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.


The introduction first non-academic printing presses a few years ago had only made the situation worse for those who did not believe.  Now that it had become simple to produce leaflets and tracts, hundreds had been written and were distributed on street corners to the heathen masses.  Only a few believers refused to embrace the technology, still relying on hand-copied scriptures often written in continuous text.

"Aha!  A beautiful young woman is interested in the truth!" the acolyte shouted.  The girl had stumbled on the tail of her obviously fashionable handmade dress and glanced up at him through her the drifting banners of her headpiece as she caught herself.  Now, bound by polite behavior, she found herself accepting one of the tracts she had so hoped to avoid.  She bowed slightly to the man and swept away, her brightly-ensymbolled train fluttering behind her.

A few minutes later, she sat alone in one of the public flywheel carriages on her way home.  Idly, she pulled out the card and began to read.

From whence does all come?

The Scribe is responsible for all that is, both known and unknown.

And how can this be?

The Scribe sat alone and dreamt of what could be.  In his wisdom, he saw fit to give being to his dreams.  He pricked his finger and wrote the world in his blood.  He used divine glyphs and grammar to craft the land and sea and everything found therein.  He is written into each and every thing.


Once The Scribe had made the cosmos and set them in motion, he wished for companionship.  He therefore made man.  Where he had written kinds to build the world, he wrote individuals to fill it, every one a special glyph made with his blood for his purpose.

How is it that we know of this?


The Scribe desired to be known and so wrote the Mantles into being.  He sent these two to those he called to be his Prophets in the city of Lerum.  Pholum and Wessenja received the gifts and placed them upon their heads, becoming conduits for his greatness.  They wrote the truth of his deeds and being for those who follow and learned of the Art of Grammar for man.  These Mantles are passed once a generation to those who are to be the living Prophets of The Scribe.

The text ended there.  She flipped the card over but the other side had only a simple rendition of one of the icons frequently used by the goup: a stylus surrounded by three concentric circles of what must have been intended to resemble actual glyphs.  As the vehicle rumbled to a stop and she stood to leave, she dropped the tract.  What nonsense that was, to believe that she was a glyph written in divine blood.  She had no doubt that it made some people very happy to think such things, but she was too sophisticated to take comfort in falsehood.