My name is Texeliara Araxtiara Cinciara Hmarj, and I was once alive. I am writing this in Korodan, my native tongue, and it feels good to see the shapes of familiar words. No one here remembers more than fragments, so I have been forced to speak Debrasian, the tongue of our enemies from over the sea, or Gef, which was spoken by the ancients.
I was born in the seventy-sixth year of the War. I was born to a woman named Cinciara Hmarj, in Baerica on the river Hmay. It was in spring, which is warm and dry in Baerica, and the Hmay is broad and slow and the colour of caramel in that season. I know this because I lived in Baerica until I was twelve years old. It was a peaceful town, far from the front, and it had many gardens of trees with flame-coloured flowers. There were ten thousand people there, or a little more. I was raised at the Number Five creche, and then at the school named Major Jaldaen, which was esteemed the best of the schools of Baerica. I was very clever and took the awards for composition, arithmetic, and history in the year I was twelve. Continue reading