Etched in Bone

Dear Douglas,

Here in Brittania, it’s business as usual, which, for us humans, feels surreal. Fishing boats go out and bring back a catch. Hunters trade some goods in order to enter the wild country and bring back a deer or two to sell at market. While we aren’t receiving the same quantities of foodstuffs from Thaisia, ships are coming in to our harbors with needed cargo, the manifest carrying both the signature and seal of the harbormaster overseeing the point of origin as well as the signature of the terra indigene assigned to approve any shipment of food. We’re even receiving shipments from the human territories in Afrikah and Felidae, as well as merchandise from Tokhar-Chin. No one mentions Cel-Romano. It’s like there is a big hole in the world that we’re all working around as it fills in and takes a different shape.

Some Cel-Romano refugees have made it to coastal villages on the continent—human places that were established in the wild country outside the Alliance of Nations and have been allowed to exist for generations. The refugees call the war the Destruction of Cel-Romano and the Alliance of Nations. The Others I’ve talked to call it the Thwarted Human Invasion of the Wild Country. A truth seen through different eyes. The invaders were not only stopped; they were hamstrung so that they will have no time for anything but survival.

While that is true of the cities with factories that made the weapons of war, the country villages, especially those along the original border between Cel-Romano and the wild country, celebrated the return of most of their sons and are living much as they had before the war. There is more wariness, more concern about provoking an attack, but the same can be said for the people in Brittania who deal with the Others.

Recently I met one of the terra indigene who is considered a historian and scholar. I can’t tell you what kind he is because I only saw him in his human form and he didn’t offer a name that indicated his form or gard. He showed me a map he claimed was five hundred years old. The map showed human places I’d never heard of—places that had once been great civilizations, until humans forgot the world wasn’t theirs to claim. He told me remnants of those civilizations still exist, with statues that were great works of art standing sentinel in pastures. The surviving people live in isolated communities on the land that wasn’t reclaimed by the wild country, coming together for major celebrations that provide an opportunity to trade merchandise and arrange marriages. They live simply, and few humans in other parts of the world even know of their existence anymore.

I think he showed me the map so I would understand that the land that had once been the largest human-controlled area in the world is gone forever. The people who still live in Cel-Romano will adapt to a simpler way of life or fade away as many did before them.

Business as usual, but nothing will be the same. I think you, better than I, understand that.

—Shady