The Lost Child

"Once upon a time there was a poor child.
He had no father, no mother, no siblings, no friends.
Everything and everyone around him was dead.”

The Lost Child is an Elven children's book. The Spiritual Travelers first encountered it in the Spirit World on Nurend 15, 308 while exploring The Prison Beneath Thera Relovut, though some of them may have seen it on bookshelves on the material plane before that.
In typical Elven fashion, it is incredibly depressing, and, despite this, it is still a very popular folktale to read or recite to Elf children at bedtime. As a popular Elven children's book, it can be found throughout Taranel in libraries, bookstores and on the shelves of many Elven homes.
The moral is -much like all hope- lost. It is unclear what the moral is supposed to be beyond perhaps not giving up despite everything being stacked against you. That being said, the child never really got what he wanted, just slightly less awful things happening to him. It's unclear if he ever was able to sleep or die as the book ends with him following a strange light in a new unknown land.
The book is illustrated with a small bit of writing accompanying each full page painting. The art style has jarring shifts in style with some pages being more straightforward and others feeling more abstract. Some Elven scholars suggest the shifting styles is just to cause more anxiety in elf children.

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“Once upon a time there was a poor child.
He had no father, no mother, no siblings, no friends.
Everything and everyone around him was dead.”
“He wandered in search of anything living
His breath was sharp, cold and hoarse
He limped, and watched as his right hand
Fell from his body a cold, frozen husk”
“His eyes would not stay closed
He was unable to sleep, like the universe held it from him
And the world was vast, insurmountable, filled with death
But no matter how long he wandered he could not die.”
“He watched the sun wilt, a dying flower.
He watched the bugs crawl from the ground just to curl up dead
He saw the moon crumble, stale and forgotten
And he felt his soul drop and bleed from his soles"
“He dripped into the ground, churned by an unseen gyre
Until the darkness around him was as ink
Drowning his still breathing lungs, and burning his eyes
Until a light found him, and guided him to the surface.”
“It was but a trail of light following an orb
And the shadow that was created behind him
Grew to be a new world that they would call home
A land that would be filled with spirits, and memories.”

Read the book here: The Lost Child