13:27, Rotation 264 / 365, 232 AE, -67.568065, -68.122535, Reath

  Ahead of them, a stumbling orcan bumped his shoulder into a passing orcan.

  “Don’t sha shove me, orc!”

  “I did not! Sha shoved me, sha gezzno hai!” And then the stumbling, drunk orc shoved the other orc with one hand, throwing his balance off, but he caught himself on the back foot.

  “Liar!” And then the other orc shoved him back with both arms, toppling the already unsteady orcan to the ground. He picked himself back up with a roar and leapt at his attacker.

  It devolved quickly into a scuffle, as the two offenders immediately went to a grapple, unloading as many blows as possible when they could drunkenly wrestle the other to the ground. Bored orcs with nothing better to do began to gather and loiter.

  “Three coppers on Wathu!”

  “Sha got a bet!”

  “Wurl Stah!”

  Githarie grabbed Zhak by the shoulders and hurried him away from the increasingly chaotic scene.

  Finally, they reached the main square, the center of East Rothera, and the location of the school, the library, the cornucopia, the cafeteria, the storehouses and the chief’s hall.

  Zhak needed to return some books, so they first entered the library.

  The library was hoisted on ten squat little stilts, a two story cuboid lug, orcish for building, with little pipes coming out from the back corners like ears, its facial facade four long concave widthwise arranged weather shields with six little rectangular windows to peep the snow flurries, all tinted the light green of pale orcan skin. One of its corrugated steel walls had been blasted apart by dragonbreath long ago and repaired by the resident of Rothera with great stacks of hemp concrete and mortar of hemp resin, topped with a thatched roof edge that fused with the original planar roof like moss growing on an old temple. It was hardly one of the largest buildings in the village, though free and communal sharing of knowledge was a cherished ideal of the Horde, books were just hard to come by. It was an unfulfilled ideal, as ideals often go, as most orcans – save for curious ones like Zhak – were too busy with the simple art of living to care much for esoteric literature. The majority of orcans were illiterate anyway, although Gnosta made sure that all the Thraxes children could read. But only Githarie and Zhak ever truly took to it.

  Inside the library the walls were lined with old, dusty tomes, transcribed off half rotten texts that were scavenged from pre-Catastrophic ruins. They were neatly arranged on shelves, but the shelves themselves were haphazardly arranged, giving the interior a distinctly messy, but cozy feel. Where some books could not be fit on the shelves, they were hastily arranged in piles and stacks, clumsily strewn about.

  In the center of the ground floor was a lectern upon a dais, meant for poetry and spoken word readings or lectures of rhetoric, but in practice was mostly used for acoustic musical performances. Orcans were mostly creatures of the body – how could one not be when they could transform their bodies in such magnificent ways? – not of the mind.

  The anti-intellectualism of orcan culture, however, had undermined the vitality of their civic lives in ways that few of them could fully comprehend, and should the time ever come for important and robust debate, there was a dangerous possibility that all orcan society could be corrupted by the maniacal whims of a demagogue.

  Githarie, however, couldn’t entertain such a possibility. In the calm of the Post-Exodus Peace, what need was there for orcan politics outside of internal village bickering? The decentralized nature of the Horde meant that all orcans were free to live their lives without fear, for the pursuit of happiness free from tyranny was enshrined as the ultimate purpose of the Horde itself.

  Near the entrance, a simple, algal resin treated, heavy hemp cloth divider to keep the humidity within the store of knowledge consistent, so as to not lose precious texts to the decay of molds – but of course a crude iron portcullis would be pulled down during the hours when their caretaker was not present to safeguard the treasures – sat the librarian.

  Although she was mostly bald, she had a short tail of green hair – chlorophylled hair was often worn by orcan ladies of more humble station, a compromise between prettiness and practicality – which she currently kept loosely hanging to the nape of her neck. She wore a pair of spectacles, rare indeed, for orcans often could transmogrify their eyesight back to sharp keenness, and only an orcan who read a truly enormous number of books and who, in advanced age, slowly had the gift of transmogrification leave them – something that happened naturally over time, but much more quickly every time they bore a child – suffered myopia.

  The librarian must have been close to two hundred revs old, certainly one of the very first to be dipped and her portliness showed it, but her skin did not look a rote over fifty, so cloistered she had been in the library all this time. Her attention was totally rapt upon a codex, the cover resting upon her desk so that the two children could not tell what it was about.

  “Heya, Meldy!”

  Meldy Whong, the Library Master of Rothera, peered up from her spectacles, “Why if it isn’t our most loyal patron, Zhakkathan, and his lovely sister,” she smiled, but there was a sly strictness to it, “and I assume that the two of you have something to return?”

  Orcans who did not return what they borrowed from the library were punished with hard labor for the village’s communal projects, so Zhak quickly produced a large stack of books, setting it upon her desk with a thump.

  Meldy’s sly smile never left her but in the back of her head she cursed how annoyingly studious Zhak was. Because every time she had to be the one to put all the damn books that he checked out back in place. Every time. But there was one thing missing.

  “Githarie?” Meldy had impeccable knowledge of the library’s inventory.

  Githarie had almost forgotten! She pulled out a very thin book from the front pocket of her overalls, and printed upon the cover in beautiful calligraphy were the words, “The Little Chief”. It was a scribed book, which meant that an orcan – Meldy herself, actually – had copied it down from a scavenged copy, most likely in irreparable and barely readable condition after having been ravaged by the passage of time, almost word for word. Almost. Of course, to assist orcan comprehension, Meldy changed some of the words so that young readers like Githarie would not be totally lost. The point, after all, was to expose young orcan minds to ideas that could shape their growth for the better. This could not be accomplished if they didn’t read.

  “What did you think?”

  “I loved it. It was so fantastical, so many mythical cryptids! And I loved all the drawings.” Meldy had attempted to recreate the drawings of the book with a fair amount of gusto, indeed one of Meldy’s talents was the beauty of her illustrations.

  Meldy adjusted her spectacles with one finger, pulling it downwards so that her gaze met Githarie’s directly.

  “And who's to say that these things didn’t once walk upon Reath?”

  “If they did-” Githarie always lived her life always in the present moment. She didn’t care much about things long past and gone. “They’re all dar now.” – they’re all dead now – “Nae much point in weepin’ for ‘em.”

  “They came alive in your imagination, no?” Meldy’s sly smile curled ever slightly upwards.

  Githarie had to admire Meldy’s geshzugas and she gave the old librarian an appreciative nod. “They did, Meldy. Thank sha.”

  “And what do you think was the meaning that the author was trying to convey?” Meldy hated ‘sha’. She hated all orcish. She hated the corruption to the common tongue.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Githarie cast her glance aside as she thought about it, before quickly snapping her gaze back with a mischievous look, “that the most important things in life cannae be seen with just the eye,” she responded, cheekily.

  Meldy raised one eyebrow, “My dear, if I wanted to listen to someone regurgitate paraphrases of the words written, I’d much prefer to just re-read it myself.” She leaned forward a bit, “What do you really think?”

  Now Githarie strained to recall all the different parables and metaphors of the picaresque, truly it was a very cryptic text with many cryptids. She responded haltingly, thinking hard about each next word.

  “That we make the meaning of our lives. We’re responsible for deciding what is important to us, and what’s not.”

  She paused, “-and if we aren’t careful to remember the things that meant the most to us, the things we care about when we’re innocent,” – Githarie was very careful to make sure not to say ‘young’, because the narrator himself was older, but had never lost his childlike sense of wonder – “before we’ve gotten caught up in some-” – she wanted to say nuk-nuk but knew of Meldy’s hatred for orcish – “-muttshit that dinnae actually matter as much as we think it does, then it’s easy to lose connection to the things that do matter, the ones who care about us most.”

  She thought of her pham. “Cannae forget that we often take those closest to us for granted.” She nodded.

  Meldy’s sly smile broke into a broad grin. “Astute observations, Githarie.” And then her usual neutral expression returned to her face as her eyes fell back into her spectacles, into her reading, “I would recommend that you revisit this one when you’re a bit older. Perhaps, even when you are a cryptic old bat” – of the three, only Meldy knew what a bat was – “like me, dear!” She let out a brief cackly chortle.

  Without looking up again – Zhak and Meldy had such rapport that not even eye contact was necessary for the two of them to converse – she said, “And what did you think of your books, Zhak?”

  “Which one, Miss Whong?” Zhak always addressed the librarian so, even though she preferred Meldy. Like clockwork he code-switched for Meldy and all the orcish dropped out of his speech.

  “Let’s start with the Invisible Mutant.”

  And this one was a very complex novel indeed, and Meldy had scratched her head trying to craft an appropriate context that young orcans would understand. She settled on imagining an oppressed mutant under the Elvan regime, right after the Eucatastrophe. Hence, the Invisible Mutant. While she was at it, she changed the narrator to a gynous mutant, and, for good measure, made her homosexual. She didn’t feel it changed the meaning much.

  “Well, I have mixed feelings about Ras the Exhorter,” Zhak, having conversed with Meldy endlessly, did not feel the need to prove his intellectual worth like his sister did, but rather zeroed in on the aspects he felt most conflicted about, “He’s the one who advocates for mutant liberation, even through violent means…”

  “Go on,” although Meldy’s eyes did not float back up, Githarie could tell from her voice that he had her interest now.

  “But isn’t the analogous character in our history, well, the Horde Master? He certainly did some questionable things, but we revere the Horde Master as a hero, the savior and messiah of our race. Yet Ras is the villain.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s just weird, thinking of the hero as the villain.”

  “Don’t you think there are a lot of villains in that one?”

  And then Zhak fell silent, lost in thought.

  “And what about the poems?”

  Zhak’s face lit up with a smile and he recited, in the sing-song lilt that was practically the Thraxes pham’s motif,

  “Here we go round the prickly pear, prickly pear, prickly pear,

  Here we go round the prickly pear, at five o’clock in the morning!”

  “Wonderful”, now Meldy’s eyes were finally torn from her book, as she gave full attention to Zhak’s reading.

  “And what was your favorite line?”

  Zhak didn’t miss a beat. “This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.”

  “Ah,” there was a hint of disappointment in Meldy’s glaze, “Everyone loves that line.”

  But then she snapped immediately to business, after noticing something was amiss.

  “Missing something, Zhak? I don’t see Giovanni’s Room on your return stack.”

  How?! Did she transmogrify photographic memory or something?! Zhak’s light green cheeks went dark with blush, “Um, I’m not quite finished with that one yet! Tomorrote!”

  “Fine. But if you’re enjoying it, might we discuss it?” Meldy sidled her elbows up to her desk, leaning in.

  “Nope! Nah! No.”

  Meldy bit her lip so she wouldn’t smile too hard and give Zhak away. But Githarie had zoned out. Literature kind of bored her.

  Her eyes snapped back to her book, “Feel free to peruse at your leisure, children, just make sure” – she shot a quick glare at Zhak before her eyes drifted back to the page – “you check them out with me if you want to bring them back home.”

  Zhak has been punished so many times for stealing books that he dared not meet her glare and defy her. He cast his eyes down. “Mo-”, he caught himself before he said mog, “Ah, I mean, I promise, Meldy.” he rubbed his toe on the ground.

  Finally paying attention again now that she sensed their boring book talk was coming to an end, Githarie thought that these two are just too adorable.

  They made themselves comfortable, sprawling on hemp fiber bean bags stuffed with fluffy mutt wool, Zhak making a mess picking books apart from the shelves and leaving a little nest of them strewn around his bean bag, while Githarie, after a brief chill to absorb the majestic ambience of the library, walked around wondering what she should read next? Nah. Nah. No, that looks boring…

  Before she knew it, she found herself in the forbidden section of the library.

  A big black tome bound in black. It was elvanblood dyed elvanskin leather, its binding unlabelled, sat staring her in the face. She was weirdly drawn to it, despite the dark aura that emanated from its binding. It was like a necronomicon, a book of the dead. Instinctively she reached for it and slipped it from the shelves, surreptitiously letting her arm drop to her side so that the book was obscured by her profile from Meldy’s gaze, which she glance-checked to ensure was still buried deep in that book she was reading.

  Using her pinky to open the lid and see simply the first page, all she could discern was the words:

  ‘THE LORD OF THE RINGS’

  And before she knew it – for she had already taken far too much of a risk as she’d see a savage beating from Meldy had she been caught and so she had to commit – she slipped the grimoire into the big pocket of her bib overalls just a second before Zhak began tugging on her bib, exclaiming “Ai-sha! Rie! We’re gonna be late for class!”

  Already? Had she really spent that long just trying to decide what to read next?

  ‘Wurl Stah’ - Orcish cry by observing bystanders meaning ‘there’s a really entertaining fight happening nearby so come and watch’. A ‘Wurl Stah’ was basically one step short of a wagh, just with two orcs instead of three or more.

  ‘Lug’ - orcish for building.

  Githarie briefly wondered who had been dipped first, Meldy or Da.

  Where things couldn’t be simply replaced with a more familiar concept, Meldy had scribbled little margin notes.

  She had redone every sketch with her own artistic sensibility, each drawing much more intricate than the ones from the fragile relic from which she copied, quite possibly to the Godlike Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s annoyance, as the narrator was supposed to be a self-admitted ‘fair-to-middling’ illustrator, that is, if he was still alive. But he was dead now.

  ‘Dar’ - Orcish for dead. As in ‘Lok Tar O Dar’.

  Meanwhile she was corrupting all the texts she was transcribing, or rather, rewriting and editing. Remixing.

  The common tongue, English, was chosen for its ability to interface with the arcane terminals of the Lost Age, and as it was the most used meaning signifier for coding in arcane languages (let, const, int, string, struct, object, function, state, call, etc.) it became the only complete language that elvans and orcans could be counted on to know. Many languages had died, but many also still lived.

  Not everything that goes around comes back around, you know.

  And indeed, she felt guilt as the more she realized she edited, the more of the true text was lost. But to tirelessly edit the allowed printed works was the mission entrusted to her as a secret agent of the Master himself.

  Put a chick in it and make her gay.

  It did. The result was, in the end, much more her own creation than anything else. But that did not mean that all the meaning of the original text was lost, either. Some things lost, some things gained.

  It was now known as the ‘early’, day and night were now revolutionary and not rotational as it was in the Lost Lands, and besides, the elvans, shortly after the Eucatastrophe, decreed that ‘morning’ sounded too damn close to ‘mourning’. This was a new beginning, and not an end. The end was over.

  It was put in the forbidden section because the Master did not want the Horde to feel poorly for itself, for ‘orcs’ – and this was one of the few extant copies across all of Orca itself so even Meldy refused to reprint it with even a single word altered lest it truly be forever lost in time – were depicted very badly in the Lord of the Rings. But of course, this was also the very text where one could trace, partly, the very origin of the word ‘orcan’ itself.