On the Descent of Words

A dense book in plain boards. Its author is Elsareth, a memonek, whose name stands on the first leaf. Its pages are crowded: lines struck through and written over, and at least three hands besides the author's at work in the margins, one of them small enough to want good light. It is held among the supervised references of the Great Library, in the Reference Rooms, and is read at a numbered desk for a set time.

Its kind is declared on the first leaf, and anyone who has opened it knows it: a scholar's miscellany of worn words. The Age of Song kept its history in verse and in the spoken word, and a word sung for a thousand years wears like a step on a stone stair eroding over time. The book gathers such words, section by section (the words of places and waters; of the seasons and the reckoning; of myth and of magic), and sets each beside the forms it wore before.