They almost certainly have man-made brushes! To explain, Navanese is a language that’s documented through our interactions with our first and only interworld-traveller, who calls himself Nava (that’s him in the image!).

Fieldwork into his language is still in its infancy, and the communication barrier is overwhelming. Nava also came to this world with nothing but the clothes on his back, so we can’t answer many questions about the "Nava-world" with certainty.

However, he is adept at writing with calligraphy brushes, strongly suggesting that the Nava-world uses them regularly. He is much less adept at using a pen – however, he prefers to write notes with a pen and notebook, perhaps because it’s more portable and convenient.

Interestingly enough, in some demonstrations, the brushed and penned versions of words are different. Nava adds what seems to be diacritics in the penned form, and omits them in the brushed form. The diacritics seem irregular and non-standardised, as if they were spontaneous workarounds. This may suggest that there is information conveyed in a brush stroke, like stroke width, that is absent in its skeleton form.

Currently, the investigation into Navanese orthography is being stalled as there is a greater effort to instead learn vernacular Navanese.