#The Historical Void unfolded once more
I learned to write, from the memories of the corpses in the glacier. So far, this was the only skill I thought was of little use.
Before that, I had found the ruins of a settlement, right beneath my feet, an entire frozen lake... Calling it a settlement seemed to make it sound a little small. It covered a vast area, with many things I could not understand, and many wondrous dwellings that seemed to be made of rock. It was the first time I had seen houses that were not made from us.
The existence of "writing" filled me with wild delight. My intuition told me that if I could fully master writing and decipher the words left in the ruins within the glacier, I might be able to escape the confusion and hallucinations that had persisted for decades.
"Written words." So language could be transformed into "written words" to record events. I thought it over carefully. I had never seen similar symbols in the residential area or the temple (only the incomprehensible totems we were required to carve onto our bodies, supposedly to draw the god's attention; I had long since severed the entire part bearing mine), nor had I learned anything of the sort as a priest. Since even it did not know how, this was not monopolized knowledge, but something lost that met my requirements. The high priest was a Believer chosen by the god and could live for two cycles. It had been born half a cycle before me and should have been long dead by now.
I tried to remember when I had first learned language-but I truly could not remember. Without the group mind's memory bank, I struggled to piece together a complete picture from my own