I lend Quilyan an ear as he responds to my inquiry with more enthusiasm than even that which he had teased up his lines in our prior conversation. It settles in my mind well that he has had access to libraries and written word, an economic system far superior to this fledging land we have somehow both stumbled upon; a connection, that burns and sparks, and draws me to the quick conclusion that I will be seeing more of the painted stallion, if for no other reason than to quell my suspicions that he once wore a crown or stood in the proximity of gold laced throne.

Even if he is only a scholar of his former kingdom, he is more learned and valuable than the other peasants I have come across. Surely, they can craft objects and have a miniscule version of a trade system among one another, but it is not Elysia. They have not a single field that is plowed by the men or a garden in which herbs are kept by wise women who heal with their aura and their plants.

They don’t even remember their own language, if this one is from this land. I look to the unicorn with raised interest in her heritage; it may be she is from an even less civilized homeland than this hellish place.

Let us hope she learns quickly. I have little tolerance for idiotic females, even less so than foolish men; if she proves to be a moron, I will cauterize her reproductive organs myself to ensure she doesn’t dishonor our gender any further than she already has wearing that ridiculous horn.

He mentions other runes etched into the stone in the caverns outside this one, and I find myself irate with my own failures to notice such things; I have been to lost in my own thoughts, dwelling upon the foul turns of fortune that have assaulted me since abandoning my mother and future kingdom.

All I had to do was kill Hespera, after all – and she was likely to explode all on her own.

I had been patiently waiting, until the night they were to tattoo Antiope; we had all agreed it would not come to pass, and fled our mother’s reach, our wings meant to carry us to the ends of the earth. But then the storm had come… and all of our plans were lost on the static infused wind.

I will not fret. I have faith in what the sky brings to me. I only wish that the time between our hastened loneliness and the reunion I have foreseen will be short; while I do not love all my sisters, I do care for them. And it is possible, as all things are possible, that we might be cured of our afflictions by some being in this land.

I have been partially listening to the exchange of words for some time now, catching the unicorn’s last inquiry and her name and filing away the latter for use on a different day. As for her question – I have an answer for her, I just do not know how to present the information. To share a cryptic half reply that I have sisters in this land whom can also read and write, but that I know not where they are or when in the time stream they will arrive; their souls are here. It is all I can tell her.

I doubt she is clever enough to understand the intricate weave of time and the path inscribed for us at birth, the magic that I was born with that has allowed me to see the lines of its ever bending path.

And so I remain silent, for now; they are of no use to me yet, my beautiful and graceful kin. Our paths have not met.

"We should not need more minds," I state, deciding instead upon a path of logic and a foundation of faith in Quilyan’s intelligence and station, ”the language is simple and quite literal at points." Finding one such emblem against the stone and directing a wing tip at it and the mentioned neighbors in turn, I finish with an example. "We begin with nouns - things, which will generally be exactly what the word is. This one is a sun. It is near fire. We can thus assume it pertains to the Sun God and his magic, be it a tale of himself, a follower who received his blessing, or a simple description of his power. Once we detail out more of the nouns and compare the myriad descriptors and symbols denoting an action to other samples from different regions in the caves we can figure out what story it is telling."

It sounds much more complicated than it is out on the open air, I decide while speaking.

Perhaps we will need others; I will not admit such things. I am wise enough to complete the task on my own, surely, and with the assistance of Quilyan and even unlearned Tangere we should make good progress so long as we are tenacious in our studies.

I glance back to Quilyan, a smile on my lips in delight of stretching my mental muscles so with a worthy study companion. "The sun was also in the creation room?" I ask, relatively sure that the answer was yes.