Much is made of the elven glyphs in the story, and the some of you will have guessed them to be the circular figures used in the chapter headers, interior title page, and in the cover illustrations (in light). The runes do in fact have meaning! And while it’s not among the most developed of my constructed languages, the Angel’s Gift uses one of the rare ideogrammatic orthographics in my bag of made-up writing systems: each glyph represents a concept directly, rather than a sound. They tend toward abstraction, but do build on a set of common symbols. For instance.

Here’s a sequence, from left to right: Life, Love, Vulnerable, Protection. As you can see, life is represented by the tadpole/sperm/comma-shape, and life is properly encased in a globe, its “skin.” Love involves two of the life-shapes, representing more than one person, and they’ve been stripped of that globe because love involves vulnerability. The vulnerable glyph is life with the skin removed. And protection involves a globe around two people, the suggestion being that it takes more than one person to watch your back.

Similarly we have here willing, unwilling, work and duty. These concepts are represented by beasts of burden. The unwilling beast has its head extended, seeking freedom; the willing one has its head down among its legs, submissive. Work involves two willing beasts; duty, two unwilling ones.

As one sees, “toil” is formed from blood and tears (and is separate from work, having a connotation of suffering). Sorrow is formed from tears and death.

Here are the other glyphs used throughout the manuscript:

 

 

The glyph on the final page of the manuscript is Joy.