inourhead: (g-c ~ longdark)
Holly / Crystal ([personal profile] inourhead) wrote2014-10-17 11:05 pm

what in the longdark spitting-pit is that

This was a bad idea this was a bad idea this was a bad idea.

Holly runs as fast as she can but the demon's faster. She has no idea where Lightning's gotten to; maybe he found a tree to climb. She on the other hand has been diverted into a treeless hill and she's careening down a slope, trying very hard not to trip.

And the demon's gaining on her.

She's never seen anything like it and neither has Crystal; maybe Book knows what it is but Book's asleep. It's mostly mouth - it looks like a cross between a floorlength mirror of a mouth and a snake to propel the mouth along.

And Holly's not fast enough.

The mouth catches her.





But it doesn't hurt.

Where are we?

----


with Minus (kappa)

with Mark (kappa)

with Max (Benedict)

in Terraria (kappa)

with Emma (Marri)


with Erin (Rockeye)
unblinkered: skeptical.png (skeptical)

[personal profile] unblinkered 2014-12-04 11:03 pm (UTC)(link)
"There's also, uh... she's got two names. Two... people. According to what I could get from her, there's more than one person in the same body? She's Pyay right now, but the one that's good at English is named Song."

Trevor snorts, but isn't quite disbelieving. "Structure, grammar, what do you know about that? We need more to go on."

Max furrows his brow. "I'm not... I know some vocabulary, the language's name is Nloggy, mweelsrow's the magic, the world she's from might be named Kweengow, or that might be a region in it... she knows 'word' and 'means', though, so if you can teach her an English word, you can just ask her what the Nloggy equivalent is."
unblinkered: dontbelieve.png (don't believe you)

[personal profile] unblinkered 2014-12-04 11:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Trevor grabs a book- something something phonics- and a pad of graph paper. "We're sure those are phonemes, not pictograms? How often do they repeat, how do they line up...?"

Max looks with confusion at the symbols. He hadn't looked too closely at her writing before, and isn't sure how this is a useful starting point, but... they're the experts. He sits down in a nearby folding chair.
unblinkered: nicetrydan.png (i don't think so)

[personal profile] unblinkered 2014-12-05 02:02 am (UTC)(link)
When they reach "ho", Trevor makes a note. "Voiceless... velar fricative. Hhh."

Max tries out the sound in his mouth- it's like how that one girl from high school, the exchange student, pronounced H.

Trevor shoots him a dirty look, as if Max were intruding on his personal space.

"Am I doing it wrong?"

"...No."
unblinkered: okay.png (okay)

[personal profile] unblinkered 2014-12-05 02:08 am (UTC)(link)
"As far as I can tell, yes. There might be Nloggy words in there, but she usually started writing things when I'd tell her the name of... you know, you can just point and ask her, like 'Nloggy words, or English words?' She's picked up that much."
unblinkered: sarcasm.png (sarcasm)

[personal profile] unblinkered 2014-12-05 02:38 am (UTC)(link)
Max peers at the paper. "So... those are the 'ah' sounds... when she says Nloggy, I noticed- you said something about vowel length- she holds the sound a little longer. That's not like, in English, it makes a different sound, but here it just... changes the length?"

"Yes," Trevor responds, "English double vowel syntax does not apply to every language in existence. I'm glad you're paying attention."

"You don't have to-"

"The real question is, does it extend past two? More vowels, you hold the sound longer? How do we check that?"
unblinkered: canthandle.png (can't handle)

[personal profile] unblinkered 2014-12-05 02:56 am (UTC)(link)
"Oh, there's- just remembered- one of her words, 'and' is 'room'- or, I guess... that's one of the drawn-out ones, so that's... ruke, coor, coor, meme. Means 'and'."

"Yeah. That'll help," Trevor comments. And then "...that'll help, actually. Yeah." Trevor begins jotting down a copy of the alphabet for his reference, and marks down "ruum <-> and".
unblinkered: yelling.png (yelling)

[personal profile] unblinkered 2014-12-05 03:32 am (UTC)(link)
When Max isn't sure, he asks Sohng to clarify.

Some time passes.

"So... you've got the alphabet down, right? What's your plan, now? Where do you go from here? Do you have an agenda besides curiosity?"

Trevor boggles. "Agenda... curi- the pursuit of knowledge isn't-"

Max backs up. "Whoa! No, that's- of course- I mean, do you want to document her whole language, or just learn to talk to her? What do you mean to do tomorrow, or the day after?"
unblinkered: facepalm.png (facepalm)

[personal profile] unblinkered 2014-12-05 03:48 am (UTC)(link)
"So... unless you think you can do that in the next few hours, there's going to be a practical obstacle. Which is... she... sort of, was teleported in, from that other dimension I mentioned, and the thing that allegedly sent her here didn't send her here with... a food supply, or money, or a place to stay. And I'm guessing that if the physics department couldn't line up room and board on short notice for a literal magician, the linguistics department isn't going to have much luck either?"
unblinkered: panic.png (panic)

[personal profile] unblinkered 2014-12-06 01:38 am (UTC)(link)
"They, uh... not the people at... there's, uh, Gloria, coworker, she called... child services? I don't know exactly what she did with that, she's handling... she didn't have any luck with, whatever she thought was obvious. I should've asked her, specifically what she..."

Well, no, he reasons, he couldn't have known any better than her what kind of people to call, so if she did miss anything he wouldn't have figured that out by asking.

...he could have known, though. If that were something he'd decided to learn about earlier. Not having known something he needed to know doesn't sit right with Max.
unblinkered: canthandle.png (can't handle)

[personal profile] unblinkered 2014-12-06 01:55 am (UTC)(link)
"Eh, we tore our hair out over that for a bit- the world she's from, it's... weird, it doesn't have days, or anything we could compare to tell time by."

Max thinks for a moment. Trevor, meanwhile, nervously mutters something about tenses and specifiers, and goes to grab a book from a shelf.

"I didn't... I didn't call the residence people, no. I can't really pay for university housing on a teacher's salary..."

Trevor scoffs. "What, are you serious? She's magic, just go win the Randi Prize or whatever. You mean to tell me you can't think of a way to make money off a wizard?"

"...the Randy what?"

unblinkered: laughrule.png (laughter)

[personal profile] unblinkered 2014-12-09 02:16 am (UTC)(link)
"Million- well! Well! I mean... yes, that's a good idea, that's a really good... if I can..."

Max is not a cartoon character, and so his eyes do not literally transform into dollar signs, but they are making a good effort. He opens his laptop bag- he's going to see how expidiently these million dollars can be arranged.

Trevor leans over and watches as Sohng compiles her glossary, consulting his transcribed alphabet. He attempts to pronounce some of the phrases near the dots.
unblinkered: seriously.png (intense)

[personal profile] unblinkered 2014-12-09 02:23 am (UTC)(link)
"No, that's not- wait, is that- oh. Yeah. Base eight. You were..." Trevor doesn't say "right" out loud.

Max, meanwhile, has discovered that applicants must be at least 18 years of age, and that there is an application process of unspecified duration. He frowns. It's still worth doing, but it won't solve the immediate problem of not having a place to put her tonight.

...he's not going to have to let an insomniac little girl have the run of his apartment at night, is he?
unblinkered: nicetrydan.png (i don't think so)

[personal profile] unblinkered 2014-12-09 02:35 am (UTC)(link)
Max sends the Randi application to his home printer... which, as it happens, isn't on. So that'll take a minute or two longer, when he gets back, hopefully without Sohng in tow.

He shoots off an email to Liu- asking if there are any expensive materials in their budget that they could directly obtain funds by having multiplied or whatever for free.

And he asks the two linguists "Do either of you have space at home to keep her for the night?"

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