Disillusionment

Rebel Leader Journal

My desk is so covered in papers that it isn’t even visible, let alone myself. Which, when I’m not busy trying to organize it all, provides a safe way to disappear into the manuscript room, seeing as no one expects to be able to find me in the mountains of documents that reside in my ‘office’. My office is really just small room that you can only find if you’re lost or if you already know of it. That also makes it easy for me to not be found and gives me several hours at a time to find useful information in the manuscripts.

                ‘The manuscript room’ is a large room that is only accessible through a trap door in my office that lies underneath my paper clad desk. (The papers help to hide the hollow sound of the wood verses the sound of the immovable rock.) Once you go through the trap door you descend a set of steep rock steps for about a quarter of a mile    in an almost vertical descent until the steps end and you reach a tunnel that stretches on for about a half of a mile. At the end of the tunnel is a small door, only about five feet tall, that appears to be made out of wood. After you enter the room you look around in awe. Parchment, scrolls, and books from every era and every country and in every language known and unknown cover the floor, hide the walls, and touch the ceiling. It is impossible to move without knocking into a stack of information. Did I mention that the floor is made of a single emerald, the walls are made of seamless garnet and the ceiling a lapis lazuli covered in golden stars. There is a writing desk at the back of the room that I have claimed as my work station. 

                I have found all of the single copies of the books that the chinese emperor Shih Huang Ti burned and the lost library of Alexandria resides here as well. I have also found the journals of our first rebel leader, Tourmaline, or as he was better known; Romal. He kept sixty-two journals during his time as rebel leader. He was leader until he was murdered at fifty years old. He kept two separate journals for every year he was leader. One detailed the activities of the Raben -  the official name of the rebel army. And the other was his personal journal. The first half of his journals were written in the current language. The second half written in a code or a language that I don’t know. I have scoured the languages and codes in here and have been unable to find anything that would allow me to read what he had written. One particular phrase is repeated on almost a regular bases in all of his journals, both personal and business; ‘Zero Era na nafi zoazi na nakoa taitanmo. Taitan ro elanoma oon gan soenal na blooma lad.’ I don’t know what it means. I’ve scoured the manuscript room looking for some kind of dictionary for the language. There is none that I can find. I have looked in the world dictionaries, world languages, world cultures. Everywhere it could be and am now looking everywhere it shouldn’t be. I have a feeling that it isn't even a real language and that it's a language Romal created. If he did, in fact, create it I am hoping against hope that he wrote it down somewhere and didn't just have it memorized.

I have been here too long. I have to return. I will leave my journal here, among Romal's journals until I get another opportunity to come down here. Until then.