Tabaxi Scroll

Description - Outside

Laid out onto its long, thin size, is what could be some sort of scroll or rod case, a long rectangular prism with a rounded top.

It looks to be made of many sticks of wood, but that notion is quickly dispelled to Trick's eyes. The way the sticks fuse together at some points and leave holes or valleys between them, how it feels like it's made of such thin fibers like strands of hair... This is cactus wood, raw and untreated beyond the basics of moisture resistance.

Metal frames the whole object, somehow not rusted away by time.

Description - Interior

Mechanisms that have not been moved at least since the library's founding shift into place. The case's interior is lined in some kind of pelt painted a deep, flaky green.

At the center are two scrolls made of old parchment, folded and bent many times before being placed in this position. Two thin strips of colorful, moth-ravaged cloth hold the scrolls closed.

First Scroll

Sigils of Primordial writing, runes clearly Terran in inspiration, are condensed and altered in a way that makes them hard for someone who knows Primordial but is not versed in this specific shorthand to understand. This is not the language of the Shadows, made more complicated and given loopholes, but the true tongue of the sands. Tabaxi.

The writing is strangely arranged, written in blocks that warp and skip towards the center to allow a circle to be drawn there. It resembles... A staff embedded into samd, an oil lamp hanging from the curved top.

Seventeenth Slide of the Dry Wind

We followed the river's pulse north again today. Its song stutters. The elders say the season has slipped sideways, but I know that is not all.

Since the first beats, we have known the flow of Gaia's blood to dance to its own rhythm, the sands as clueless to its dance as we are.

I see, now, that the young forget the steps of the long-beat dance. Our paws fall out of time with one another. This should not be- we are to be united as one.

How should I lead, if even the rivers hesitate?

Nineteenth Slide of the Dry Wind

A stranger walks with us, though his beat finds none of our tunes. His tent rises and falls away from the clusters, away from the river.

He carries a strange thing, a design our carvers have approached synchrony with. A curved staff, lamp hung from its throat. Seems such a simple note to arrive to, yet it eluded us until now.

His lamp, however, is a strange tone. It holds no flame, yet casts a cooler shadow than mounds and trees.

He says he listens for the river's missing beat.
He says we have all missed it, the ending and beginning. That we are far too focused on the journey.

I know not what he speaks of. Our dance is made of one beginning after another. He insults us.
I shall sing my tune to the elders at the next sunfall. May the moon witness my words and grant them its glow.

Second Scroll

Again, that same text is scrawled throughout it, but in place of the staff drawing at the center, lines swim between words like the flow of rivers. A stamp of bone-white ink marks the end of the text. Its design is... strange, surrounded in concentric curves of symbols whose meaning does not seem to constitute a language. Trick and Riga both notice- the stamp is certainly a much more recent addition than the rest of this scroll.
> The stamp is a sigil to Kelemvor, dating back to before the Draconic Wars, resembling the sigil found in the temple at the Pit
> It is also a cypher, an old practice of the priesthood to send messages in times of strife

Twenty-First Slide of the Dry Wind

This Slide, he spoke again by the fire. He asked why we turn from the knife even when beasts tear our children. Why we dance our grief instead of dancing revenge. He asked why we fear burden.

The elders could not stand to answer him without looking disgusted. Will the song turn now?

--

Twenty-Second Slide of the Dry Wind

He used a step I've never seen, taught to me and others.
Five beats, but the fourth lands without a sound. This pause. I feel it in my whiskers; it is wrong. The others seem not to notice.

He touched the lamp. He said it could hold a burden for another.

I do not trust this man. Cursed be the elders for ignoring my plea.

--

Twenty-Fifth Slide of the Dry Wind

Word spreads the river may shift its dance. Again.
The stranger says we should settle. Anchor our beat in place, and make beads along the water until the Winds find us.
Some are listening. We stop our dance as the Winds ask, but this time... it feels too early. It feels wrong.
But I cannot deny.
Both myself and the river... we sound so tired.

The stranger said that next Slide, he will show us a place where the river forgot its way.
He says the sand there is more fertile than a fresh Oasis.

For the first time, I sing to the moon that he may be right.

Written in a hastier script, at the very edges of the scroll.

I write this only so that this note is never lost.
The elders ignore my songs, the young despise my dance, but I know what I witnessed.
When He stood with his lamp in the sand this early Slide, I saw the wind flee him. Even the dust refused his paws. And that is not all.

He had no-- The scroll is damaged here. The damage seems natural, either from time or the work of insects.