The lizardman took the piece of paper from my hands. “A wisdom-granting grimoire, hmm…” There was a curiosity in his voice now which hadn’t been there before. “...and in a foreign language, no less.” He looked at me, noticed how I was dressed, and even though lizardmen facial expressions were hard to read, I could tell that he did not approve of my attire. The old lady had helped me clean up a bit, but all that did was make me look like I’d had a rather bad week rather than a bad month.

My appearance did not dissuade him from inviting me inside the shop, however. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a room in which about half a dozen lizardmen were writing on pieces of paper. He led me beyond this room and up a flight of stairs. These stairs were broader and steeper than I was used to, likely because they were made to accommodate the lizardmen’s proportionately larger feet.

He stopped outside a well-furnished office and told me to wait while he went in. A few minutes later, he opened the door and ushered me inside.

The room was richly decorated, with an axolotl even larger than the ones I had seen before resting on a set of cushions near the window. It was a rich pink color, and was napping, though my attention immediately went from it to the lizardman sitting behind a desk.

I was not entirely sure, but from what my limited experience was, this was a female. She had bright scarlet scales, and there were a set of books stacked on her desk in a neat pile. The floor of the office was decorated with a bearskin rug, onto which I hesitantly stepped.

“Quite interesting,” she said as she held the piece of paper I had written. “Can you make anything else apart from this?”

I said, “Yes.” I was not actually sure whether or not I could, but my gut was telling me that if I could turn one part of Shakespeare’s work into a grimoire, I could turn another part as well.

“Do you have one of them with you?”

“Sorry, no, but I can make another one if you’d give me some paper and something to write with,” I told her.

Unfortunately, she also did not have anything resembling a modern day pen. The brushes she had were also made for lizardmen hands, so they were a bit unwieldy in mine, but I had to make do.

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She laid down a piece of paper and invited me to sit with her. Now that I was actually tasked with the prospect of writing something - what was it going to be?

I hesitated for a moment before I settled on Shakespeare’s Sonnet 95. I had not memorized most of his work verbatim, but that one was stuck in my mind word for word.

I started writing.

“Ah, I see,” she said while observing what I was doing. “You write left to write…”

I felt a similar sense of fatigue when I had finished, but thankfully, the text glowed a gentle green once I was done. She took it, and exclaimed, “A mana raising grimoire? Why didn’t you lead with this instead of the other one?” So that was how it worked- you could tell what a grimoire did when you picked it up in your hands instinctively.

The other lizardman, who had been standing behind me without saying anything, let out a small gasp.

“Ah, forgive me,” she said. “My name is-” She told me her name, but I’m not sure how to describe it. The lizardmen language contained some sounds like hissing or screeching which you couldn’t replicate with a human mouth, as well as occasional slams with their tails. They had three noises they could make with their tails which they also used while adding to their speech- one was a quick slap on the ground, the other was a harder noise akin to a human stomp, and the third sounded like the crack of a whip. These sounds were incorporated as syllables within their language, though thankfully whatever magic was in the air turned this into something comprehensible so normally I wouldn’t even pay attention to them doing it.

At least, normally it did. Names were not something that were easily translatable. Her name sounded like, “Lar-screech-smack-der-hiss.” It likely had a meaning within the lizardmen language, though when it was said as a name, it was not translated. I decided to call her Lauren in my head, because it was the closest thing that resembled a pronounceable name to me.

She then smiled at me. Lizardmen smiles were peculiar - not in the least because this was only the second time since coming to this world that I had seen one smile. The only other time was when a lizardman with gray scales, after listening to my story, seemed to take pity on me and gave me some fruit free of charge. He had a small smile on his lips as he did so. He probably did so to appear reassuring, though, with their sharp teeth exposed, in all honesty their smiles were more frightening than reassuring to look at. “So, you wish to join us?”

“Yes, yes, I do,” I told her.

“Oh, you have me at a disadvantage.”

“My name is Stefan Dawson,” I told her. A bit of confusion passed through her eyes - she likely was not very familiar with human names, but she probably had not heard a name like that before. “I come from a country very far to the west of here, you probably have never heard of it.” I had learned a bit of geography regarding this world from my limited time here, the world from what I could tell was a single large Pangea-like continent. Chipker was near the east coast of the continent, and so saying that I came from a place far to the west hopefully wouldn’t invite many questions.