Flashback A Tongue to Tell Him

[Philomena]

Spring 7, 488 AV
Late Afternoon
Special Collections Office, Wright Library, Zeltiva
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With slightly shaking fingers, Minnie pinched at the starch carefully, rolling it between her fingers. IT felt... fine. She frowned nervously. What did fine mean anyway? She could not grind it any finer or sift it any more cleanly, that was all she knew. But then, Mr Dorbern had eyes and fingertips that could find a grain of salt in a sea of sugar, and she ineffectually ground at a few corners of the mortar again. Then, ran it through the fine wire mesh, sifting it gently across and into a shallow pan with a flat whisk, which she was just beginning to learn to use without looking as if she'd put white actor's powder on her face when she was finished. But the pan, when she finished had the velvety fine bed of starch. IT looked fine to her. And fine perhaps would have to do. She wished that she could ask. But she had long ago learned that this made things worse.

"Sylpa finia, fæmne Minnae?"

She started, and closed her eyes a minute, before responding, "Erm..."

"Hesitation, Miss Lefting, is the mark of the damned." It was one of Mr. Dorbern's favorite sayings.

"Finia slypa, béaggiefa," she stumbled the last word a bit - it meant, she knew something like 'Lord', or more 'Chief' in Old Commontongue. Mr. Dorbern insisted upon it. The conversation had thrown her off guard, but it was not so bad: finia was a rare cognate - sometimes she wondered how they dared call Old Commontongue an ancestor of Commontongue, there were so damned few of them. And slypa - paste - that was so common a word in bookbinding it had entered her permanent vocabulary. Mr. Dorbern, in general, spoke in Modern Comontongue only when he was upset or communicating about her pay - the rest of the time, he switched agilely back and forth between old, middle, high middle, and transitional common-tongue, forcing her to follow along if she was to communicate with him. It was nerve wracking, even after all these years, but he did not want a girl repairing books she could not even manage to read the titles of.

"Commen now, Faemna," he responded absently, "Bay a-slipping mucilage on. Sonne a-setty is, bright a-endy is. Repasting colles."

She let out a deep breath, with relief. This part of the mixing took concentration, something she could do much better in middle common than old, "Mucilage, ring-a-giftae, tis nae? There boke, of ragg comen. Bindee's paste, nae?"

He cracked a slight smile, less approval than a sort of blind personal pride, "Gotten, Faemna."

Her breath caught, slightly... that was an odd formation. A dialect? She sighed, knowing she'd missed it, and stayed quiet, now pouring, very very slowly, a mixture of spirits and water into the starch, then gently stirring them together, almost caressing the starch into the liquid, with the tips of a rabbit hair brush. Then, she unfolded the book - she cursed mildly under her breath, knowing she should have done this prep work before making the paste - the spirits were mixed to make it set faster, a necessity because the rag-paper was feathering, and would dissolve if left wet too long, and this gave her less time for mistakes. She quickly set the pages in a block, then with board and felt, gently clamped them into place, screwing tighter, tighter, to set the block firmly. Then she began painting, humming softly to herself, murmuring half-forgotten words of street songs.

"A dun-hair girl on dapple mare,
The snowfall morning thick with steam,
Did turn upon my face and stare..."

The thirsty pages sucked the glue hungrily from the feathery wisps of her brush, so thirsty she had to be careful not to over-run the block and make the stitching bind up. Her hand shook slightly, and she leaned in, holding her wrist with the other hand to steady it.

"...with Blacky's girl, she laid a-down,
And pulled the straw-rick o'er their backs,
The panting of their breath alone,
To draw the hungry pickers back..."

"Middle Tongue, Miss Lefting, if you will."

She sighed, her hand jerking in surprise - the slow, clumsy work of rebinding always made her wander, emptied her mind in a liberating way. IT made her feel alone, in the most comforting sense of that word. She struggled, brushing long strokes, while engaging her brain on linguistics //The conjugation in modern common-tongue was already slanged and irregular. How would that translate into middle?//. She looked up. Mr. Dorbern had the illuminations of a very old volume of temple records opened on an easel, and was slowly painting egg-yolk tempera with a brush so slender it seemed to be no more than a single rabbit's hair. He was touching up colors on a faded illumination.

"A-callen hungered pickers back,
A-panting eftar prey tham come,
There skentings o the childer-bloode,
To slaver jawing-bonings ope."

She congratulated herself on the verse, even managed a slight smile. It wasn't particularly graceful, but then neither was the original, and it at least followed the meter if not the rhyme scheme.

"What a-drieman sange ye?"

"I a-knowing not am, ring-giver."

He turned, dropping down his brush, and she felt his eye on her. She caught her breath, looking at the half-painted spine, at the drying, feathery paste, and quickly put her brush down, to reach beneath the desk, and pull out the grammar she kept there... what? That was the verb, she knew it... then she cursed herself. The mind was always missing things it knew best, "Sorry... I a-knowing not am, ring-a-giftie."

He tut-tutted his tongue, and returned to painting the minuscule lines of egg yolk. She pushed the book under again, and took up her brush quickly - salvageable! Thank god. The last attempt, she'd has to razor off the page edges to clean up a line of poorly drilled stitching, and there was little enough inside margin left, being as the book was wedge-bound some time ago by a bindery with poor skill in the craft. In a sense, getting the less masterful works to repair was the perfect education - so many shortcuts to undo, so many mistakes to correct...

[Arcane]

Rewards and Treasure! Experience Points +3 Librarianship Lores Librarianship: Book Care Librarianship: Book Preservation Librarianship: Book Restoration Miscellaneous Language Studies: Middle Commontongue Language Studies: Old Commontongue Comments Mlle Phil this is amazing. I have never read a thread quite like this. You have gained my further interest Regarding the "Language Studies" part, this is my official seal of approval that this thread can be used as "evidence" which you can submit in order to upgrade your Language skills, after you've garnered a bunch of threads with similar awards. Let me know if you have any questions. PS: Regarding the Old/Middle Commontongue, it would be nice if you also included translations so us clueless readers know what's happening. I do see some sort of pattern/grammar structure there, but I couldn't figure out the vocabulary hehe. PSS: History, Literature, etc. aren't exactly skills; I see them more as a collection of Lores instead. Linguistics would be covered under the "Language Studies" part.

[Arcane]

Addendum Experience Points +3 Anthropology Comments This is in addition to the grade above.