Chapter 55: Fragmentary Diary
Chapter 55: Fragmentary Diary (3)
#The fog of history unfolds again
I learned to write, from the memories of the corpses in the glacier. This is the only skill I find useless so far.
Before that, I found the remains of a settlement, it was right under my feet, a whole frozen lake. ... Calling it a settlement seems a bit small, it is very large, there are many things I don't understand, and there are many magical, seemingly rock-made dwellings. This is the first time I have seen a house that is not made of stone.
I was ecstatic about the existence of "writing". My intuition told me that if I could fully master writing and decipher the text left by the relics in the glacier, I might be able to get rid of the confusion and hallucinations that had lasted for decades.
"Words", it turns out that language can be converted into "words" to record events. I thought about it carefully. I have never seen similar symbols in residential areas and temples (only unknown totems that were required to be engraved on the body, which were said to make the gods notice. I had cut off the entire part long ago) and I have never learned anything as a priest. Since I don't even know it, this is not monopolized knowledge, but something that meets my requirements and has been lost. The high priest is a favored person chosen by the gods. He can live for two cycles. He was born half a year earlier than me and should be dead by now.
I tried to recall when I first learned language - but I really couldn't remember. Without the memory bank of group thinking, it was difficult for me to piece together a complete picture from my own memory. I think I can use it to write my own name, but I don't want to share it with others, not to mention that a name is just a number. The Latus share a mind, but never really have the same heart. Fearing pain, they forbid those who sacrificed their limbs to wail because of pain. Fearing death, they expelled those who were still alive in advance. Fearing madness, and also fearing things that don't fit in, they threw me out early.
"Our God rejects the cycle of life and death"
“That’s why everything lives.”
I saw these words on... a strange thing. I don't know how to describe this thing. There are words written on it, but it doesn't look like stone or leaves, but something lighter and thinner. Many pieces of this thing are neatly stacked and fixed together into a thick pile, held in the arms of a young Tyr's body.
She was inside the ice, dozens of meters away from me. Her eyes were tightly closed, and there was light brown fur on her cheeks that belonged to a cub. She was floating in the ice. It was conceivable that a large amount of water must have rushed into this depression, but it quickly froze, which kept her here.
I thought this kind of writing was by Latour, but isn't it? Before this glacier formed, we used to share a common writing system?
Does the fact that the cubs can carry text prove that they knew how to write and interpret since childhood? Did they undergo systematic learning?
But what makes me more curious is the content of these two sentences.
I remember the teachings saying that a long, long time ago, floods and cold weather almost destroyed the world. When the gods saw the world collapsing, they shed tears and used their divine power to disperse the floods, protecting the creatures during the hundreds of years of cold winter, and marking out the last safe place for the survivors of the two tribes to find peace. Hundreds of years later, spring finally arrived again.
What does it mean to "reject the cycle of life and death"?
I felt hungry. Real hunger. My intuition told me that the child's body carried the "memories" I needed, and the thing with the words on it alone was valuable enough, but it was sealed in the ice, and it was almost impossible for me to get it intact.
I want to obtain this history, I want to eat her body. I want to learn more skills, I want to know what our "God" is. As long as I can obtain the memory of this child when she was alive, I will definitely be able to decipher the meaning of this sentence, and even successfully get rid of those messed up hallucinations.
I started chipping at the ice.
Once, twice, countless times.
TBC
(End of this chapter)