Lecture et L'écriture

J'adore Austral · 01-01-2011, 02:11 PM

OOC- J'adore has a really posh hut XD. Sorry for the PP.

J'adore sat down on one of the tree stump chairs in his hut. The fire was blazing and the stump J'adore was sat one was placed next to the window. Another one was placed next to him and a few books were place on the small table. J'adore had been expecting Nian to drop by for his reading lesson, but was guessing his lateness was due to yesterdays hunting trip, J'adore himself had slept in later than usual. They had been successful in Halifax, finding a large industrial fridge and a few easy to read books. J'adore's fingers walked over to the pile of paper on his table, pulling a sheet over and picking up a pencil he began to write:

I am J'adore Austral, son of Jandro Austral and Ayanette Da Scene, born of a lone litter in the Luperci occupied state of Santander, Spain, on the third of March, two-thousand and eight. I had visited many places in my life, the Soviet lands, France, Italy and I now find myself in Nova Scotia, Canada. I am apart of a pack, AniWaya. Where the ways are simple, but the bonds are tight. I, at this point in my life, am content.

The writing was free and proud, noble loops and high letters, bold and honest. A tear dripped down J'adore's fluffy cheek at the though of his parents. He dried the tears just in time as someone, presumably Nia, knocked at the door, 'Come in' J'adore said.

Nian Redtree · 01-01-2011, 02:31 PM

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Nian entered the house curiously, first poking his head in to look around and then stepping fully into the hut. He was was suitably impressed by the house's decor, which was spacious, warm, and - above all - fully furnished. He remembered his own slight little lean-to and felt a faint twinge of longing. As his eyes swept over the room he noticed the warm fire in the center and smiled, heading towards it. It seemed that J'adore was well suited to his rank as a Gata Hineyu, as the fire crackled with life and heat, brightening up the whole room. "Good morning!" he said, stopping by the fire. "How are you doing?"

As he sat down by it he peeked at the papers before J'adore, then looked between them and one of the books they had brought back, frowning. Both were filled with writing, he knew, but for some reason the text looked completely different in the handwritten form and the printed form. This might be harder than he had expected...

"Sorry I'm late. I met the Oltsvna Gata last night, and we stayed up late swapping stories. Have you met her yet? She's a nice wolf." He smiled. "You might be helping her with her job someday, which is pretty neat."

J'adore Austral · 01-01-2011, 02:41 PM

OOC- Sorry for the length XD

As expected it was Nian wwith a grin. He took a glance round and walked over to the fire. 'Good morning!' J'adore greeted with matching enthusiasm, 'I'm doing well thanks, you?'. Nian sat down and frowned unsurly at both what J'adore had written and the text from one of the books. 'I decided to take you advice on documenting my travels, I haven't gotten very far though'. J'adore listened as Nian spoke about Ralla, 'Oh Ralla, yeah I've seen her about, but I must speak to her proparly. Have you seen what she's building? The observatory, it's intresting, I might make a trip down there to offer my assistance'[/b]. J'adore laid the papers to one side and pulled a book over to his eyeline. He was about to read but before he did he asked, 'Do you ever miss your family?'

Nian Redtree · 01-01-2011, 02:53 PM

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Nian looked down at the handwritten papers again, feeling a lot more friendly towards them now that he knew what they were. "That's great!""Have you gotten far in them yet?" However, he could see that the writing only covered about half a page. He did not know much about how writing worked, but he could not believe that a half page could really cover too much. Having answered his own question, he sat and watched J'adore pull out the book. J'adore stopped, however, and asked about Nian's family. Nian tensed up for a moment. This was the second time in two days that he had to think about his family... He loved them, he missed them... but he much preferred to think about the good times rather than the things that had happened more recently. Not that traveling had been bad, of course. In fact, there had been many really great moments... He relaxed almost as soon as he had tensed up and nodded.

"There's not much left anymore. My father used to be a sort of leader, but a younger wolf pushed him out. My brothers and I thought it was safer to get away... Which is how we started traveling, actually. So I haven't seen my parents in a long time. I'm the only one of my brothers who came to Nova Scotia, though. I think my closest brother is in the Northeast United States somewhere. I thought about visiting him, but it's a long way away." He was quiet for a moment, then looked up at J'adore. "What about you? Do you have family where you're from?"

J'adore Austral · 01-01-2011, 03:09 PM

J'adore listened to Nian's story in great intrest. 'Sorry' he apologised, obviously stirring up tense memories. Nian asked J'adore about his own family, 'Yes, In Santander. My parents and pack mates, I was born in a lone litter, not even a still-born with me. Not even a sibling from another litter. My pack was full of young wolves, we could all read so it feels odd to enter a country where some do not, but I don't mind teaching. I had an uncle, well he wasn't really my uncle but you know. His name was Evian, I met him when some of our pack moved to Orleans'. J'adore sighed. He was along way from home, but none the less he was content in Nova Scotia. It was colder and wetter, and cloudier, and had nowhere near the amount of sun Santander got, even though it was in the north, be J'adore didn't mind.

Nian Redtree · 01-01-2011, 05:52 PM

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Shaking his head, Nian said, "Don't worry about it. I'm just not really good at looking at the past. This is my home now, and I'm happy with it." He listened to J'adore's story with interest. The other wolf had a very different upbringing than he had, it sounded. Nian's pack had been all about oral tradition, songs, and storytelling, whereas J'adore's had a written tradition. He wondered what growing up like that would have been like. "Only pup, huh? That's really rare. I can't imagine not having all my siblings around when I was growing up." Tilting his nose towards the book J'adore had in his hands, he finished, "Well, maybe writing about them will help a little with missing them..." He did not like to dwell on sadness; he had always preferred to move forward. Perhaps that was not the best way to live life, but for the moment it served him well enough to keep him optimistic.

J'adore Austral · 01-02-2011, 10:47 AM

OOC- This is a great opprtunity to describe J'adore's hut Big Grin

'Agreed!' J'adore beamed. J'adore stood and opened a large chest at the bottom of his bed, the chest was cruedly build and didn't lock but it was big enough to store important things. The bed itself was low and thin, but it was comfortable enough. J'adore pulled a scroll out of the chest and said, 'This is my family. The two adults are my parents, Jandro and Ayanette, and the kid is me. It was draw by the alpha's son, Ease, a close friend'. J'adore smiled at the old portrait, all the wolves were in Lupus form, the adult male was strong and proud, with a thick brown coat. The female by his side was thin and a lot smaller with a light grey back and sandy chest. The small male pup stood tall, mimicking the adults above them, J'adore, white chest, tan body thick black stripe. 'Oh my friends made up for it, I was born in our pup boom. I think there was 17 other pups born within 2 months of me'. J'adore placed the picture on the table for Nian to see. 'Yes, I suppose it would'. Little did J'adore know that he would fill countless pages with his life.

Nian Redtree · 01-02-2011, 01:05 PM

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I love how J'adore is going to become a great memoir writer... Like Casanova, only without the social commentary and the women. Or at least, not that I know of. XD

Nian smiled at the portrait. J'adore's stance was the sort a more dominant pup would have taken, but that made sense, considering that he was an only child. In a portrait like it, Nian would have been more likely to be drawn close to the ground, or half-hidden behind his mother's legs, or distracted by something out of view... He had never been the most aggressive of pups.

"It's a nice picture. Ease's very talented." He looked up at J'adore. "Do you ever think you might visit home one day to see how they're doing?" It was a long ways from here to Santander, but such a trip was possible, with access to a good ship. However, a trip overseas would take the traveler a long way from AniWaya, and seeing how fast Nian had grown accustomed to his new home, he was not sure that such a trip would be an easy one.

J'adore Austral · 01-02-2011, 01:23 PM

OOC- J'adore wants women now! XD

'Aye, he is. Handsome too, a had a coat similar to my mothers, only darker' Nian looked up at J'adore, 'Maybe he mused, 'But for now I'm content here, we send letters, I got one last week. It's a long story, but we're able to get messages across the sea, I'll read it to you' J'adore pulled his nag onto the table and found his letter in oneof the small compartments. He coughed and began

'Dear J'adore, myself and your father are doing well. The pack is still going strong. We've moved back to Santander. Everybody misses you and I have had nurmerous people ask me to say hello in my letter. Ease is doing well, he is tall and strong, but still not as tall as you. He misses you like crazy. I hope you are doing well and...'

J'adore paused with a sigh. 'I won't read the rest, it's just a mothers rambles'. J'adore set the letter down and picked up a sheet of paper. 'Do you know how to write or read any words?' J'adore knew the wolf was ilitterate, but he didn't know if he knew some words.

Nian Redtree · 01-02-2011, 01:32 PM

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Nian listened to the letter, and another hidden quality of writing revealed itself to him. You could use writing to preserve speech! It was almost as if J'adore's mother was speaking herself. As a scout, this particular quality appealed to his sense of duty, and he found himself scheming how he could use letters like this to his advantage. It would be easy to carry messages over very long distances if he did not have to keep them in his head.

At J'adore's question, he hesitated. "Uh..." Nian thought about it, trying to come with some word or phrase that he recognized, but he could think of nothing. A little embarrassed by his lack of knowledge, he shook his head. "I can't think of anything."

J'adore Austral · 01-02-2011, 01:40 PM

J'adore nodded 'What about you name?' This is how you spell mine he picked up the pen again and wrote in bold capitals: J-'-A-D-O-R-E. 'It's French' J'adore addded as he replaced the pen on the table. He blew another fallen lock out of his face. He really must get a haircut. J'adore glanced around his hut, it was tidy which contented J'adore, his mother always taught him to keep tidy. If only she could have seen him yesterday, J'adore though. Blood all down his front, soaking wet from the snow. Speaking of snow, it had receeded a bit over the night and you could just see the patches of green breaking through. Outside of the hut he could see a bird, on the roof of a hut, stealing a twig. J'adore couldn't help but smile

Nian Redtree · 01-02-2011, 02:05 PM

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I just realized that I never decided how to pronounce Nian... O_O That's what I get for making up a name. I'll make it like Ryan.

Nian examined the letters intently, trying to pick out which letter corresponded to which sound. Most of them he could figure out, but the little mark next to the "J" made no sense to him. There did not appear to be a sound attached to it... He pointed this out, asking, "What about this mark here? What does that sound like?" The concept of punctuation was not as readily grasped as the concept of a phonetic alphabet.

Thinking about his own name, he started to break it up into sounds. "All right, well, first I have an 'NNNNN' sound, and then an 'AAAA' sound, and an 'EEEE' sound..." He started to laugh at how his name sounded drawn out like this, but managed to finish. "And then an 'IIIIII' sound, and the 'NNN' sound again." The idea that letters did not always sound the same isolated and within the context of words was something Nian had no conception of yet, so he was unwittingly bound to create a very strange spelling of his own name.

J'adore Austral · 01-02-2011, 02:19 PM

OOC- I always read it like Nee-An. XD

J'adore frowned this would be hard to explain 'It's an aphostrophe, it doesn't have a sound, it's pronounced,
'Ja-Door'. It's the way it's spelt I suppose. Ease used to call me Door as a joke'. He really was having a hard time explaining this. As Nian spelt out his name, J'adore scribbled down possible spellings of his name.

'Nyan, Niean, Niyan, Nian, Nyian, Neyan'

'There all the ways I can think to spell it, I'm not sure which ones right, but if it was never written down, I guess you free to chose'. J'adore himself prefered the fourth one he had written down on the paper below his own name. J'adore began to write his second name, 'A-U-S-T-R-A-L.

Nian Redtree · 01-02-2011, 02:32 PM

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I like some of the hypothetical spellings better than what I made up. Big Grin Niyan is very AniWaya-ish.

At first, Nian looked at the words in dismay. How in the world was he going to learn to spell if you could spell the same word so many different ways? He decided that since he was mainly trying to learn reading and not writing, he only needed to figure out how to understand what he read, and since he was most likely going to sound words out loud anyway, alternate spellings would not be quite so problematic. Biting his tongue in concentration, he picked up a pen and started to copy down the letters. He figured this would be the best way to learn, as he had always understood concepts better when he tried them out himself. He liked the letter that looked like 'y', even though it was a little hard to draw out. The easiest by far was the 'e', because he could make it in one quick spiral. As he copied them out he tried to figure out if there were differences between them, even though they all supposedly spelled out the same sounds. Looking over at J'adore's writing, he was excited to realize that he could now recognize a few of the letters. "So this is an "Ah" sound, right?" he said, pointing to the letter A.

J'adore Austral · 01-02-2011, 06:35 PM

OOC- It does doesn't it XD Sorry this is short, it's way late.

J'adore noticed Nian's look of dismay and alram at the choices he was given, 'Don't worry whichever you pick they sound more or less the same'. Nian picked up the pencil and started to write. He was doing well as the pencil slowly but steadily moved across the page. 'It really just a case of which one is most asthetically pleasing' J'adore smiled 'It's really reading you need first, so you know what you've written'. Nian pointed to the A, asking if it was the 'Ah' one. 'Yes' J'adore grinned, happy to see Nian's pleasure.

Nian Redtree · 01-02-2011, 11:41 PM

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While J'adore had said that choosing a spelling had more to do with aesthetics than anything else, Nian decided that the best course of action would be to choose the spelling that was easiest. This translated to the shortest one with the least amount of pencil-strokes. Carefully writing down the word Nian on his page, he "hmmm"ed and looked over at J'adore's name again. "Okay, so... Which letters in your name sound like what?" The alphabet seemed the best place to start, despite the fact that it was so confusing. After that, he could move on to basic words. He wondered how to spell his last name... Redtree wasn't really a name so much as two words pushed together. It was a holdover from an old pack land where he great-great-grandfather had lived - a reference to a large old cedar that had stood at the center of it. Or at least, that was what he had been told...

J'adore Austral · 01-04-2011, 12:33 AM

OOC- Short post XD

'JJJ,AAA,DDD,OOO,RRR,EEE' he sounded out as he pointed to the letters. Nian had picked the shortest and easiest one 'Nian'. J'adore smiled as, in his eyes, the title suited the smaller wolf well. He carried on by pointing to his second name, 'AAA,UUU,SSS,TTT,RRR,AAA,LLL'. J'adore paused, wonder what Nian's second name was, he decided to ask. 'And your second name?' he questioned, readying his own pencil.

Nian Redtree · 01-04-2011, 01:04 PM

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Kay. It's hard to make long posts with this topic anyway, considering how much back-and-forth is needed in teaching.

As J'adore sounded out each of the letters, Nian wrote them down one by one on his paper. He looked down at them, then added the other letters he know from his own name. Now he had the letters J, A, D, O, R, E, U, S, T, L, N, and I in a row across the page. He went over each of them, sounding the letters out aloud, then looked up at J'adore with a grin.

"How was that? Was that right?" At J'adore's question he answered, "My last name's Redtree. Like the two words pushed together." As he said this he realized that with his last name he would learn how to recognize his first two real English words, and he perked his ears up, paying particularly close attention to J'adore's answer.

J'adore Austral · 01-04-2011, 04:57 PM

OOC- Thats a point. I've made a bit of a time skip so we get more words covered Big Grin

'Almost right' Jadore nodded, he pointed at his second name, the one which he had written down. He sounded it out again poiting to each letter as he went. 'Huh, Redtree?' J'adore sribbled this down in bold capitals, next to the 'Nian', his friend had written.

Another hour or so later, they had covered a few more words: Wolf, AniWaya, Elk, Luperci, Male, Female, Pup, Book, Pencil, Paper and, of course, the alphabet. 'Here' J'adore said suddenly after a moment of silence. He handed Nian a blank book and feathered pencil. 'Now you know the alphabet, you can ask peple how to spell there names and write it down here. Or use it for relaying messages. Your choice'. The pencil was ordinary bar from the birds quill sticking out of the end. The book itself was too, but the cover was a rich red colour, with 'Notes' in gold lettering, sparkling in the evening sun. 'The word say 'Notes' J'adore informed happily.

And J'adore gives these items to Nian!

A quill and a book. *Loudspeaker voice* 'Which you can find in Sie's inverntory item dump!' XD

Nian Redtree · 01-04-2011, 06:02 PM

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Possessions, yay! Big Grin

The hour flew by surprisingly quickly, as Nian remained focused on learning the new words. Beside the more difficult ones to remember, he drew little stick-figure glyphs to remind him of their meaning. After a few repetitions, however, he no longer needed the glyphs, and he could recognize the words by sounding them out. This turned out to be the best method, as he could sound out a word without knowing its meaning, but by listening to sounds he was making he often recognized it as a word he knew. When J'adore ended the lesson and handed him the notebook and pencil, he was both relieved and delighted. He accepted the gifts almost reverently, opening the cover of the book and sniffing the cover and pages. It had a distinct woody smell, almost as if he could detect the origins of the paper as trees, but it was much fainter than in a forest. He grinned up at J'adore. "Thank you!"

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