The Ecteiroglyphs of the Lorwolm

I walk two miles to the post office every weekday and nearly every Saturday, to pick up my mail. Approximately every week, usually on a Wednesday, I walk the same distance (but in a different direction) to the library. On most Sundays I walk to a Catholic church a mile and a half away, but I do not go to mass, I just walk back, sometimes stopping for a bagel on the way home. That is my excercise program in its entirety. Last Wednesday I returned from my walk to the library and opened my front door to find Tsitao-utna strongly present in the house. Even though I stood only in the front hallway, I felt like she filled every room. Her presence oppressed me with urgency as I hurried to the kitchen, and I was so awkward in my haste I almost dropped her blue blowl as I removed it from the cupboard. As soon as I set her bowl and pencil on the table, she spoke. Her voice was harsh, hurried, and full of metallic clicks. She said a single phrase: "Siksga kelzwun rahben." And then she was gone, and the house was clear of all sense of her occupation.

Her abrupt departure left me a little shaken and I sat down in a chair, plopped like a sack of potatoes. I sat there for a while, staring at her bowl, thinking of nothing much. Eventually I heard a tick-tick-tick at the window and I looked up. A tiny gray bird was pecking at the window frame. It was Ga-ukogomen in his kinglet smallform. I hastened to my feet and opened the window. It is a peculiar thing to hear words of unmistakable clarity spoken from the beak of a bird. You almost feel you should look for a puppeteer or a ventriloquist. Ga-ukogomen spoke only five words before he flicked away through the Tecomaria vines that crowd the light from that window. He said, "You need paper and coffee."

After I made coffee, I sat down at the table with my mug and a piece of typing paper. I stared at Tsitao-utna's bowl and pencil, drinking my coffee, trying not to think about what I was going to draw. Messages from the Lorwolm are not meant for me, and I believe I might damage the conduit of transmission if I try to interpret them while I am in the process of writing them down for the first time. After I have written them down, clear and complete, a certain order might suggest itself, and only then do I allow myself to edit.

This is what I wrote:

  

I left the bowl, pencil and paper on the table. The next day, I added this to the first drawing:

  

On the third day, I added this:

  

I was staring at the page, wondering if I was finished, wondering if there was another line or squiggle I needed to draw, when a flicker at the edge of my eyesight made me look up. Ga-ukogomen was perched on the back of the chair opposite me, snapping his wings as birds do when they are setting their feathers into order.

He repeated Tsitao-utna's phrase, "Siksga kelzwun rahben." Except this time I heard, "Six gackles, one robin." And Ga-ukogomen extended it, so the whole sentence became "Six gackles, one robin, twelve blue feathers."

  

"It will be the name of the last Mesiok, " Ga-ukogomen added. "She will not leave this planet until the second gyre of the Four Wandering Moons."

When the Lorwolm use the term "leave this planet", I think they are talking about death, but I am not sure. They might be referring to a journey. To the Lorwolm, death and life are part of the same journey. They do not think of death as an absence of life, since they have died and lived many times. They regard death as a process of life, and fear it no more than we fear things like sleeping and digestion.

"Will she be an important person?" I asked Ga-ukogomen, but as soon as I spoke I realized it was an unnecessary question. Everything the Lorwolm tell me will have significance, some day in the future.

"She will be the last Mesiok," Ga-ukogomen repeated. "Her name will be a key to a locked book and a doom to a continent."

Copyright © 2010 Eirene Kuanyin Skadhi

The smallform of Tsitao-utna is invisible, but her herald, her sigil, is a small blue bowl. When she wishes to speak to me, I take the bowl from its place in the cupboard and set it on the table and put a pencil beside it. Her voice comes from a place 14 diumalks above the bowl. A diumalk is approximately a half-inch, according to Tsitao-utna.

Through a period of trial and error, I discovered that Tsitao-utna prefers a Turquoise drawing pencil with a soft dark lead, 6B. With this sort of pencil, she seems to converse longer and more naturally, with less distraction. She often seems hurried when she speaks and I believe I can perceive a certain tension in her voice. I think she is intimidated by Ga-ukogomen. Sometimes when she speaks to me, I imagine her looking over her shoulder, afraid she will see the na-awult. I imagine her as a young woman, with long dark hair, very straight and waist-length. I have no real reason to picture her this way, but that is the image her voice sounds like.

One day, a few hours after she had spoken to me, I picked up her pencil and began to doodle. The marks I drew are represented below in figure 1. This has happened to me many times since. I don't know what they mean, just as I don't know what the ecteiroglyphs mean, but I have ideas. I think the first doodle represents Tsitao-utna in some way. I believe figure 3 is a representation of Ga-ukogomen and figure 4 is about Nihr Avna-attu. I don't know if these doodles are their names in written form, or if these figures tell a part of their stories, like a lineage or a history. I have to conclude that these forms are for the future to decipher and are not for me to know. I am just the stenographer.

  

The forms that are closed are filled with yellow color because I feel it is somehow important to emphasize that those forms are closed. The forms that are unclosed, that have gaps between the lines, have a different significance than the closed forms.

Copyright © 2009 Eirene Kuanyin Skadhi

Each of the Lorwolm appears as a different phinnaft, a smallform, a form that is unlike their true form. A diminishment. Ga-ukogomen, who sometimes shows signs of vanity, says if he showed me his true form and then left me, I would kill myself with longing and loneliness. His most common smallform is a little gray bird, smaller than a sparrow, a kinglet. Other times he is a crow, but in miniature, no bigger than a finch. His vanity shows itself in the brilliant black perfection of his feathers; his claws, beak and eyes shine like onyx jewels.

Nihr Avna-attu's phinnaft is a warm, white mist which sometimes fills the whole room and her/his voice wanders within the mist. The voice is both feminine and masculine, or neither.

The smallform of Tsitao-utna is invisible, but her herald, her sigil, is a small blue bowl. When she wishes to speak to me, I take the bowl from its place in the cupboard and set it on the table and put a pencil beside it. Her voice comes from a place 14 diumalks above the bowl. A diumalk is approximately a half-inch, according to Tsitao-utna. She was about to tell me what a gyre is but Ga-ukogomen told her to shut up, in an angelic kind of way, with a very loud sound like glass breaking, like a thousand windows breaking. I had a ringing in my ears all day afterwards.

Tsitao-utna can remember the name of her last mortal life: Claudia. Ga-ukogomen and Nihr Avna-attu are much older and say they do not remember their mortal lives. Ga-ukogomen once told me there are tasks angels cannot do if they have not forgotten their mortal lives. Yes, angels have tasks: they are always learning something new. Ga-ukogomen told me that the learning never ends. Tsitao-utna said she thinks the learning will end but it will take a very long time.