After enjoying the second cup, Oram studied the new writing guide in earnest. The guide suggested that one start by analyzing the essay question, circling key words to make sure that one was clear on what the essay needed to do, what questions it was expected to answer. After that, the guide continued, if there was time, one ought list or quickly outline the main points one was to write. That would require already having some idea what one wanted to say, so Oram confined himself to addressing the first step.
What were keywords? the hunter wondered. The guide had only vague hints, so he took his best guess. Taking his pen, he circled “describe” “faunal diversity” “Scalvoris”, “conforms or deviates”, “models of island bio…”. He stopped, frowning. He was basically circling the whole question apart from words like “and” or “the”, which hardly seemed helpful. Forgetting about what words to circle, he instead just tried to parse the question. The first part looked like a compare and contrast. The second part was more open-ended, although Oram suspected that there was a probably a right answer he was supposed to come up with.
The guide next suggested that he make a quick outline or list of what points he would get to. Well, he wasn’t ready to do that yet. What else? Rewrite the question as a statement pointing to an answer. So he wrote: “The faunal diversity of Scalvoris differs significantly from what standard models of island biogeographical diversity would predict.” That sounded like a good start. Scientific models made predictions, after all, and observations matched them or they did not, so that was probably the sort of answer the Professors were looking for. Thinking a bit more, Oram reckoned that next he should elaborate on *how* the faunal diversity of Scalvoris differed from the models. He started thinking of examples of what made Scalvoris different. There was the bewildering variety of turtles it had that suggested not only endemic species but -here he peeked in the glossary of Uvalus’ book for the right term- probably even an in situ clade. Then there were the different bears, and birds like the etchwing and drawer dragons on Faldrass and…
Oram stopped before he wrote anything else. All these were details, and he hadn’t finished the intro paragraph yet. This was probably where outlining came in handy, he realized. Unfortunately, the hunter was terrible at outlining and didn’t trust himself to write an outline on the fly that would help here. Outlining was discussed in detail in the writing manual he had set aside earlier; the process discussed in that text was anything but quick; Oram had found it mechanical, tedious, and unintuitive, involving lots of upper-and-lower-case letters, numbers, and those numbers-that-looked-like-letters (I, II, V, etc.). There was no chance that he was going to sketch a “quick outline” of a test essay any time soon. Instead, he simply left space on the page to finish his introductory paragraph later, after he had scrawled out a few paragraphs of body that would give him a better idea of where his thoughts for the essay were going.
Back to turtles, then. The turtles on Scalvoris were unlike those found on the nearest mainland, and their sheer variety and size range made migration or rafting across the ocean unlikely. Local legends and folklore insisted that the turtle varieties were in situ stemming from Ol’ Tuck himself, and all observation available to Oram was consistent with that claim. Even varieties like turtle doves, which could presumably have flown over, were unknown on the mainland.
Not only were the fauna on Scalvoris highly different from any known varieties on the mainland, and thus presumably endemic, but also the fauna variety on each island in the archipelago (Faldrass, Ishallr, Immortals’ Tongue, Scalvoris) differed sharply, even for animals that should naturally have been able to move from island to island, such as turtle doves, or etchwings, or skullgulls. This could be partly due to the sharp environmental differences among the islands, but also the activity of mortals and spiritual powers alike. Ishallr, Faldrass, and Scalvoris each had active Induks (two of them, in the case of Scalvoris) and of course Immortals’ Tongue was a nexus of Immortal activity.
After he had scribbled about three paragraphs full of specific examples illustrating various aspects of Scalvoris’ diversity, Oram paused, realizing that he needed to come to some sort of conclusion. Looking quickly over his half-finished introduction, as well as the “body” paragraphs he had just written, Oram then wrote: “The fauna profile of Scalvoris suggests a natural history dominated by local events and self-contained processes, including events that gave rise to a number of situ clades, clades that have mostly remained in their original environments. This is in line with what is known about the local geniuses and other factors at work on the islands, and because they are well known, their influence is not hard to trace. One might infer, on finding a region with a similar profile to Scalvoris, that that region was also probably dominated by local events, and less affected by the surrounding areas than standard biogeographical models would normally predict. One might be able to infer from this the likely presence and activity of induks or other spirits in such areas, even if those spirits are not currently known.”
After putting a couple finishing touches on the essay, Oram sat back and looked at it. Would Professor Seams or Druff be impressed by his efforts? Maybe not, but the hunter decided that he was satisfied for now. The Eternal Empire was not built in a trial, as the saying went. Writing an essay was surprisingly tiring work. Moreover, he was now out of tea, and feeling a bit hungry besides. Putting his materials in a neat stack, he rose to find some staff, to order more tea, and perhaps some pastries to go with it this time.
