So I've figured that Mer use silk and water safe dyes to "print" their books. The Mer can't really have paper underwater, and writing in pen and ink is very difficult with water being everywhere. As a result, they have two types of written word, clay and silk. Silk is your permanent printing, using inks that won't wash away in the sea they use silk batik techniques and regular printing techniques to create pages for books. huh. I guess pages could be sewn together backs to back, since you're only going to be able to use one side of the cloth due to bleeding effects.

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Anyhow, the clay is for notes and mark making in the regular world, and is usually left just outside the water in a home so its not washed away unless they need to wet it and erase a previous note.

I'm still working out in my head what that looks like, here's one attempt. Its not very legible so I have the spreadsheet below. :)

[https://mcmcreates.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/twitcher.jpeg?w=2048]

[https://mcmcreates.files.wordpress.com/2023/06/twitcher2.jpg]