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Lessons

It had not taken long for Taym to grow accustomed to waking up being watched, and since, weak and without further distractions, he spent so much time sleeping--well.

This time it was Qarah and not Lurks, so at least he wasn't in any danger of having his hair stroked. Instead he found himself confronted by water and by books and he found both items simultaneously repellant and a relief so great that his throat knotted up.

He eyed Qarah, uncoiling from his fetal sleeping position upright in the corner, and tentatively reached for the water without looking away from the lurking Horseman.

i c u thar

"I don't know," he said, a thing he was saying more often than he would have liked to back in his own world, but that he clung to here. "I didn't ******** pick it. It just is what it is." He still held the knife, fingers tense and white on the hilt, and he remained coiled and restless, but he did not, as the minipet had, strike.

Restful

It took a few seconds for the situation to register: Qarah sleeping, not simply waiting, nor was it Lurks or Waits, the former with a beaming, terrible smile or the latter with some implement of torment and study held in his hands.

He found Fionnghal in his hands without knowing how she'd gotten there, and he tightened his fingers until the shaking stopped, and he watched Qarah sleeping and he did not dare to move.

What good what it do him? What possible good would it do? The best he could hope for would be Qarah losing its temper, violating the moth-thing's orders and hurting him, possibly killing him. Maybe he'd be granted permission to die, as punishment for his rebellion.

Or maybe it'd be worse. Maybe nothing would happen at all.

His hand ached on the knife's hilt and, barely breathing, he watched Qarah from where he sat, his head buzzing.

Restful

Qarah slept a long time. It remained still, deathly still, a weirdly young and almost innocent look on its face in sleep, so unlike the permanent slight sneer that etched its features awake. For a minute, perhaps two minutes, its chest ceased to rise and fall in slow breath. Then the motion began again. Whether it needed to breathe or whether it had simply picked up the habit somewhere was a question that even it could not have answered.

Eventually it stirred and picked itself up in a flutter of fabric. It studied the nervous, trembling-tense human briefly, then swept out of the room without a word.

i c u thar

"Of course they don't," he said, voice shaking and disgusted, and he thought Qarah meant the copies, but his answer could have gone either way: "They aren't me. I am better."

He almost whimpered when the bowl was retrieved but he bit it back hard in his throat and he accepted the stick when it was offered.

He would do what he had to to continue getting food and drink, but he would complicate things as much as possible. Hesitantly he turned the stick over in his hands, and he thought of the hazy, barely-there memories of memories: another him in another life, patiently tutoring impatient future Hunters on nonstandard verb conjugation.

He paused, and then, his hands shaking violently and his voice matching, he cleared a bit of dust in front of him and reached to take a book at random.

"It would help me to--to know where to start. How does your language work? Is it logographic, or is it alphabetic? Or maybe it's syllabic."

Lessons

The Original asked questions, and Qarah turned the meaning of the questions over in its mouth and its head, considering. "Runes make words," it explained, "and sometimes they are words. My language puts pieces together, pieces of words and tones to make more words." It tilted its head. "Where does your language start? Pieces, or pieces of pieces?"

i c u thar

"It would be nice," he said, his voice still shaking. "Maybe I will learn to do what I'm told, like the Worthless One has learned."

Lessons

"C," Qarah repeated meditatively, and drew a curve in the dust with one bony finger. "The C glyph makes three sounds. Now show me the sounds that go in front of it or behind it to make it make the different noises," it instructed.