Kerisl

piles of old books scattered in an abandoned room

Kerisl

n.
the sorrow of imagining the wealth of knowledge forever lost to history—knowing we’ll never hear the language of the Etruscans, the battle cry of the Sea Peoples, or the burial chants of the Neanderthals; that we’ll never read any more than a fragment of the works of Blake, Sappho, Aristotle, or Jesus; or enjoy the untold treasures of so many burned libraries and forgotten oral traditions and unrecorded songs—any of which might have made up the cornerstone of the canon, that we’d all be able to quote by heart and couldn’t imagine living without.

A contraction of Kergeulen Islands. Roughly equidistant between Australia, Antarctica, and Madagascar, they are the only visible remnant of the Kergeulen microcontinent, which was submerged some twenty million years ago. Three times the size of Japan, it was once covered in dense conifer forests, with peaks reaching 2,000 meters above sea level, populated with strange and nameless fauna that must have called it home, before all traces were lost beneath the waves. Pronounced “kair-ahyl.”

Echthesia

blurry image of two clocks

Heart Of Aces

a person covering their eyes with their hands

Thwit

close-up of a person with forehead wrinkled and holding their head

Epistrix

several doors standing in a dark room

Vellichor

shelves with many books stacked and organized

Appriesse

a blurry image of a person looking at mounted images

Keir

a snowy landscape with trees and a fence

Mithenness

a person standing on the side of a road

Halfwise

a train coming towards the camera shot from the tracks

Aulasy

a blurry image of a house on the road

O’Erpine

a person looking at a grave

Kerisl

piles of old books scattered in an abandoned room

Énouement

a hand opening a curtain

Present-Tense

a close-up of a stopwatch

Ecury

a close-up of cave drawings and symbols

Spinning Playback Head

silhouette of a person looking out a window

Zysia

a kite soaring above an empty landscape

Tirosy

a close-up of a young child's face

Jouska

Cover image for the Jouska word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Redesis

Cover image for the Redesis word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Cullaways

a lone sand castle on a beach at low tide

Anthrodynia

Cover image for the Anthrodynia word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Heartmoor

a campfire with a kettle many small logs

Fitching

Cover image for the Fitching word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Ironsick

a group of random devices

Aesthosis

Cover image for the Aesthosis word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

Kenaway

Cover image for the Kenaway word card on the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows