Shóaf Kepl Poets (修福  凱鮑  俳吟辭)

Shóaf Kepl Poets

That well known drinking toast—and Cognate term for bards of the short form—had its origins right here in this gwome (a Cognate word meaning “footprint of a nation”). In fact, “Shøaf”, “Kepl”, and “Poets” are the sounds meaning the numbers 14, 11 and 48 in the language of this place (written with their characters as ) This tongue was of a type known as a 158: where numbers were words and words were numbers; where authors wrote equations and accountants scribed pages and pages of text to achieve the most simple addition. Importantly, while symbol and sound could convey meaning, it was in the count that real meaning ultimately lived. In this specific 158, 14-ness (so, 14 of anything: pebbles, claps, clouds—what have you) meant “good health,” 11 such things was “South,” and 48 added up to “the spirit of my thought.” Since the South was where the citizens of this place went to bear their children, this toast conferred good wishes on you and all your descendants. Not surprisingly, having a 158 as a native language made for a life of perception both quite literal and stunningly evocative, with myriad novels enmeshed in the nearly innumerable, and countlessly countable, stones of a single rocky beach.