They say the wind here speaks in broken alphabets. I collect dying languages, fragile things made of breath and dust, barely alive, like insects caught in amber. I’m a boy born with sand in his mouth, raised by silence and the slow scratch of forgotten scripts across his skin.

At night, the walls murmur in extinct vowels. I write them down with a stylus carved from my father’s rib, pressing ink into salt paper. The letters flicker like moths caught between two flames. Above us, the sky is a pyre. It devours books, and scorches meaning. Once, I opened a scroll and it disintegrated in my hands—no weight, just memory leaving. No one mourns here. We remember instead. I recite syllables no throat has shaped in centuries, and speak them to the stones. They remember better than we ever could. There is another boy. His alphabet is etched in scars across his back. When we press our palms together, it feels like opening a door. We trade phrases the world no longer wants. Sometimes we invent a word for joy. Sometimes, for ruin. Sometimes, we just sit in the hush between them.

We believe language is still holy, even after the gods forget our names. Even after the last story forgets how it ends.

© 2026 Oladosu Michael Emerald