My nation’s mountains spoke to me from as far back as I remember, or perhaps it was the fairies residing in them. They spoke to me in my tongue… I heard them through my tongue.

My people’s tongue, and that of our ancestors, is immortalized in the caves of these mountains. Just as the water has flowed down from them for the thousands of years since Noah’s landing, and will flow for another ten thousand years, so it is with our tongue.

At the sunrise of every day, no matter the sharpness of the cold, or the power of the wind, I walk along the sides of a mountain or two, visit their caves, and breathe the stories their walls would tell me or the stories and instructions I could manage to hear.

In one of those mornings, around the mid of my life, a whisper reached my ears proposing a certain task. The writings on the walls, as you might say in your age, spoke to me.

The scriptures of our new faith, and our writings, had to be scripted and newly scratched into our tongue for my people to read and understand. They had to be translated and interpreted to our tongue. They had to be brought back from hiding to help reunite us; to help save our identity, our nation, our integrity. But our letters had long been given back to the other side, unused, and perhaps even forgotten.

It was time for their return, the whisper said.

Rome had moved east, to Constantinople, some decades ago. Ever since we have been sharing our faith and our struggles. But my people and I lagged in one sense—The scriptures were not in our language. Moreover, and in spite of some common interests, we have also been fighting those same Romans, and also the Persians at once. Unity and identity.

Herein lay my task, as it was whispered that fateful morning, to me, in a cave near Odzun.

“The livelihood of your brothers and sisters, their continuity, and strength of their faith, depended on their common understanding.”

But I converse and explain to as many as I can, every mid day and every sunset, my first thought. What more can I do… I am but one person?

“Rome. Constantinople. Athens.”

To be fair, my nation’s metropoles rival any other metropolis with art, knowledge, and prowess. Except in our writings. For we had long abandoned that art.

I opened my eyes. I gazed at the wall directly across from me. Gazing back at me was a bull’s horns, faded but discernible, in the shape of an arch looking up, a parabola, a U in your tongue plus a notch near the bottom. This was the first letter, the first letter in our long forgotten alphabet. The first letter from our ancestors. This first letter was about life, It was scratched on this wall to remind us of life, to remind us of the First Thought, and the sound of thought, the sounds of what precedes creation and action. It was the aleph for the Semites, the alpha for the Greeks and the ahh for the people of the rivers—the Hindus.

Perhaps not the Hindus, but the rest all originated from the bull’s head, as ours. For most peoples, it was the bull who reminded all of life. And yet, each morphed into a different shape.

The second scratch was another arch but looking down and with a vertical line continuing down on the left side. It was the beta or the be, the sound of the first action, the sound of being. It was what came after the Thought; it was the result,

A few scratches thereafter were disfigured or completely faded by the elements, and perhaps it was the elements that led my ancestors to forget and abandon scratching on these walls. I would have to rediscover or perhaps reinvent these. Still, not too far to the right lay another figure. It was a vertical line crossed by what might be called a hyphen at its middle and another at its base. This was the sound of the essence of all creation.

“Recreate each one, and create more to represent each of your sounds. Then transform the scriptures and instructions to your tongue, for your people,” the whisper had instructed.

It was a monumental task. Impossible, when the wars around us and how they were consuming us are brought to mind.

I searched into the maze of the future, into the options that led nowhere and those that were riddled with hazards. It was a thick wall with every path I searched. But if my faith were true, if I trusted the whispers I heard, then there had to be a way.

My eyes closed and searched once more. Deeper into the future’s maze I went. I looked for small openings, for holes, for even tunnels, bridges, and other connections I could build along the way through the walls and the closed doors. With each, from the start, our king blocked the way. It seemed that he would block the endeavor, and would have to be convinced otherwise; or, that his blessing, and then his assistance were required.

I complained and pleaded, but the whisper persisted. Eventually I allowed my faith to lead me and take me to the king regardless of those doubts in my mind. There, I put aside my hesitations and simply I spoke, and then watched his thoughts and motions and waited. He moved his left hand to his temple; stroked his beard; sat back; stood and paced, while I struggled to but could not hear the whispers of his mind.

Just as I lowered my head, unsure of where this was going, I heard a nod, I heard a yes it must be so.