III. he did not wake
The third fragment is the longest and the most structurally unstable. The author shifts between describing a historical figure and describing personal experience without apparent awareness of the transition. The Department recommends reading this section in well-lit conditions with another person present.
- Department of Antiquities, University of Rivermount
I. he saw. the one they buried the histories to hide. he did not pierce the veils like a mystic climbing toward the light. he turned around. he looked at the wall behind him. the wall that no one looks at because every lantern in the cage is hung on the opposite wall and your eyes go where the light is and the light is the trick. he turned around in the dark and he put his hands on the wall and the wall was thin. it was so thin. and on the other side of the wall something was breathing and the breathing was warm and the breathing knew his name. not the name they gave him. the name he had before names existed.
II. [four lines illegible]
III. i have been to the lake. i did not tell the Department. i hired a boat and rowed to the centre and lay on my back and looked at the sky and the sky was wrong. the reflection in the water was not the sky above me. the reflection showed a different sky. a sky with no sun. a sky that was not empty but full, so full that the fullness looked like darkness the way deep water looks black from above but is not black when you are in it. i put my hand in the water. the water was warm. lake water is not warm. i pulled my hand out and my fingers smelled of something i recognised but could not name. i have smelled it since, at odd moments. in the transcription chamber. in my bed at night. it smells like the room where i was born, if such a memory is possible.
ᛄᛠᛔᛏᛠᛂᛒᛠᚨᚹᛂᚨᚤᚿᛠᚣᚼᚩᚻ
the door was always open
IV. the city did not fall. i have to be precise here because precision is the last thing i have. the city descended. a stone does not fall through water. it sinks. sinking is not falling. falling is loss of control. he was in control. i know this because i can feel the intention still in the water. forty years of studying thaumic resonance and i could not feel intention in the water until i stopped using instruments and used my skin. my skin is a better instrument than anything the university has built. my skin knew before my mind did. my mind is the last to know anything. my mind is the part of me they built to not know.
V. i opened my abdomen. i need to report this. i used the stylus and a mirror. the organs are not placed randomly. they are placed the way the codices were placed in the twelve chests. in a circle. around a centre. the centre of the circle in my body is a space behind the stomach where there is nothing. not emptiness. a deliberately maintained nothing. a kept absence. the same shape as the twelfth chest. the empty one. i sat with my abdomen open and looked at the arrangement and i understood the Codex-writer's final teaching before he did. you are the twelfth codex. he meant it literally. the text is meant to be written in the body. in the space where the nothing is kept. and the nothing is not nothing. it is a seat. it is empty because whoever is supposed to sit there has not arrived yet. or has not been invited. or has been forgotten.
VI. they said he opened the door. they are right but the word door is wrong. a door implies a wall that is meant to be there. what he opened was a wound that had been called a wall. the wound was always there. the wall was the bandage. he removed the bandage. what was underneath was not healed. what was underneath was the original condition, and the original condition is not a wound at all except from the perspective of those who applied the bandage and need you to believe that the bandage is your skin
𒀁𒀞𒌑𒂗𒄿𒁕𒀞𒁕𒂗𒂊𒋙𒀞𒀑𒌅𒀞𒄀𒌋𒁡𒂊𒊯𒀞𒀈𒀞𒊯𒂊𒈠𒂊𒈠𒀏𒊯𒋙
the void does not hunger it remembers
VII. [nine lines illegible. all four scripts. overlapping. the following recovered:]
...he is not dead. dead is a word for a body that the tenant has vacated. he did not vacate. he expanded. he is in the water and the water is in the ground and the ground is beneath your feet. you are standing on him. you have always been standing on him. he holds you up because holding things up is what he learned to do when he stopped being a king and started being a floor...
...i can feel him when i press my palms to the ground. he is patient. he is so patient it hurts to feel it. the patience of something that knows the answer and is waiting for the question to be asked. and the question is very simple and no one will ask it because the question is: what if outside is home...
VIII. [two lines illegible]
IX. you have dreamed of falling. in the dream the falling becomes flight. you always wake before the flight completes itself. you are meant to wake. the waking is the mechanism. he did not wake. he let the dream finish. and the dream was not a dream. the dream was a memory of a place you lived before you were given a body and told the body was you. and the place was dark and the place was warm and you fit there the way a key fits a lock. perfectly. without remainder.
ᐝᐌᐙᐌᐙᐲᐝᑁᐅᐮᑁᐣᐎᐏᑁᐶᐝᐌᑁᐲᐫᐌᑁᐥᑁᐚᐋᐙᐺ
remember what you were before the naming