The starry tide is coming
And fire burns on your horizons
But all I hear is nothing
As we drown in your absence.
-
Info
Reading time: 5 minutes 23 seconds no footnotes, 6 minutes 40 seconds with footnotes
Word count: 1418 words before footnotes, 1833 with footnotes.Recommended Listening:
Item #: SCP-2381
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: SCP-2381 is to be kept in a large storage locker within Site-212A when not in use. SCP-2381 may be accessed by personnel with Level-1 clearance or higher for therapeutic purposes. SCP-2381 should not be operated in external areas.
Linguistic experts familiar with the Elder or Younger Finnfelk languages are discouraged from interacting with SCP-2381.
Description: SCP-2381 are a pair of objects, the first of which is a scale model of a Giant Oceanic Manta Ray1 capable of both automated and controlled motion through unknown thaumatological mechanisms (See Addendum Translation Log L-2381-01). SCP-2381 has a wingspan of 2 meters and its body is 0.9 meters in length with a 3 meter long "tail". The dorsal, ventral, and belly of SCP-2381 are intricately carved, with a number of "channels" that become luminescent when it is turned on. Two "handlebars" for holding onto are placed symmetrically on the dorsal surface. SCP-2381's forwards and backwards motion, pitch, yaw and elevation can be controlled via particular gestures on a "control panel" of glowing diodes placed just behind the head of the object.
SCP-2381 is activated by placing one hand on the large circular imprint in the center of the "control panel" and placing one finger on the right-most diode and circling it clockwise three times.
The second component of SCP-2381 is a box shaped device with an identical layout to the control panel on the scale model. This box functions as a remote control device.
When SCP-2381 is turned 'on' it is capable of performing a number of aerial and aquatic maneuvers, including barrel rolls, loops, hammerheads, etc. SCP-2381 engages in these behaviors automatically if its remote or manual controls have not been touched for a period of 60 seconds or more. At random intervals, the item will play a series of varied chords in E♭ Major. This auditory sequence contains a mild audio compulsion, inducing feelings of 'joy/happiness' when it begins, and 'longing/loss' when it ends.
Discovery & Linguistic Markings: SCP-2381 was discovered in 1914, following an earthquake in Lefkada, Greece, by farmers sorting through the rubble of the town of Vasiliki. SCP-2381 was buried in a cliffside and was exposed during an earthquake-related rockslide.
The farmers initially kept the item to themselves, until they accidentally activated the device. Believing it to be an ancient Greek artifact, they reported it to a group of archaeologists visiting the town. An embedded Foundation agent filed a report on the object, at which point a recovery team was dispatched to retrieve both objects. SCP-2381 and a scroll found tied to the head of the manta ray were recovered.
Linguistic Markings: At the time of cataloguing, the recovery team noted the presence of a number of linguistic carvings of an unknown and untranslated language (See Translation Log L-2381-01) on the ventral surface of SCP-2381.
Many of these carvings are identical to a rune-like script inked onto the unusually well preserved scroll recovered with SCP-2381. The scroll was photographed, hand copied, and etched multiple times, before the original was lost in a fire caused by Obskura infiltration during WWII. Until roughly 1920, the Foundation believed these marks to be a lost branch of the Mekhanite language, however, recovery of further artifacts across northern, western, southern Europe and the Mediterranean indicated that these were not Mekhanite artifacts, as the Northern Orthodox branch of Mekhanism never reached beyond the Rhine river.
Translation Log L-2381-01
Foreword: On July 31st, 1985 embedded Foundation archaeologists recovered a number of tablets from a Phoenician site in Tyre. Analysis of these tablets uncovered a wealth of direct translations from the unidentified runic script to Phoenician.
From these tablets, the Foundation learned that the language was referred to as "Elder Finnfelk" by its speakers and was created by a hominid race known as the "Finnfolk" more commonly known in the ancient world as the "Sea Peoples". Subsequent analysis of cultural records from across the region revealed corroborating evidence of this mysterious civilization.
These tablets served as Rosetta stone equivalents, allowing the Department of Linguistics to begin translating the large backlog of recovered scripts, carvings, and notations found on thousands of recovered materials. As it was among the first discovered items, researchers used SCP-2381 and its accompanying scroll to test their early translation models. The following log is a composite of these early translations.
Translation of scroll found with SCP-2381:
Translators note: The following poem largely doesn't appear to follow a strict meter, but the short stanzas seem to suggest the possibility of metered verse existing elsewhere.
Oh tiny, tiny ones
Tiny ones living so tiny and slow
With tiny little hearts
Oh, how they are so small
How I watched you grow.
Oh, brave singing Frodi, sensitive2 Alfrún too,
We loved you so.
As we held you in our arms
Your song had so much glow.
In summer you laughed the days away,
In winter you spoke each other's life-names
But poor tiny Alfrún's gills
Why did they turn so gray?
We moved from our grotto in the inner-streams3
To distant Finnfelheim4 for Alfrún to stay.
In that gentle summer,
I made you both this great ray.
Oh, the smiles it brought to your faces
As the pangloss-lillies burned brightly in the bays.
I leaned against your mother and hoped
That the underskies5 would not take her away.
So we prayed to the Mither each night
And in the daylight you both played
With this lovely, gifted ray
Clinging to those grip-bars,6 tightly so.
You gave him a lovely life-name, Líttvængr
Truly a wonderful gift
Yet such a strange little thing.
And every night when I put him away
I added just a little more.
Gave him a life-song7 all his own
To help you love and play.
But poor tiny Alfrún,
There was nothing the magisters could do
For gill-rot has no cure
Bedridden with illness came all too soon.
As I stand here against the waves
Holding you in my hands
There was so much more to say
But the chance passed us by
Like little eggs in the waves.
So the sharks came out to play
And you, little Frodi you,
Played dispirited and all alone.
I wondered if it's possible,
Did we do all that we could do
What more could we have done?
But in that following spring
Poor tiny Alfrún sailed for the underskies
Into the Mither's embrace.
Oh how we all weeped
For tiny Alfrún had been so full of joy
Despite how frail she seemed.
But her song burnt too bright
And took her from us too soon.
In her wailing memory
I took a piece of her song
And wove it into Líttvængr.
So we'd always have
A piece of her
To live on with us at home
With all those for whom she so loved.
We floated amidst the city's-name-gates8
And set her body to sail
Down the great rafts of the underskies
To join her life-song in the dancing night.
A miracle happened then
As you wept against my shoulder.
The Mither gently lifted-her-low9
Towards the soul-of-heart10 in peace and color.
And for the first time we could say
She truly flew on her own.
In her name we carried on
But it never was the same
Not for your mother, you or me.
Oh, as you grew and grew
The playing danced so much less.
I could see the sadness in your eyes
The absence in your heart
Unfilled by the mythic sky.
And there was nothing I could do
The skies deny me the fullness of singing grief.
The war came so quickly through
And Finnfelheim fell under siege.
By then you were almost grown
But Líttvængr never left your side.
And you grew in your power
You bloomed in your beauty and love.
A magister one day I was certain you'd be
But what if the day would never come?
And when the shields came down
We were all on our own.
And in the evacuation of the canals
Metal and fire came raining down.
Oh, how we searched for you
And found you all alone
Stilled beneath the hateful sky
Had the Mither forsaken us so?
Oh tiny, tiny ones
Tiny ones living so tiny and slow
With tiny little hearts
Oh, how they are so small
Now they beat no more.
The only sounds in the air
Are the starry waves washing against the land
Here I stand with you
Held softly in my arms.
Her voice is on the breeze
Her touch against my scales
As I rock you against her waves.
Oh mither hear me please
Deliver unto me
Your sight, your sound, your heart
For I would drown in your silence.
The starry tide is coming
Your mother kneels in its trough
Maybe I should join her too?
The starry tide is coming
And fire burns on your horizons
But all I hear is nothing
As we drown in your absence.
The undersky approaches
How can we hope to keep on going
Without you both at home.
Translation of markings on SCP-2381:
Right Wing:
Brave little Frodi.
Left Wing:
Joyful and soft Alfrún
Center:
Let the Mither guide you where we could not.
Postword: Upon translation of SCP-2381's markings, a low-level memetic effect affected the translators handling the object. Both linguistic experts described observing adolescent humanoid figures covered in scales.