5 It’s a New World

Boring doesn't mean pointless.

The hour was filled with countless revelations, small and large.

The plants here seemed to mostly use photosynthesis. There were many green plants. Some of them were also carnivorous, similar to a meat plant she'd once read about in PNG. Smaller but very stinky. Flies were constantly attracted.

Boring doesn't mean without danger.

Spiders here had six legs. They moved faster and often in pairs. They were bigger than what she was used to and more aggressive. Jemman had to fight two pairs of spiders off with her small stick. She couldn't kill them. She just made biting her too bothersome and they finally wandered away.

Boring doesn't mean lacking in beauty.

Small mauve birds that moved like hummingbirds flitted around snatching at pollen and flies with equal abandon. Butterflies occasionally meandered across her view filling it with cyan, yellow and maroon.

Boring meant feeling trapped, at least this time it did: unable to do what she wanted, when she wanted, where she wanted.

Despite being trapped in a little, messy, spider-filled garden she did her task: to take note of her surroundings. For once she tried to turn off her inner dialogue and just notice.

Jemman realised she really wasn't good at it.

"Try to be mindful."

She read in some magazine about mindfulness. Notice what you feel.

"It's a nice temperature. It feels twentyish."

"The air is a bit humid and, holy heck, there's two suns. I really do need to take more notice." One was smaller and quite red. At least, compared to what she was used to. The other sun was even smaller than the red one but quite bright. "I wonder what their names are?" After a few minutes of introspection Jemman started again. "Okay, try to be scientific. Geology or biology?"

Looking at the soil she noticed it was light and loamy but seemed quite poor in nutrients. Things struggle to survive. It was dry and plants were pretty sparse. "Probably why they evolved differently." She looked at the topography for quite a while. She noticed that she was quite high up, probably. The air seemed thinner than she was used to. As she couldn't see outside the compound and there weren't any hills around she decided it was just a vibe she had.

Just before she looked more carefully at the plants around her Jardin walked over.

"What did you notice?"

"I get bored quickly and distracted even more easily. The rocks here seem to be sandstone-based. We're quite high up based on the thinness of the air. Spiders have six legs and travel in pairs. They are aggressive if they feel fear. Many of the plants don't generate enough food from the suns and need alternative food sources. There are flies but not mosquitoes."

For almost ten minutes Jemman rattled off her observations with background commentary.

At the end Jardin said with surprisingly little sarcasm, "You think better than you act. This is good for a scholar. You seem completely uneducated as to the names of plants an animals. A spider with six legs. Even though you're only eight I though you might know that spiders have eight legs. These are their cousins, the splade. Half as poisonous, twice as mean. Ours are small but I've heard that splades can grow as big as cows. Cows have four legs by the way.

"You don't want to be a scholar but a Kenstar. You're clearly uneducated so it's just as well you don't want to be a scholar. What a waste of a good mind. After lunch I'll take you to the library and see what we can teach you. You can read, can't you?"

Jemman didn't know if she could read or not. "Ha, a medical student who doesn't know if she can read. What a joke. Susie could read but I don't know if Jemman can. What to say?" Deciding which horn of the dilemma to impale herself on she realised that she didn't care if he thought she could read or not. "Nope, can't read. Always wanted to but I was too busy being a little girl. Who knew I'd need it one day?"

Conflicted. Jardin definitely looked conflicted.

Indeed he was. He loved her sass and hated that he needed to teach her to read, from scratch. "I really hope that girl is as bright as she seems." He said it almost to himself.

Jemman heard, "Wow, you're eight and know almost everything except how to read. Oh, and you don't how to fight ...or cultivate.

"You're amazing! I wish I didn't switch you now cause you've obviously been pushing yourself so hard. Only Eight, if I teach you to read, are you sure I won't just be wasting your time?"

Ignoring his tone and the content of what he said Jemman turned to Jardin. "I would love you to teach me to read. Is the reading system phonetic or logosymbollic?"

Jardin looked at her liked she was an alien.

"Am I going to be using an alphabet or seperate symbols?"

"An alphabet mostly. Many individual concepts have special symbols that we add in."

To himself Jardin added, "Crap, is this girl a genius or an idiot?"

"How many specific symbols are we talking about?"

"Probably six hundred common ones. Different regions have more, as do some professions. Many mages use them. If you don't know the concept behind the symbol then their writings become meaningless. It means their enemies find it harder to discover their methods."

"Would you mind teaching me the alphabet first and then I'll learn symbols as required. Does that sound fine to you?"

"Crap, is this girl eight or eighty?"

To Jemman he said, "Sounds good Already Eight and Can't Read Yet, let's get lunch and then I'll teach you the Alphabet Song."

Lunch was mushroom soup with course grain bread and slightly old butter. Jemman ate it like a starving beggar.

True to his word Jardin sang her the Alphabet Song. His voice was deep and strangely mesmerising. He sang in more than one pitch that harmonised perfectly. As he sang Jardin pointed at a black board with forty-two sounds. "Most of you humans can only reproduce thirty five of these sounds. I'm teaching you the Carden Alphabet Song version. If you actually achieve singing the whole song it will make your life easier." Jardin sounded sceptical that she would achieve anything like the whole song.

"Now tell me five of these symbols."

Jemman could do the first symbol, Choll. After that she'd gotten lost in his beautiful voice.

Unfortunately, choll was one of the unpronounceable symbols. She made a hash of it but at least he knew she'd heard it. He had nothing else to work with.

He repeated this process two more times: Choll, Kar, Sept, Moi,... before making her repeat after each letter. An hour later he started giggling. Jemman found the sight of this massive, savage wolof yipping and chortling hilarious and soon couldn't continue learning due to her own giggles. "I actually sound really cute," she thought to herself.

As he started her working through an alphabet picture book Jemman finally realised something. "I'm not really speaking English. Dorothy, this definitely isn't Kansas anymore."

The afternoon was spent training with something that Jemman thought looked like a bokken but was called a 'colmar'.

Although he only taught her a single form to move through with the colmar, Jardin was absolutely pedantic about demanding perfect form and breathing.

Jemman didn't even realised this was her first form, to her it seemed she was learning to stab. She slowly realised there were hundreds of ways to stab incorrectly. Jardin demanded one way to stab, his way.

"Only Eight, you don't know anything about fighting with a colmar. You do not know enough to defend yourself when trouble comes. You will probably only have one chance to save yourself in a dangerous situation, and that's if you get one chance. It's a big if. You must make your one stab perfect and then run like a rabbit."

So for three hours she stabbed. Her arms were burning, her legs were cramped and her breathing slowly became ragged. When they finished, at long last, Jardin turned to Jemman and said, "Guess it's your turn to cook."

The day actually finished with one last stab and a huge twitch on her backside.

That night she did cook. Jardin secretly thought it was a pretty good meal for a spoiled little eight year old girl.