715 Cylus 2...
Quill in hand, the scritching scratching sounds of its sharp end filling the relative silence of the study with a steady beat, Mads carefully stared down at his work. He was much better at writing and reading in foreign languages; speaking and listening were far more taxing and, by extension, more difficult.
Over the arcs, he had managed to solidify a relatively sound though simplistic vocabulary; while it was one that was ever expanding, its expansion was slow and laborious. Very few Quacians – more specifically the Heaps, which he counted himself among in spite of his careful upbringing – knew even the most simple of Common phrases or words. It cast a very pale, sickly light upon the study of the language itself: why study something that was, essentially, useless?
Yet, each time he’d brought that exact question – or variant thereof – before the Madam, she insisted it was practical. More than that, she typically reprimanded him with extra assignments, impressing upon him quite young that while he, perhaps, was unable to espy any particular benefit, it didn’t change the fact that it was there.
Of course, that didn’t help to make the language any less boring.
Mostly he learned through repetition – writing out a word and its definition hundreds of times. There were more efficient ways. There were more enjoyable ways. There were even other ways he actively attempted to add into his study schedule, but for all the possibilities, he tended to wind up right back where he was: neatly seated in his chair, dutifully bent over the cool stone of the study’s writing desk, quill in hand, parchment beneath, and deliberately forcing his attention on the work at hand.
The room he was in was small – much smaller than the sunroom, where Graciana was currently lounging, book in hand and spectacles daintily balanced upon the end of her nose. There was a single window that took up most of the northern wall, though it was not so much that the window itself was large as that the wall was the opposite. There were shelves filled with journals and folders; little baubles and gadgets that Graciana had either found or been gifted for her various deeds among the Seekers and greater Quacian populace alike lined what space was left.
From sunrise to set, the room was nearly always lit by the light that filtered in, but Mads tended to keep a bloodlight or two nearby when it came to writing. Something about squinting down at his own, curvy handwriting required him to bathe the entire paper in an absurd wash of light to avoid headaches.
And it was in that light he now realized he’d been carefully penning the incorrect spelling of “conceive” – his “i” and “e” had switched about fifty words back. The word itself, like so many Common words, was a verb that existed in all forms – noun, adjective, adverb. From memory, he knew “conceivable”, and “conceivably”, but couldn’t recall the third – though all of it was a further distraction from the corrections.
Rather than crossing out or otherwise concealing his mistakes, he neatly underlined each of them, quietly whispering to himself the correct spelling, “C-o-n-c-e-i-v-a-b-l-e…” There was a Common rhyme Graciana had shared with him when it came to spelling with “i” and “e” – he didn’t remember the exact phrasing, but it essentially stated that “i” always was placed before “e”. Except for when it didn’t.
He started again, moving from the smooth curve of the “c” into the rounded circle of the “o”.
It was one of the – many – things he found so absurd about the language. There were rules and rules and rules, but for every rule, there was an exception – and at times there were exceptions to those exceptions. The word “one” was pronounced like “won” but when an “h” was added to create “hone”, it was not pronounced “hun” rather “hone”. Even more confusing, the word “hun” was a slang term of endearment and was spelt with “u”, whereas “hon” was also a slang term of endearment and meant exactly the same thing.
Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five…
Then there was the most basic verb of all “be” – and it was a right bastard, plain and simple. Mads always struggled with his conjugations of it, because everything seemed so ludicrously arbitrary. The first person singular “was” and “am” and “will be”, while the second took “were” and “are” and shared “will be”. The third person singular – which why it mattered there was an ungendered pronoun or even pronouns at all, escaped him – chose the same “was” but a different “is” and then, like the two before it, “will be”.
Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine…
And verbs in and of themselves were ridiculous. The past tense – supposedly – was meant to take on the form of the verb’s root with an “-ed” suffix; but in the sense of “was/were”, “ran”, “swam”, “fell”, “ate”, “left”, “lost”, and so many, many other words, he didn’t see why it was even a “rule” at all. It didn’t make sense to him that there should be so many exceptions. Rules were rules. Whatever it was Common seemed to abide by, it was hardly the Vahanic equivalent.
Seventy-two, seventy-three, seventy-four…
Then there was the word he was transcribing over and over and over again. “Conceivable”. Its antonym was “inconceivable” – adding the suffix of “in-“ which alone was a preposition denoting location, but when placed before the root of the word suddenly became a negative modifier. It was a bit like magic, if magic made no sense, had no rules, and was unbearably burdensome to wield.
Ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine…
“Con-see-vabel.” He set the quill down leaning back into his chair, closing his eyes, and let his thumb and forefinger massage the upper bridge of his nose. It was all information Graciana had ground into him over and over and over again. Repetition after repetition. Vahanic he understood. The problem came when she tried to explain to him how it was Common functioned. His mind thought in Vahanic, it understood in Vahanic, and it reasoned in Vahanic.
Blinking, three times in rapid succession, he leaned forward once more. With a sharp dip of his quill into a small glass jar of ink, he started again.
“I-n-s-a-n-i-t-y…”
Quill in hand, the scritching scratching sounds of its sharp end filling the relative silence of the study with a steady beat, Mads carefully stared down at his work. He was much better at writing and reading in foreign languages; speaking and listening were far more taxing and, by extension, more difficult.
Over the arcs, he had managed to solidify a relatively sound though simplistic vocabulary; while it was one that was ever expanding, its expansion was slow and laborious. Very few Quacians – more specifically the Heaps, which he counted himself among in spite of his careful upbringing – knew even the most simple of Common phrases or words. It cast a very pale, sickly light upon the study of the language itself: why study something that was, essentially, useless?
Yet, each time he’d brought that exact question – or variant thereof – before the Madam, she insisted it was practical. More than that, she typically reprimanded him with extra assignments, impressing upon him quite young that while he, perhaps, was unable to espy any particular benefit, it didn’t change the fact that it was there.
Of course, that didn’t help to make the language any less boring.
Mostly he learned through repetition – writing out a word and its definition hundreds of times. There were more efficient ways. There were more enjoyable ways. There were even other ways he actively attempted to add into his study schedule, but for all the possibilities, he tended to wind up right back where he was: neatly seated in his chair, dutifully bent over the cool stone of the study’s writing desk, quill in hand, parchment beneath, and deliberately forcing his attention on the work at hand.
The room he was in was small – much smaller than the sunroom, where Graciana was currently lounging, book in hand and spectacles daintily balanced upon the end of her nose. There was a single window that took up most of the northern wall, though it was not so much that the window itself was large as that the wall was the opposite. There were shelves filled with journals and folders; little baubles and gadgets that Graciana had either found or been gifted for her various deeds among the Seekers and greater Quacian populace alike lined what space was left.
From sunrise to set, the room was nearly always lit by the light that filtered in, but Mads tended to keep a bloodlight or two nearby when it came to writing. Something about squinting down at his own, curvy handwriting required him to bathe the entire paper in an absurd wash of light to avoid headaches.
And it was in that light he now realized he’d been carefully penning the incorrect spelling of “conceive” – his “i” and “e” had switched about fifty words back. The word itself, like so many Common words, was a verb that existed in all forms – noun, adjective, adverb. From memory, he knew “conceivable”, and “conceivably”, but couldn’t recall the third – though all of it was a further distraction from the corrections.
Rather than crossing out or otherwise concealing his mistakes, he neatly underlined each of them, quietly whispering to himself the correct spelling, “C-o-n-c-e-i-v-a-b-l-e…” There was a Common rhyme Graciana had shared with him when it came to spelling with “i” and “e” – he didn’t remember the exact phrasing, but it essentially stated that “i” always was placed before “e”. Except for when it didn’t.
He started again, moving from the smooth curve of the “c” into the rounded circle of the “o”.
It was one of the – many – things he found so absurd about the language. There were rules and rules and rules, but for every rule, there was an exception – and at times there were exceptions to those exceptions. The word “one” was pronounced like “won” but when an “h” was added to create “hone”, it was not pronounced “hun” rather “hone”. Even more confusing, the word “hun” was a slang term of endearment and was spelt with “u”, whereas “hon” was also a slang term of endearment and meant exactly the same thing.
Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five…
Then there was the most basic verb of all “be” – and it was a right bastard, plain and simple. Mads always struggled with his conjugations of it, because everything seemed so ludicrously arbitrary. The first person singular “was” and “am” and “will be”, while the second took “were” and “are” and shared “will be”. The third person singular – which why it mattered there was an ungendered pronoun or even pronouns at all, escaped him – chose the same “was” but a different “is” and then, like the two before it, “will be”.
Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine…
And verbs in and of themselves were ridiculous. The past tense – supposedly – was meant to take on the form of the verb’s root with an “-ed” suffix; but in the sense of “was/were”, “ran”, “swam”, “fell”, “ate”, “left”, “lost”, and so many, many other words, he didn’t see why it was even a “rule” at all. It didn’t make sense to him that there should be so many exceptions. Rules were rules. Whatever it was Common seemed to abide by, it was hardly the Vahanic equivalent.
Seventy-two, seventy-three, seventy-four…
Then there was the word he was transcribing over and over and over again. “Conceivable”. Its antonym was “inconceivable” – adding the suffix of “in-“ which alone was a preposition denoting location, but when placed before the root of the word suddenly became a negative modifier. It was a bit like magic, if magic made no sense, had no rules, and was unbearably burdensome to wield.
Ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine…
“Con-see-vabel.” He set the quill down leaning back into his chair, closing his eyes, and let his thumb and forefinger massage the upper bridge of his nose. It was all information Graciana had ground into him over and over and over again. Repetition after repetition. Vahanic he understood. The problem came when she tried to explain to him how it was Common functioned. His mind thought in Vahanic, it understood in Vahanic, and it reasoned in Vahanic.
Blinking, three times in rapid succession, he leaned forward once more. With a sharp dip of his quill into a small glass jar of ink, he started again.
“I-n-s-a-n-i-t-y…”
