[Visual / Location]

[imperial_long]

Mayland Long is waiting for Azkadellia to appear (she is not late for their appointment of noon; he is early), but in the meantime he sends out another message to Taxon.

The visual backdrop behind Long is a far cry from the library, today; instead a restaurant, white tables and Chinese decorations.

"Good afternoon, Taxon," he says politely as ever.

"There was a young man who had expressed an interest in Latin, but he no longer seems to be in the city, alas." Long is for the most part inured to the casual coming and going of those he barely knows.

"If others are interested in language lessons, please don't hesitate to ask; miss Azkadellia and I are embarking on our first lesson of Latin today.

"Mr. Spike, did you have a preference for when we might conduct our sessions?"


[OOC: For Azkadellia, but open to any!]

Comments

[imperial_long]

"It's nothing so bad as that," Long said with a little shake of his head. Or at least, he doesn't think it's that bad. "The eggs are plastered in a mixture of clay, quicklime, and salt, and left to sit. The alkalines in the earthen mixture preserve the egg rather than rot it, and this is the result."

He chuckles again, taking another bite of his own egg before answering. "The taste is actually less strong than the bouquet. It taste... it tastes like egg, I think, but the change in texture is what often requires acclimation."

He's still deeply amused, which shows in the creasing at the corners of his eyes. "The rest of the meal will be less adventuresome. I promise."

[azoftheoz]

She peered down at the egg as he spoke, more than a bit curious by that. "And merely time in the earth, a special kind of earth that is, does this to it. How curious," she said, poking at it a bit to the yolk.

She glanced up at him and then spooned up a bit of all. She stared at it again for a long moment, considering it.

"I'm still not sure what I think of it," she admitted. "Without the rice, I don't think I could handle it," she admitted. Even as she took the bite.

Her nose wrinkled up and she put down her spoon as she worked on chewing, grabbing her cup to drink tea to get it down. The combination of the sulfury taste and the texture was a bit more than she could handle but she kept it down.

[imperial_long]

"Sometimes the preservation process creates beautiful patterns in the white, like snowflakes or pine branches," Long says, inspecting one of the sliced egg bits for such. "Not today, apparently. Alas."

The face Azkadellia made when she took her daring bite was incredibly eloquent. Long laughed-- not maliciously, just gently and mildly, a resonant chuckle accompanied by a little shake of his head.

"Brava, miss Azkadellia, brava," he murmured, eyes dancing. "You have experienced trial by egg. Cleanse your palate with the juk and the tea, as you are doing; our noodles should be here shortly."

[azoftheoz]

That revelation had her peering at the egg, though she was still not sure what she thought of the entire thing, even if the process didn't sound nearly as scary as one might think. "Any reason for the anomaly," she asked, her science being mostly of the most superficial variety except in her own studies.

Taking another gulp of tea, she looked at him with a mixture of uncertainty and a shy smile. Taking a big bite of rice, scooping along the edge away from where the egg was.

"I'm not sure what I think of it," she admitted, suspecting honesty was the best answer her. "Likely not something I would order on my own."

[imperial_long]

"I don't know the chemical processes well enough to hazard a guess."

He smiles at her admission. "Probably not, no. But this is why one tries things with others."

Long puts pickled ginger on another egg, tugging the plate of them closer to himself; he doubts Azkadellia will eat any more of them.

"Now then: Latin. It is the language of an empire that reached its peak some 2000 years ago in my world; the language itself was preserved, albeit not without changes, even after the empire collapsed, as it became the liturgical tongue for the culture that succeeded it."

(The waiter wordlessly appears, deposits his burden (battered shrimp and roe, with a crab garnish), and disappears once more.)

[azoftheoz]

She nodded, considering another bite and then making it of the rice alone because she did find she liked the taste and texture with the tea.

"Why I was willing to try," she admitted. "Though I wasn't sure from the smell... and the color," she added, poking at it lightly with her fork.

"Is there a historical or linguistic reason that it remained after the empire was gone."

[imperial_long]

"The liturgical, yes-- it was the language of the church, but not the common people," Long clarifies. "By the time I come from, it is not even that, really. A tongue of scholars and historians.

"But it has orderly virtues."

[azoftheoz]

"Is it common for unused languages to survive in any way that isn't purely scholarly," she asked, considering that. "In my own the language was nothing but paper and ink. Do all languages seem to endure in other worlds?"

A brow arched at that. "What virtues?"

[imperial_long]

"All languages? Certainly not," Long said with a little shake of his head. "There are numerous languages in my world that have utterly perished from both memory and paper alike, of which I am probably the only speaker," (and if Long registers what he is giving away with that statement he doesn't apparently think about it much) "and some which have only been rediscovered through fortuitous happenstance. Egyptian hieroglyphics, for instance... ah, but that will mean nothing to you."

Long snags a piece of battered shrimp with one hand, and Azkadellia's journal and writing utensil with the other, long fingers darting across the white tablecloth.

He starts writing rapidly, other hand occupied with nibbling on the shrimp, jotting out a sort of chart it appears-- a column labeled 'the five declensions', another labeled gender, and then various categories such as dative, genitive, nominative and a few more.

"Orderly virtues," he repeats. "It's a highly regular language. English-- well, in my world-- English is not; it's a bit of a hodgepodge of various other tongues, with extremely irregular idioms and conjugations. Latin is quite the opposite: it's a language often taken to easily by those with a grounding in the hard sciences."

[azoftheoz]

That was the second time he had mentioned the vast amount of languages Long spoke and Azkadellia couldn't help her natural curiosity as to why he might have that knowledge, or where it came from. "No, I don't know of it but I'm willing to learn," she said, making note of it that she might go and look it up into the library just as he took the notebook.

Azkadellia grinned at that and then shifted so that she could look at what he was writing as he wrote it.

She takes a bite, not quite noticing the food as she watched what he was doing. She glanced at him, arching a brow. "You say hard sciences to the princess and witch," she asked, chuckling and obviously amused.

[imperial_long]

Long made a slightly disparaging snort in the back of his throat for the word 'witch'-- very prim, very restrained.

"And this precludes your learning Latin? Certainly not. You are clearly interested and willing; that is the most important bit. Try the shrimp. You will not have had seafood before, I imagine-- the Zone being landlocked as it is..."

[azoftheoz]

She frowned, shaking her head. Between that sound and the question she looked shocked, paling as she sat back and put her hands in her lap, looking proper and properly confused.

"I hadn't meant I couldn't. I was merely...' She shook her head. "Nevermind. Please, go on," she said, lowering her gaze and looking shy.

She nodded at his comment. "Not something we've had, no." So she took a bite, gaze still down and savouring it."

[imperial_long]

Long tilts his head, one brow arched, lacing his hands together atop the notebook. She looks struck by his words, one way or another.

"I have offended you?"

[azoftheoz]

She shook her head once more, glancing up at him. There was a bit of a flush to her cheeks. "No. Not offended. It was merely a joke and a poor one at that, it seems. There is nothing I can not learn."

The last was said fiercely, unwilling to accept she could actually fail to learn something. "I just... I'm not acquainted with the sort of sciences many seem to know from their worlds."

[imperial_long]

Long listened, a thoughtful noise humming in his throat.

"In my world, the sciences and-- magic-- are frequently considered to be at odds. The scientific mindset and that of the witch or wizard are... fundamentally opposed, I think, on a base level.

"I myself have far more sympathy with science, I admit."

[azoftheoz]

"I can imagine why that would be," she admitted, with a nod trying to imagine a world where both might be primary and not one secondary to the other. "Have you ever known of a time when magic and science coexisted with one another?"

[imperial_long]

"Without conflict?" Long asked, and laughed softly. "Not as such. I have seen magic stronger, but science has claimed the crown, as it were, in more recent years. Very few people still think magic even exists, in the time I come from."

[azoftheoz]

She winced despite it being the answer she had expected. "But it does exist? How can they deny what they must have seen?" She paused, considering that. "Have they? Or is it so hidden that they never see such things?"

[imperial_long]

"Most have not, no," Long said with a little smile.

"It is both very rare in my world now, and very hidden. They think it is children's stories. Fairy tales."

[azoftheoz]

Shaking her head, disappointment written on her face, Azkadellia sighed.

“I know it isn’t this way for most, but for even things like this, I’m glad to be here. Glad to have a chance to learn things that my world doesn’t acknowledge, not as they should. I know many wish for their homes, but I find myself making a home here and that knowledge of being able to share from so many worlds is only part of the reason.”

[imperial_long]

Long steepled his fingers before his face and leaned back in his chair.

"Knowledge is always to be pursued. I do not think it is wrong to delight in the opportunity to acquire such."

[azoftheoz]

Blushing at that, she nodded. "How I feel. I'm glad you weren't offended by my words. I know many have no desire to be here and I wouldn't want it to seem like I was glad they were trapped," she admitted.

"I find Otherside sciences interesting me, as well as the languages," she said, nodding at the book. "The languages seem to have a much more clear starting point than science. At least to me."

[imperial_long]

Long shrugged one shoulder. As far as the spectrum of opinions on being stuck in Taxon went, he was squarely in the middle of more-or-less indifference. Some desperately wished they could go home; others knew that death or worse awaited them there. Long's own feelings on being abducted from 'home' extended primarily to a vague nostalgia for San Francisco restaurants.

He slid his fingers together under his chin and smiled diffidently. "The sciences are more universal and broader, and thus, a more daunting area of study. But worthwhile. But what is science in the OZ? Surely it must exist to some extent."

[azoftheoz]

"Of what I would think would be the most general ways. We have lighting and plumbing. We have medical science, especially outside of the palace. There magic has a bit more control than science does. Compared to things I've seen here, I suspect many from here would find it primitive."

She went quiet, looking away. "Especially some of the practice," she said, thinking of Glitch.

[imperial_long]

"But the lighting and the plumbing are accomplished via machines and gravity and pressure and electricity? Or also with some element of magic?"

He guessed at the meaning of the look away, the low voice.

"I assure you barbarism of some stripe or another happens in all worlds."