glowfic | Local lore is surprisingly accurate

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Local lore is surprisingly accurate

Noelle finds that having a village is quite a pain. So she doesn't have one. Instead she travels. This isn't as easy as the sentence makes it sound. She has several sets of clothes that fit her just badly enough to make her look androgynous instead of feminine, while still being practical and not in her way. It's perhaps not what her fashion choices would be if choosing for aesthetics, but her fashion choices are not based around aesthetics. Instead it's to keep the idiots that think a lone reasonably pretty young woman is a tempting and vulnerable target to a minimum.

Not that it's a foolproof strategy. People are stupid, and she's apparently rather pretty. Not that anyone should try anything; while she might be tempting, she is not vulnerable. She has a sword at her hip that she knows how to use beyond 'pointy end goes in the person,' a small crossbow that looks deceptively useless when it is anything but, and a few knives that benefit from baggy clothes and the ability to hide knives therein. Anyone that thinks she is a tempting and vulnerable target and that they should act accordingly will be corrected. Possibly with the knives, if they especially deserve it.

She's actually in the middle of that right now. Well, sort of. She is working on being in the middle of that right now. In order to get there she has to find the guy. He had some wandering hands that went to unsanctioned locations, and after she broke his finger he, well, ran. Normally she might let him go, call it even, but she realized the next morning that he fit the description of a bandit with a sizable bounty on him. And he did have a mysteriously large purse for a man with that little class. It fits. And he's an asshole, so she can go retrieve him, dump him at the feet of the local lawmen that are looking for him, collect the lovely bounty, and be on her way.

One problem: the asshole ran into a thing the locals call the Witchwood. She realizes rather too late that it is appropriately named. The trees must be moving, or moving her, because she passed by that creek with the rocks in that particular formation and the slightly broken tree two hours ago, and she was following the sun. This should not happen.

Well. She has travelling rations with her, and she can find water reliably well (especially if the creek keeps showing up) but if she's trapped in here forever there's not much she can do about it. If it takes longer than a week she might set the forest on fire, but she's not that desperate. She'll let the magic woods lead her around if they want to, she guesses. Not that she has a choice.

She scrapes marks in trees with her least favorite knife, because it's not like she has anything better to do, and she wants to know how many times trees will repeat themselves. Scrape scrape. Wander wander.

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Delicious, delicious breakfast! Nom nom nom.

Well! As much as she wants to go be a language nerd again today, she... dislikes feeling like she's languishing. And she doesn't, exactly, but she doesn't want to feel anything close to like she is. Besides, she has a lot of energy in her, from consistently good meals and long comfortable sleep and an entire day cooped up in the library. She needs to go do something.

She has all of these new weapons, and she isn't quite good enough with them all to her taste.

The armory has a good area for this sort of thing. She'll use it.

Wheeee!

As usual, she is uninterrupted except for trays at mealtimes.

Lunch is a good stopping place, she thinks. For this thing. Though now she is covered in sweat...

...

She can have as many baths as she wants, can't she.

So because she can, she has one, because why not, it's magic, and then she dresses in clothes from the wardrobe that have trousers, but look a bit more actively feminine over androgynous. No one else is here, the wardrobe changes its clothing offerings, and she just feels like it. So, again, she does.

And then, to the library! She'll get to looking at the non-Albish and non-Callian offerings. She thinks it will take her less time to get enough of a handle on the languages to tell if there are introductory books than it will to sort through archaic Albish and Callian books to piece together a lesson plan for a beginner when all of the terms are different and everything is in jargon, instead of something perfectly understandable, like long-archaic languages.

Back to reading. Aloud.

Edited 2015-12-20 00:05 (UTC)

Some of the languages on offer are close enough to Albish or Callian or both that she can guess pretty well at the meaning and pronunciation of this or that word and then work from there. Some are more obscure. Several don't even use the same alphabet, which makes reading aloud a pretty hopeless prospect.

If you can't do everything, do what you can. She leaves the ones that use a different alphabet alone, a little glumly. They're - not exactly hopeless, she's not calling them that, but there is no way she could figure out that language in any reasonable amount of time.

She doesn't get the languages confused very often, which is hard to do when one is embracing their inner polyglot. Distinct accents for each helps distinguish them in her head. This one does not follow these rules, because it sounds like this, but it is more like this language because it sounds similar, but not quite, it was sort of in the same region as this other one that sounds similar but not as much -

And on and on it goes.

Until the dinner tray arrives.

Dinner tray means break time, but not a permanent one. Nom nom nom.

Then, back to being a language nerd.

Pity she doesn't have anyone to practice with, but that's all right. She'll be fine. She read and chips away at them, piece by piece. She'll understand how they work.

The books are helpless before her onslaught.

But none of these are introductory, either. And there are only helpful poetry books available for some of these languages. The supply of books she could understand soon but hasn't understood yet dwindles steadily.

From the material she's deciphered so far... well, she might be able to tell that a 'Dream-world' is the same thing as a 'mind-realm' which is the same thing as a 'mindscape', and the name gives some obvious hints about what sort of a thing it is, and there are more hints to be had in how and where it is mentioned, but all these books seem to be written assuming the reader already knows exactly what it is, how to get there, and how to safely manipulate it. And many of them are very clear that unsafely manipulating it is also possible. It's like this for much of the specialized enchanter jargon: hints that add up to a broad grasp of what something is, but not enough of them to form a concrete practical understanding.

That's sort of annoying, but it's looking more and more like she made a good call in trying to decipher the languages first. She'll be more able to piece information together that assumes she knows the basics if she has as much information as possible. So she's allowed to play to her strengths.

And eventually she yawns mid-diction, notes that it is late, and goes up to bed to sleep. Zzzzz. Glorious bed.

Delicious breakfast arrives the next morning after she wakes up. It is tasty and the tray that brings it is adorable.

Yes, yes it is.

She spends her morning practicing with weaponry and doing general physical exertions (for a change of pace, she goes jogging through the forest that pulls her back to the castle, counting how many times it happens) and then after lunch goes back to languages and books and figuring out magic.

Book after book keeps turning out to be intermediate-to-advanced. Some of them are really specific or obscure, too, like the book on how to create and enchant inanimate servants. Depending on your preferred form of inanimate servant, it has advice on how to sew/carve/sculpt/forge a doll, mannequin, or other object that will be easy to enchant.

That says some worrying things for the owner of this castle, certainly. If there is an owner of the castle. It's possible that the owner of the castle is long dead, and no one has found the castle until now due to the magic forest. That. Seems to want her to be here, for some reason, and won't let her leave.

When dinner arrives, she looks at the tray and asks, "What do you want me to do, exactly? Just. Stay here forever? Because, while this place is great, I would like to go to other places, too. ... And then come back. Because magic castle. But this feels very deliberate, I feel like I was picked, what am I picked for?"

The tray raises itself up a tiny bit and then droops down again, with a helpless little shake of its teapot. One can almost hear the sigh.

There are two beautiful glass windows in the library. The tray tiptoes with utmost quietness over to the closer one, tilts itself up slightly (not enough to spill any dinner), and raises its teapot with a side-to-side scanning motion as though looking for something. Whatever it's looking for seems to be just outside the window, but too close to the wall to be seen from inside.

She has a hunch, now. If she's correct, how does she want to play this, nice and polite or distinctly not?

... Polite, she thinks. She hasn't been hurt, or - honestly even mildly inconvenienced. Oh no, she's been taken to a nice castle with fascinating language puzzles and nice clothes and comfy beds and good food and excellent weapons, whatever will she do. She'd still like to leave, eventually, but that's different than being upset about her current treatment.

She walks quietly to the window, opens it, and pokes her head out. Is anyone there?

A glimpse of a long dark tail, disappearing over the edge of the roof.

Well.

She's not inclined to be upset with the owner of the long dark tail, she thinks. But she would rather like to talk to them.

"Could I have paper and a pen?" she asks of the tray.

It nods a little teapot nod.

A second tray arrives, bearing some paper and a pen.

She writes a note, for people with tails that stay by windows.

'Hey. I'm Noelle. I don't actually have anything ground breaking or clever to write, just - I try not to be an asshole. Are you also stuck here?'

She folds it up and leaves it outside of the window, in an easy-to-see place, along with the pen and spare blank paper, and then takes dinner and the book she's currently working on and leaves the library in case the person with a tail would like to have some space after being so rudely found out.

Upon reflection, she is going to go to a very easy to see spot, and will not look upset at all. This is easy, because she's not actually upset. Outside in a comfy spot she goes. Nom. Reading. Nom.

Edited 2015-12-20 02:15 (UTC)

Time passes.

The second tray comes out to her, carrying note and pen and remaining paper—and a reply. Just a few words, written out in very large letters so that all together they cover nearly an entire page. Despite obvious care, the lines wobble in a few places.

CURSED
NO NAME
109 YEARS
ALONE

FOREST
TOOK YOU
TO HELP

Well, this seems to be working. She minds much less that she was snapped up by the forest. Okay, forest. She forgives you.

She gets another sheet of paper and writes.

'By learning magic and beating the curse with it until it stops its shit, or is there another mechanism by which I am helping?'

On the tray it goes, to the tailed person.

Edited 2015-12-20 02:27 (UTC)

The tray scampers off, and returns after a somewhat shorter time with a new reply, written more hastily with more visible wobbles:

TRUE LOVE
ENDS CURSE
FOR FAIRNESS

FAMILY
3 BROTHERS
ENEMY
CHOSE ME
LEAST LOVABLE
CURSED ME
BEAST-FORM

NOT SO FAIR

Edited 2015-12-20 02:34 (UTC)

...

That has some implications about her, doesn't it.

She doesn't mind, she's more focused on fuck this enemy, holy shit, who would even do that. She wants to find this enemy and calmly let them know in no uncertain terms that this is not okay. By stabbing them. Not to torture, just to kill, there's no need to make a mess, just, make this person not exist in the world anymore. Very neat and tidy.

'I will get you out,' she writes. And then because she doesn't want to get into her burning passionate feelings about the subject of getting this poor person out of this fucking castle, she adds, 'I also will not freak out upon seeing you, if you're worried about that.'

Well.

The tray comes back with no new message. It gives an apologetic little tray-shrug.

Okay.

Having space is probably dramatically important to him, with - all of this. And there is a lot of this. She will give him as much space as he needs, and not read too much into the true love portion of the curse reversal. If she can learn magic, she can get him out, and no one needs to fall in love with anyone unless they want to. That sounds like the solution to her.

She finishes figuring out the gist of the language for this book, and then: back to the library. She has a mission. Read read read read.

Edited 2015-12-20 02:50 (UTC)

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