Page Composition

by **Jenni Twilight** on May 20th, 2014, 8:57 pm

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-- Spring 30th, 514 AV --

There was paper… paper everywhere. The pages were scattered over the large table, in no particular order. And it was Jenni’s job to put them in order. She was, at least, working with one of her superiors… Sayeo, the Seeker who’d in fact shown her the ropes on her first day working. According to the story, a clumsy Lhavitan had been reading this book in the library… then dropped it. It had been an old book on top of that, and badly bound, so what had been left of the binding simply broke and scattered the pages all over the place.

It was painfully large, with –according to Sayeo, well over 500 pages. This was a job that would take a long time… a very long time. What was worse, was the fact that said pages were not numbered, and the writing was very… messy. They’d have to go by chapter, subheading, and general content instead. The Twilight groaned softly.

“Eyris help us,” she muttered, closing her eyes for a moment as if to pretend the mess didn’t exist.

“I think it’s us that’s helping Eyris,” Sayeo commented, very unhelpfully. She almost scowled at the man, but barely remembered her manners and signed instead. “On another note, I think I’ve found the table of contents!” he exclaimed, lifting up a fading yellow sheet. Sayeo had been shifting through the piles, apparently looking for key information. Luckily, he’d found it. “It’s double-sided… so we should sort the pages by chapter, judging by the content. You could say this author was unorganized… but at least he’d added this.”

He moved to the second table at their disposal, laying the page on the top left corner. “I say… we put them in piles on the table here, in chapter order. Pages you don’t know about, put in the bottom right corner, and maybe we can place them at the end. Once that’s done… I guess we can do the page order one chapter at a time. Sound like a plan? ” Jenni nodded, curling carefully around the tables and papers to get a look at the chapters for herself.

Like everything else in this book, the writing was a mess, in not particularly straight lines. It was also in a confusing cursive that took longer than normal to decipher… it was like reading a funny code. At least it was better than Nari, though… she wasn’t particularly good at that yet.

It was a book on important figures in Lhavit’s history. However, it was outdated, so didn’t hold some of the more recent people. It did contain the longer-lived people, namely Aysel and Talora. There were chapters on each of those. Other chapters went over general areas, like ‘art’ or ‘politics’. There was one on the Shinya too. It was wide and varied, and made Jenni want to groan again. Instead, she shook her head, scowled for a moment, and picked up the first page she could see.

Imihain’s mission was to do his best for the people of Lhavit. He began his life as a lowly baker’s assistant, but quickly discovered he had a way with the money… and eventually started his own business. It, and his skill, grew from there.

Common - Nari/Crook - NPC - Writing - Reading

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by **Jenni Twilight** on May 21st, 2014, 12:16 am

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Jenni frowned at the first few sentences. So this person was a businessman? There was a section on business… chapter… She double-checked the guide sheet. Eight. She picked a spot that looked about eight page-widths away from the table of contents and set her own down. Sayeo had added another to the pile, conveniently in the chapter two space. It had taken her longer than was convenient to read that little bit, and now… she had to do it all over again. Why would anyone read this? The information was possibly useful, but it was too… tricky to find it.

The next few sheets all seemed to be on a chapter about the founder of the Twilight house, someone that actually interested the Morpher. However, she could find such information in the family’s own library. It was limited, but certainly had books on family history. She was sure the Dawns and Dusks were in the same boat. She was also familiar with the man’sAssuming it’s a man… backstory, though this seemed to have much more information than what she’d seen.

She slipped out a page from under all the rest and glanced at the top. This actually started with its own subheading, detailing a person that was described as a ‘Great Magician and Businessman’. Reading further, she learned that his business was, in fact, based off his magic. He discovered a number of interesting tricks with magic, and sold them, or trained others in his disciple for a price. On top of that, he was a Dawn… though a minor member.

She didn’t know which section to put him in. Magic? Business like the first? Or the Dawn family. It seemed like anyone in any family always sat in that pile. But it seemed to be such a minor part of this person’s history… she simply couldn’t guess. She glanced up to see what Sayeo was doing, in case he was in a good spot to interrupt. He wasn’t. He was staring hard into one sheet, holding it barely inches from his nose, as if that would help. He didn’t look like he wanted to speak to anyone.

Jenni shrugged, not wanting to put that much effort into something so unimportant. Instead of fussing over it, she dropped it into the ‘unknown’ pile, which already had a deposit from the older Lhavitan. She hoped there would be another mention of him on another page that would make things a little clearer. She also had the feeling that, no matter how hard they tried, the book would never be in quite the exact order as it had been before. Some things were just up to luck.

The next page was simply infuriating. Infuriating, in the manner that it was completely illegible. Completely. She could decipher a word or two, but that was her limit. The first one was… ‘cat’… or maybe ‘hat’… or was that squiggly bit at the end an ‘e’? She wasn’t sure. The Twilight glanced up again at Sayeo and saw he’d changed positions at least, now sitting down in a chair and scowling at his own sheet from afar. It didn’t seem to have changed.

“This is completely un-readable,” she announced, causing him to glance up in surprise. A moment later, he nodded.

“I tried looking at it with my gnosis. He wore glasses, did you know? The author. He dropped them on the page a lot. He also dropped his quill… even more often.”

“Maybe he had a shaky hand? And possibly head.”

“That would explain this abysmal writing. Honestly… someone needs to re-write this more neatly.”

“I’m not volunteering for the job. I may still be a Novitate, but I’ve been here long enough to not deserve that.” Sayeo grinned at that, and tossed his paper onto the ‘give up’ pile, as Jenni had mentally named it. She did the same.

Common - Nari/Crook - NPC - Writing - Reading

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by **Jenni Twilight** on May 21st, 2014, 12:44 pm

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Their work continued on for several chimes, the stack of unsorted pages seeming to never get smaller. The job had seemed massive at first, but now? It looked simply humungous. There was no way the pair of them would finish this in any sort of reasonable time… it would probably take them a few days of painful reading to get maybe even halfway through. Though that was possibly an exaggeration. However, despite all this, she was actually finding the writing slightly easier to get through, with practice.

“You know,” Sayeo said, out of the blue. “The guy who was reading this… the one who’d dropped it… said he’d started reading it on a whim. He lasted about half a bell before giving up, saying it was illegible.” He laughed at his own joke, grinning at his sheet. Jenni giggled as well, understanding completely.

“My, he got rather far… I’m impressed. I hope he had a headache,” she commented, raising an eyebrow at the older Seeker.

He groaned, in a joking tone. “I think I have a headache. This sentence doesn’t make any sense.” He frowned at it for several moments, then put on a look like he finally understood the meaning of the world. “Ohh… that was ‘the’, not ‘here’… that would make much more sense.” Barely a tick later, he added it to one of the growing piles.

Amusingly, they didn’t seem to have any progress on the first pile… the one on Talora, was it? Maybe all those pages were buried down deep, where they wouldn’t find them to the very end. Despite the fact that this work did have some variety to it, it was quickly becoming monotonous. Jenni was alright with that, as long as she was learning something. And, technically, it was. However the information was in quick snatches, sometimes completely out of context. She didn’t mind this work entirely… but she felt like doing something different. Like trying to order the pages… but that would require sorting them all, in case you forgot one or two.

“I wish we could have some more help,” she muttered grumpily to herself, not really intending for anyone to listen. However, Sayeo did, and made an understanding noise. “Maybe I should drag a few more Novitates onto this. It would make life easier for me.”

“Not me?” she threw back, and the older Seeker simply snorted and waved his hand. The implicated idea was that life being easier for her didn’t matter.

It was one of the things she liked about working here, with the Seekers. They contained people from all walks of life, all families and statuses, all ranges of knowledge. Some were socially inept, only good for deducing facts about old pots and jewelry. Some worked with the public, skillfully working out problems and keeping irritating ones away from those who were actually trying to work. Importance and hierarchy was judged by Eyris, and who she’d gifted with a mark… and Eyris was a good judge.

It meant that she, despite being a member of the Twilight house, was the same as any other unmarked in the Library. It also meant that, because of her lack of a proper mother, she wasn’t below any of the other wealthy members. She was… equal. And it was a nice feeling, something that happened rarely in her life. Being born with wealth and station was good, but it also created extra complications, extra responsibilities, extra… everything. You were expected to do things for the good of the family, and sometimes she didn’t agree with what that was. Here, she was expected to do things for the good of knowledge and Eyris, and she always agreed with that.

Common - Nari/Crook - NPC - Writing - Reading

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by **Jenni Twilight** on May 22nd, 2014, 9:51 pm

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Sayeo did actually end up recruiting a few more helpers for their work. He left Jenni to sort things on her own for a while, and came back with a few slightly baffled looking Seekers trailing behind him. Apparently he’d dragged them out of ‘less important’ work… though that was a term that could be debated. Still she didn’t complain… it meant that there weren’t just two of them slaving on what seemed like an unending task. The group, after a quick briefing, set to work, silently scanning pages of their own for clues on which sections they belonged to.

The Twilight did the same, and their small section of the library fell into a nice, compatible silence. Except… there wasn’t quite silence. In fact, she could hear muttering, coming from where two girls stood, scowling at their own pages. Their words were incomprehensible, but their faces told quite a bit. Neither looked quite happy, and they were both pointing at one of the sheets in confusion. It was an emotion she’d felt many times that day, brought about by the authors horrendous writing. She didn’t know how he’d have been able to edit it at all. Actually, he probably hadn’t… She’d found a number of spelling and grammatical mistakes during her readings, not caused by the messy handwriting.

She considered letting them mutter along, and wait till they’d finished or given up, but boredom dragged at her. She didn’t entirely feel like staying silent, so instead threw out a sarcastic comment, making her knowledge of their conversation known. “Hard to read?” she asked, glancing up with raised eyebrows from her own sheet.

Their expressions were amusing, mixes of shock and surprise . They hadn’t expected her to notice, nor to actually speak up… but doing so felt worth it. She had to work hard to keep a grin breaking out at their embarrassment, and succeeded… mostly. She couldn’t help having the corners of her lips twitch up at every glance.

There were a few moments of startled pause, then one of them… the older, spoke. Her voice was a twitch shaky at first, and she gave a weak grin. Had Jenni really been that… intimidating? She’d never considered herself in that way. “Well, yea. I mean… how can you read this? Sometimes I get the whole meaning mixed up because one word looks like another…” She sighed, as if it was some great tragedy.

Sayeo had apparently decided to listen in on their moping, and snorted loudly. Everyone turned to face him. “Join the club,” he said a little harshly, though the Twilight could see that he was smiling, from her angle. The Novitates looked a little cowed. She was one of them, but… maybe they were new. They probably were. She’d been working at this place for well over two seasons now, and had gotten the hang of most things. Some of those around her had been marked, but she apparently wasn’t quite at that point. Still, she waited patiently, for the day that Eyris decided that she deserved to move up.

The chimes ticked by, and there were a few spatters of conversation here or there. Mostly complaints, but sometimes people did general socialization… where they lived, how old they were, when they joined the Seekers, and such. The girl who’d spoke first apparently had a parrot, imported from Taloba itself. It wasn’t as exotically colored as some, but it had quit the vocabulary and pronunciation. She’d even taught it to associate words with certain objects, like food or books.

Jenni was tempted to mention Crook, but he was much less impressive. However, the thought of a parrot was rather interesting. She’d thought about trying to morph into a bird one day… though flitted through species. However, as a parrot… she’d probably be able to speak like a normal human being. It would make communication much easier…

But it was a thought, and many of a similar type passed through her mind as the chimes turned into bells, and even those dragged by as the pile grew ever smaller….

Common - Nari/Crook - NPC - Writing - Reading

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by **Catastrophe** on June 4th, 2014, 3:45 am

Jenni Twilight :

Notes :

Solo Page Composition