Knowledge is Power [Aranta]

[Snaeha Datura]

That glimmer of determination in Aranta's voice made Snaeha smile, and for one single tick, she simply remained where she was, her full lips pulled into a smile. His question snapped her back into focus, and she gathered the book she had been reading closer to them both. If he were going to learn to read, he would need something to look at, obviously. "We'll also need a quill and paper." Those two could easily be accessed from the reception of the library, and after a bit of jostling and nagging from Snaeha, the moody librarian eventually gave her a handful of paper sheets and a ratty quill.

She returned to Aranta and her seat - aware, and secretly appreciating, the warmth from the closeness of his body. "Right. The common alphabet has 26 letters," she wrote each of them down, in a long list of swirled and delicate handwriting. "and each have their own sound, but some may have two." She whispered through the phonetic alphabet, moving a finger down the list of her letters for each word. At 'C', she explained further, "This letter, C, has two sounds. 'C' for Cinnamon and 'C' for... curve. A soft and hard sound." She ran through the other letters, swiftly but clearly. "So when you read... it's just a case of recognising each individual letter in the word, and knowing how they sound."

Perhaps it was not the simplest way of teaching a grown man to read, but Snaeha hoped that, through her many examples, Aranta would at least pick up the basics.

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[Aranta]

Aranta chuckled as Snaeha almost browbeat the older Symenestra into giving her some paper and a quill, and he listened through Snaeha's explanation-- twenty-six letters, seemed simple enough-- following her hand with his eyes. He leaned in a bit closer, a frown appearing as she pointed out one of the letters that made more than one sound. "How do you know when they make which sound?" he asked in confusion. "And how do you know how they make words?" This may be harder than he originally thought. Still, Aranta wasn't going to give up just because something was difficult.

[Snaeha Datura]

"Well..." Snaeha considered his question. The answer was beyond her knowledge. "I'm not entirely sure. I think it's just a case of guessing. Some words, like 'circus', have both sounds as well." Her brow was furrowed in a mixture confusion and frustration. She wanted to help her friend, and although - like many Symenestra - she could speak common fluently, it was not her mother tongue. Snaeha was unfamiliar with the reasons behind the lexical rules; she had always just accepted them.

It would be easier to show examples -- or so Snaeha hoped. She wrote down a word on the parchment, the quill point scratching noisily. "Take this one, for example. There six letters." She said each letter sound aloud, slowly, "A-R-A-N-T-A. See how these letters - the 'A's - all make the same sound? And then the two other letters, an 'R' and 'T', just make the sound in between."

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[Aranta]

Aranta was briefly amused, watching Snaeha struggle for an answer, but that feeling quickly left as she started fumbling through an explanation. "So... It's just trial-and-error?" he asked; his frown was going to become permanent one of these days. "How do you know you've got it right?" He was distracted momentarily by Snaeha spelling his name; Aranta studied the handwriting intently. He'd heard and spoken his name many times, but he'd never seen it written down before. It was a little weird, seeing a word written down and being able to associate it with something. "A-R-A-N-T-A," he repeated slowly, reaching out to gently trace each letter with a claw, careful not to rip the paper. "How do you spell your name?"

[Snaeha Datura]

"Yes... Sort... of." Snaeha replied slowly, pursing her lips in concentration, "there are rules, though. When the 'H' letter is placed behind one of these letters--" she tapped a black nail next to 'C', 'S' and 'T', "-- it changes how they sound. 'C' becomes 'CH, 'S' becomes 'SH' and 'T' becomes 'TH'." All the while, it was the phonetic sound of the letter that Snaeha would say, to avoid further confusion.

She smiled at his concentration on his own name. When he asked about hers, Snaeha rested her quill on the parchment once again and scratched in her name, sounding the letters out again. "There's my name. In this case, the 'H' and 'A' creates the 'ya' sound." Again, this was not something she had noticed until now. "Again, one of the weird rules of Common."

Not wanting to get too hung up on the many lexical rules, Snaeha wrote down four more words, made of two or three letters each. They were simple words, creating the sentence 'my name is Aranta', written in her elegant hand. "Try this sentence. Take your time. Seeing as you speak Common anyway, you'll be able to piece together the meaning pretty quick."

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[Aranta]

Aranta made a face as Snaeha finished her next explanation. "Non-Zith are confusing," he announced, not caring that his loud tone earned him another glare and hiss from the Symenestra at the front desk. "It would be much simpler to have one sound for each letter." Still, he refocused on Snaeha's writing, watching as she traced out the letters to her name. "S-nay-ah," he mumbled under his breath, looking to Snaeha for approval. When the woman wrote out another few words, Aranta stared at them in bewilderment before gently tugging the paper closer to him so that he could look more closely at the words without getting too close to Snaeha; he wasn't sure how comfortable the Symenestra would be with Aranta getting up-close-and-personal. He mouthed each part of each word to himself, making no noise as he tried to make sense of the scribbles. After he'd gone through once, he started murmuring them aloud so that Snaeha could correct him if he was wrong. "M-a... Ma n-ah-mm-ee... Ma nahme eh-sss-- Ma nahme es-" With a grin, Aranta was proud to recognize his name. "Ma nahme es Aranta," he said triumphantly. OOCOh man I'm having too much fun with this. XD

[Snaeha Datura]

Snaeha grinned, "Symenos is a much smoother language, and the rules make more sense." This was potentially untrue, but she felt that her mother tongue needed to be portrayed in a favourable manner to her friend. "Even more confusing, when 'H' is placed behind 'P', they make an 'F' sound." Even Snaeha though that rule, in particular, had no logic behind it.

The Zith began reading, and Snaeha watched him intently as his eyes scanned the page and his lips moved silently. She had never paid much attention to his mouth before, but now she could stop looking at his lips, how his teeth glinted through between them as he mouthed the 'is' sound. In fact, Snaeha was so engrossed with watching Aranta that it did not strike her that he had finished until he grinned at her. "Well done!" She said joyfully, trying - and hopefully succeeding - to hide the fact that she had not been paying attention to his reading. "Let's try a few more words."

She scribbled four more down, her mind still distracted with rather unexpected images. Only when she finished writing did Snaeha actually read what she had imprinted on the parchment: kiss, lips, body, fuc-

"Oops, spelt that one wrong." She quickly replaced the fourth word with 'cow' and smiled innocently up at him.

oocYeah, this is pretty entertaining! Kinda tests the old English Lit. skills though!

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[Aranta]

OOCOh my god, Snaeha. XD She's really trying to make Aranta no longer oblivious. Due to pretty much all of his focus being devoted to the words in front of him, Aranta was oblivious to Snaeha's distraction. Instead, he grinned happily at her praise, and watched eagerly as she started writing down more words. They didn't look familiar, but then again, no words did. The Zith slowly went through the same process, sounding out each individual letter before attempting to string them together into one word. For the first one, it took Aranta a moment before he decided to string the last two s's together, making them into a short hissing sound. It came out sounding more like "kehss" than "kiss," but Aranta didn't realize that. He knew that some races had a custom where potential mates would put their mouths to each other's, but he'd never seen why. It just seemed... awkward. He wasn't sure why Snaeha had included it, unless it was just one of the first words to come to her mind. The second word was easier-- as soon as Aranta realized what he was sounding out, he said the word confidently. Same with the third, and he found himself curious as to how Snaeha had managed to misspell "cow" as "fuc." The only letter they had in common was c, and that was in a completely different place. Maybe fuc was a Symenos word for "cow"? Aranta didn't have a very good grasp on Symenos, so he supposed it was a possibility. "Kiss, lips, body, cow," he repeated once more, letting the words roll off of his tongue. "Is that right?"

[Snaeha Datura]

This time, the Symenestra forced herself to concentrate on Aranta's reading (which was not hard, as she did not want to mess up on her word selection again). "Yes, well done!" She grinned and touched her hands together in silent applause. Her choice of words needed explaining though, Snaeha felt. They were, after all rather random -- to anyone who did not know where her mind had been mere ticks ago, that is. "I thought it would be good for you to see a word with two of the same letter. You managed very well." Her thin fingers tapped under the word 'kiss'. The excuse sounded like a valid one, Snaeha thought, and she was rather impressed with the lie herself. Her other choices, however, were harder to explain. "The rest... Are just words I like."

The quill point rested upon the parchment again, and this time Snaeha considered her word choices with great care. She could not let her thoughts leak onto the page as before, especially such lewd and... unexpected thoughts. So this time, she wrote nice, clean, innocent words: kitten, hug, flower, nice. "Try those on for size." Her tone was playful, and Snaeha twisted a lock of her red hair between her thumb and forefinger as she spoke.

Petch, there are those thoughts again.

oocI know right! Desperate times for Snaeha.

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[Aranta]

OOCThis is going to be a very interesting relationship if Aranta reciprocates, haha Aranta smiled, pleased with himself for reaching the correct conclusion about Snaeha's choice of words. "Cow," the Zith thought, was a strange word to like-- but maybe she just liked the taste of cow, and thus liked the word? As he'd said earlier, non-Zith were incredibly odd creatures. Aranta watched as Snaeha wrote down more words, idly picking at the edge of the scab on his chest-- it was beginning to itch slightly. Nothing too bothersome, yet, although soon enough it would be quite irritating. This newest set of words looked to be the most challenging yet, and it took Aranta several tries mouthing them out silently before becoming brave enough to attempt them out loud-- not that Aranta was shy, per se. Just that he was proud, and didn't want to seem dumb. Kitten was up first. "Kah-eh-t-t-eh-n. Kahehten. Ketten. Kitten!" The last word was said triumphantly as Aranta realized what it was-- it was the word for a young cat. Hug was easier, but flower took him a few tries; he kept tripping over combining the last four letters. Last up was nice. This one Aranta was least sure of-- Snaeha had said that c could have two sounds, and he didn't know which one to use here. "N-aye-k-eh?" he mumbled, frowning in concentration. "Nikeh?"