The Secret Exodus
Chronicle Entry - Secret Annex
Recorded by Brother Wyn of Caermynach, Anno Domini 920
Event Date: c. 4000 BC according to merchant reckoning
Location: The westward migration from Mesopotamia to the Atlantic coasts
Primary Source: Intelligence from Cwmni'r Llwybrau
The Record
The Secret Exodus refers to the westward migration of peoples fleeing the plain of Shinar after the towers fell and tongues divided. The merchants who preserve this knowledge name it secret not because the migration was concealed but because Scripture records only that men were scattered, not where they went or what they found. The journey itself, and what awaited them in the west, passed unrecorded beyond the traditions carried by those who made the trek.
The refugees who turned westward numbered in the thousands. Many had been struck silent by terror of what they witnessed at Shinar, able to manage only whispers and fragments when they tried to speak. They travelled in kin-groups, each carrying the double affliction of tongues fractured and voices stolen by fear. The merchants report that the journey took generations, with some groups settling along the way while others pressed onward toward the setting sun, carrying bronze tools that grew heavier with each passing year. Those who continued westward were drawn by rumour of gentler lands where the sky had not been torn and the Song might be heard more clearly.
The Stranger and the Teaching
During the long trek across lands whose names I do not know, the westward-moving groups encountered a figure the merchants describe only as the stranger who walked among them. He appeared first to the groups travelling along the northern routes, though accounts vary as to whether he came to each separately or whether word of his presence spread through the scattered peoples. The merchants will not name him directly, though their silence on this point tells more than speech might.
The stranger found the refugees struggling with silence as much as with divided tongues. He began teaching them a new language, one the merchants call Tafod Dwybig, the Fork Tongue, which the Dragons spoke before men walked the earth. The first among the refugees to learn was Tafod Ddu, a blacksmith whose voice had been among those struck silent at Shinar. His recovery of speech became proof that healing was possible, and he helped teach others as the migration continued.
The teaching took generations, continuing throughout the westward trek. The language sang in harmonics, carrying difference within unity, multiple tones forming one voice. Where Zeus had sought to force all into one unified tone, the stranger taught a tongue that could hold many speakers within it. By the time the refugees reached the Atlantic coasts, most had recovered their voices through this teaching.
The stranger did not command or instruct in the manner of the lord who had taught men to build the towers. He walked beside the refugees, listened to their attempts at the new tongue, and corrected with patience rather than force. The contrast was not lost on those who had fled the consequences of Zeus's ambition.
The merchants report that he told the westward-moving peoples of an island in the western ocean, virgin hills and valleys waiting for those who would settle them. He spoke of ground that remembered harmony, of ridges where stone itself could be made to sing if men built with care and patience. He promised not glory or dominion but belonging and the chance to preserve what the shattering at Shinar had nearly destroyed.
The Arrival
The groups who followed the stranger's guidance reached the Atlantic coasts after generations of travel. Some settled along the Mediterranean shores. Others continued to what are now called Gaul. The merchant families whose knowledge I record descend from those who pressed farthest west, crossing the narrow sea to the island the stranger had described.
They found ridges rising above valleys where rivers ran clear. The ground was rich with volcanic stone that hummed when struck, a sound unlike anything they had heard in the dry lands they had left behind. No cities stood here. No towers reached toward heaven. The land was as the stranger had promised, waiting for those who would settle it with patience.
These peoples, arriving near four millennia before Christ, became the first to build the resonance forts on the high ridges between what men now call Builth and the Epynt. They named themselves Cymroth, meaning those who help together, marking themselves by the red clay soil their hands shared in settling this ground. They spoke Tafod Dwybig with the reverence of those who understood what it meant to lose speech and have it restored. This tongue became the foundation from which the language I write in descended, though five thousand years have changed it beyond what those first speakers would recognise.
Final Entry
The merchants who preserve this account speak of it with the reverence men reserve for founding stories. When I asked why this migration deserves the name exodus when Scripture already uses that word for Israel's flight from Egypt, the eldest merchant replied that some departures change only the location of a people while others change what the people become. The Israelites left Egypt yet remained Israelites. Those who fled Shinar and came to these western ridges left behind not only a place but a way of being in the world, and were given a new tongue to mark their transformation.
He departed at dawn, leaving payment and a small bronze mirror worn smooth by handling across generations, older than all the others he has given me. When I hold it and see my face distorted by time's touch on the metal, I think about refugees walking westward beneath stars they could no longer name in a single tongue, learning to speak again through the patience of one who taught healing rather than control.
