The story of Roshaska's first calamity looks both different and identical when I finally pull up before it in the core's largest cave. Identical because I have no issue finding it; like the rest of the caves, its location and overall image are engraved into my memory. Different because with the amount of pain we've been through to bring Xivay here, and the immense amount of weight riding on xir interpretation, the story seems suddenly, impossibly hard to read. The eel-Kel symbols twirl and leer. The older, more complex ones embedded among them nearly burn my eyes. I want to push Xivay towards the story, and drag xem away to forestall the possibility that xe might get nothing more from this than Sar did. But I can't fight the inevitable.

Xivay confirms the story I'm staring down, and approaches it with something caught halfway between reverence and caution. More caution than I'd have expected from a Rapal scholar with a history of studying eel-Kel writing. Or maybe that's the source of xir reluctance to approach too quickly. Xe stops a little farther from the story than Sar did, and keeps xir hands clasped, showing no signs of hovering them any closer.

"It starts with the prelude story," I sign, realizing belatedly that there's more context I can offer here. I point out the prelude, calamity, and aftermath, three sequential blocks of writing on the wall that somehow hold the key to our destruction or survival. Xivay nods along as I explain. When I break off, questioning my own utility, xe simply thanks me with another smile and goes back to reading. Xe started with the prelude even without my prompting. That gives me at least a little hope.

Our escort retreats to the previous caves, then back out to the core's waiting room while Xivay reads. It's just the two of us in the sparkling story-caverns now. I distract myself by looking around, trying to make any sense at all of the writing engraved so artistically in the ancient coral plaster. It's pointless, but also beautiful enough that I almost don't mind. I've drifted halfway around the cavern in a desperate search for distraction when Xivay lifts xir hands. I'm back at xir side before xe signs, "Sar read this, yes?"

"They said they got the gist."

The scholar nods slowly, and says nothing more. This time, I hover at xir side, trying not to make it awkward, though xe doesn't seem to mind. I watch xir face, trying not to make it look like that's what I'm doing. It's almost futile; Xivay's expression is the impenetrable kind of calm of someone used to schooling their expression. It's several hundred heartbeats before I'm rewarded. For a moment, the scholar's eyes jump, then shadow. It's just a flicker, gone a moment later, but xir prevailing expression becomes a little less neutral in the aftermath. I can't take not knowing.

"What does it say?" I ask. "If I'm allowed to know."

Xivay shakes xir head slowly, but it's not a shut-down of my request. "It is... familiar, I can say that much. Anyone able to read this at the time of the second calamity showed a severe disregard for history, if they repeated their mistakes."

Those might be the strongest words I've ever heard from xem.

"Sar was correct about the location of the fighting," Xivay continues. "The lower island chain, at a time when those seamounts were, perhaps, a little closer to the sun. The conflict seems to have originated on those mountaintops; shallow by the standards of these people, if not what you and I would consider shallow today. The people here were... unbothered. Perhaps even glad the fighting was elsewhere."

I can see what xe meant by familiar.

Xivay rocks slightly in the water, drifting from one side of the story to the other as xe reads. Xe's moving much faster than Sar did, and they didn't call it "reading" properly at all. We certainly seem to have brought the right scholar.

"They are evasive on their involvement," continues Xivay, unlocking xir clasped hands again. "If I was to guess, I would suspect they either watched those lower seamounts without intervening, or else kept their intervention subtle. Sent scouts, even spies. It was one of those that first disappeared."

Xe isn't smiling anymore. There's something unsettling about the thought of Roshaska's Kels sending their own watchers to bear witness to a conflict that doesn't involve them. If they simply watched, that borders on voyeurism. If they intervened, my bias wants to believe they did so for good. Xivay's expression, though, is not reassuring.

"A rapid turnaround," xe signs. "To find the first disappearance, ostensibly, but they escalated quickly to a fighting intervention. I imagine they already suspected the local peoples after the first scouts went missing."

More and more familiar. My heart sinks as my bias takes a beating. The walls of Roshaska seem to swim away from me, written less by ancestors—other Shalda people, whose pride in this place I would like to claim—than by strangers to me. Strangers taking actions I doubt I would agree with in the present day, exacerbating a situation that ultimately led to their own demise. Xivay's expression continues to shadow as xe reads.

"Another escalation," xe signs next, two lines further down the story.

"I thought it didn't affect them?"

"A spiraling retaliation for the missing scouts. They involved themselves."

The awe I've always felt towards the eel Kels is cracking. Xivay no longer looks reverent. Xe shakes xir head again. "They present justifications. One can only hope they didn't realize the impact they were having, to have continued so—ah."

My stomach drops at the sudden wiping of emotion from the scholar's face. "What?"

Xivay remains silent for a long time. When xe lifts xir hands again, xir signs are quiet. "They knew."

I'm not following. I watch Xivay helplessly as xe continues to rock in the water, eyes no longer moving back and forth, but fixated on a specific line or symbol in the story. After what feels like an eternity, xe lifts a hand again. Rather than sign, though, xe indicates a symbol in the story. I suspect not touching ancient writing is standard practice among Rapal's scholars; Xivay's fingers don't make contact, but sweep sideways just above the wall, drawing a line through several discrete segments of writing.

Xe signs quietly again. "The changes they saw—the motion in the water, the disappearances, the"—new sign I don't recognize—"along the island chain... they recognized these. They tell a story within a story. An older legend... if we were able to read back far enough, we may yet find another iteration of this pattern farther back in time. The story was known. Perhaps they didn't connect the consequences of their actions to its outcomes. Perhaps they decided to push their luck. Either way, they regretted it."

They knew of the possibility that their actions might end in disaster, and chose to carry on anyway. A bitter taste clings to my mouth. Sar mentioned that regret. They hadn't been able to pinpoint the origin of it—only the trigger, as villages began disappearing in this story itself.

I repeat back the sign I didn't recognize. "What's this one?"

"Ah... you wouldn't know."

Xivay falls silent again. I wait for an elaboration, unsure whether xe has opted not to give me one, or whether xe's done what xe often does and simply forgotten the present exists while buried in the past.

Then xe lifts xir hands again. "The walking stones."

That is a combination of signs that should not be combined. It sets the hairs on my arms prickling as I move to ask for an explanation, second-guess whether I want to know, then realize with a nasty shock which symbol Xivay's hand hovered over as xe first made that sign. It's the first one Taiki found from the stone forest. A far more internally complex symbol than the eel-Kel writing all around it, from some far more ancient language that might have been left by the demigods themselves.

"You know the symbol," I sign.

This time, Xivay leaves me hanging for so long, I almost retract my statement and back out of this whole conversation before xe replies.

"There are things I have read in my time that I wish I had not," xe signs. "Things that provided their own warnings that I did not heed. Things I should not have gained access to. There are things I wish I could un-read again—I remain fiercely in support of knowledge gathering from history so that we might not repeat the mistakes of our ancestors, but there is also knowledge in this world that is better left forgotten."

Xivay has learned things xe regrets. I'm less surprised than I should be. I've seen the energy xe brought to remaining undercover in Rapal, lying to Arcas and all her loyal followers so confidently, xe was able to direct them around like children. Able to slip out of the city after simply requesting the presence of the other person we needed to bring. I can all-too-clearly picture a younger Xivay finding xir way to forbidden ruins, or reading scripts better left alone to rot and crumble in the ocean's ever-shifting water. From that angle, I'm not sure what unsettles me more: that Xivay holds knowledge xe regrets gaining, or that xe's now indirectly told me the language of the demigods might be better left forgotten.

"A warning," signs Xivay. I have to drag myself back to the present to continue watching what xe has to say. "When she is angry, the bedrock itself cries out for the ocean to realign itself. There is a risk by then that it is already too late."

There's no question who "she" is in this instance. I stop asking for elaboration. Xivay, likewise, does not speak again for the remainder of the prelude story. I try to track xir eyes as xe reads, but end up simply watching the story again. The final symbol in it is the same one from earlier in the prophetic story thread. The walking stones. From there, the catastrophe itself begins.

Xivay doesn't narrate this part. I don't ask xem to. If there are important components I later need to know, I can ask for a summary version—I don't think I can stand to subject myself to the proper narrative right now. It's everything that happened when it was too late to escape Andalua, and if Sar's reading is to be believed, nothing changed for the better until the midpoint of this story. I wait in tense anticipation for Xivay to reach this part, but there's no change in xir expression this time. Xe just stops reading, eyes falling on a single symbol again. The next ancient one, embedded in the middle of the calamity. Sar said that symbol changed everything.

My hands betray me.

"What is it?" I ask. "Do you know that one?"

"I do."

Rather than answer further, though, xe breaks away and begins to scan stories around this trilogy, searching for something xe doesn't name. I move back, hands twirling small dances to keep myself from fretting too obsessively.

After some time of apparently unsuccessful searching, Xivay takes a critical look at several stories on the wall, then switches caverns entirely. I follow xem to a newer one, where xe finds the exact same story Sar did while reading here, too. I'm not sure whether that was prior information, skill, or coincidence, but I wouldn't put it past Xivay to gauge the timelines of everything written here and pinpoint exactly where to find other examples xe must know from memory. Xe reads the story several times, then hovers over a particular pair of lines for a while before turning wordlessly and returning to the calamity tale.

Only here does xe finally sign, "That symbol is the Unity Song."

My heart nearly lurches from my body. It soars upward, buoying me upward in the water like I've lost control of my tail, only I'm not moving. I need a stronger word than relief. The path we've been on, trying to protect ourselves, is the same one that once protected the eel Kels themselves from Andalua. It's a validation and a reassurance so strong, my eyes sting with tears in the still, cold water. My hands are shaking of their own accord.

If the eel Kels used the Unity Song to protect themselves, we may yet manage to survive.

Xivay, though, looks like xe has more to say. "I have never seen it written like this before," xe signs. "In most stories, it is more abstractly designed. A symbol of protection or community, nothing more. This is the same word, differently annotated... it is doing something."

"Doing what, though?"

"That is what they do not say." Xivay nods to the ensuing lines. "It does seem to repel the goddess herself, which is no small feat. However, the details of how they accomplish this seem to be assumed as knowledge held by the reader."

Knowledge lost to time. Maybe with the fall of the eel Kels themselves, or maybe even earlier. It's been so long between calamities, any presumption of cultural knowledge baked into this particular story could have sloughed off in any of the ensuing generations.

"They started rebuilding almost immediately," signs Xivay, catching my attention again. Sar had hoped xe might be able to determine the timeline on that recovery. "The city was not emptied, so we can only presume the goddess was either defeated or repelled."

"You can't tell?"

"The story mentions dissipation. Your guess as to what that means is likely as good as mine."

I quite frankly have no idea how an ocean deity appears or takes her leave again, or what happens if she's defeated. Clearly she didn't die; in both our stories and those of other Shalda people, she can't be killed, and she's still around to wreak another round of havoc today. Then again, I'm not sure it matters either way. Whether defeated or repelled, she left. That's all we really need to know.

Xivay pores briefly over the story of rebuilding, then asks, "Could you find our friends at the entrance and request my permission to continue studying these? I have a feeling there is a great deal more to learn here, and perhaps some things of value to this city's current inhabitants."

I track down our escort and quickly secure that permission. When I deliver it to Xivay again, xe thanks me and signs, "I may be here for a while. If you have other obligations to attend to, you are welcome to attend to them."

I do have other things to do, and while a solid portion of me wants to stay here and get story translations from Xivay in real time, my nerves will thank me for leaving. Before I leave, though, I do have one more question.

"Can I ask something?" I sign.

"Always," signs Xivay with a smile.

"What are the walking stones?"

The smile fades again. Xivay once more shakes xir head. "I wish I had the answer to that as much as you do."

That is the opposite of reassuring. I thank xem anyway, then take my leave. The guards point me back towards the people I want to find. No matter how far or fast I swim, though, I can't seem to leave the cold of those deep story-caves behind. 

A/N: Read a month ahead on Patreon—link in the comments ➡️