calmly, “but they … don’t owe me any favours.”

“As in you already owe them.”

“As in I turned down a breeding contract and now they are not speaking to me,” Mari responded, “while this may be important, I doubt that it is that important. I am not going to barter away my first born for symbols written on a wall that may or may not mean something.”

“What’s significant about the first born?”

“If I take up certain breeding contracts? It means I lose the child. Those are the only contracts that are being offered to me. Could we focus, please?”

“Sorry…”

“You always do that. Whenever something is up you just start asking questions and it’s like you just. Like. Do that thing.”

“What thing?”

“THAT thing,” Mari snapped, throwing her notebook at Mik.

Paw snatched the notebook from Mari and flipped through the pages, “wrong, wrong, all wrongs.”

“When did you get back?” Mik asked Paw.

“Close enough to hear about contracts. Yesh. No, no, yesh? Possible,” Paw tore out a piece of a page and held it out to Mari, “any meaning?”

“No. I was just altering it to my own eye, the changes are completely biased.”

Paw held the piece of paper out to Mik, “meaning?”

“Ehm… a top swirl with two branches from it to go down and … Lover’s Haven. But there aren’t enough lines, you said it was-”

Paw walked up to the wall and looked over the wall, ducking his head this way and that before tapping a symbol, “here. This one here is look like this one. Lover’s Haven?”

“As in…” Mari clenched her teeth together for a moment, “the lines ‘betwixt the stars is a lover’s haven, always in need of saving’? As in the constellation? How does he see that and I see nothing at all?”

“Because Mik not have all other information floating about his head. Mari seeing it with modern eye, Mari expertise modern times, Mik’s… not so much,” Paw shrugged, “Now only one symbol might make sense, yet might not. Mari`s relatives not helpful, this before Illuva and therefore before their knowledge. Only… mm… perhaps, only a perhaps… Rahl-ta`s high priest would understand this. Man`s language, yes. Yes. Give the men something over the women… seems appropriate. Not certain why…”

“So now…”

“Now, now we gets really drunkards and look at wall and wonder if`n perhaps Paw has lost mind,” Paw murmured, “Edno left stash in Souse`s apartment, claiming of whiskers!”

“Whiskey, Paw, it`s called whiskey.”


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