This story was co-developed by Titan127 and beta read by ShonnaRose and JhinoftheOpera.
Letter 7
𒅆𒊒𒍪𒅆,
All lives touch other lives to create something new and alive.
However, that touch may be destructive just as well as it may be creative. We touched countless lives and built a realm on a mountain of their corpses. It brings me hope, as well as saddens me, to see those people that have learned to live with, not above, those they call Others.
Friends are unknown to me now, perhaps because my transgressions preclude me from the world I denied many. But I will continue to fight for that world and allow it to be new and alive as it is meant to be.
𒁾,
𒍪𒅆
It looked like… a letter.
Saber's fingers stole dust from the petroglyph, and his flashlight darted between the stone and his mother's paper. He could almost understand the first line. Embracing, or maybe touching, other people creates new life. Something of the sort.
A few segments of the next few paragraphs—he wasn't certain that word applied—stuck out to him, and he jotted them down for reference. Then the next few hours passed him by as he hovered over the ancient archive, testing meanings and sounds until they decided to cease their stubbornness and fit together.
"That would be 'friends' or 'allies', and then 'zero'', then… I don't know. I don't know!" He nearly ripped the page clean from its binding but stopped himself only after reminding himself how precious a possession it was.
The most he could gleam from the letter was that the author was sorrowful. Several phrases alluded to destruction, or mistakes, or failures—perhaps it was addressed to prosperity, a lesson preserved for future generations.
This wasn't the first of these letters he'd discovered. Another had surfaced on his visit to Mt. Coronet, and he'd meticulously drawn and redrawn it to preserve the etching style. Despite the years, decades, centuries of wear, he was certain it was the same as the one right in front of him.
As he read and studied, he cross-referenced with the message at the end of his mother's notebook. His translation was the beginning of a puzzle—the edges were filled, but a mass of information was jumbled within. The generous two percent of words he could understand were puzzling, and not nearly enough to garner meaning.
One at the bottom, however, was a phrase he felt comfortable in translating. It meant "our kin". This language, he discovered, referred to most objects with plural ownership using only a single possessive symbol, considering the belongings of a speaker to belong to all its speakers. "Our kin" could also mean "my kin". My child. My son.
Saber emerged from the Solaceon Ruins with quivering eyes that he tried his best to clear. He'd recorded the entire message for future study, and despite his stalled progress, he'd still deciphered more of the language than most experts had in hundreds of years. No matter the barrier, he was heading where she led him.