A Tract

"You there!  Do you know the truth?  How about you?"

Passerby did their level best not to make eye contact.  As long as no one acknowledged the acolyte, he wouldn't pounce.  One of the potentially uncomfortable parts of living in Benajir was the extent of religious influence; most of the city's inhabitants were adherents to the teachings of the Prophets of Lerum, acolytes, but they were unsatisfied with anything less than a totality.

Cartography

Kayre frowned at his map.  It was hardly the work of art that a true guildsman might produce.  This was of course entirely expected from a student who had just begun his apprenticeship, but that truth did little to stave off the disappointment he felt.

He had spent the better part of two days laboring over the parchment—the first piece he had been given in his six months with Guildsman Beniira—in his attempt to recreate faithfully the coastlines and vegetation from the massive hand-produced tome propped open on the table next to him.  Even with his finest efforts, he had mixed the inks poorly and was fairly sure that the largest island of the exotic Ophruts was badly malformed.

He looked over it one more time, sighing wistfully at what it could have been, before he called to Beniira.

The Race

The University grounds teemed with people.  In the shadow of the skeletal figures of the in-progress library and research buildings on the edge of the new pond, the Northern Gate had been thrown open.  Here, stands held the throngs of hundreds of bystanders eager for the beginning of the race.  These overlooked the starting line where four vehicles stood arrayed and being prepped.  Blessedly, the sun shown brightly, pushing back the sharp cold of morning and making this year much more pleasant than either of the previous two.

Flicker Tower

The wind howled and clawed at the sturdy walls of the flicker tower.  Inside, however, it was cozy and more than a little homey with bright machine-woven tapestries.  Hale wouldn't have had it any other way; one of her first concerns when joining the Corps was that she could bring personal items.  She had been assured that those who were posted would be given luxuries to compensate the isolation.

Black Market

Olee Goffen reassured himself that he didn't have another choice.  It wasn't as though he wanted to go to a pirate.  He'd much rather have a licensed grammarian repair the flywheel, but his family didn't have the money.  He mused about that: without the flywheel, their boat was dead in the water and they could catch no fish which meant they could make no money to repair the flywheel.  He shook his head at the thought and ducked through the crowd, weaving his small form easily between the adults.

An address to the Guild of Textors by Grammarian Tamner

Good textors, it has been almost a century since the invention of the motive flywheel. It is a truly remarkable device which has undoubtedly changed our world forever and I would be loathe to downplay Textor Pollun's role as its creator and master of grammar. Yes, he stood on the shoulders of such giants as Textor Grame who first discover that grammar could be boolean, opening new worlds of possibility beyond simple symbols, and the Textors Hebbling who together described the first glyphs modifying mass and inertia, but he was the one with the insight and skill of composition to combine these into a source of power.

Recovered Text

The following is the remaining text of page 153 of A Beginners Compendium and Catalog of Terminology of the Grammarians, the only relatively intact work to be recovered from The University following what official reports refer to as "a synergistic glyph event" in one of the establishment's grammar research cells.

Prairie Schooner

She hadn't noticed the slant to the floor before. It might have been even longer if she hadn't been cooking eggs that morning. She had just walked up the gangplank, through the living room, and into the kitchen with the morning's eggs, putting most into a box in the closet where the wallpaper's patterns kept things cold. She didn't understand how, but that was for those who studied grammar. If she were honest with herself, she might admit that she regretted not paying extra for the hand-scripted wallpaper instead of the cheaper mass-produced stuff that never seemed quite cold enough.

The Grammarian

He sat, hunched close over the lodestone, muttering his recitations as he worked.

"Top to right. Left sweeps up. Double ogonek."

He straightened his back to a series of satisfying cracks. Lying before him on the table, surrounded by various styli and bearing a chain of glyphs winding the entirety of its surface, the stone had begun to hum gently. One of the closer, smaller styli drifted absently upward. The grammarian smiled to himself as he gently plucked it from the air and began to put away his tools.