A Discovery
This story was originally planned as a video submission to Invocation, the Night Mind 2023 Candy Bowl community Halloween video event. For personal reasons, the original planned video version of the story was not made. This story has been created in the spirit of the Candy Bowl event.
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Everything portrayed in this story is fiction or otherwise not meant to be a reflection of any real people/places/events.
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Translation from a recovered page of Dr. Lockman's (resident archaeological scholar, Digborough School) research notes. With additional annotations by James Langston, student, Digborough School, 1922. One of the few recoverable artifacts from the Tyrrhenian archaeological site. Mr. Langston's later account of the events that transpired during this field research session is not currently available.
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The Tyrrhenian language has a syntax organized from specific phonemes*, which I have identified below with etched charcoal rubbings. Dr. Lockman wants this translated by sunrise tomorrow to do… something.
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Could this be a PIE** candidate?
Original text: "Geritcha mo / aanell / Bu emn so'oo / sh / aa aan / o'oo"
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Translation" Call unto me / the first grim day of forever / prepare the finest offering / cleanse thyself / one glimpse in the darkness / and wait"
"Geritcha mo" was one of the first verb phrases Jacques Tadivar successfully translated from Tyrrhenian to English (by way of Greek) in 1919. Tadivar's team also was the first to suggest it may correspond to a velar plosive.
"Aa" is roughly "open eyes", "morning", "sunrise", "first".
"So'oo" is likely an adjective with the same root as "o'oo": a quality of waiting. Anticipation? Something worth waiting for?
"sh" refers to water and activity with water. Longer durations of the phoneme* represent larger bodies of water or more activity in those locations. Remember to cite Thatcher et al.'s (1920) work identifying "shhhhhh" as "the ocean". Really cracked this open for us.
We've been in this tomb*** breathing dust for two months now. What does the professor want to find?
Hal Beauchamp, another from Tadivar's team, proposed that this verb phrase (as originally suggested by Tadivar) is actually a noun phrase - an oxymoron.
At least this isn't Linear A.^
"One glimpse in the darkness"… I think we could do this with a torch.
Waiting…
Cleaning…
Offering…
IS THIS A SUMMONING RITUAL?
*Correction: I meant to refer to the written graphemes in this instance. - JL
**Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is a hypothetical language that is the original root for Greek, Latin, and other Romantic languages. See Schrader and Childe’s work on the subject. These linguistic artifacts are unlike many of their known PIE counterparts.- JL
*** Note from the editor: See also Davis and Stocker’s excavation of the tomb at Pylos-Nestoras.
^ Linear A is a hypothetical script for a Minoan language from the 2nd millennium BCE. It would have been spoken by Minoans, an ancient civilization that lived in what is now the Crete region of Greece. First discovered in 1900. At the time of publication, Linear A has not been completely deciphered. - JL