SCRIBE SWIFT-PAW'S NOTES

23rd Day of New Blooms, 1386th Year of Understanding

As a Scribe, I consider it my duty to record information for posterity. As of now, the events surrounding the quarantine of myself and the afflicted have doubtless been documented extensively. However, your excessive caution has left me as the only creature in a position to document more specific aspects of the afflicted's nature. Primarily, who they are as people, and what the Other World they recall is like.

[Former?]Scholar Ink-Talon has supplied me with the marking implements necessary to make these records, having been using them to record its own private thoughts. Of all the afflicted, it is the least obvious at a glance, with much of its odd behavior just as attributable to its Attunement as its condition. Of note, however, is that it described being without a role in its previous life, with the implication that this was shameful, rather than a natural state of self-discovery. I have reason to believe that their culture values [utility?/productivity?] beyond the necessity to meet one's needs. Remember this as I continue.

The primary subject of this note is what I have learned conversing with Quiet-Dream. I recently took the opportunity to ask the squirrel a multitude of questions about its former species and world, and it was a fascinating experience. It is hard to internalize what their species would be like from a description, because they seem absurd. But what made them far more sensible to imagine is when it was explained what that body plan was built to do. They are a species of natural tool users. Of Builders and Crafters and Inventors, all without the Gift of Understanding. By any definition, they would be feral, but there is a key difference that I have realized.

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One of them is a bird capable of vocal mimicry. It communicates almost exclusively in vocal expressions it recalls from its previous life. It can be draining to Understand, but after enough exposure I noticed a pattern. Each sound it used in an expression had a fixed meaning. The vocalizations of their species are so robust that they seemed to have constructed indirect systems of Understanding through pure, memorized association. It is limited, inconvenient, and prone to error, but it was enough.

And in the end, it has left them ill-equipped to be thrust into our world. Understanding comes naturally to us, but we were born with the Gift. Could you imagine having it thrust upon you suddenly? Conversing with each of them, I see creatures who find themselves unable to use tools that they once depended upon, forced to engage with something foreign. It does not matter how reliable or versatile it is, it is fundamentally different. Different is uncomfortable. This extends to their bodies as well. They are all different than they were. What should be obvious is obscured, and what they can assume is unreliable.

I want to help them, but I can do little. I am similar enough to a squirrel to give advice and care, but birds, bats, and salamanders? I am just a Scribe. I watch, record, and share knowledge. This is far beyond my meager abilities. I do not know where this heightened caution comes from, but they do not deserve it. They feel useless and burdensome, even though they are not to blame for any of this. They can do little to improve their situations as things are now. That power lies with you.

So I have recorded this, to share with you. Take this record and use it to help them. We should be better than this. We must be.