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The westernmost tip of Kalea, Wind Reach is home to an amazing group of people and their giant eagle mounts. [Lore]
Ven's mind was full of excitement even after the woman had left, his heart never pounded with such fear of them being discovered and he couldn't help but enjoy this feeling. Never before has such fun came to him, and now Vala was asking him what books he knew he was after. It was a good thing she offered to at least help his search, because he knew little about any books describing humans and their societies. He made sure to keep a low whisper, so only Vala would hear him. His face though content showed excitement, especially within his eyes.
"I know little about books besides the ones you've checked out for me, but any in relation to humans and how they act in particular will do. I'm curious as to find out for what reasons why humans do what they do, and perhaps some other things about them I don't know of." He mumbled low enough for her to understand, and a smile came to his face. "By the way, if this is what you do for fun then I'd like to participate in future activities." He joked of course, though he was enjoying himself he knew there was only so much he could do before getting caught; and punishment was something he would not enjoy.
With that said he nodded and waited for her to act, for he would only comply with what she had to say and silently follow. To him she was in fact different than other humans, instead of finding some other type of human within her he now saw a wild animal; maybe perhaps a demon. It was strange to him, though it mattered little. What he was gaining was a mutual benefit, she was helping him because he no doubt could later return the favor. With this in mind he felt a feeling that was foreign to him, as foreign as the way the humans are. It was excitement but also something else, something he couldn't name in the slightest. He felt this energy grow within him, as if the animal inside has started to awaken.
OOC :
As you can tell Ven likes excitement, and of course when he describes Vala as a wild animal/demon he was simply saying he was beginning to respect her more. Don't forget if any situation becomes sticky and Ven needs to hide he can revert to his original fox form too.
Was he serious? 'Any books in relation to humans and how they act in particular' What kind of order was that? This was Wind Reach, not some... fancy other city with an amazing library. Vala could only wish. The library never bothered wasting its limited funds on buying fiction from the rare traders that visited. If they were lucky, they could afford some practical non fiction tomes about new glassblowing techniques. Vala didn't even know what category his needs fell under. The closest she could think of was philosophy books. They maybe had what, a shelf of philosophy books? And even those wouldn't really answer Ven's questions. Vala was flushing with frustration just thinking about it. And she hadn't even considered the fact that the few philosophy books were probably written in Nari because they were written by locals. Ven barely spoke Nari yet, let alone read it.
Unwilling to be trumped by some uppity Dek with impossible needs, Vala led Ven to the philosophy section. She would lead him to the fiction area after he was done. "Here, see if you can find anything." She said with a sneer; she was sure he wouldn't find anything. Hopefully he would realize and stop annoying her.
OOC :
What Ven is probably looking for is psychology tomes. It is plausible for psychology studies to have been conducted during their time, but most likely they would have been conducted pre-Valterian and I doubt the Enclave has many books like that, or more specifically books they would allow chiet and dek to even see. Wind Reach has no reason to have books with that kind of information, or many other libraries in Mizahar for that matter. Ven is basically asking for the impossible from Vala.
Ven felt stumped by the books before him, what he was wanting to find wasn't to be seen. Within the pages he searched for he could see words that he barely understood, but he still knew that they weren't what he was searching for. Finally accepting his loss he decided to simply follow Vala, with a simple joke in mind. "Perhaps I can check out a book that spells out Nari for idiots." He said with a grin, hoping that she would laugh at least a little. It would lighten the situation for them as well, that depended on whether she found his humor well worth a small laugh.
If she did laugh it must've been silent, even his hears couldn't hear any faint sound of laughter. Again she amazed him with her strange difference, he has only learned little enough about her but still enough to tell she was far more..."unique" than the average human.
He decided though that it would be best to simply follow her, and simply obey her commands when given. So far everything has gone well for them, apart from her "acquaintance" from earlier, and since there was nothing there he was searching for he accepted it. "I'll simply follow you from here, if there's anything you'd prefer me to read or anything you wish of me I'll simply comply." He reassured her, waiting for her next command or decision. The euphoria he felt earlier still existed but he held it inside well, he was sure that even Vala couldn't see much of it now compared to earlier.
Vala sighed. She had made him sad; not that she cared. She switched back to Nari just so he could get practice. It was probably one of the nicest gestures she was going to do for the day, since she wasn't asking for recognition. By speaking in common it helped her practice, speaking Nari with Ven only benefitted him and possibly irritated her from miscommunications. She hated using simple words and phrases to anyone but young yasi. It was a constant reminder of Ven's 'inferiority'. "Come with me. I know books that can help you." Vala strode off to the children's section. Her quick eyes didn't take long to spot what she was looking for. She plucked out three books, about twenty to thirty pages each. She handed them to Ven as she took a moment to organize the shelf. Since it was the yasi section, it tended to be in constant disarray from their negligent attention.
Many of the books that the children had to struggle to reach on the higher shelves were wrongly returned to the bottom shelf from convenience. Just a quick scan of the call numbers on the spine told Vala where they actually should have been. Her sure hands grabbed the tome, pushed the books on the top shelf to the side, and shoved it back in its proper places.
Then there were of course the sneakier ones. Sometimes it was by accident, sometimes it was because the little snots were pure evil. When the books were placed back upside down it was hard to notice since the children’s books had such thin spines and you had to look at the front or for the call numbers to really see. It was much harder than finding the ones with the pages splayed out. Though those always led to the books getting damaged when pulled out, edges got torn and ripped in the blink of an eye in a yasi’s careless hands.
“Why don’t you start reading here while I fix this up.” This was a perfect example of Vala’s work ethic – obsessive compulsive disorder. Though she was officially off duty, and rarely assigned to the children section because she could write calligraphically, she couldn’t just see the damage and not fix it. She worked for at least ten chimes before everything was back as it should have been. Vala sighed again. In a matter of a bell it would yet again be decimated to its inevitable state of disarray. Children… should be hit… and hit often… was Vala’s motto.
“Come on I’ll go check those out for you so we can read it in the room. I don’t want to stay here any longer than necessary… we could get caught.” Vala led Ven back to the reception desk, where she nodded in acknowledgement to the current desk librarian. “Don’t bother. I can check my own books out.” The other girl, nodded and went back to her own copying work. Leaning over the counter, Vala plucked a quill, dipped it into an open vial and began to write in perfect script, hitting the line every time with each stroke, the book info: title, author, condition. Then she wrote her own name and date: Vala, Chiet, 1st of Summer, 511 AV. Once all the records were set, she gave a nod to the girl. “See you in a bell.”
“Come on Ven.” She muttered under her breath. “To our-… my room.” It was a slip of the tongue, a simple mistake, that made Vala’s eye twitch in annoyance. “Come on. Let’s go.” She growled, to cover up her mistake.
When they reached her room, she sat on the bed, wordlessly motioning for Ven to sit on the ground in front of her. She waited for him to settle before she began to explain. “I chose these books because they were specifically translated from common to Nari. The front half is in Nari, and the back half is in original Common. I still have an hour to burn and I don’t have enough time to start my projects. Would you like me to read the Nari out loud to you and you can read the Common on your free time? Maybe I can even teach you some of the Nari characters so you can begin to read and write on your own.” Vala offered not because she wanted to help Ven. It was just a convenient byproduct to her own self serving need to practice storytelling and possibly teaching. What is a favor, but a passive aggressive way to guilt someone into helping you when you need them?
He quietly nodded while handing her the kitanu, finding a spot to sit as he perched himself up with curious eyes. He wanted to learn as much as he could, and as fast as he could make it. The more he absorbed the better, and now that Vala offered to give him a small "tutor" lesson he wasn't going to waste the opportunity. In the end he would most likely end up repaying her, someway he would work his way up the ladder...at it all would be because of her.
He wondered if she felt any other connection, because to him he felt odd about her. He felt that even though she wanted nothing to do with him, even though he was simply disposable to her...he wanted to mean something. He wanted to prove useful to her, and show that her time with him isn't meaningless; even if he's a Dek. Before she began, he made interrupted the silence. "Vala..."
There was stillness in the room, a strange stillness that made his situation feel awkward. Before he continued onward with his thoughts he covered his trail by wearing a smile to cover the hurtful longing he suffered, and made his recovery before she could say anything. "Thanks...for everything, you know." She didn't seem to be catching on from where he was coming from, which was good to him. "You've taken me in...given me a place to sleep...and someone to be with..." Before he continued he returned his serious gaze from before, showing her that what he was saying wasn't from out of the blue. "You've been practically helping me when I had no where else to go, and for that I..." That was it, it's gone. The moment is passing and he was done, and he pushed aside whatever remnants of his feelings aside.
"Well now that the mushy stuff is done said, why don't you continue?" He changed the subject, rubbing the dust out of his eye as something wet slipped down his cheek.
OOC :
This is basically when someone perches, just in case it started to confuse you. Oh and by the way sorry it took a bit, seeing as how I had to come up with a post that was well within 300 words stumped me a bit.
Ewww. Make it stop. Vala turned her head, bile threatening to jump right out of her stomach and onto the bed. When he was finally done making her sick, she continued as if nothing had been said. Her hands reached for the thinnest book. She flipped to the first page as quickly as she could. Vala began to read as soon as she recognized the first word, hoping to quell any more unwanted outbursts just in case.
“Yevela the Milkmaid from Riverfall had just finished milking her cow Retai.” Vala looked up from her book. Her voice had been uncharacteristically sharp, not at all what a storyteller’s should have sounded like. It was not the first time she had read the tale, she remembered at least once in the Story teller’s Well, but Ven had completely eradicated any traces of goodwill she might have harbored. “Do you know what a milkmaid is? We don’t have cows here in Wind Reach, but we do have goats… so do you know what a milkmaid is?” Vala didn’t give him a chance to speak. Setting the book down on the bed, on the page she had opened, Vala walked over to her desk. She pulled open a drawer and pulled out a clay tablet with an accompanying stylus. She sat back down on the bed. “Don’t talk, let me concentrate.” Squinting as she drew a basic out line, Vala began to show not tell what Ven what a milkmaid was. Her voice felt strained as she spoke; she needed something to release the pent up anger that had suddenly appeared without letting it beat the crap out of Ven for inciting it in the first place.
Her hand was steady, hours of calligraphy will do that to you. She had seen enough illuminations on the margins of the tomes she copied to know what a basic human form should look like, though hers was definitely a lot more stylized than realistic. The finished form was barely recognizable as a human with a pole around its shoulders with buckets hanging at the end. The girl’s hair was a curly, frizzy mess that looked like a bird’s nest more than a head of hair. The girl wasn’t frowning per say, but she definitely didn’t look happy. Vala had given up on even attempting fingers with her stubby stone stylus on the soft clay; the girl basically had mittens for hands. She had even doodled a fat looking blob of a cow in the corner, spots and all. The clay wasn’t the best medium for drawing, with stylus strokes lacking in precision or depth, but it was cheap and didn’t require ink. Vala held up her masterpiece. “This is a milkmaid. You see that cow? It makes milk. You see the buckets? They’re full of milk. You see this girl? She’s a milkmaid.” Vala knew she was being overly condescending, but the reemphasis of her dominance in their relationship helped calm her down.
She put the stylus back in her desk once Ven had gotten a lengthy peek. “Now back to the story..” Vala coughed to clear her throat. Her tone had softened, to what it should have sounded like. Setting the binding against her right leg, Vala held out the book so she could peer at the large blocky letters while Ven looked on as well. “Now Yevela was as pretty as could be.” Vala smiled, not at Ven, definitely not for Ven, but because a good storyteller smiled when trying to get the reader to like a character. “Now Yevela was carrying Retai’s pail of heavy milk on her head, making sure to keep it as balanced as she could.” Using her left hand, Vala moved her pointer and middle finger, walking them down her left leg, daintily crossing them at each ‘step’ as a maiden should. “As she walked, Yevela began to think of all the things she could buy with the money from Retai’s milk.” Vala began to crescendo her tone, slowly building up the feeling of hope that Yevela was feeling as well. Clearing her throat one more time, Vala changed her voice – she made it higher, and daintier, with a soft wispiness, a voice akin to what she used when she tried to niggle her way out of trouble. “I’ll buy some chickens from Farmer Beider, said Yevela, and they will lay eggs each morning, which I will sell to the stablemaster’s wife. With the money that I get from the sale of those eggs I’ll buy myself a new hat and a pretty blue bow; and when I go to the market again, all the youngest most handsomest of the Akalak will come up and speak to me. To me! Unmara will be so jealous; but I don’t care. I shall just look at her and toss my head like this.” Vala paused, allowing herself just the tinniest of smirks. Then with a flick of her own neck, Vala acted out what Yevela did in the story. Now with a gasp at the end, Vala continued the story with a stern and surprised voice. “As she spoke she tossed her head back, the pail fell right off, and all the fresh milk was spilt. And poor Yevela had to go all the way home and tell her mother what she had just done. When she got home her mother just said," Vala cleared her throat one last time to change her voice to a raspy lower note full of stern admonition, "Ah, my child. Do not count your chickens before they are hatched.”
At the end Vala put the book down, and allowed herself a malicious giggle. She loved stories where the silly twits got their comeuppance. When she had allowed herself enough enjoyment she turned to face Ven, her corners of her mouth descending right back to an indifferent line. “So what did you think, Ven?”
Milk Maid :
I had some free time and I just got a new tablet so I actually drew a milkmaid... instead of just describing me draw one. Crazy, I know. I even made it brown so its 'like' on clay. (I sketched this in like 20 minutes so please don't judge too harshly)
But yeah, I can't draw cows for the life of me... so there: Cow Butt
PS.... extra credit?
Last edited by Vala on July 4th, 2011, 6:23 am, edited 2 times in total.
He didn't know exactly what to describe to her, he found her little acting quite funny and entertaining but the story seemed a little pointless. Still to him it was a good challenge for learning Nari, and most of what he heard was simple really. Yet what he thought about it....was completely different to him.
"Uhh...It was...OK?" He didn't take much to the thought that he could also be referring to how she read the book as well, and made a quick recovery before she could say anything. "I-I mean that your reading skill is great, and acting is good too of course...but the book just seems a little...odd." He spoke the truth, she was no doubt definitely good at both of those. Therefore his recovery should at least be a decent one. Hopefully no damage was done, he thought as he exhaled a silent whew. He wondered what time it was, after all he no doubt had more messages to carry out soon. He wondered if Vala had more work to do at the Enclave, and couldn't help but grin the same grin he bore when he felt that same euphoria of excitement earlier.
"When do you have go back to work Vala?" He wondered if she did, and if she had planned on doing any more of these interesting reading sessions.
She was going to hit him so hard that his entire face turned black and blue. No. She was going to hit him so hard that he wouldn’t wake up until he had grown a full beard. Vala’s clenched fist shook as she tried to keep it down. Why was she controlling herself? He was a Dek. He had irked her, in her own room no less; she had every right to beat him down and crush him underfoot. No. Vala, draining most of her will power, slowly unclenched her bone white fingers, dropping her limp hand to her side.
Something had changed, more like snapped within her. It had probably been people like Ronin, Eoin, Torc, and she hated to even think about it, and Fois who had forced her to think twice about her shadier hobbies.
He was below her. It would be below her to waste energy on him.. Without another word, Vala stood up and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind her. She ran to the Enclave. She didn’t care if she looked foolish; she just needed to release enough energy so she would be too tired to lash out at people during work.
She kept her hands loose, her fingers gently held bent by her thumb; if she clenched them again she was afraid wouldn’t be able to pry them open. Her long hair streamed behind her, the strands tangling as they whipped about. Her breathing was ragged, but not from exhaustion. Her feet pounded hard; her knees hurt, but still she ran, faster and faster. Her chest heaved at every breathe. It had taken her some time but she had finally gotten the hang of breathing in through her nose. As Vala rounded a corner she nearly ran into a Dek. She didn’t swerve to avoid; she easily could have. She rammed into its shoulder. The frail thing fell, unable to brace itself from Vala’s unrelenting momentum. Vala easily regained her balance as she continued to run, ignoring the Dek that was now sprawled pitifully on the floor. Vala’s snigger echoed mockingly through the halls.
She reached the Enclave in record time. Vala was only mildly out of breath. Oddly enough, her brief encounter with the Dek had only given her a second wind. Taking long, graceful strides, Vala made her way to her station and promptly plopped into her stool.
She picked up her quill, dipped it in a vial of ink as blue as her eyes, and opened the sign in book. Her hands were still shaky from the rush of running but she managed to still her quakes enough to make the expansive strokes necessary for the pretentious font Vala had chosen. She even added a couple unnecessary frills and serifs just to show off her skill.
It didn’t take long for Vala to ease into work. Nor did it take long for her thoughts to catch up with her. With the adrenaline and rage wearing off, Vala was left with only a weary ache that sapped her strength to the very bone.
Odd.Odd?Odd!
The ungrateful twit wouldn’t recognize someone trying to help him unless they smacked him in the face. On that thought… Vala had read him that book not only so he could practice his nari, but so she could dig in the fact he might not become a hunter as soon as he learned their language. It was her cruel, back handed way of trying to help him out and maybe let him down easy. Seeing as he was too naïve to understand her hidden message, he had inadvertently set her on a flaming rage, which she would probably recover from after a few days of non-speaking terms.
Poor Ven.
OOC Note :
Wow… Vala is so moody sometimes (always). So I guess I kinda ended this thread. Want to start another? (that is if you’re willing to let your poor PC get abused some more)
Lores: Wishing for a new apprenticeship, Practicing one’s language skills, Learning to be human, Learning about the finer points of human ‘mating’, Learning to sneak and lie, Having a willingness to learn, Trying to express ones gratitude
Lores: Falling victim to social statuses, Intentionally making things hard on people, Explaining the Birds and the Bees, Corrupting an innocent soul, See a mess and clean it up, Trying to help someone and instantly regretting it
The Method, The Fire:
Any questions or concerns, please send me a PM and I'll be happy to help!
Don't forget if any situation becomes sticky and Ven needs to hide he can revert to his original fox form too. 
(that is if you’re willing to let your poor PC get abused some more)
