The great-grandmother of our great-grandmother’s grandmother first taught the lost words. We do not remember her name. She is from the before times.
No one knows what generation this grandmother was from. It happened so long ago that there is no one alive who remembers someone who knew someone who was alive when it happened. Yet her memory lives on in our telling. The telling is my sacred duty. The telling guards our life.
The lost words are the only defense against the false people. Some think the false people are only a myth to scare the credulous and the young. No one living has ever seen a false person. No one alive has ever known anyone who saw a false person with their own eyes. But we know they were real.
They say the lost words are nothing more than the babbling from the time before true language. It doesn’t matter. The lost words are holy. The lost words have power. We must pass the lost words on, forever. We must never forget, lest the false people return.
In the days long ago, when the world was colder and the rains did not come, the Enemy sent the false people through the veil. They came with gifts and soft words.
The false people were beautiful on the outside but corrupt within. They claimed that they wished to live alongside us in peace. But any who allowed a false person to live next to them soon sickened.
Wherever the false people settled, crops failed and livestock died. This was just as the false people wanted. They wanted sickness and death to walk among us.
When all was dead and barren, the false people would open the veil and bring forth their crops and animals. These would thrive on bones and dust, on tears and sorrow. On the graves of our ancestors, in the ruins of our great villages, the false people thrived.
Even worse, they would come in the night and take our children. When the little ones were returned, they too were changed. No longer did they speak the language of the true people. No longer were they small and mighty. They sprang up in the form of the false people as they grew. Tall and shining, they were no longer of us.
The true people rose up, driving back the false people with fire and sword. Yet for every false one we struck down, two more returned.
All seemed hopeless. Then the grandmother of the grandmothers discovered the lost words.
These are not words of the true people, nor words of the false people. Perhaps they are the words of the deep ancestors who live beyond the veil. Perhaps they are the language of the guardians. Wherever the lost words came from, they are words of power.
The lost words, shouted into the wind, made the false people fall down. They crawled on hands and knees to the tear in the veil from which they came. Even the greatest of false people can not stand when the lost words are spoken.
Today, the tear in the veil is quiet. No false people have come through in my time, nor my grandmother’s time, nor the time of her grandmother before her.
There is always a guard to watch the veil. We keep the signal fire burning, ready to send up the warning should the false people return.
But only you, if you learn and keep the lost words, can repel the false people when they return. My time as the keeper is done.
Now it is your turn. You must keep the lost words.
