Small Things

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Elred set the small girl down softly onto one of the dilapidated chairs within the expansive tomb. Through the thick coat of darkness, a few phantom shapes could be made out. Judging by their sharp angles and rectangular bodies, they were shelves of some sort.

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"Why it so quiet in here?" the girl asked.

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"I think this place has been empty a long time," Elred spoke softly, "and when all the people left, silence moved in."

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She looked at him curiously, her mouth squirming into a strange expression. After a few moments she merely nodded, accepting this. Ever since Elred had collected her abandoned on the side of one of the roads outside the razed town of Verrdikt, she'd been a child of few words. It was hard to say if that was due to her limited knowledge of them, or the lack of appetite for them which the world had imparted unto her.

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Elred pulled a small torch from his bag. Softly, flint and steel clicked together. For a few moments only that rhythm existed in the long vacant space. From the emptiness, eventually, came light. It was soft and orange, gently peeling back layers of the inky blackness.

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What was uncovered were volumes upon volumes of scrolls. A lost collection of knowledge. They overflowed from shelves, often simply being deposited in unruly stacks across the ground.

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"Why so many of the paper?" the child asked, now with a few fingers in her mouth.

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"Well," Elred spoke contemplatively, "people used to write all the stuff they knew down. Stored it in places like this. They wanted to make things easier for people that came after them. Some people didn't like that, though. Thought that people had learned too much. Departed from the faith of the twenty divine - so they all got locked away. Forgotten."

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"Like me forgotten?" she whispered.

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Elred winced, his features soft under the gentle firelight.

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"A bit. People often discard things, not knowing their worth."

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Though he doubted she really got the nuance of the statement, the girl gently smiled with the far off look she often had.

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"Will words tell us what to do? To make it good again?" she pawed at her cheek as she spoke, a strange look coming over her. Hesitantly, she asked a question that she'd voiced many times since joining Elred. "They tell me my word?"

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Elred knew what she meant to ask - her word, anyways. She had never known her name. He began to leaf through the first of the shelves, getting a lay of the structure the scrolls had been formed into.

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"Well, they say everything you need for a better future and success has already been written," Elred laughed lightly. "So maybe someone figured out how to make it all good again."

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He doubted that was an easily achievable objective, regardless of the tombs harbored knowledge. Looking at the poor girl though, it didn't really seem like a time for nuanced opinions.

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"And who knows? Each town did have a Yeuomen."

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She cocked her head.

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"Sorry - a writer of words. They kept track of things like births and dates. Collections of events."

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Sadly, Elred knew their skills were probably very underestimated and largely underemployed in the times before the shattered reclamation.

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She smiled a far off smile again, eyes not quite focusing.

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"My word?"

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"Yes," Elred returned her smile. "Your word."

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Elred glanced through shelf after shelf. On the Topic of Cold Weather Fertility, The History and Significance of House Verneer, and Appropriate Methods of Long Term Storage for Perishables. All undoubtedly useful - but not the answers he sought out. He masked his frustration - the girl didn't need to see that.

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"My word?" she probed, eyeing him as he worked.

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"No, not yet I'm afraid," Elred sighed.

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"I look?" she asked, placing one faintly damp finger on a scroll near her.

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Elred paused, a thought striking him. He set down the scrolls in his hands and walked over. Perhaps this journey wouldn't be wasted after all. They'd need many to remember the forgotten knowledge - at least if they ever made it that far.

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"Quite a good idea," he said, patting her gently on the back. "Do you see the squiggles? They are called 'letters.' This one here is 'V.'"

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She furrowed her brow, pointing at the letter shown to her.

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Elred pressed his front teeth against his lower lip. "Vuh - Vee. Like that."

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She repeated the sound, clearly concentrating. "Vu- Vuh. Vee?" She looked upward, questioningly.

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He smiled, nodding on encouragingly. So they went, squiggle by squiggle. Letter by letter. Word by word. Though this was not the knowledge Elred desperately sought, he took solace in that for today it would be enough.

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Perhaps finding one word would make this worth it.

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[WC: 795]