Murals and Glyphs

While Sonic and Tails started out with a discussion on what to draw where and how, complete with frantic wavings of brushes at each other, Knuckles selected a brush and paint for himself and took to the side of the area they'd designated their mural space. It had been painted before, but the colour had faded to random vague lines at the edges that formed neither glyphs nor pictures anymore, leaving the wall almost empty.

It would not stay that way. As had been common with some of the murals, especially from more recent times, Knuckles wanted to include a text describing the events depicted in their picture that would put it into context for any future viewer. The inscriptions had not survived for all the murals. The fateful one in Hidden Palace, showing Sonic and Robotnik, had been without inscription for context, and wouldn't that have saved them all so much trouble?

Knuckles intended to do better with their mural, so he'd have to write a text for it. For all his life, he'd been reading a lot more than written anything himself. He wrote the occasional note, or reworked faded glyphs on old parchment or stone, but he rarely wrote an actual text. As he started out, it required all of his concentration, but by then Sonic and Tails were thankfully busy with their tasks, and after a while he found he dropped into a flow of sorts that made their occasional comments to each other just blips at the edge of his awareness. For several minutes, his world narrowed down to the stone and the brush, to choosing the right words and to lining glyph after glyph, careful, precise. He was going to do this properly now, and he didn't want his writing to look sloppy.

He was so absorbed in his work that when he noticed Sonic had called his name, he wasn't sure if he'd called it only once or if he'd tried to get his attention for a while now.

Slightly annoyed at being interrupted, he lowered his brush and turned to the hedgehog. "What, Ch'ooj?"

Sonic had obviously been about to say something, but instead of actually doing that, he blinked, frowned, tilted his head at Knuckles. "What did you say?"

It took Knuckles a moment to go back to it and realise he'd mixed two languages in a two word phrase. "Um. I said "Ch'ooj". That's "Blue", in your language."

"You were really busy writing; it makes sense something like that would happen," Tails called from the other end of the mural in the making, but Knuckles didn't have time to process let alone answer that, because Sonic was grinning a sort of disbelieving grin.

"What's much more interesting here," the hedgehog trailed, tone light and amused, "did you petname me? That's my thing, Knux."

The echidna shrugged. He hadn't been thinking. "I guess?"

"Now I want to know what else you call us in your head." Sonic's ears twitched.

"A nuisance, sometimes. Like, when you interrupt something I'm working on."

Sonic laughed. "Fair enough."

Knuckles raised a brow. "So? What did you even want?"

"You said you can't paint!" Sonic had stepped up next to Knuckles and was looking at the wall.

Knuckles finished the sweep of the glyph he'd been working on when Sonic interrupted, then turned back to the hedgehog. "I can't. I can write, Sonic. That's not the same."

His blue friend contemplated first him, and then the writing. "Looks like painting to me," he said. "Here, you can draw hands!" He pointed.

"That's kind of my name, Sonic." Knuckles found a grin spread on his face. He studied the glyph for "knuckles". It was indeed a very stylized fist, with emphasis on the conical spines.

In his own part of the mural, Sonic had by now finished drawing himself, in bright yellow, with some blurry, jagged circle around that resembled a ball of flames. The picture of Sonic himself somehow managed to be very easily recognisable, with several triangular spines on the head, and at the same time so simplistic that it looked kind of clumsy, and kind of like the glyph of someone who couldn't write with quite a steady hand for some reason. Next to the little yellow hedgehog figure, Sonic had depicted Tails in the same colour as himself; the fox was mostly distinguished by the larger ears and lack of spines on the head, and the double tails. A yellow circle surrounded the fox picture. On Sonic's other side, there was another circle, with the stick and circle style body in bright red. It lacked the head yet, and the hands.

Sonic pointed first at his half-finished picture of Knuckles, then at the writing at the side of the mural, waving at the glyph for Knuckles' name and the one that looked like an echidna head and in this context meant the syllable "chu" . "Here, how about you do your own head and hands? You obviously can do them. If you let me do it, you might end up looking crippled."

Knuckles felt a grin spread over his face and accepted the brush from Sonic.

Tails, who'd been hovering near the ceiling to comfortably reach the upper part of the mural where he wanted to draw Metal Sonic's airships, dropped down to watch Knuckles' quick, practiced strokes outlining first two fists and then the echidna head shape.

The Guardian didn't add in the face, but handed the brush back to Sonic. "Here, I think you can take it from here."

Sonic shook his head. "Yeah, probably. But seriously, you do realise that you just like that drew a good looking head, and I took ten minutes to get mine and Tails' somewhat right? And you say you can't paint."

"Because it's not painting to him," Tails said.

Sonic frowned, but Tails was waving towards the half-finished scrawl of glyphs. "If it's a common symbol in this writing, it's like drawing a letter. It's a practiced motion."

Knuckles shrugged. "I guess?"

Sonic grinned. "I'd call cheating, but, it's party day."

Knuckles wasn't sure yet if he wanted to argue with Sonic about the "cheating", but Tails was pointing at the rows of glyphs. "But those are not letters, not like our letters. Do they represent one word, or something else?"

"Words or syllables, depending on context. A lot of the syllables are actually short words that speak like the sound of that syllable, others are... shorthands." He'd never thought he'd explain his people's writing system to anyone.

Tails was still studying the glyphs. "It reads top to bottom?"

Knuckles nodded. "You read the two glyphs next to each other, then the two below, then the two below that."

"What's it say, so far?" Even Sonic seemed curious in a way, about something as technical as writing.

"There's a classical way of telling a story in writing like this is," Knuckles explained. "The beginning explains who the people in the tale are."

Tails pointed. "So that's your name, I guess?"

"And next to it is... an Emerald, with something on top?" Sonic was frowning.

"It's a flat hand," Tails realised. He smiled. "That's the "Guardian of the Master Emerald" symbol."

Knuckles nodded. "It combines the sign for the Emerald and the glyph for "guarding or shielding something"."

Sonic waved at the wall. "Where's my name?"

Knuckles pointed. "I spelled out your names as they speak. I thought of translating, but it sounds weird. And the old language has no word for "sonic". I could've called you "sound" as in, you know, "noise"." He grinned.

Sonic pulled a face. "Gee, thanks."

"Hey, I said I didn't."

"This is a ship, right?" Tails had ignored the short byplay entirely. He was rubbing his chin, contemplating the writing like some puzzle to be solved.

"Yes, it's a ship. The glyph before it reads "Ka'an", that is "Sky"."

Tails brightened. "The airships!" He tilted his head at Knuckles. "You have no word for "air"?"

The Guardian shook his head. "We do. But no word for "airship", so I made one. It's... There's a system to how you describe things. This here," he waved a hand vaguely around, "gets transcribed as "sky-land". You don't write "Floating Island". You say that. You say other things, but in writing, a floating island, such as Angel Island or Sky Babylon or the Lost Hex, it's written as "sky-land", made up of "sky" and "land". So, these," he indicated Tails' beginnings of drawing airships, "are "sky-ships"."

Tails nodded. "Makes sense. You need to be concise writing like this. Each glyph takes a lot of time, and a lot of space on whatever you're writing on. And it would be hard to read right if there aren't rules."

Knuckles shrugged. "Rules changed a lot. You need to know when something was written to interprete it right."

"Sounds complicated," Sonic noticed. "Really, that must've taken ages to learn."

"I don't know. I don't remember."

Tails shook his head. "But surely someone taught you; I can't imagine how you'd learn that all by yourself."

Knuckles sighed. "As I said. I. Don't. Remember."

"Sorry," Tails said, wincing. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"What he means is that you're a big, red mystery," Sonic noticed. "And Tails can't stand unsolved mysteries."

"Well, you'll have to deal with not solving this one, because I sure never did." Knuckles folded his arms, the stem of the brush he still held poking somewhere near the crook of his elbow, but he hardly felt it. It was a frustrating topic. "Was I too small to remember? Did I forget about most of my childhood? Did I hit my head or something? I don't know. I don't- I don't feel like there's a gap or anything. Everything makes sense until you start to think about it, and then it falls apart. Where is everyone else? Why did they leave me here? Was it an accident? Did they leave on purpose? Was I forgotten about?" He forced a breath. He knew he was rambling, that he was saying things he might regret bringing up, but he couldn't stop. "I just... sometimes I wonder why I was left behind. Why would they, my parents or anyone else, really, why would they leave me? And then I get angry, at whoever it was who left me here, and then I get angry at myself for being angry because I don't even know if that's what happened and-" He caught himself off, remembering the thought from a couple days ago. "Maybe they didn't actively leave me, on purpose I mean. Maybe something terrible happened to everyone else here. I don't know, an illness or an eruption or some other catastrophe and somehow only I survived it. Maybe someone came after the Emerald and killed everyone. I don't know. I can't know. And then I'm mad again at myself because I'm assuming and -" He gulped in another quick breath of air to carry him through the last part. "And I'm always assuming the worst of the other echidnas first. I always assume it's their fault, or maybe that it's mine and I did something to deserve," he waved a hand around to try and encompass the entirety of the deserted island, "this."

Sonic frowned at him, but not in a way that suggested he was mad - why would Sonic be mad? - but in an unusually thoughtful kind of way. He exchanged a look with Tails, who gave a weird half-smile, something like a nod of permission and a shrug.

"Would you think Tails deserved being left alone?", Sonic asked, and the question was so unexpected that Knuckles just stared at him. Catching the look, Sonic waved a hand towards the fox. "We're not sure how Tails came to be left by himself, but since a lot of people didn't treat him well because of his second tail-"

"You think his family or community cast him out for looking different?" Knuckles stared, a quick surge of anger vibrating sharp and hot through his body.

Sonic steadily met his glare, apparently aware it was not directed at him this time. "Let's say the thought has crossed our minds a few times, yes. So, do you think he deserved this?"

"No!" The word was a sharp snap, sharper than he'd intended. He wasn't angry at Sonic, and certainly not at Tails.

Sonic seemed utterly unbothered by the tone. "So, recap here. Tails was four when we met, and he doesn't remember his folks. You also don't remember your folks. Tails, scientific conclusion?"

"You were probably a similar age," the fox said, softly, gently, inexplicably unruffled at having his own troubled past discussed.

"We don't know that," Knuckles argued. "Like I said, I -"

Sonic cut him off mid-sentence. "Right, we don't know. We're speculating. You're speculating, and with very little hard facts to start out from. Tails, is that good method?"

Tails shook his head. "It's very bad science."

Knuckles grumbled. "It's not science."

"True. But it is speculating." Sonic still steadily held his gaze.

"So, you're meaning to tell me to drop it because it doesn't lead anywhere?" The echidna huffed out a frustrated breath. "You're probably right, too. It's just - it doesn't make sense. My memory doesn't make sense. My life doesn't make sense. I know things I shouldn't know, and I can't say why. I remember being much smaller than now. I liked to crawl into spaces not even Tails would fit today. I remember being small. But I don't really know how long ago that was. I don't really know how much time passed, and it's fuzzy when my first memory is. There are things I know and can do and I don't remember being told. I don't remember being told anything. But I know a lot of things, and it's kinda scary because I never remember learning any of it. I know I'm Guardian. I know what I'm to do here. I know how to use the Emerald. I knew what Chaos Emeralds are like before I'd even seen one, before you came with them to the island. I know what plants are good to eat and how to prepare them and stuff. I know how to read and write. I knew how to speak your language, but... I actually remember teaching myself to read that."

Sonic blinked, but he seemed to take Knuckles' new outburst in stride, compared to Tails at least, who was speechlessly staring again. "You taught yourself to read our language," the blue hedgehog repeated, Knuckles wasn't sure because it was the last thing he'd said or because it seemed the least troublesome thing to pick up.

"I knew how to speak it, and there are scrolls with translations." Knuckles shrugged. "Your script is rather easy to learn."

Sonic snorted, waved at the wall. "If this is your starting point, I can even imagine. How many symbols do you have? Hundreds?"

"Several hundreds, I guess. It's hard to tell because they combine and make new glyphs."

"Like sky-ship." Sonic smiled, carefully, like he knew Knuckles knew he was trying to distract him, and unsure if there would be resistance.

But the echidna was grateful for Sonic's ability to focus on harmless and non-serious things. He didn't want to think about it anymore, not right now at least. "Yeah, like that."

Sonic's smile steadied a little, and the green eyes flicked across the mural. "I think I'm gonna draw lots of cool lightning bolts between the airships," he declared.

A while ago, Knuckles would've considered it a random statement, but he was starting to see how it was not, not quite. He wasn't sure how to reply, but Sonic was still talking anyway, and now he was looking at Tails, who still looked stricken and uncomfortable. Knuckles felt sorry, but it seemed like Sonic was going to be the one to eradicate any low mood that so much as looked his way.

"There's just one problem," the hedgehog was saying. "I can't draw my epic lightning storm anywhere, because you," he mock glared at Tails, "haven't even finished your first airship, and you," now the look zeroed in on Knuckles, "haven't drawn us a single cloud, because you're not done with the story writing. Come on, speed it up!"

Tails shook his head, but he was smiling again. "Are we slowing you down?"

"Yes! And you know I hate being slowed down!" Sonic waved his brush for emphasis, almost stabbing Knuckles in the eye.

"Okay, okay, we're going back to work." The echidna went to pick his own brush back up. "And technically, it was you guys who interrupted."

Sonic grinned. "You'll have to forgive us for being illiterate simpletons."

Knuckles snorted, secretly glad for the banter, for getting over the uncomfortable topic of before. "I think it's hardly appropriate calling Tails an illiterate simpleton."

"Oh, but it's okay calling me one?" Sonic was back to gesticulating with his brush.

"Your words, not mine." Unexpectedly, Knuckles found he was grinning. It felt good to.

"Really Sonic." Also Tails was smirking, and rather mischievously at that. "If you wish to identify like that, nobody is going to stand in your way here. Feel free to be yourself."

"That's extremely generous and open minded of you guys. Thanks." Sonic actually bowed at them. "I shall express myself in this painting now."

"You do that." Knuckles turned back to his writing to hide his grin. "But don't screw up my face, hedgehog."

Sonic laughed.