Working like a Ferret (Valkahal Library)

by **Dex** on December 11th, 2012, 6:19 pm

Dex was lounging on top of his favorite bookcase, allowing him free view of the front of the store and the doorway. Getting to the library had been fine that morning, but the weather promised that it would become much colder outside soon. Dex knew that his ferret body felt like slowing down for the winter, but he couldn't pull himself to do it.

Having a human body let him have all sorts of interesting things during the winter months. However, a human body also did not have any fur. Therefore, being human was more of a hindrance then anything else for winter, unless he found a way to grow human fur really quickly.

He had seen a few people out and about on the streets sporting odd fur suddenly appearing over them, but he had no idea how they had done it yet. Worse yet, when the librarians came inside and lit the fire heater in the corner of the library, they literally shed their fur all off in one big bundle. This would require further investigation, but much later.

A small scent wafted up to him, mixed with the smoke. His eyes lit up and his ears perked up quickly. A rat was trying to get warm at the fire. Mine!

He rolled over onto his little feet and scurried to the end of the bookcase, looking down at the fireplace. Hmm, his eyesight was still weaker then his human eyes, but they could catch movement more then nothing else. The smoke was moving the scent around enough to displace where the rat was.

There! It was scurrying away from the librarian that just came out of the doorway. It's tiny claws scrabbled against the hard wood floor. Dex tensed his legs, and tried to follow the movement with his eyes, but relied on his ears to keep up with it. He sprang off the bookcase, launching his front legs to land onto the floor just a few inches to the side of the rat, his mouth wide open. His momentum carried him forward, letting him snap his jaws shut on the back of the startled rat's neck, snapping it's tiny little spine. Some of the blood leaked into his mouth, bringing the regular savory taste onto his tongue.

Mmm, a little smokey flavored. Tasty. He picked it up in his mouth and dragged it off to the far back corner, where he finished it off within a few minutes, nibbling through it. Oh how yummy.

He licked his lips, wiping the blood off his furry muzzle. That hit the spot, very well. As he hobbled back towards the front of the room, he moved up to the front of the room, flashing into human form, wearing his dark blue librarian over robes. He walked into the back rooms, where some of the akalak librarians were busy scratching feathers onto funny flat stuff.

He walked over and looked down over the top of the akalaks shoulder's, watching them scratch funny black lines over the flat stuff. After just a few minutes, the akalaks growled at him lightly, giving off a sense of anger to his presence. Feeling rebuked, he backed up and stood in a corner, before hearing a chuckle from the eldest of the librarians that was there, who was sitting at a desk.

by **Dex** on December 13th, 2012, 1:09 am

Dex looked at the laughing blue man. What a short and old blue person! Short, in this case, meant that Dex was actually taller then him. Most of the blue peoples were his height and taller.

"Come here you kelvic rascal, I'll answer your questions. The young ones are a bit tired from their work, that's all."

Dex furrowed his eyebrows together some, but still walked over to the old man. The head of the library was a lively older akalak, seeming less dignified then his station would seem to require. At his best, or worst, times, the younger librarians would wonder if he had gone over the edge, losing all control of himself. Still, there were few rivals to him as far as knowledge and wisdom. A well learned man of philosophy, science, math, politics, he was well known to possibly be the best person to go to for advice.

Dex twitched his face a few times before asking his question in a subdued voice.

"What are they doing? Why are they always in here doing it? What's the funny symbols?"

The akalak sighed in amazement. You could read about kelvics in countless books, untold amounts of information, and yet, it's never quite like having a real one bugging the petch out of you. Thankfully however, the books did give some idea's on how to translate into their generally simplistic way of speaking.

"Alright my friend, sit with me and you might learn a few tricks to getting more miza's eh?" The akalak said, almost certain that he would get the animals almost complete attention. When he did say miza's, he was definitely certain he had his complete and total attention.

"Ok bearded blue, I'll sit with you."

Dex plopped into a seat next to the old man and looked down on the desk they were both sitting at. In front of them was a stack of the funny flat stuff, completely blank. The akalak pulled over a feather that was standing up in a pot with black liquid in it and began to drip the stuff all over the paper. Dex watched him oddly, waiting for the old person to talk again instead of this unnerving silence between them.

"Alright. What we, and they, are doing is called scribing. All these groups of letters mean something when their in a ..." The akalak sighed as the animal put on a face of confusion. "What?"

"What's a letter? And whats that black stuff? Whose feather is that? Why are you making a big mess over these flat things? Does this black stuff taste good? Oh wait, I'll find out." Dex said, acting on his last question by taking his finger and sticking it in the black liquid. Then he promptly pulled it out and stuck it in his mouth before the akalak could stop him, followed equally promptly by him trying to spit it out on the floor in disgust. "That doesn't taste good. That tasted like bad ale!" He said with a face.

The akalak almost gave up then and there. Why was he wasting time trying to teach this animal? He decided to give it one more try. "Kelvic! Mizas! Now focus! This is 'flat stuff' is parchment. The letters are ... ok, let's try it this way. Scribing is taking little squiggles on one section, and copying them down on a different piece of parchment, so there's two. So if I squiggle this over here, you make the same squiggle over here. Yes, take the feather, dip it in the ink, and then make the same scribble." Dex watched as the akalak took his hand and moved around to help him out. At first Dex had the hardest time just hanging onto the feather, and then moving it only ever so slightly. After awhile, he realized it was just like a stick in his hand when he drew pictures in the sand. But even then he had issues, just from lack of control. It'd be so much easier if he could just ... hey!

Dex flashed into ferret form at the surprise of the akalak, climbing up onto the desk before he could be grabbed. He nudged the ink pot closer to the parchment, just a few inches away from where he had been making terrible scribbles. The librarian stopped trying to grab him, suddenly very curious as to what the animal was doing. Dex himself lopped over to where the librarian had scribbled a line of silly scribbles, looking intently at the first few sections of it. After a few minutes, he lopped back over to where he was, dipped a claw in the ink, and scribbled approximately the same sections onto the parchment. It wasn't perfect, but it was much much better then his previous efforts.

The librarian looked down on him with a curious look of possibly pride and shock. Shaking his head lightly at the thought of all those books that said kelvics were generally dumb animals, but easy to adapt. How odd it was to see this little pest pick up on a concept previously difficult to him before, all because of how they felt that their human bodies were more awkward then their animal ones. It was a curious concept.

by **Dex** on December 14th, 2012, 5:31 pm

Dex turned his head and stared up at the librarian. The librarian nodded at him and gave him his next few instructions.

"Alright you dumb animal. You want to work that way I suppose you can. Just don't scratch the parchment. Take that line I gave you and keep copying it until it's perfect. Oh, and this parchment is coming out of your paycheck, but you'll make it up if you get good at it." The akalak just walked away shaking his head in almost absolute disbelief.

Dex got himself to work. Little claw, little writing, and somehow this was suppose to end up with him having more shinies. Well, all he had to do now was to copy the other line perfectly. Sigh. He started off in a pattern. Lop over to the akalak's writing, memorize a section, come back, dip claw in ink, scratch it in, repeat. After a few rounds of this however, his paw stretched to far into the ink pot, dunking about a quarter of his entire paw in the ink. Frowning a little, he didn't know what to do. Hmm. Something... oh look! He wiped the paw against his tail, drying it off some, reminding himself that he would have to clean that later. He continued on the pattern, finishing when he thought he had a pretty close match to what the akalak had scribbled.

Not knowing immediately where to find him, and being hungry, Dex loped off the desk onto the chair, then onto the floor, making his way into the main library section again while swishing his tail, not remembering the ink and flicking it back and forth across the floor behind him. Once in the main library, he crawled up a book case in the far back of the room to lie in wait near one of the rat chewed holes in the floor for some food.