When we were little, it was easy.
My mother was the scaffold of a queen from far away, thick-boned and lovely. The whole of the island was completely green, grassy with dark woods toward the center, surrounding a wide mountain capped with frost - the mountain that Humans would later deem Mount Ebbot, after their leader.
Mom always told me she'd carved me out of a rock from the mountain because there was no one to raise me from. Other skeletons migrated to the island like her; I didn't know where they were raised or by who. There were many other stone monsters, though, and I was never alone once throughout my childhood. We - myself and the other children - would play in the forest mostly, dodging in and out of the green shadows like wolves, who of course were the best at our games.
A particular friend of mine - I daresay you'll know him - was a young firestarter who called himself Laisrean. It was rather difficult for the poor kid to get along with anyone on account of his, well, fiery nature, unable to play our hiding games, burning the others by accident, or becoming so inflamed by their immaturity that he was often left alone. I was an old soul myself, having come from the mountain, and we became friends rather quickly.
There came a time, maybe a century or so after I was born, when, as Laisrean and I were on the stony beach, we saw strange fleshy creatures coming ashore further down the way, similar to ourselves in stature and shape. Thinking they were immigrants like many in our community, we went to welcome them. They were scared at first - understandably, since many of their company was the same kind of creature and it was doubtful they'd ever seen any different - but we showed that we meant no harm, leading them into the forest where we lived and sharing what we had, and they settled comfortably in their own community nearby.
It's worth noting that my mother and her kind seemed anxious about these new Human arrivals, but very few of them argued against them, giving them the benefit of their mercy.
Not long after their arrival, perhaps a half century, my mother died suddenly after sitting down with some friends around a fire, telling stories. Some Humans had been in the area, loudly trading and socializing as we found it was their wont to do, when my mother laughed herself to dust after hearing a joke about a fish and a musical instrument (I believe it was: "What's the difference between a fish and a flute? You can tune a flute, but you can't tuna fish."). The Humans were terrified by her sudden disappearance and the light-heartedness with which her friends treated it, scooping up her dust in their hands and spreading it on her favorite hammer and chisel, leaving the tools by a Big Tree with the dusty items of others who'd left us. The Humans stammered out question after question about this curious ceremony, which we tried to answer as best we could, but they didn't seem to understand, leaving quickly and nervously.
By this time, I'd worked my way up in our little society to a state of some respect, my mother being one of the first settlers on the island and myself being a tinkerer and repairman. When news came to me of the death of my mother and the manner in which our strange neighbors observed it, I grew nervous. Monsters and Humans had had small disagreements and violent altercations, usually over the differences in our cultures, but Death, we had found, was something Humans were sensitive about. They seemed to have the idea that a soul lived beyond its body after its expiration (a unique idea and true for Humans, as I later learned), keeping watch over its friends forever after. In short, their friend was never really gone, never really at rest. We found this disturbing, naturally, but then, they found our dusting ceremony equally so.
Fatally, they considered it a dangerous show of power that disagreed with their own; in their term, "pagan."
I was three-hundred and forty-two years old when the first war started and three-hundred and ninety-six when it ended. Since Monsters were not so separate from the idea of violence as they are now, we fought hard and I daresay valiantly.
When you were little, you often asked why my head is cracked, among other things. I get the feeling I won't get to tell you why exactly in person, so I hope you find the alphabetic translations in the front cover of this notebook and are able to read this properly. Everyone should know their history, even if it's from a single shattered point of view.
Laisrean, myself, a young monster called Aisling - another person I'm sure you know - and three others were in charge of the upkeep of our army's weapons, not being much in the way of fighting ourselves. Aisling, thanks to his long training with his mother and father, was a calm, level-headed person, and we were all rather surprised the one day he went out with the troops instead of staying with us. We thought he would die in battle, but by day's end, there were peace negotiations. By year's end, he'd been crowned King and renamed for his great-grandfather, the first of his kind: Asgore.
The peace lasted a long while, for the most part: Humans claimed more and more of the territory we'd inhabited for centuries for themselves. There was some unrest, naturally, but Asgore managed to settle most things through compromises with the Human leaders, assuring us that both sides gained and lost the same amount.
The peace ended dreadfully: I'd been studying with some of the less wary Humans, hoping to learn all the differences between Human souls and Monster souls, when the cry went out that someone had been murdered by a Monster. We were now at war. I hurried away before anyone noticed me, only to find that it had been Asgore's adopted Human child who'd been killed, supposedly by his own young son, Asriel, who'd died from wounds inflicted by Humans soon after he'd retreated home.
I learned the details of the affair straight from him, being his childhood friend and appointed science officer.
Monster civilians were being slaughtered left and right as we spoke. Any entreaties to the Human leaders fell on their deaf ears, so blinded by fear and hatred as they were. There were barely enough Monsters left who were able to fight, and what may have been a fair battle quickly turned into a massacre as some of those who could fight refused. This included the Queen herself, who'd been so heartbroken over the loss of her children that she couldn't seem to bring herself to contribute to the number of souls at rest. For this, no one blamed her, but it meant that anyone who could be spared must fight, including myself and my more peaceful friends.
I took no sword, convinced that my being made of stone might save me and make me seem invincible to the terrified Humans. They were facing more wrath than had ever been conjured by our race in all of history, and I hoped that whatever adversary I met might run. This hope was added to by the fact that Laisrean never left my side but once; as much as all civilised life depends on fire, those who can be burned fear it with undying passion.
There was one Human who would not run from me, a small and terrified woman defending her brother who could not move. I loomed over her like a shadow, but she would not run. I stared into her eyes and into her very soul and found her as much stone as I was. I was so surprised that I didn't see her husband running at me, a hammer in hand, until the weapon was buried in my skull, splitting a perfect line through to my eye. I fell over and saw him standing over me, and my only thought was that no one would be able to find my dust among all the feet and ash and wind, and if Laisrean needed help, he'd have no one to call on, we were so scattered.
And then there was fire. The man with the hammer was left burned down one side of his face, and I was aware of our forces retreating, though not much else. There were trees rushing past, the stormy sky alight with our homes, and then there was darkness, coolness, the wide mouth of a mighty cave.
There were civilians already hiding in the depths of the caverns, huddled together and silent. We rushed in as we could, some holding our opponents back, some hoping they'd be lost in the mazes we were so familiar with. I stumbled as fast as I could behind Laisrean, but we couldn't lose our pursuers in the darkness, he glowed so brightly.
Finally, we could go no further. The maze ended abruptly, and we were trapped between solid stone and the ten or so bloodthirsty, armed creatures. Laisrean stood between me and them, burning nervously. They crept closer, only a shred of doubt preventing their attack.
I begged them to stop. I tried to say something, anything, that might make them think about what they were doing, what was happening, but the light was in their eyes, that foreign killer instinct that my mother had mentioned once when I'd asked about her old home.
Laisrean's fire shuddered.
They lunged forward in attack.
It was suddenly so incredibly hot and bright, and there were high screams echoing around us, and I was so confused until I blinked and caught the glimmer of the white tongues of flame licking the rocks to either side of us. The Humans ran blindly, burning like charred wood, wailing all the way until they fell and it became completely silent.
Hearing nothing beyond our maze, we collapsed, exhausted and scared.
While all of this had been happening, a barricade had formed in the main tunnel, Monsters holding against whatever Humans dared rush in and attack. The fights became more and more scarce as Monsters successfully held their ground, until finally, nobody came. Asgore, having assured the safety of his subjects hiding in the deep cavern, made his way forward with a few brave knights, creeping up the tunnel toward the mouth. But nobody came. They went closer and closer, hearing nothing, seeing nothing but the gray light at the end. But nobody came.
Finally, they stood in the empty tunnel, looking out, no doubt confused yet relieved at the sudden disappearance of the enemy. The stormy sky swirled beyond, the trees shushing the screams of those who hadn't made it to the caves. Asgore made to move out of the cave and look around, but something stopped him; an invisible wall, perhaps. (He never described it to me, and I never saw it). Whatever it was, it was there; the Humans had put it there, a barrier of magic, the magic they'd so feared from us, and yet we were the ones left to starve in the dark.
I hope you understand why I and many others were so incredibly upset by our entrapment, despite our luck in finding so fertile a new Home. We'd seen the outside world, felt the sunlight, heard the waves of the ocean. We'd settled the island ourselves, most of us remembering it without Humans or cities or anything like that. We were doomed, suddenly and unfairly, to live beneath the land where we were born instead of on it, in its meadows, in its forests. Right now, as I'm writing this, it's been a fair half century since I'd visited my mother's dusty tools under the Big Tree, the same ones she carved me out of this mountain with.
I feel like I should add what is happening right now, as well; maybe when you finally find this, you'll be able to look back and match it to the time.
You are very small, barely the size you should be for someone with your brain. You know your alphabet, though you get stuck on the letters of your name every now and then, which is fine; I didn't learn to spell my own name until I was almost two-hundred (of course, there had been no alphabet until then, but I digress). You seem to have a knack for mathematics and tinkering, like me; you made a small automaton out of the spare parts in my office, yesterday morning. I have it on my desk right now, next to Papyrus's many many drawings. You both love to go out and play in the snow that falls in from some space in the top of Mount Ebott, and though the other children were a bit skeptical of you at first, you all seem to get along just fine. Laisrean keeps an eye on you all when I can't, and you especially have bewitched all his customers with your sense of humor. You're so much like your grandmother sometimes, it makes me laugh.
I'm sorry I'm not there for you as much as I should be. I would blame it on Asgore trying to get me to synthesize strong enough souls to break the Barrier and set us all free, but the fact is that it's my own fault. I miss the Overworld. I miss it very much. And I feel like I should somehow instill in the two of you how much better it was living there, our own little community on an island, but I would rather you live to see it yourselves. Also, I feel I should add: not all Humans were bad. Many were kind, smart, fully capable of love and acceptance. But when something scares too many of them at once, they all become massively determined to extinguish whatever caused that fear. So, if it comes down to it and somehow a Human finds their way here to the Underground, don't give them a reason to fear you. Be as kind and gentle as you would hope they would be. It's better to give someone the benefit of your mercy than the terror of your wrath.