She stared at the pages of the ancient volume, its gold leaf edges shining against the fading candle light. She had managed, in her way, to interpret the purple script upon the pages. It had taken years to understand the fading words. The problem had not been the reading of the words at all. It was the characters themselves. The writing had begun to fade with time and now all that remained of many of them was a dying, pale violet. She knew the words once she was able to read the letters that spelled them out.
The words were of an ancient time, of a time back when Oz believed, when there was more faith in the unknown and unnamed.
Casting her eyes to the dying embers, she considered the emerald filigree that adorned the borders of each page of the ancient book. She had discovered early in her attempts to discover the meaning of the script upon the many pages that this seemingly decorative addition was actually of greater significance. She had found that the thin strip of emerald was actually impressively small script as well, a script which, even more remarkably matched the last of the lines on the very last page of the book.
It was to that page that the book lay open now, the words taking on an otherworldly essence. Now, even after years of study, she had no clue as to what the words meant. They were the only lines in the book she had failed to understand, for they were not written in the commonly spoken tongue, but in an entirely different unreadable language. As the fire finally found its place among the sleeping dead, she glimpsed once more the words upon the page.
Lectus
Praemedicatus
Lecta Praemedicata
Lectum Praemedicatum