The Feel of a Page

Defi was intrigued about the way Turq suddenly split in two, or was it 'birthed another'? Sarel said it was the normal way slimes reproduced. They split when the vitality within them was too much for their bodies.

But then shouldn't Jar be similar in looks and size or temperament to Turq? Obviously, in all three, Jar was distinguishable from Turq.

Jasper, or Jar as the small children in the orphanage insisted, was a bit more energetic than Turq. It was not content to lay on its summoner's head all day, and preferred inanimate objects to sit on when resting. It also ate more suirberries than Turq did, despite its smaller size.

Did that mean different slimes had preferred diets? Had Turq only been eating suirberries because it was the only food Defi provided?

"There are publications on known mystic beasts." Sarel finally got tired of his questions. "The Lowpool has a library. Not sure you'll find anything on slimes but you're irritating me so go spend the day elsewhere."

So Defi was once more taking the scow to the Lowpool, along with another load of zaziphos to another buyer – the baker this time.

"You gave it away?" The incensed yell startled him out of his conversation with the baker. A man and a woman were walking down the street. Well, the man was walking rather calmly. The woman was all but jumping around him while vibrating with anger. "And what will we eat for the next month, eh? The abominable excuses for vegetables you can't even grow well?"

"They're hybrid herbs, Leraine. And would you grudge a hungry child the food?"

"They have parents to take care of them! As you promised mine when you married me, or have you forgotten? Oh," she lamented loudly. "we'll truly starve this time. Because of you and your failed research!"

"Pay them no mind, Defi," said the baker, as the two passed by. "They do this every now and then."

"All the time," muttered her fellow baker and husband.

Defi nodded, turning away from the couple. "What is he researching?"

"Mystic herbs, I think? Something about agricultural evolution…"

"He thinks he can cross common herbs with mystic ones," drawled a customer. "So they can grow outside a blessed land, and without a treant. The Lowpool has sable crab where there isn't a hint of blessed land nearby. He wants to duplicate it."

"Is that even possible?" wondered another customer.

"Not likely."

A nearby customer laughed. "Everyone knows the Lowpool's blessed land is under the lake."

"No wonder they had to sell their farm off bit by bit."

Defi listened a while to the gossip, as he finished the transaction with the bakers. Blessed land? Is that where mystic plants and animals grew? Where Turq came from? Was the slime used to eating mystics? Fascinating.

He walked to the library, having it pointed out by the bakers Dyene and Reon.

He noticed that the people referred to the town and the lake in the same manner. Did the town really not have a name?

The librarian, a tall and thin man with a bristly beard and a voice unexpectedly as low and growly as a bear's, grumbled the answer while not looking up from his book. "It's Sottolac Town, officially. Apparently 'Lowpool Town' was not grand enough for his lordship the Marquis."

"The town is part of a marquisate?" Books written about Ascharon by certain Ontrean scholars said the empire's caste system was haphazard: there were thirteen ranks of social status, with the emperor at the top and the commoners at the bottom, but it was possible to move up and down the ranks in a person's lifetime. A marquisate was mid-high in the rankings.

"Not anymore," the librarian looked up finally, took a second to eye Turq before continuing. "his heirs squabbled over territory and got on the old emperor's nerves. We've been independent for twenty years now. An interest in history?"

"I'm looking for information on slimes, and someone to read it to me."

"Most people," rumbled the man, studying him curiously, "would not be so sanguine in admitting within a library that they could not read."

"To hesitate because I am ashamed of a skill I do not have is a waste of time better spent on looking for what I want to know. I can pay whoever, if it helps. Not a lot, though." He did not regret spending the majority of his Ascharon coin on the sable crab, but it also meant he was once more at the mercy of tight accounts.

"A practical point of view." The man hummed. He unfolded his body from the chair. "Slimes, was it? There should be something in the old sections. Take a table. I'll send someone with the books."

Defi took the nearest chair. He tapped a finger on the table surface, contemplative. He looked around, the place unfamiliar but hauntingly nostalgic.

The walls were not plaster and stone, but wood and paint. The lights in the dark corners were not carefully glass-enclosed oil-lamps but glowing glyph designs. Even the scent of books and ink were not the alike. But it was a space of learning just the same, a collection of knowledge transcending worlds, a connection between lands and peoples and times.

He sighed.

It was past time he learned how to read Ascharon letters. It had been foolish not to immediately seek the knowledge. He was not afraid to admit that.

In his haste to distance himself from Rimet, he had tried not to be himself.

But this was now undeniable: he was a scholar. It mattered not if he had been raised to be or came to love it. It was what he knew and he loved it.

Even if he never left this town in his lifetime, even if nothing more ever happened to him, this was something of him that would not change. He could leave behind his noble titles and his blood, but not the craving for the feel of a page beneath his fingers, for arcane knowledge and obscure fact.

This was something of himself that made him happy.

He smiled at finding something he enjoyed that would please Maryiz and Casmiref. He reached up and patted Turq – it was because of the slime that he was here after all.

A pile of books thudded on the table and the woman, some few years older than him, raised a brow at Defi disdainfully. "You needed information on slimes and someone who could read?"

The woman was as thin as the librarian, but not as tall, though her neck seemed too long for her head. An academic, Defi decided.

"I did," he answered neutrally. Turq bounced onto the table. Defi quickly blocked his path to the books. "Those aren't for you."

The woman scoffed. "Who even summons that trash these days?"

"Who said it's a summon?"

"Why else would it follow you around?"

"It could have been tamed."

Another look of disdain. "You can't tame a mystic animal."

"Are the stories of griffin-riders a lie, then?"

"Those are summons too, you idiot."

"Indeed? They say that like griffins, frost-tigers have to be caught before a summon-bond can be made."

"That's not taming!"

"No? My mistake then. As expected of an expert, to be so decisive. Then the slimes who are not even part of the summon rankings should be easy. The parts on diet should be read first, please."

The woman looked superior. "Everyone knows slimes eat anything."

"Even then, aren't we going to start?"

The woman grit her teeth, loomed over Defi. "Look, you ignorant peon, this is a waste of time. Why would anyone ever do a study on a trash summon like a slime? Even –"

"A hundred years ago, slimes were a level-two summon."

The woman laughed, contempt evident. "I get it's your first summon or whatever, but you don't have to make up lies so you're not ashamed of the weak little--."

"The fact that it is true is not part of your consideration, is it, Erlaen?" rumbled the librarian. He was carrying several books on one arm, frowning.

"Cousin!" she quickly placated the librarian, "Of course it is, just that these days who cares about slimes? And people who can't read should have the grace to come here. They're making work for the rest of us!"

"I suppose that if you do not want to work, there's no reason for you to be here."

The woman's eyes widened. "Cousin, are you taking his side over mine?"

"This is a place of learning." He stared her down.

After a long moment of disbelief, she huffed and sat down at Defi's table.

"Diets, was it?" she forced out unenthusiastically.

"And habitat," agreed Defi. He did not care about what she thought of him, or the insults slung in his direction, only that she did the work well. She did not know him, and he did not know her – in the face of that, hostilities were insignificant and irrational.

If she did not want to be here, he was certain the librarian would recommend others. As the woman's cousin and employer, he had some responsibility for her actions after all.

Still, it was not his nature to blindly trust.

"Why are you staring at me?" the woman, Erlaen, demanded after a while of going over various books.

"You don't want to be here, and your dislike for uneducated people is marked. It's just reasonable to make sure the information you're passing on is accurate."

She sputtered. "You think I'm going to lie?

At his silence, she reddened in added indignation. She calmed herself visibly. "Look, idiot. This is a place of learning. I'm not going to anger my cousin because some illiterate farmer walks in and wants to waste my time."

"I find the information useful actually. If you feel your time is wasted, then send someone else next time." The books said slimes were naturally drawn to bodies of water and often are found in wetlands. Still, information about specific diets was sparse. Should he look at edible ingredients around wetlands and rivers next?

He glanced at the other.

She looked like she was biting back a retort, probably another jab at Defi's ignorance or the fact that he wasn't supposed to be here. He was just mostly amused now. What he'd heard in the children's court had been eminently worse.

"We've gotten through most of the books. What's left is just speculation."

"It's far from sunset yet. Might as well finish." He tapped his fingers on Turq's back. The springy, firmly soft outer shell was unexpectedly soothing to touch.

It had been two hours or so, and nearly mid-afternoon. He was about ready to call it a day, a multitude of ideas to better care for Turq and Jar already in swirling in his mind.

However…

He heard his employed reader stifle a groan of dismay, and tried not to smirk.

*

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[excerpt from the journal of a beast hunter]

13th First Spring, D532

It was not perhaps the best idea to hunt watercats in the swamps during the season of rain. We are constantly damp and near to rotting, I say. We have had both the silent slime and the generally docile myconid attack us unprovoked.

Marku is of the mind that they build territories. A preposterous notion.

The only good thing about this trip is that we have found the watercats. Unfortunately, they have in return found us.

Marku and I have discovered that under rain and in the blush of the season, watercats are infinitely more aggressive than normal.

Certainly we have found many.

Also certain, we have near lost our lives to many.

I have advocated for the postponement of the hunt, that we may return at a more opportune time. But Marku cannot be dissuaded, and therefore we must go on.

Even with me quite out of humor with him, he is optimistic.

The increasing numbers of slime and myconid have given Marku the idea that these creatures live in a sort of symbioses with the watercats. I cannot countenance his theories. Certainly none of the scholarly works have mentioned these three species in the same habitat as each other.

But it is rain season, and the rise in waters have likely washed some few of the small mystic creatures from their natural lands.

Marku has returned.

He is in loud hysterics about a gigantic serpent in the swamp, of the same persuasion as the watercat but with the translucence of a slime. He is determined to go out again, into the rain and damp of this forsaken place.

Evolution? He grows more fantastical by the day. I fear some strange powder or air has touched him.

I must prevail to change his mind.

We must leave this place.

--- Parval Berggare, Esq.

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Chapter End

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Notes:

blessed land - land that is so abundant in power that it sustains mystic plants and animals naturally. There are only pockets of blessed land available and they are rare, not even 1% of the area of the empire. One square mar of blessed land, if bought or sold, will run to the hundred thousands in gold solstices.

treant - a mystic tree being that helps protect and grow mystic plants and animals, even outside a blessed land. It lives in symbioses with small mystic monkey creatures called tree imps.

level summon - there are ten levels of summon beasts, ranked using an algorithm that assesses power, utility, and danger with level ten beasts being the most powerful and dangerous.

beast hunter - exploratory hunters of mystic animals. Summon beasts have to be studied first before glyphmasters can create the emblems used to summon a particular species.

Esquire (Esq.) - the common address for untitled nobility in Ascharon

[In Earthen units, a 'litr' contains a volume the equal of 1000mL. In the same system of measures, the Ascharon 'mar' is of similar property as a 'metre'. – from the journal of the Magician of Dimensions]