I spent a while reviewing the latest packet of information Wolfram had sent me regarding his reading lessons, which were "progressing rapidly" (according to his tutor) at least partly because he reviewed them with me again at night after each lesson. Plus, to be frank, I had some natural talent when it came to linguistics (or at least so I had been told), and had the major advantage of being fluent in two different tongues even before we left Earth behind. The third point in my favor was that I already knew a writing system that was very different from English since Chinese uses Hanzi characters, a type of logogram where written symbols represent words instead of using an alphabet of letters to try and spell them out phonetically as with Latin-based languages.
Wolfram had none of that, the poor soul, and claimed to be terrible at all languages (even his native English) that weren't 'programming languages', but he was naturally intelligent and I thought he was doing rather well. However... even with all of that, there was a truly terrifying obstacle we had to overcome...
I winced at the anger, frustration, and rage that Wolfram included in his message. That's right... the writing our people used was a form of hieroglyphs, which is a system of 'writing' that uses tiny pictures. And to make matters worse, each little picture could either be used at face value (where the picture represents the actual thing pictured), as a symbol for an object (where you have to know or guess what the author intended the picture to represent), or as a symbol for different sounds (where you combine certain pictures in a particular order to represent a sound, like a person's name, for example).
I was in the middle of helping him with his homework, but I didn't want to just provide the answers because then he would never learn.
<... ... ... I hate everything.>
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Practicing my powers at home was nearly impossible, and the threat of beast attacks made it so that our culture considered it to be seriously negligent to let a child go outside by themselves. It was one of the few significant differences my new home had with the image of a typical 'medieval' style village that historical movies and books had painted in my head. Quite a lot more time and effort went into raising each child than made historical sense for a village of this size, yet less effort went into educating them than I would expect from a 'modern' society - or, perhaps, regular civilians were already educated as much as the nobility allowed.
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Then again, comparing this place to historical villages from Earth was probably a fool's errand, since the few differences I was aware of could have far-ranging consequences on the development of a culture. For instance, sickness and disease appeared to be complete non-issues, which was still very strange to me, and the average person lived about seventy years here in the village even though our knowledge of medicine was very rudimentary. This might partially explain why fewer families had children, and those who did tend to only have one young child at a time, waiting until the first was at least seven before having a second.
Regardless, all this was only important to me for one reason - I couldn't go outside to 'play' and secretly find a good place to practice my abilities. The danger didn't really bother me since I figured I was probably about as capable of defending myself from any small individual beast that slipped past the scouts as an average adult by now, and if there was a serious threat the bells would give me time to get to safety.
What really got in my way was that most adults would likely stop whatever they were doing to get an unescorted child to safety, and my parents would freak out if they knew I had snuck out without them noticing. It didn't help that people in the village were generally pretty easy to identify, so even if I escaped from a nosy adult they would just have to report seeing a kid with 'forest green scales and black horns' and it would lead back to me pretty quickly...
So I waited for Father to return in the late evening and decided to try something else. After a difficult discussion, my mother finally relented and agreed to let me accompany Dad to the Smithy more often, as long as he agreed; after all, I was already fluent in the language well past what was normal for a kid my age, had learned the majority of our history and legends from her already, and had proven that I was way more responsible at five than most children were at seven (which was typically the earliest age anyone started to seriously learn a profession).
The door shook briefly before opening, gigantic gleaming teeth the first thing visible in the firelight of the stove. Mother put down the sewing equipment she had been using to modify my clothes and stood up. Her long gorgeous purple hair was styled straight up into the air, as it often was, revealing her pointed ears as well as her brief smile before she quickly replaced it with a frown.
“Have a care, you big oaf!” she said, a typical example of one of her many evening greetings. “What if you struck someone with that door!”
Father didn’t reply, as usual, but he did flash a toothy grin at the two of us.
“Dad, how was the forge this day, sparks bright and fires hot?” I asked in one of the typical forms used at the Smithy.
“Fires from the earth and sparks from the skies, Heller,” Jaws rumbled in reply with a warm smile (well, it might look like a fearsome grimace to anyone who didn't know him, but to me it was clearly a warm smile), sweeping me up in a hug. I returned it as best I could, but my arms couldn’t even encircle his neck yet.
Mother sat back down, looking satisfied, as Father stomped further into the house (we didn’t remove footwear in our culture, so a somewhat dirty floor was the norm). “Can I visit the Waresroom with you tomorrow to help with inventory?” I asked, referring to the smaller building beside the Smithy where their various works were polished, oiled, and stored. It was technically not inside the Smithy itself, but it was next to the emergency shelter and could only be accessed from the wide hallway that connected the shelter to the Smithy proper, so it was considered a pretty safe location.
Mother’s head snapped around, looking at Dad and tilting her head to the side at a dangerous angle (dangerous because that’s how she often looked just before exploding). I quickly glanced over at her, my eyes opened wide, “Please Mother, can you ask Master Toly the Blacksmith to take me to the Waresroom tomorrow? I want to look over the pieces there, and prove that I might be of worth.”
Mother looked at me for a moment, her gaze softening, before she looked past me to Jaws. They exchanged a lingering look that told me none of this was a surprise to either of them, but there were complexities that I might not have been aware of. “What say you, Master Toly, will you train my son in your ways, and not let your damn fool Apprentices lose sight of him?” I was pretty sure the last part wasn't a normal part of the request, but it was already going better than I anticipated.
Father simply replied with a low rumbling chuckle, giving my head a gentle rub, “That’s a fine idea, lad.”
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“Yeah, Carver, I’m sure I’ll be alright!” I said yet again, trying to assure the lanky teenage Apprentice who had been set to watch me.
She fidgeted with her tail, which was wrapped around her waist, as she looked back in the direction of one of the grinding rooms. Watching over me meant that she would fall behind in her duties (which she abhorred the very thought of, even when she had the perfect excuse of being tasked with watching over 'Master Toly's son'), and she finally nodded at me with a grateful smile. “Thanks, Heller, I owe you one!” she said, waving as she went back to her work, leaving me alone at last.
The 'Waresroom' was actually a bit of a misnomer, as it was in truth a series of storage rooms and workstations that didn't require any hot forge-work (such as grinding, polishing, or attaching cloth and leather straps, fittings, and the like) in a solid stone structure next to the Smithy. The area I was interested in had only a single entrance that was infrequently accessed. Combined with the constant noise of activity around us it provided a nearly ideal location for me to practice my powers.