Okay, I've finally gotten back to this epic story! Yay! Go me!
If you missed parts one and two, here they are!
Tales from Farmacie - Part 1
Tales from Farmacie - Part 2
--- --- --- Part 3 --- --- ---
"A pen pal?" echoed the royal twins.
"Yes, a pen pal," repeated the tutor.
The idea was so utterly normal it almost seemed absurd.
"How would we go about finding one?"
"Let me worry about that," the tutor answered.
After that days lessons the tutor immediately drafted a letter and sent a copy of it to each and every person in the kingdom that had a title or an ounce of blue blood in their veins. The letter asked if the respective ruler would be so kind as to allow the royal children to write to their children.
The letters were sent with the fastest horsemen to every corner of the kingdom where a royalty laid their head at night and within a fortnight the answers began coming back. The tutor was dismayed at the replies which generally read something like this:
Dear Tutor Ridalyn,
We are pleased to see that the Royal tutor has thought of our children worthy enough to write to the dear prince and princess. However, we are ashamed and regret to inform you that our child is ____ (illiterate, away on holiday, at their aunt's, at their grandmother's, out of town, out of the country, terminally ill with the plague, recently lost their writing hand, etc.). We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. Perhaps (the ruler in the next province)'s children are able to write.
Signed,
(Enter rulers name here)
After the first few letters the tutor realized that they were afraid to allow their children to write. As it stood, the general rumor amongst the aristocracy was that whatever curse was upon the royal children was transferable to anyone if they got too close. The tutor did not learn this until several days after the first letters arrived and only after he, in a moment of frustration demanded an answer of the chamber maid. The fact that everyone was so superstitious bothered him greatly, but there was nothing he could do about that. What he could do, however, was reach out to the community where perhaps such wild rumors hadn't spread as yet.
He approached the king with the proposal of letting a commoner write to his children and received a less than favorable response and ended up spending the night in the dungeon. The next morning however, the king saw this as a way to perhaps boost his image to the people and so released the tutor and let him send out the invitation.
To Ridalyn's dismay, the response of the commoners was hardly more enthusiastic than that of the aristocracy. Most of the replies came in the form of a sob story, and the ones that were not were plainly written by mayors and sheriffs who wished a promotion and favor and wrote with their left hand. Ridalyn was determined to find suitable pen pals for the royal children and so, in a moment of desperation, sent out messengers to the outer provinces where mostly farmers lived. Most of the messages had to be read to the farmers who then sadly had to reject the offer, but there were two replies that were written in return and delivered by owl.
Ridalyn was so delighted by the two replies that he immediately wrote back and attached the letter to the leg of the messenger owl and sent them on their way.
"My children, I have found pen pals for the both of you!" Ridalyn announced one day at the start of lessons.
"REally?!"
"Truly?!"
"Really and truly! I have granted them permission and you are to begin writing immediately. Now, I'd like you to write a letter about yourself, introducing yourself to your new penpal. Write the first draft now and the second draft after their first letter arrives."
Just then a messenger owl tapped at the window of the classroom. Ridalyn lept up and opened it and in flew the owl who flew of Morfine and dropped the note in her lap then flew back to the windowsill and sat.
Morfine read through the letter three times and then proceeded to write her first draft. Codine waited patiently for his letter to arrive, and his patience was rewarded when a second owl flew in and dropped the letter in his lap.
Ridalyn smiled as the royal children read their letters and wrote back. This was the happiest they had been since Beneidryll took a holiday.
... to be continued...
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Baby Steps
This is my attempt at trying to blog more regularly. I still don't have a life or much to blog about, but since blogs are often nothing but taken up web space, I blog on.
Oddly enough however, I actually have a number of things I wish to make comment on today!
First - Ted Kennedy's death. I would be glad he has finally, irrevocably been removed from the office of senator were it not for the fact I have very little faith in the liberal peoples of Massachusetts. If I thought it were impossible for them to elect a politician who was worse, I would indeed be... relieved. However, I do not underestimate the power of human stupidity so I shall not breathe that satisfying sigh of relief until they have elected someone better. My only hope at this point is that we won't be subjected to Michael Jackson-esque coverage. On that note, I hope Michael Jackson's coverage will FINALLY end.
Second - Ring hunting. It is difficult to find a ring that you actually like that is actually within your price range, and that is versatile. After several months of searching for a ring I have finally found and purchased a ring that I like. Well, technically it's three rings in one (which really made my day!), but since when do I quibble on technicalities? Don't answer that.
Third - Stupid politicians. I would say more than that, but unfortunately caps lock, point 72 font, bold, italics, and underlining does not convey how fed up, ticked off, and generally irate I am. That, and I don't use that kind of language.
Fourth - Comedy movies. Never in my life have I seen a string of such un-funny trailers for comedy movies! I'm not a fan of movies like "Dodge-ball" or "Meet the Spartans" but at least the trailers will have a few chuckle inducing clips. The trailer for "Funny People" was the most unfunny thing I've ever seen in my life, followed by a close second of the "Taking Woodstock" trailer. As a matter of fact, I thought the "Inglorious Basterds" trailer was much funnier. Watching Hitler say, "Nien! Nien! Nien!" over and over reminded me of that Carol Burnette skit with Tim Conway and the Hitler hand puppet. FUNNY stuff that!
In fact, lemme share the laughs with you:
Oddly enough however, I actually have a number of things I wish to make comment on today!
First - Ted Kennedy's death. I would be glad he has finally, irrevocably been removed from the office of senator were it not for the fact I have very little faith in the liberal peoples of Massachusetts. If I thought it were impossible for them to elect a politician who was worse, I would indeed be... relieved. However, I do not underestimate the power of human stupidity so I shall not breathe that satisfying sigh of relief until they have elected someone better. My only hope at this point is that we won't be subjected to Michael Jackson-esque coverage. On that note, I hope Michael Jackson's coverage will FINALLY end.
Second - Ring hunting. It is difficult to find a ring that you actually like that is actually within your price range, and that is versatile. After several months of searching for a ring I have finally found and purchased a ring that I like. Well, technically it's three rings in one (which really made my day!), but since when do I quibble on technicalities? Don't answer that.
Third - Stupid politicians. I would say more than that, but unfortunately caps lock, point 72 font, bold, italics, and underlining does not convey how fed up, ticked off, and generally irate I am. That, and I don't use that kind of language.
Fourth - Comedy movies. Never in my life have I seen a string of such un-funny trailers for comedy movies! I'm not a fan of movies like "Dodge-ball" or "Meet the Spartans" but at least the trailers will have a few chuckle inducing clips. The trailer for "Funny People" was the most unfunny thing I've ever seen in my life, followed by a close second of the "Taking Woodstock" trailer. As a matter of fact, I thought the "Inglorious Basterds" trailer was much funnier. Watching Hitler say, "Nien! Nien! Nien!" over and over reminded me of that Carol Burnette skit with Tim Conway and the Hitler hand puppet. FUNNY stuff that!
In fact, lemme share the laughs with you:
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Summer, Language, Nerdy
I was going to post more this year but I just keep forgetting to!
Well, another summer is almost gone, and sadly this is the last summer that will mean anything. That is, of course, assuming I never decide to teach. If I do teach, summers will be awesome again.
As is the case with most summers, this one did not last long enough! They almost never do, you know. But in spite of it being short, it's been busy! In the midst of watching BO (that is, Barack Obama) try to trick the American people into a flagrantly socialistic form of health care (and then finding out nobody likes the idea), weddings, work, plotting and planning trips to exotic locations and working on a large stack of books, I have some how managed to find time to do two things I love dearly - graphic art and working on my language.
Yes, you read that right.
I know, I know... I'm a nerd. A word nerd no less with a seemingly insatiable desire to learn/study ficticious and dead languages. Why, ask you? Because they're awesome! Dead languages are usually the grand-daddy's of modern languages, which makes studying the evolution pretty sweet. That, and if you understand the language, it helps you understand the culture and religion of any given society. Since I like studying societies too... well, you see the draw. As for ficticious languages - same rules apply, but only in a more glaringly nerdy way.
As for working on my language - it has a name, but I'm not sure I'm going to keep it. I may end up renaming the whole language and people group to which it goes before it's all said and done... but I digress.
The reason for even embarking on the whole endeavor is strangely similar to the reason I picked my major - writing. I decided that no decent ficticious world would be complete with out at least some sort of scrap of a language to go with it. Thus, when I started creating this little world 7 or so years ago (I don't exactly remember when the chaos started) I drew a map and set about a language. Seven years of language writing has produced a workable calendar complete with names for the months (but no holidays as yet), days of the week, runes for most of the alphabet, a (recently created) set of numbers, along with a few random words and phrases (none of which are set in stone). In addition to all this I have scraps of phonetics and grammar, sentence structure, and the beginnings of conjugations and tenses spread out throughout my ever growing stack of language stuff.
It's a headache and a half sometimes but I am enjoying the journey immensly.
The one notably tricky thing about creating a language from wishful thinking and imagination, is that once you start creating even a basic language, the thing comes alive and starts going crazy instantly. If you don't start out with some sort of structure in mind in the first place, you wind up with a crazy, half wild beast like the one I have. I have lists of words, but once I figure out conjugations and tenses and such, I have to go through my word lists and figure out what I have to fix.
Fortunately though, I do not believe I'll have to create a massive vocabulary for this language. I'm fairly well convinced that for my purposes I will not need to create more than a 'survival' vocabulary. The focus of this endeavor is language structure.
In the mean time, I'm still grappling with the question of - do I want my verbs to be like Spanish and have a basic form which means 'to do something', or do I want to be like English where the unconjugated verbs look like imperatives?
I've spent weeks and will spend many more weeks studying the grammars and sentence structures of various languages before I come to a conclusion.
Irony.
I know, I know! It sounds like I'm so busy on a side note to a greater body of work that I'll never get to actually writing a book, but that's simply not the case. The fact of the matter is, it is much easier to work on a language while being a full time student, than it is to work on a story. A story requires a massive amount of plotting, character development, and coherant ideas - all of which are things that require a lot of time that is not there while taking classes at college. Language writing however... while it does require a lot of thought, time, and etc. most of that can take place in your head and whenever you have a spare second. The hardest part, at least so far, has been coming to a decision on how I want to do something. Actual execution doesn't take very long. Most of my language stuff has been done on scraps of paper and while fighting off sleep during chapel or killing time between classes, or even at work. So once you figure out that you want all your present tense verbs to end in "-le" in the formal you form, you simply throw an -le on the end of the verb and go. See how easy that is? It's getting to that point that's the bear. Once you do though, a quick jot down on a scrap of paper and it's done, needing only transfering to the file where all the language stuff is kept.
Well, now that I've rambled on forever and proved my nerdiness, let me add a layer by saying I lament not being more strict with my 'poem-a-week' goal for this year. Where as I have written several this year, it hardly reflects the number of weeks gone by. Ah well, I believe it is more than I wrote last year, so I shan't complain too much. Though, I am almost certain I've written several poems that haven't been transfered to the computer yet, and are therefore unrecorded... now I just need to find the critters and get them put somewhere a little safer than a random notebook or bullatin back.
Ugh! I've been lacking on my calligraphy too! But that takes an exhorbitant amount of time if you really want to do it right... and even longer if you mean to put it on display or sell it... I've been asked to do a calligraphy piece for the living room, but I haven't found a text I wanted to do or the time in which to do it. I'm afraid by the time I manage to get back to calligraphy again I'll be so long unpractised I'll basically have to start over. Bah!
Oh, did you notice the music player posted at the top of the page? I'm sure you couldn't have missed it. I don't think anyone actually reads this blog, but if anyone does and wants to take a listen, please do! I love music and I love sharing it.
Anyway, now that I have thoroughly bored you, I'll close and try to think of something more interesting to blog about in the nearish future.
... I tried to think of a witty way to end this or find some awesome quote or something, but in the end all I could think of was...
TTFN! Ta-ta for now!
Well, another summer is almost gone, and sadly this is the last summer that will mean anything. That is, of course, assuming I never decide to teach. If I do teach, summers will be awesome again.
As is the case with most summers, this one did not last long enough! They almost never do, you know. But in spite of it being short, it's been busy! In the midst of watching BO (that is, Barack Obama) try to trick the American people into a flagrantly socialistic form of health care (and then finding out nobody likes the idea), weddings, work, plotting and planning trips to exotic locations and working on a large stack of books, I have some how managed to find time to do two things I love dearly - graphic art and working on my language.
Yes, you read that right.
I know, I know... I'm a nerd. A word nerd no less with a seemingly insatiable desire to learn/study ficticious and dead languages. Why, ask you? Because they're awesome! Dead languages are usually the grand-daddy's of modern languages, which makes studying the evolution pretty sweet. That, and if you understand the language, it helps you understand the culture and religion of any given society. Since I like studying societies too... well, you see the draw. As for ficticious languages - same rules apply, but only in a more glaringly nerdy way.
As for working on my language - it has a name, but I'm not sure I'm going to keep it. I may end up renaming the whole language and people group to which it goes before it's all said and done... but I digress.
The reason for even embarking on the whole endeavor is strangely similar to the reason I picked my major - writing. I decided that no decent ficticious world would be complete with out at least some sort of scrap of a language to go with it. Thus, when I started creating this little world 7 or so years ago (I don't exactly remember when the chaos started) I drew a map and set about a language. Seven years of language writing has produced a workable calendar complete with names for the months (but no holidays as yet), days of the week, runes for most of the alphabet, a (recently created) set of numbers, along with a few random words and phrases (none of which are set in stone). In addition to all this I have scraps of phonetics and grammar, sentence structure, and the beginnings of conjugations and tenses spread out throughout my ever growing stack of language stuff.
It's a headache and a half sometimes but I am enjoying the journey immensly.
The one notably tricky thing about creating a language from wishful thinking and imagination, is that once you start creating even a basic language, the thing comes alive and starts going crazy instantly. If you don't start out with some sort of structure in mind in the first place, you wind up with a crazy, half wild beast like the one I have. I have lists of words, but once I figure out conjugations and tenses and such, I have to go through my word lists and figure out what I have to fix.
Fortunately though, I do not believe I'll have to create a massive vocabulary for this language. I'm fairly well convinced that for my purposes I will not need to create more than a 'survival' vocabulary. The focus of this endeavor is language structure.
In the mean time, I'm still grappling with the question of - do I want my verbs to be like Spanish and have a basic form which means 'to do something', or do I want to be like English where the unconjugated verbs look like imperatives?
I've spent weeks and will spend many more weeks studying the grammars and sentence structures of various languages before I come to a conclusion.
Irony.
I know, I know! It sounds like I'm so busy on a side note to a greater body of work that I'll never get to actually writing a book, but that's simply not the case. The fact of the matter is, it is much easier to work on a language while being a full time student, than it is to work on a story. A story requires a massive amount of plotting, character development, and coherant ideas - all of which are things that require a lot of time that is not there while taking classes at college. Language writing however... while it does require a lot of thought, time, and etc. most of that can take place in your head and whenever you have a spare second. The hardest part, at least so far, has been coming to a decision on how I want to do something. Actual execution doesn't take very long. Most of my language stuff has been done on scraps of paper and while fighting off sleep during chapel or killing time between classes, or even at work. So once you figure out that you want all your present tense verbs to end in "-le" in the formal you form, you simply throw an -le on the end of the verb and go. See how easy that is? It's getting to that point that's the bear. Once you do though, a quick jot down on a scrap of paper and it's done, needing only transfering to the file where all the language stuff is kept.
Well, now that I've rambled on forever and proved my nerdiness, let me add a layer by saying I lament not being more strict with my 'poem-a-week' goal for this year. Where as I have written several this year, it hardly reflects the number of weeks gone by. Ah well, I believe it is more than I wrote last year, so I shan't complain too much. Though, I am almost certain I've written several poems that haven't been transfered to the computer yet, and are therefore unrecorded... now I just need to find the critters and get them put somewhere a little safer than a random notebook or bullatin back.
Ugh! I've been lacking on my calligraphy too! But that takes an exhorbitant amount of time if you really want to do it right... and even longer if you mean to put it on display or sell it... I've been asked to do a calligraphy piece for the living room, but I haven't found a text I wanted to do or the time in which to do it. I'm afraid by the time I manage to get back to calligraphy again I'll be so long unpractised I'll basically have to start over. Bah!
Oh, did you notice the music player posted at the top of the page? I'm sure you couldn't have missed it. I don't think anyone actually reads this blog, but if anyone does and wants to take a listen, please do! I love music and I love sharing it.
Anyway, now that I have thoroughly bored you, I'll close and try to think of something more interesting to blog about in the nearish future.
... I tried to think of a witty way to end this or find some awesome quote or something, but in the end all I could think of was...
TTFN! Ta-ta for now!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)