Eshtine

water on stone

(This is background info on a character in a fantasy story I wrote a few years ago.)

I used to write with water on stone, the waters beginning to dry before the word was complete. My finger formed every curve and slash and if there was too much water and the surface was tilted, the letters would bleed a little but you could still make them out.
I wrote, too, with a charred stick. Letters of ash, words of dead fire.
I always loved writing. It is no wonder, then, that I teach the skill now to a class of students sometimes as enthusiastic as I was at their age. We have to make our own paper, of course, but that is no hardship. I have a fine grove of trees with peeling bark. We throw bark into the hand-crank pulpers in a shed in the yard, mixing it with water and bits of rag from old clothes. I reach in and pull the pulp out on screens, shaking the screens like IÌm sifting for gold in a streamÛmy students all beg me for this job, but I say no, not yet, soon IÌll teach you how to keep the pulp from being all lumpy, but not yet. I push the screen pulp-down on felt pads the wool-woman gave me. It will dry well there and in two days a new paper crop will be ready for our words.
We donÌt manufacture our own ink, though I know how to make a low quality sort in case something happens to our supplier at market. Quills we make ourselves. My first lesson was how to cut a quill properly, so I could send home the students careless enough to forget their knives.
We also have block printing, a letter at one touch. A word at one touch if we string letters together, and also if we consolidate what we have to say. We are economical with our language. I tell all of my students the fewest words are best. The most profound thing I ever read was written with one letter. Strive for that, I tell them.
They write their own pieces, most of which get shredded so the paper can return to the pulper. And then we read, because I give two trainings in writingÛI teach the basics of book construction and I teach the basics of thought construction.
To be self-sufficient, we have to spend a good portion of the day copying worksÛpoems and legends and political tracts. I do not treat this as a mindless task either. I tell my students the dissemination of information is critical for our survival and prosperity. Ideas must be exchanged, else they may never go from ideas to reality.