4 Ashan 690
Language had to be one of the most tedious subjects to study in all the world, Malcolm thought to himself, and yet he was willing to make a career out of it. It was official then, he smiled, standing in the university hallway while waiting for the class to begin, he was mad.The night before he had stayed up burnin the midnight oil, and scratching up on the notes from two previous seasons of study. He was probably never going to be a linguistics expert, after all he was a realist, but he would need to know a bit more than just the basics if he intended to teach a language like Common, Draketh, or his own native tongue to hoards of students, all eager and ready to learn.
A sensation akin to the feeling of butterflies in his stomach, caused him to walk the hall, pacing back and forth. If he failed this exam, it was going to put him on the back foot for a very long time. Starting a family and joining the Iron Hand would see to it that his free time was seriously diminished.
The idea caused him to sweat, and he knew he had to get his nerves under control.
“You look a little pale,” one of his fellow classmates commented, a woman no older than perhaps her early thirties. “Have you eaten?”
Malcolm shook his head. “I don't know if I could,” he said in all honesty, “might come back up.”
The woman smiled. “My first research assistant used to say, if you don't start your trial right, it won't end well.”
“Don't tell me that,” he grinned, “I'm already dreading this test.”
Again she smiled at him. “You'll be fine.”
There were other people, some of which looked even more unsettled than the knight. Malcolm took a seat on a nearby bench after disappearing to get a drink of water, though his lips remained dry. He watched the other students for a time and started to wish he had waited outside, where he could at least enjoy the fresh air. Rather than torture himself, he opened his notebook up and scanned the notes again, reading some of his old, almost illegible scribbles.
Linguistics: An insight into one of the most intriguing aspects of human knowledge and behaviour, the first line read, and for a moment, his confidence was restored, had he really written that? The feeling never lasted long before dread crept into his heart again. Linguistics: How humans make meaning and understand one another, he continued scanning the pages. What if the test was an essay? His heart sunk.
A younger man, perhaps no older than twenty, sat shuffling through a dogeared set of flashcards, stumped by one of the questions. He looked up, as if someone had just told him the world had forgotten the recipe for honey mead, and stared into space.
“What's a homophone?” He asked. “I remembered this one last night, only I… it's gone completely from my mind… and I.” He kept staring, and it made Malcolm feel a little unsettled, to be looked at, and yet, through.
“Two words that sound the same,” Malcolm replied, it didn't appear as if anyone else was going to answer the kid.
“Can you give me an example?” The young man asked.
Malcolm hummed, “hmmm, I can hear you. I am here. I have hair.” He smiled warmly. “Hear, here, hair, three words that sound the same but are written differently and have different meanings.”
The young man scratched away wildly with his ink quill, adding the notes to his flashcard. “You're a lifesaver, thank you,”
Malcolm couldn't help but smile, it was usually the little things like this that people stressed about, which never ended up in the exams but were handy to know anyway.
“They had a link to Draketh right, the language, you know, that the knights speak to dragons with?”
“Yeah,” Malcolm agreed with a nod. “Ar and Ah. One is aggressive, the other is peaceful.”
“Which is which?”
“Go ask a dragon and find out,” the woman who had been speaking to Malcolm a moment ago, piped up again. She was smiling, smirking even. She looked so calm and relaxed that even Malcolm envied her.
“After the test,” Malcolm added, playful.
