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Message: <blockquote data-quote="howandwhy99" data-source="post: 2267122" data-attributes="member: 3192">[DAY 39 – Holyday, Juna 28th, CY 81]“A week without the dwarf around,” thought Igor. “This could be fun.” Only now looking back he knew it had been quite the opposite. He still counted himself lucky for selling off three of the owlbear eggs before being ordered to march back to this waterlogged, cesspit of horseflies and bigger pests. Mouse had not wanted the fourth egg. “Unfertilized”, the tiny man had said. Igor gave it to Kayla instead in hopes she might be able to use it in her wizardry. The woman had studied with the Elf Elion ever since their return. It bothered Igor as he had quite a few of his own questions to check with Elion about, but it did little good to let others know he was asking – asking about anything at all really.Shockingly, the militia well guard was doing its job too. He had learned Darius had ordered that no one was to enter the well in his absence shortly before he left. Without the little guy here to rescind the order, the way down was closed. Even for a quick, single-person inspection. By the third time he asked the guard knew his face; or at least his current guise. Reflecting back on his choice of aliases, Igor thought he could have picked a little more wisely. The pain from wearing the hump when he first arrived at Xavier still affected his back when he leapt from one tree to the next. Yet, he liked those days better than these and their interminable rain. “Come ‘ere an try me seven layer salad. Made w’ seven kinds o’ beans and three o’ four things that look like beans”, he recited. “Y’need real food fer growin’ good brains. This dish ‘s good brains. Brain tasty too.”The noise around him stopped. He forgot he was still in class with Mirel and Brother Ben. The oddball priest was lecturing the two of them in hopes they would learn to read. Igor wondered if he even knew Mirel was humoring him. She looked studious enough, but Igor knew willful ignorance when he saw it. She was scared of what reading and writing might mean for her. “She’s a smart girl”, thought Igor. He further wondered if the man realized how hard he himself was trying to learn the work while playing the fool. He spun his eye around again. “What did you say, good Igor?” said Brother Ben. “It’s EYE-GORE dammit”, Igor thought silently to himself as the cleric mispronounced his name yet again. He opened his mouth and lied: “o’ nothin’ Just me thinkin’ about me cookin’ agin.” That got him chastised. The priest started once more into his inscrutable monologue and Igor struggled to keep up in his head.[SBLOCK][From quotes] Brother Ben focused on the shapes of numbers and letters giving special emphasis on the order and logic of each. "The ordinal nature of the numbers is representative of the underlying aspect of law present in all places. The completeness of the letters chart, including specific roles for consonants and vowels, will later be incremental in learning both language structure and propriety."(stolen from Webster)”For instance: Consonants are divided into various classes, as mutes, spirants, sibilants, nasals, semivowels, etc. All of them are sounds uttered through a closer position of the organs than that of a vowel proper, although the most open of them, as the semivowels and nasals, are capable of being used as if vowels, and forming syllables with other closer consonants, as in the Common feeble (-b'l), taken (-k'n). All the consonants excepting the mutes may be indefinitely, prolonged in utterance without the help of a vowel, and even the mutes may be produced with an aspirate instead of a vocal explosion. Vowels and consonants may be regarded as the two poles in the scale of sounds produced by gradual approximation of the organ, of speech from the most open to the closest positions, the vowel being more open, the consonant closer; but there is a territory between them where the sounds produced partake of the qualities of both."[/SBLOCK]Igor’s brain hurt. He reflected back on Kayla instead. A highly intelligent woman if a bit reserved. She was smarter than he was which normally meant trouble. But he felt he and her were right about where Igor wanted them to be: wrapped in a crisscross of truth and lie even he could not always discern. She had many questions for him and knew a little more of his real nature - at least that he was not just a simple cook. “What cook could use a bastard sword to kill an owlbear in one fell stabbing?” he thought. “Well, Sergeant Guido’s loss is my gain. May I never see his ghost again.” He shivered. It still unnerved him that a thing once dead might rise to seek revenge on its killer. But the blade, it was at least one item he could show openly. Everyone else still believed he had lost all his other belongings except his new sack in the theft. The truth was those books did not even pay for it. "They were money in the bank, investments.” His thoughts started to flow. “No, it was those pretty, pretty gems on that old wizard’s throne. How could everyone else overlook them? Wise men are bad and good are fools, facts evil - wishes vain appear, we cannot go… damn! What was the end of that line?” Igor could no longer concentrate with Brother Ben prattling on.</blockquote>

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