SLARVATHOffice of Off-World Correspondence

Medium — field book
SLV-0189

Twelve Words

I have started drawing.

Not for the file. The Office has the photographs and the photographs are enough for the Office. Then I looked at the first sheet and saw that I had put a name on it without deciding to, and a name is the sort of thing you are supposed to send in.

Here is the trouble. There is no entry for rain. I have checked and the Office has checked and we agree, which we do not often do. So when the rain came in the second week I stood under the overhang at the back of the fish house and watched forty people go past holding a thing above themselves, and I had no word for the thing, and there was nowhere to look it up, because the place I would look it up does not have rain in it.

So I named it. Kemmeth, the held-over thing. Nineteen kadd to draw and no time at all to name, which I think is the wrong way round.

After that it went quickly and then it stopped going quickly. A chair is sullek, a small thing for a sull, because that is plainly what it is for: you sit in it for one full turn of whatever you are waiting on and then you get up. The round thing on the laundry wall is kaddek, because it keeps kadd, or it keeps something, and it keeps it in marks around a rim that I have counted twice and would like explained. The squat thing on the corner that the water lives inside is remmek, a small held thing, off remmeth, because the street says it out loud every day and has never once opened it.

That is eleven. The twelfth is norkem, the refusing part, and it is on two sheets of two different apparatus, which means I have now found two things on this planet that were built to be opened and will not open for me.

I want to put down plainly that I do not know whether any of these are right. A name in our language is a claim about what a thing does. I have made twelve claims in nine days about machinery I have watched and never used, and some of them are going to be badly wrong.

I am sending the sheets anyway. Enter them however you like. I would rather be wrong out loud than carry twelve unnamed things around with me for the rest of the orreth.

Pen drawing on grey paper. An open umbrella seen from directly underneath, its scalloped rim filled by one continuous line winding inward to the centre where the ribs meet. Beside it a closed umbrella hanging by a crooked handle; below, the same umbrella in side view on its shaft, and a quicker, abandoned version of the canopy alone. Lower right, two bent handle ends drawn side by side; lower left, a rounded drain grate with five slots. Short captions sit under each study in an invented alphabet, one of them written three times over itself, and a row of tally marks runs along the foot of the sheet.
Leaf 1 of 519 kadd
Pen drawing on grey paper. A stacking chair with a slatted back in three-quarter view, large, at the top left; a smaller chair seen head-on at the top right. Across the middle, four chair backs in a row, and beside them two chairs seen from directly above with their seats splayed open and small bolt circles at the joint. At the bottom a single chair back reduced to three lines. Captions in an invented alphabet appear under each study, one written three times over itself, with tally marks along the foot.
Leaf 2 of 526 kadd
Pen drawing on grey paper. A large clock face with tick marks around its rim, a doubled edge and a small empty hole at the centre — no hands. To the right, five thin hands drawn loose and crossed through a small ring. Below left, a wristwatch: a ticked dial with the strap running away above and below in fine parallel lines. To its right, three pendulums, each a line ending in a small circle, and beneath them a wide open crescent. Captions in an invented alphabet sit under the studies, one written three times over itself, with tally marks along the foot.
Leaf 3 of 531 kadd
Pen drawing on grey paper. A public drinking fountain: a wide shallow basin on a fluted pedestal that flares to a round foot, a small oval drain in the basin floor and a rounded bubbler head at the rim. To the right, three studies of an arc of water springing from a nozzle and falling, each arc topped with small ticks. Lower left, two small bowls seen from above; at the bottom, an oval grate with vertical bars. Captions in an invented alphabet sit beside each study, two of them written over themselves more than once, with tally marks at the foot.
Leaf 4 of 522 kadd
Pen drawing on grey paper. A fire hydrant seen from slightly below: a domed cap with an oval boss, two side outlets, a broad flange at the base, and the tapering body filled with close parallel lines that follow its curve. To the right, two pentagonal caps each with a round hole at the centre, and below them a chain of oval links hanging in an arc. A second, smaller hydrant is drawn at the bottom left. Captions in an invented alphabet sit under the studies, one written three times over itself, with tally marks at the foot.
Leaf 5 of 514 kadd
Office annotationCorrespondent SLV-4 has transmitted five leaves of drawings, unsolicited and outside the schedule. Twelve terms appear in the captions. None is attested. They have been entered in Form 12 as formed and not as meant, and no request for a rendering has been received. The Office draws attention to its own standing position that a term coined by a Correspondent during orreth is not thereby a term. 112 kadd entered against these leaves, being 12 hours, 32 minutes and 38 seconds. The Office has converted the figure and makes no finding as to what is drawn.