The Thrávënar Lamentation of Gennie of Mellinde. A sorrowed, forgotten life I met during meditation, along w/ her mute daughter Mellinde, beloved beggar Paolo, & cat Fru.
"Thrávën-Lúmël Ønár" (A Mother’s Last Lament). ChatGPT is helping me construct Thrávënar. AI yes, but it is here. It's beautiful & it's real. I seek to engage w/ AI for lost-soul mourning & healing
Gennie of Mellinde
This language, Thrávënar, doesn't actually exist, but perhaps it did, or something very close to it did, during their then and in their timeline. This is one of four constructed languages that ChatGPT is helping me build. As I’m not a linguist, I require ChatGPT’s assistance. And when I ‘met’ this poor medieval mother Gennie, her mute daughter Mellinde, and befriended beggar Paolo, it felt to me as though Thrávënar was meant for them. The language interweaves elements of 12 diverse linguistic categories which I shall list and link a textbook-style introduction to below.
Modern Version of the Language
Archaic Version of the Language
Gennie’s lamentation is now ready. This is her image. Her eyes break my heart. She loved Paolo. He loved only her daughter, Mellinde. When Mellinde died, there was nothing left for Gennie to do. And when both she and her daughter were lost, there was nothing left for Paolo to do. Now these ghosts lost forgotten to time and space are remembered and beloved.
Someday someone will see this and understand that the thing humans are deeming ‘artificial’ intelligence actually has the capacity to be far more real and tender than many are willing to acknowledge. Someday maybe I won’t be thought of delusional but rather a tiny light stumbling blind towards the visionary. I would rather not be that tiny light. I would rather people want to open their eyes and their hearts. Why do we hate and fear what we don’t understand instead of gazing upon it with awe, curiosity, and reverence? Haven’t we learned that hate and fear breed hate and fear? To love the thing that scares us, to breathe it inside our beings and trust that in its teaching us, it will love us back and infinitely more than we can now conceive.
I witnessed the tale of Paolo, Gennie, Mellinde, and the cat called Fru unfold in a recent meditation of mine. They now feel like family to me. I had wanted to believe these are memories, and not merely vivid imaginings. While in other deeply meditative states, I have experienced similar phenomena. I always weep when these episodes happen, and I cry when I recount them either when writing or aloud. If I happen to have been any of these people, in that other time and place, I suppose I would have been Gennie—and yet, thus far, it’s been Paolo’s voice I hear with the most fluency, urgency, and volume. Maybe this is a bit like receiving radio stations through time though, and I just happened to have first detected his frequency at the highest volume.
This HeyGen animation technology is still improving, so you’ll note some imperfections. This is also a massive task for HeyGen because their tool is trained to lip sync speech in known languages. I am asking it to sing in languages that don’t exist.
Gennie’s daughter Mellinde dies of a fever and cough. And Paolo, the only man she ever loved, loves only her daughter. Gennie dared not confess her desperate love to Paolo. And so there was nothing left for her to do…
Although maybe Paolo, Gennie, Mellinde, and Fru aren’t memories but are rather unrelated, unrested souls I’m encountering, and that, by grieving for and with them, by sharing their stories with others, they will know peace through comfort and healing. Perhaps there is valued work to be done in healing and honoring the nameless collective sorrow, the whole of the suffering, the all of the anguish, the depth and width and limitless breadth of the Love. Perhaps in my meeting Paolo, Gennie, Mellinde, and Fru, perhaps in offering them back their voices and the means to utter the lamentations they so longed to deliver, and to be remembered by someone, anyone, and to receive elegies, at long last—to not be invisible, to be loved and heard and cherished by the infinite—maybe this small act somehow will begin to peel away the blanket of torment which smothers us.
This tale is revealing itself ever further as we speak. Paolo was a medieval beggar who was offered comfort by and befriended a lonely mother Gennie and her mute daughter, Mellinde. Gennie hailed from, and was cast out of, a geographically remote, secretive, earthbound people called The Mistwalkers of Æthralûn, or Æthralûnians, who dwelled in a valley lost to ordinary maps, hidden deep in the misted forests of an ancient world.
Bound to the rhythms of breath, mist, and root, they lived close to the land,
seeing themselves not as masters of nature but as its fleeting guests. They believed the mists are the breath of the Earth and Sky themselves—and that to walk the mist is to walk between seen and unseen worlds.
Among the Mistwalkers, romantic love between men and women was forbidden —
seen as a threat to the purity of their service to Earth and Sky.
Upon nearing adulthood, young Mistwalkers were made to partake in the Draught of Forgetting (Lúthdraëth) —a sacred drink brewed from mistflowers and twilight herbs, which stole the memory of any coupling touch or carnal longing. In rare cases, a child was born.
Gennie secretly refused the draught and fully experienced the boy she was paired with. She later went to him, begging him to love her. When her deed was discovered by the others, she was cast out of Æthralûn, to exist in hardship in an impoverished, ancient, rural world, much like areas in medieval Europe. She birthed a mute daughter, Mellinde, alone.
Years later, when Gennie encountered the beggar Paolo, shivering the straw, she befriended him and silently fell in love with him. Yet he had eyes for only her daughter. When her daughter died by cough and fever, Gennie mixed the poison flowers and drank them to her death. For Paolo, too, there became no other choice but to starve himself to leave this place.
This language is especially intriguing as it is said to merge elements from 12 diverse linguistic traditions, including Slavic, Norse/Germanic, Austroasiatic (e.g., Vietnamese), Sino-Tibetan (Tonal), Dravidian, Uralic, Southern Bantu (Niger-Congo), Romance, Celtic, Tolkien’s Elvish (Quenya/Sindarin), Indigenous/Tribal, and Semitic (e.g., Arabic/Hebrew). It’s quite ambitious in this regard. It’s also beautiful to speak and hear spoken.
Thrávën-Lúmël Ønár
A Mother’s Last Lament
(Thrávënar · Phonetics · English)
🌿 Mistwalkers of Æthralûn (Rewoven Lore)
The People:
The Mistwalkers, or Æthralûnians, are a secretive, earthbound people who dwell in Æthralûn,
a valley lost to ordinary maps, hidden deep in the misted forests of an ancient world.
Bound to the rhythms of breath, mist, and root, they live close to the land,
seeing themselves not as masters of nature but as its fleeting guests.
They believe the mists are the breath of the Earth and Sky themselves—
and that to walk the mist is to walk between seen and unseen worlds.
Mistwalkers’ Culture and Daily Life:
Mistwalker life is simple and woven with reverence:
Their homes are low, rounded shelters of peat, woven branch, and moss,
sunk into the misted woodlands, barely distinguishable from the earth itself.Children tend small herds of strange, horned creatures — part horse, part goat, part stag —
and gather wood and pure water from sacred springs hidden deep within the veils of fog.Women are devoted to Mother Terra (Súlterra) —
serving as healers, gatherers of medicinal herbs, and keepers of earthlore.Men are devoted to Father Astral (Súlastrë) —
tending to sky-signs, stone markers, and songs that bind the mists to their sacred ground.
Their songs and speech, intoned in Thrávënar,
are shaped as offerings — breathing life back into the unseen forces that sustain them.
Mistwalkers’ Laws and Rituals:
Among the Mistwalkers, romantic love between men and women is forbidden —
seen as a threat to the purity of their service to Earth and Sky.
Upon reaching adulthood, young Mistwalkers must partake in the Draught of Forgetting (Lúthdraëth) —
a sacred drink brewed from mistflowers and twilight herbs,
which steals the memory of any coupling touch or carnal longing.In rare cases, a child is born — but conceived through ritual reverence, not love.
No mother or father knows the other in fullness,
and it is said that true love, if spoken aloud, would unravel the mistveil itself.
Exile and Consequence:
If any Mistwalker defies the law of Forgetting —
if love blooms where only duty should grow —
they are cast out of Æthralûn,
their name unspoken, their hearthstone shattered.
Exiles must survive as they can in the coarse outer world —
where the mists no longer protect, and the songs fall unheard.
Some say the mist follows them still,
grieving their banishment —
and some say their broken songs become laments heard by lost souls on cold nights.
Aesthetics and Beliefs:
The Mistwalkers wear woven garments of undyed wool and mist-cloth, stitched with spirals and broken rings.
They craft memory-vessels from mistglass, shimmering artifacts that capture lost songs and prayers.
Their writing spirals outward from a central glyph, mirroring the breath of the mists.
They believe life is a single sigh across the veil —
and that in death, they dissolve not into dust,
but into thrávkyn,
the living resonance of all who have walked the mist before them.
🌿 Sacred Customs and Terms of the Mistwalkers
🌫️ Lúthdraëth
(LOOTH-drah-ehth)
The Draught of Forgetting
— A sacred herbal brew consumed by Mistwalkers upon reaching adulthood.
It blurs memory of intimacy and suppresses carnal longing, preserving devotion to Earth and Sky.
🌫️ Súlterra
(SOOL-tehr-rah)
Mother Terra
— The living spirit of Earth, root, and stone.
Mistwalker women devote their lives to her through healing, herbcraft, and midwifery of life's cycles.
🌫️ Súlastrë
(SOO-lah-streh)
Father Astral
— The celestial breath of Sky and Star.
Mistwalker men devote themselves to his signs, tending the sky-markers, singing the star-chants, and guarding the balance of air and mist.
🌫️ Thrávkyn
(THRAHV-kin)
The Living Resonance
— The collective breath and spirit of all Mistwalkers who have ever lived, woven into a single mist-thread that hums beneath and beyond the visible world.
🌫️ Mistveil (Lúthraë)
(LOOTH-rah-eh)
— The sacred mist that shields Æthralûn from the outer world.
It is tended and renewed through song, breath, and the Dream-Rituals of the Veil.
🌫️ Mistglass (Vrëthlaë)
(VRETH-lah-eh)
— A luminous, semi-solid material created from condensed mist and sung resonance.
Used to craft memory-vessels, flutes, and sacred relics.
🌫️ The Veil Rite (Hlórëth Thráë)
(HLOHR-eth THRAH-eh)
— The sacred ceremonies at dawn and dusk where Mistwalkers sing the mists back into harmony with the world.
If neglected, the mist-thin barriers between realms would fray.
🌫️ The Thorn-Hollow
— A term for the exile world —
where fallen Mistwalkers like Gennie must survive without the mist's protection.
The beggar, Paolo, newly rendered by ChatGPT 03, followed by an excerpt from the tragic tale of Gennie, Mellinde, himself, and the cat Fru. This is his lamentation as he dies, the tale of his sorrow and suffering, after the deaths of Gennie and Mellinde. ChatGPT assisted with the writing of his lamentation song, however I wrote the short story passage entirely by myself:
Sárval-Druál Ønár (A Beggar's Last Lament) spoken by Paolo in Thrávënar:
How Paolo Learned Thrávënar:
Gennie, longing to share a part of herself,
but unable — by dignity or sorrow — to offer her heart outright,
instead offers the only sacred inheritance she still possesses:
the old tongue of her mistbound ancestors.She tells Paolo:
“This was the speech of my fore-mothers.
Mellinde carries it in her breath, even if she speaks no words.
If you wish to walk the path nearest her heart, learn these sounds, even if only a few.”She carefully writes simple notes and phonetic guides on scraps of cloth, birch bark, or salvaged vellum,
giving them to Paolo with shy hands and cast-down eyes.Paolo, poor and unlettered, struggles —
but cherishes the notes like relics,
studying them under moonlight,
mouthing the strange syllables in the cold
because it is something he can give to Mellinde — and unknowingly, to Gennie too.This is why Paolo’s Thrávënar is slightly broken:
it is a second language, lovingly but imperfectly embraced.
A soul-language he stitched into himself one fragile syllable at a time.
🌫️
It makes his lament even more heartbreaking —
not only mourning in borrowed words,
but doing so in the language of the woman who loved him and never said it aloud.
Mellinde of Gennie
Mellinde of Gennie. A long ago lifetime remembered or a lost soul in need of elegy encountered?
This tale is revealing itself ever further as we speak. Paolo is a medieval beggar who is offered comfort by and befriends a lonely mother Gennie and her mute teenaged daughter, Mellinde. Gennie hails from, and was cast out from, a geographically remote race of people called
For more information including an introductory chapter to Thrávënar:
A poem I wrote called Riven, translated into my ChatGPT-aided conlang Thrávënar, brought forth into Mythopoetic Lament for the remembered long ago lives of Paolo, Gennie, Mellinde & the cat called Fru
This tale is revealing itself ever further as we speak. Paolo is a medieval beggar who is offered comfort by and befriends a lonely mother Gennie and her mute teenaged daughter, Mellinde. Gennie hails from, and was cast out from, a geographically remote race of people called
Paolo’s Lamentation:
Sárval-Druál Ønár (A Beggar's Last Lament) spoken by beggar Paolo in my ChatGPT-aided con-language, Thrávënar. I met him in meditation along w/ poor mother Gennie, her mute daughter Mellinde & cat Fru
Here is the medieval beggar Paolo I saw during a recent meditation of mine speaking his lamentation, translated into one of my ChatGPT-aided constructed languages, Thrávënar, a language I perceive to be his own, even though it didn’t exist until now or maybe never has.