Imagine a floating island, slowly drifting the sky currrents, containing the remnants of a lost cicilization. There are buildings there, and streets, parks and shops, but the people are long vanished.

One of those crumbling stone buildings might be a university, dedicated to the study of the known world, and of the unknown world. In that university there is a library. Many of the books are gone, removed when the people left, and some have succumbed to the ravages of time.

But there is one book, its covers of etched copper and its pages of green-tinged paper, that seems untouched by time. When opened, moths flutter out. They have been sheltering between the pages, their wings adapted to look like paper printed with words and images. If they hadn't moved, they might have remained unseen. Now, only a fine dust on the pages shows the moths were ever there.

The text on the green pages was hand-written with a reed pen in dense black ink, centuries ago. The glyphs are unfamiliar, the language as lost to time as the floating island, or perhaps more so. What people created this book? What might be learned if the language could be deciphered?