short fiction · 2026-10-30

Stratigraphy of the Spoken

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The philologist does not speak; she stratifies. Each utterance a core sample: window yields vindauga — wind-eye, the Norse hole for breath before glass. Salary coughs up salarium, salt-rations for Roman soldiers guarding the Via Salaria. Nightmare drags mare, the Old English crusher who sits on sleepers' chests, female, always female.

She catalogues the dead inside the living. Muscle from musculus, little mouse scurrying under skin. Candidate from candidatus, white-robed, dusted in chalk for the Forum's glare. Disaster from dis-astron, ill-starred, the heavens withdrawing favor.

Her mouth is a tell. Every word a potsherd, every sentence a layer cake of conquest and migration. She tastes the Viking in sky, the Norman in beef, the Latin in people, the Greek in chaos. Ghost itself — gást — breath, spirit, the thing that remains when the body stops making wind-eyes.

She stops speaking. The excavation completes itself in silence. Silere. To be still. The dig site fills back in.