GRP Chapter 40

Mariaeks turned the carving over in damp palms and examined it from every angle. When Samthyeon's gaze began to feel like heat on her skin, she set the carving carefully on the table. The light exhale Samthyeon let out struck her ears sharply. He was visibly disappointed.

She could not bring herself to look up. She breathed quietly, with nothing to offer.

Floating book dust tickled the tip of her nose.

Achoo. Mariaeks gave a small sneeze. Samthyeon rose from his seat, drew the curtain, and opened the window. Cold air poured in from outside. Mariaeks shuddered, coughing repeatedly. Garthe turned to look at her. What on earth is this for, his expression asked.

Mariaeks rubbed under her nose with her sleeve and lowered her gaze with a slight wince. Sunlight coming through the open window fell across the table. Her eyes went again to the carving, now sitting in the bright patch. Shadow fell through the interlaced forms. Mariaeks tilted her head slightly and rolled the carving with her fingertip to change its orientation.

'The shadow... it's the same.'

Unlike the complicated interlaced form of the carving itself, the shadow it cast was identical regardless of which direction it was turned. Mariaeks watched the shape drawn by the clear light and deep shadow, and spoke as if in a trance.

"...We will meet again after a very long time."

She said it aloud and then said it again inside. It felt familiar, somehow. As if she had heard it before. But when she searched her memory, nothing in particular surfaced.

Mariaeks had been rolling the carving with her fingertip when she felt the weight of eyes on her and looked up. Samthyeon, seated across from her, was watching in stillness with the eyes of a golden eagle tracking prey. He asked in a voice thick and sunken, as if waking from sleep.

"...Can you read it?"

Mariaeks registered then that she had just interpreted ancient divine tongue. Oh, I did, didn't I. She nodded, the ease of the realization filling the space where her shoulders had been drawn in. The satisfaction welling up in her set her head upright again.

Samthyeon reached down to pick up a piece of paper that had fallen to the floor and scrawled something on it with urgent hands. The excitement was in his handwriting. Samthyeon, always soaked in exhaustion, reacting this intensely. Mariaeks's eyes slid sideways toward Garthe. She had hoped—with some small expectation—to catch an unfamiliar reaction on him.

But Garthe showed nothing. Not a fragment of excitement or satisfaction or joy. His gray eyes, brow faintly drawn together, were fixed on the ancient language on the table. In them, only the faint trace of the same recognition Mariaeks had felt a moment before.

Samthyeon paused on the stairs.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said she feels hunger."

"Lady Mariaeks?"

"Yes. Your 'Lady.' It seems her divine power alone can't sustain her body."

"......"

After a brief silence, Samthyeon nodded. He was thinking of the circumstances by which the two captured spirits had ended up caught.

"She is, in every respect, an extraordinary individual. Wait—if that's the case, what has she been eating all this time?"

Samthyeon's methodical thinking had caught on something important. Garthe thought of her eating the rotten potato—eating it diligently—and a faint smile showed.

"She doesn't strictly need to eat to get by."

He extended the courtesy. There was one shred of her dignity remaining. He preserved it. The roundabout implication that she had managed without eating made Samthyeon horrified.

"...That explains why the Anir has been ordering meals sent up without fail."

"Doing a background check on me now?"

"And so—what food does Lady Mariaeks like?"

A perfect disregard. And a forward check on top of the background one.

That all the priests, Samthyeon included, had lost their heads was understandable. Even if it had been nothing more than a worthless scrap of a journal entry like "earthworms that come out when it rains are charming," divine tongue was divine tongue. A territory unreachable by humans.

Even among gods, different regions and generations meant languages did not communicate. An old god could understand contemporary divine tongue, but for a younger god to understand ancient divine tongue was exceedingly difficult. The gods of today were nothing more than derivatives of the ancient gods. How shall the fingernail of a torn-off pinky know the mind of the right hand?

Samthyeon put it this way: mothers can tell from a baby's babbling alone whether it's hungry or has soiled itself; or alternatively, a grandfather understands whatever his grandchild says, but the grandchild can't follow half of what the grandfather says. And yet a young Mariaeks, barely a hundred and fifty years old, had interpreted diverse divine tongues without regard for region or era.

In Samthyeon's phrasing: a wet-behind-the-ears babe had understood the slurred pronunciation of its grandfather, and the refined vocabulary of a great-great-grandfather living in the next village, and the island dialect of a great-grandfather who lived far away—all of it at once. Words like "prodigy" and "wonder" could not help but arise.

And that was not all. Mariaeks had interpreted even what was believed to be the ancient divine tongue of the Father and Mother who had given birth to the world—as casually as reading a passage from an ordinary novel.

Ten or so years ago, in the process of reclaiming Olgidphaenn, a small ruin site had been discovered. The carving Mariaeks had interpreted was what a sculptor had made in imitation of the sacred relic excavated from that ruin. As there were duplicates rolling about everywhere in Samthyeon's room, the carving had not stopped at a single work—over ten years it had been copied into thousands of pieces and distributed all across the continent. Not only to the temples of the Thul'Mhoriae Alliance, but to those who worshipped different gods beyond its borders. But no one had been able to read it. Until today.

We will meet again after a very long time.

The sentence Mariaeks had interpreted was one that anyone with even a partial knowledge of ancient divine tongue could not fail to recognize.

The Thul'Mhoriae Alliance's temple was a religious body and research organization scattered across the continent. Its priests excavated ruins and sacred relics hidden somewhere in the natural world, and interpreted the records found within them, and built the foundation for answering what gods were and what humans were. Over a hundred years of records had accumulated this way. Even within that vast body of material, what was distinctive stood out. The temples of Thul'Mhoriae had noticed that ancient divine tongue bearing the same meaning continued to appear.

You and I—or: we—after an immensely long, long time has flowed past, shall meet again.

From the ancient beginning when the world was born, through the present moment. And from the deep ocean floor where light did not reach, to the high stone mountains beyond the clouds. Appearing scattered across every region of the continent and all of time. In over a thousand different forms.

That more than a thousand gods of different eras would all think the same thing was simply impossible—so it was likely the Father's memory, the one who had become the foundation of the world. How intense a memory must it have been, that so many gods who inherited it had wanted to carve it into the natural world? Considering what records are for at their core, the meaning felt all the more significant. It was a desire to convey to someone that we shall meet again after a long time.

The humans who had arrived at this discovery were tremendously excited. How noble the sacrifice of the Father who gave birth to the world, how great the achievement of the Mother who made the world breathe!

And yet the memory etched more intensely than that sacrifice, more than that achievement, was we shall meet again after a very long time?

For a mere human it was almost impossible to conceive of—the Father, suffering through eternity in opposition to Providence, and the one thing he had wanted to say to the Mother was we shall meet again after a very long time?

Love stories are always the most interesting kind. Not just any love story at that, but a desperate love given to the point of laying down one's life.

The love story of the Mother and Father gods became the foundation of countless cultures and arts across the continent. The stories of other halves of the soul, of fate and destiny—the ones Garthe found ridiculous—had originated from this. The influence of this message had not dimmed in the slightest from ancient times to the present; if anything, it bloomed more extravagantly with each passing age.

The influence of Providence dissolved into all things, growing thinner. The world's chaos showed no sign of settling. Humans who worshipped gods and humans who stood against them. Beings that dwindled day by day and beings that grew in power. Lies hardened by upheaval and truths ground down by them. A day when ten thousand were born and a day when ten thousand died.

That the number of humans in this chaotic world did not diminish but grew was also because they had been—imitating, or learning—that kind of love.

This is what they mean when they say parents ruin their children. Romanticism in a world where death and chaos ran rampant.

Garthe let out a dry laugh. He had never found the sentence—believed to be a love letter from the Father to the Mother—romantic in the slightest. It was sinister.