Flashback [Thundiirn] Some say a word is dead

[Philomena]

Minnie scribbled furiously and fluidly, the characters arcane and unreadable. But, apparently, effective - she finished writing only a few beats after he spoke, and looked up again at him.

//Conversation, Minnie Lefting... you were having a conversation, remember? He just asked a question... books. Books!//

"Oh, books! Oh... yes, I ... so it is difficult, I'm not an expert in Sunberthian lit, but I honestly suspect that noone at the University really is... er... I mean, Doctor Bullis who works in Linguistics might be the closest, but he studies it from a very different perspective, looking for speech pattern reflections. And then there's... you know, the issue of reliability. Actually, I recommend, the notes of Eunice Howelly, a sailor on the first Wright voyage to Sunberth. She had a taste for storytelling, and spent a good deal of time while she was in Sunberth swapping tales with the locals. She doesn't write like a scholar, and the interludes are... embellished, I think. But the stories themselves are interesting - perhaps even to a native. In an oral culture, I would think... well, I presume. But my experience in studying other similar cases has been that one can see changes over time, and that hte changes reflect other things - societal pressures, particularly, changes in the hopes and fears of the culture, you know. The Wright library has two copies, and they won't let... a student check them out, but you could probably read them on site, if you presented an academic case for access to them."

SHe stopped, "I'm... sorry. I didn't introduce myself - Dr. Lefting, of the literature department."

In truth, she wasn't sure if she HAD introduced herself. And it hardly mattered, for a beat after saying it, she realized that the boy was attending a lecture which she had given, and thus was well aware of her name. By then, there was nothing to do but blush.

[Thundiirn]

"I'm... sorry. I didn't introduce myself - Dr. Lefting, of the literature department." "Thundiirn, ma'am" He said, smiling and offering his hand to shake. Of course he knew who she was already. He had just attended her lecture. But she was hilariously flustered at being spoken to, and so he tried to be friendly and not terrify her any more. Such shy people didn't tend to survive long in Sunberth, so Thundiirn wasn't very used to dealing with them, this was a new experience. "I wouldn't say we're really a purely oral culture, ma'am. Just....unconventional." With that, he gave a good laugh, sitting down at one of the chairs near the front of the room where she sat. He'd never really thought about Sunberthian communication, but it really wasn't normal by any other standard, or at the very least they used it much more primarily than the average culture. Yes, surely that would be an accurate way to phrase it. We tend to use it primarily. He still wasn't entirely used to Zeltivan speech, but he thought he'd made quite a bit of progress towards the more academic speech patterns. "We've got plenty of strange ways of communication. Graffiti, childrens' singsongs, tattoos... They're all ways that we speak to each other without having a conversation. I haven't seen as much of it in Zeltiva. Do you see such things here, ma'am? For Sunberth it is one of our...primary... ways of communicating"

[Philomena]

Minnie smiled at this turn in the conversation, and mused, "Well, when I was very small, we used to snitch lime wash, and go write things here and there. But it was more simply stress relief than communication: names, 'Petch the Guard', 'Kennel-Dogs Were Here', that sort of thing. And then the sailors, they hav tattoos, sometimes, but you are right, it isn't terribly common. It is strange for me to think of it there - so often these things, here in Zeltiva, are rebellion against some mainstream cultural norm. In Sunberth, it is difficult for me to imagine what one would be rebelling against. So, perhaps the meaning of such totems is somewhat different there."

She smiled at this. The lecture hall was quickly growing empty. She hopped down to her feet, "They'll be coming to clear this up soon, perhaps we could step down to my office, I can make you a cup o' kelp-tea? Do you have any tatoos yourself, then?"

[Thundiirn]

"...But it was more simply stress relief than communication: names, 'Petch the Guard', 'Kennel-Dogs Were Here', that sort of thing..." What an odd thing to say, as if those aren't messages being communicated, he thought upon hearing her reply. It sounded like Zeltiva had the same sorts of things as Sunberth, though it must be on much smaller scale since he had seen next to none of it, but they viewed it in a completely different light. Vaguely, in the corner of his mind, he heard her muse about what Sunberth could be rebelling against. How strange, the ideas that her culture had instilled in her mind, like that graffiti or tattoos need be a form of rebellion. Why couldn't they just hold personal or group meaning, just as any other form of words do? graffiti, tattoos, they were both languages, or perhaps two dialects of a single one. Clearly this woman wasn't fluent. And how could she be, growing up as she likely had in such a wealthy city, never lacking a more official way to speak and be heard? Perhaps a person needed to live within a setting where there was no society in existence to rebel against to understand. Though he had never lived in a place where society existed, so it was hard to be certain. "They'll be coming to clear this up soon, perhaps we could step down to my office, I can make you a cup o' kelp-tea? Do you have any tatoos yourself, then?" His train of thought was derailed, but the promise of kelp-tea more than made up for it. He'd heard the stuff mentioned a few times around the city, but had yet to try it. Thundiirn rose again from the seat he had just taken moments before, prepared to follow the professor to the promised tea. "No ma'am, though I have graffiti'd. And what about you? Any tattoos? You've already 'admitted' to graffiti." Thundiirn let out a chuckle at this. It was just such a crazy mental image, this meek little lady being a, as she called it, rebellious teenager at one point. "I'm ready to go when you are, just lead the way!"

[Philomena]

Minnie smiled, peculiarly at the boy's question, and stood thinking for a moment.

"Tattoos. Hmm. Perhaps. At times."

The words were quiet, more to herself than to the boy, and she quickly followed by taking her satchel - apparently a heavy one, and walking, to lead the boy from the lecture room.

"It's quite close, actually, my office, Master Thundeern," an odd accent inflects across the name, one closer to the sailors and the girls of East Street and Loveless than of the University, "Come."

She is, now standing and walking, truly tiny, taking probably one and a half or two steps to each to each of Thun's. The bag thumped against her buttocks with each step in a familiar, comfortable way.

"And what have you graffitied, then? Words or images? Territorial markers?"