[Translation note: Kneril and Knetsil would not be interpreted as proper names, but a shortened version of ‘first sister’ and ‘second brother’]
Both Father and Mother had been called to harvest. This was a good thing, they said, for it meant there would be plenty of food until the next harvest – but it still should not have happened. Not with two Íl to care for at home. But happen it did.
Kneril was charged to mind Knetsil while they were away. Almost as soon as the had departed, Kneril concluded there was not enough food in the cupboard, and made to go fetch more. She warned Knetsil not to stray from the courtyard.
As Knetsil wandered, he thought of the work his parents would do; Would the pick the tree fruits? The Ground fruits? Would they pick for flower seeds? Or chop the grasses and tie them into bundles? Would they look up and see the workers chipping off pieces from the great stone pulled from Hell?
[Translation Note: The human concept of Hell and Yekkr, while obviously ascribed different physical conditions, bear a lot of overlap in metaphysically prescribed attributes]
Knetsil looked for things to harvest, but found little; the flowers were up in high windows of his neighbor’s apartments, and he had not seen any fruits or grasses growing outside the harvest.
Perhaps, Knetsil thought, he could dig. He put claw to the ground, and made a hole, though moss and soil, but he quickly hit building dust.
He went further from home apartment, and dug again, to find the same thing. Frustrated, he went further and further from home, over paths quiet from harvesters called away, sampling the ground for dirt that could even grow food.
Kneril soon returned with enough to fill their cupboard, and easily found Knetsil by following the line of shallow holes. What he had found was not a root – but some sort of post of stone, pointed at the top, but not sharp enough to be a weapon. Wondering why it would be left there, useless, he dug down, to find it went deeper than his claws could dig in the dense building dust- and was covered with signs he could not read.
Knetsil asked Kneril what the signs meant, for she had been taught how to read – of which she was proud/boastful, but it was merely because it was not yet Knetsil’s time.
But when Kneril looked at the signs, she did not know them, or their meaning, and for a time she was angry at her teacher for withholding knowledge from her, stamping the ground in her shame. With a clearer mind, she wrote down the signs, careful to leave no question she could answer unanswerable.
[Translation note: Meilkto as a title could refer to the storyteller themselves – a position generally associated with language education, as the student performed the role of a scribe, writing down the dictated story. One could take down an entire story without repeats by the time their education has been completed – elementary level. Which meant these stories tended to he recited with a more internal repetition than has been included in this translation. The Instructor generally chooses the another gender to refer to a Meilkto in a story.]
Then, together, Knetsil and Kneril found Meilkto and, placing their notes before [him/her], Meilkto reviewed them.
“Do not be worried, for the words of this script have not been spoken for ten thousand generations, for these marks are only found on the Bones of the World.
“For in the black of Yekkr, there are the stars, where the whole of creation once burned; and once burned the brightest star, of awakening.
“But as all things must die, so was it for the star of awakening. And thus the bones of the world were made, and the world around them, to carry the Ouinhed to a new star that their children might one day know the awakening.
“If you have seen the harvest, then you have seen the lesser bones, taller than any can stand. And now you have seen the mere tip of one of the greater bones, which keeps us from Yekkr. It know nothing but it’s duty – let it be about it.”
Knetsil and Kneril thanked Meilkto for this knowledge, and then, returning to what they now knew was a Bone of the World, thanked it for doing it’s duty, and buried it, to leave it to it.
[Translation note: This is as close as the Ouinhed get to a ‘creation myth’ in their early education, at least with what has been recovered from this cylinder. Of course it is suspected thousands of cylinders were built over a millennia as the Ouinhed star started to go Red Giant – it’s believed they ran out of resources to build them long before their planet would have been uninhabitable, much less consumed.
The implication that previous generations of buildings were ground to dust and left in place is interesting, but not directly referenced in other materials. Reference to asteroid capture is ubiquitous, so that provides somthing more of asteroid-crete lifecycle ]
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