Introducing: Brae's meteorite

or, translating a diary by a person named Renn -- Part 1

Mar 02, 2023

In the flickering torchlight, her hair flared a shade more crimson than usual.

Here’s a thing.

I found a diary. Bound in thick, cracked leather, flaking at the edges, brown and scuffed and long weathered by time’s fingers. The pages are parchment, scribbled and scrawled with dates and places and people that—how can I put this without sounding insane?—don’t seem of this earth.

I know, I know. That sounds a lot worse when I write it out. A lot crazier when I admit it to this screen I’m staring at. But … well, I’m going to transcribe what I’ve been able to make out. It’ll take some time. There’s a lot of entries and I’m not yet sure I truly understand everything that’s written within. It’s like I still have to piece it all together, map it out, work out which entries go where, how the timeline fits and if there even is a timeline. Whether the author had any underlying intention or if it was just a collection of thoughts and happenings, perhaps a tracing of an arc of a meaning.

Of course, it is somewhat strange I’m able to read the thing at all. The words are in a curling, mysterious script. But, I suppose that’s one of the luxuries of this object and craft: being able to decipher what isn’t really there.

*The room in which I imagine Renn penned most of his diary. Image courtesy of Midjourney.*

You’ll find the very first entry below.

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Feshen, 11-on-Rye, 568

The meteorite—if that is what it truly was—came three days after leaving Toӧr. It burned bright in the sky, a corona of cool blue cloaking a heart fierce as ember. It was beautiful. Then it winked out, leaving us motionless, the night sky re-emerging in dim jealousy.

I had looked to Brae then, my mouth parted with a word half formed. But Brae just shuffled, feet crunching on loose leaves, eyes squinting towards that point on the horizon.

Then came the explosion—or something like an explosion. There was only the light, spitting forth from the horizon and illuminating the sky with a narrow, prismatic jet. Then that too was gone, lost to space.

We waited, expectant on a sound that never came. No rumble, no shockwave. If we had been asleep, we might never have known of its passing.

Or so I thought, back then.

“What?” I said in whisper, the lone word finally finding itself.

Brae said nothing. She motioned we continue, stepping up her pace. Though the waning moon still gave enough light to see the mossy way below our feet, she lit a torch and held it high as we walked. The light struck the myriad tree branches lining the path, casting each leaf and twig into darting shadow-shapes. Somewhere nearby came the low snort and rustle of an animal. Jackhog, most likely. Scavenging in the night, it must have been startled by our footsteps and flame.

In truth, if I am to be honest in what I write here, Brae’s insistence on the safety of fire had unnerved me. We had walked with the moon’s silver guidance for hours, so why the change? What significance had that celestial body brought?

“Why the torch?” I asked, words echoing thoughts as I brushed aside a branch.

“Would you rather I put it out?” she said, her first words in over an hour. Those words carried something strange. Something out of place, even for Brae.

I could have answered. I could have set forth a series of questions. It was what I did with Brae: ask questions to seek the slightest favour, often receiving nothing in return, not even a grunt. But sometimes, if my question could nudge her just right, or I found her in a moment of peace, or I said something spectacularly stupid, I could glimpse the single thing that made me smile: her eyes and their edges, the way they creased, the momentary wrinkling. It was always enough, seeing those creases, thinking that perhaps I had brought a fleeting distraction to her life. I suppose it had started as a game. One I had played for years.

But that night had been no time for games.

I shrugged, though I doubt Brae could tell. By then we had reached a larger clearing and she had taken the lead, sweeping the torch in what I felt were unnecessarily wide arcs until she caught sight of the forest hedge once more. “I don’t care if you put it out or not,” I said, forgoing my own silence. “I just don’t see why we need it. There is moonlight enough. Why waste a torch?”

“Waste?” Brae stopped, whirling to face me. In the flickering torchlight, her hair flared a shade more crimson than usual.

This was not going well. “Not waste.” I held up an appeasing finger, like a banner pole bereft of any actual banner. “A flame at night, waste no light, drown the ghost, appease the blight.” I spoke the charm in my best lyrical tone. “Yes, yes, powerful and true and all that.” Brae was superstitious. I knew this, even from a young age. I just didn’t see how her superstition fit with what we had witnessed.

She said nothing, staring instead at my unwavering finger. Finally, I let it drop. Her eyes in turn shifted to mine. They were deep set and cold, entirely devoid of creases.

“Brae,” I said coolly. “What was that? What did we just see?” The meteorite already seemed the distant memory of dream—something that may not have actually occurred.

Brae continued to hold my gaze, inspecting me as though I were an outsider.

“I don't know,” she said, dropping her eyes and slumping her shoulders. “I don't know,” she repeated, her voice drained of any power. And then, in a moment of honesty that felt distinctly juxtaposed to the impervious Brae I had spent so long trying to crack, she added, “but it is not the first I have seen.”

Not the first.

I wondered deeply on her words that night. I wondered at their meaning, at the fear writ across Brae’s face. At what may lie ahead. Everyone sees meteorites, on occasion. Especially night rangers. Those that wander unseen in the cloak of dark. But her words gave me pause, and it is only with the silent passage of time, with deep regret, and with my own slow stupidity that I caught her true meaning. It was no mere meteorite that we saw. It was something far more profound. Something intangible, even for me now.

Brae shook her head, as if ridding herself of some unseen insect. “Let’s move,” she said. “The night is still upon us, and we have a ways before camp.”

I had almost protested, almost stopped her and demanded some answers, or at the very least set upon her some questions. But instead I let it go, motioning an as-you-wish gesture with my hand.

It is a decision I have forever had to live with.

You’ve just read the first entry to Brae’s Meteorite, a journal I found and one I am slowly translating. It takes a fair chunk of work to translate, but if you’d like to read further entries then leave a like and a comment and we can, err, try and make this a regular thing.

SLAKE

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