[Amalthea.]

Every day seemed to be a repeat of the previous for almost as long as Amalthea could remember at this point, but then that was hardly a surprise now was it? For a girl who wanted so much to make her family proud she'd yet to really find a way in which to do it, or even just something to fill her days with in general. It was sad was what it was, and at times she almost felt jealous of her siblings because they must've been doing so much better for themselves than she was. After all Thea hardly ever saw any of them so around so the obvious answer must be that they'd found ways to occupy themselves, that or else she had accidentally managed to become a recluse despite her youth. Standing, stretching, the youth would let out a short yawn before contemplating just where to go to rectify her accidental seclusion.

And yet despite deciding to change that, to seek out someone (anyone!) to spend the morning with in the end Amalthea would somehow find herself in one of her new favorite places to be instead; a place she found even more interesting than the strange castle whose very idea she loved. No, this place was far more intriguing to her and with every visit to the hollowed out tree her curiosity only seemed to grow and Thea couldn't help but hope that one of these days she'd learn to understand the things carved within it or find someone else who could. Although, her face would screw up in thought, maybe what they'd left within was nothing more than gibberish created by someone with too much time to waste. Even if it really was nothing (not that she actually believed that; there was too much there to be nothing more than worthless scribbles), she still wanted to know that for sure.

Finishing what was sure to be the first of several rounds within the library the girl would come to rest against the peeling bark of its home as she stared off into space pondering just who she could ask about the place. Surely one of her parents would know something about it, right? Or else they'd know someone who else who did. But...she didn't really want to bother them with something that was  so trivial compared to everything else they probably had to deal with. No, she would sigh as he head fell back against the tree, this was going to be something she had to figure out for herself it looked like.

[Gaven]

“You’re the spitting image of the Queen, but I’m sure you hear that a lot,” Gaven’s playful voice axed the silence that was becoming so oppressive here. Libraries were usually places of solitude and silence, but he was an interpreter not a librarian. He leaned against a tree across from the young wolf, legs all…the way they were, too long for the comfort of the wolves and casually crossed at the ankle. “I had a feeling someone was poking around here. Little did I know it would be you.”

They did not know each other but Gaven spoke as though they did, if only to be amusing. Today he didn’t wear the mask and his golden eyes grinned down at her. One hand held a dark stone tablet loosely in front of him, the carved writing turned towards his body as he nearly threatened to drop it with his lazy grip. He was possibly the furthest thing from professional in that moment, but he was non-threatening, almost affably nonchalant. His attitude had purpose, well-practiced until it was second nature, but only her response would affirm him of his success or failure.

“I’m Gaven, the Starreaver, and your Lorekeeper,” The elf introduced himself with a slight nod of the head. “And you’re curious. Maybe we can sate your appetite?”

[Amalthea.]

Maybe, most definitely, if the girl had been paying more attention to her surroundings the voice wouldn't have seemed to come out of nowhere and caused her to all but flail back into awareness. An oh so articulate, "Huh? was her first reaction though it was quickly followed by a ducked head as their words sunk in. "I, well, not really?" Because Mother was beautiful and amazing, and she was just...Thea. Why would anyone want to compare them like that? Her attention was soon distracted from the comparison however and she instead simply blurted out, "What are you?" Amalthea would allow a brief frown then, maybe that wasn't something you were actually supposed to ask...Oh well, it was too late now.

Now introductions she could do without quite as much awkwardness and it was sure to show in how she straightened up before offering a polite, "I'm Amalthea." Though after a small amount of debate she'd tack on, "Some people call me Thea though." Her eyes would quickly flicker back toward the item in his hands, though Thea would hold herself back from trying to sneak forward and take a peek at it. "So does that mean you can actually understand that, or well, any of this?" one paw would raise to motion around them. The girl would barely manage to hold back a snort at her own hopefulness; she was never that lucky after all.

Her head would nod along eagerly - she was so, so very curious about it all. "Can you, would you maybe, be able to tell me about it?" Though it went unsaid the wag of her tail and unconscious leaning forward had to show just how much she wanted Gaven to teach her.

[Gaven]

A grin widened on his face as the young wolf jolted in surprise. He was allowed the luxury of thinking it was funny only because she didn’t immediately snap around and bare her teeth. He supposed of all the wolves he met in Gemini, the ones related to Serrate were the mildest in manner. At least, until lurking dark things reared up somewhere in the dark crevices of their minds. Luckily a bit of surprise didn’t push the wolf before him into a blind rage as far as he could tell from her demeanor. She mostly seemed confused and curious when she saw him.

“Huh, I’m surprised. It seems so obvious. I suppose I am known for my astute observations if nothing else.”

"What are you?"

He put a finger to his chin as if considering the question, eyes narrowing momentarily, “I’m an elf, I think…or am I a wolf? I get those two things confused sometimes. Regardless, we’re not so different, even if I don’t look like you on the outside. I could be dangerous, but to you I’m not. Not without reason.

She politely offered her name and Gaven nodded his head in grateful response. “Amalthea, a lovely name for a lovely, intelligent creature. It’s a good sign you’re full of questions. Never be sorry for that.”

He noticed her trying to peer at the tablet and without hesitation turned it outward so she could see the scrawled pictographs of the spirit-touched (hellions) herself. These were no great secret, as far as Gaven was aware, but no one else had put time into studying them so he supposed if only one person could read them it did seem like a bit of a secret. He wasn’t closed off to the idea of sharing, however.

“A bit. Admittedly codebreaking was never my forte, but I am an interpreter, and this isn’t the most difficult language to crack once you understand how language works and spend the time to decipher it,” he explained. “My people don’t have much of our written history left to us, but it is a good way of storing information as long as it doesn’t become destroyed and forgotten.”

"Can you, would you maybe, be able to tell me about it?"

“Mm-hm. Before Gemini was here, what you call ‘hellions’ called this land home. They kept records of the history of their pack. It includes things as inane as records of the bloodlines, to historic battles for territory,” Gaven began. “I’m…not the first choice as a teacher on this. Basically, words have meaning and then you can make physical symbols that represent those words.”

Gaven wrenched a slender branch off of a nearby tree and plucked a leaf off of it and then held it slightly in front of him to show Thea as though she may have never seen such an object before in her life.

“Leaf.” He spoke to her in her wolf’s tongue. Then he took the stick and sketched a swirling pattern in then ground that somewhat resembled a leaf when looked at a certain angle. “A symbol for a leaf. Just like a sentence I can put other symbols around it to express a thought or idea. That way I can communicate with others without having to be physically present with them. Useful, if you need your ideas to last longer than your natural lifespan.”

He began sketching more strange symbols around the pictograph for ‘leaf’, all in the dead tongue of the hellions, though he knew Thea would unlikely be able to translate them. He was also quickly reminded of how awful his handwriting was; even pictographs didn’t save how shaky and unaligned his writing was. He smiled to himself.

“It’s difficult starting out, but once you parse the meaning of certain symbols it gets much easier. Sometimes all you need is a singular context clue to crack the puzzle of the whole sentence,” Gaven said before tossing the stick aside. “Luckily a lot of the pictographs are self-exclamatory here. The most difficult things to translate are names. Reading: an incredibly boring, immensely useful skill to have. What more were you wanting to know?”

[Amalthea.]

Her shoulders would rise in a sort of half shrug at his words, though in some ways she felt as though her mind was only slowly comprehending all his words. Maybe it was an off day? Yeah, she'd go with that for now although Amalthea would certainly perk up as he continued on, only to interject with a thoroughly unimpressed look, "I'm pretty sure you're not a wolf." And though it was tempting to wave a paw back and forth as examples, the girl would somehow manage to resist it even though hello not at all alike here. "Everyone can be dangerous," probably anyway, " 'm not scare of you though," she would assert just in case there was any question about that.

"Thank you," flattery she thought, but even she didn't know if it would have any real affect on her yet. "My questions might get annoying though, I'm pretty sure of it. I mean they might just go on, and on, and...on," the girl would finish flatly at best.

Not difficult? Amalthea would let out an undignified snort at that, "It looks kind of difficult to me," but what did she know? Nothing yet she supposed. Her head would tilt this way and that as she followed one symbol to the next, pondering Gaven's other words. "So how do you make sure it doesn't get destroyed? Anyone could just walk in and try to break it," briefly, Thea's eyes would flicker to and fro as though at any minute someone might appear to shatter the tablet before she managed to talk herself out it - they'd lasted this long already, surely no one was suddenly lurking about to destroy them now.

Quickly enough, however, she'd settle down to listen to his explanations though she couldn't help but interject from time to time. "Hellions," now where had she heard that word before...oh! "Like some of my family might be maybe?" Not her, she was so completely normal in every way she could think of, but some of her siblings looked differently. And then as she looked between the leaf and Gaven's sketch, "So, they just tried to draw whatever they meant." Her nose would wrinkle up curiously after a brief moment of thought, "But some things don't have real things like them so how do you even start there?" Like, there was no Amalthea out there that she knew of so what would they do draw a picture of her and hope someone figure it out? Quietly she'd murmur more to herself than him, "There's got to be a better way of doing things like that..."

And oh, wasn't that the big question? With an almost delight shrug she'd proclaim, "Anything and everything! I just want to learn...everything really."

[Gaven]

Amalthea made her astute assessment that he was no wolf, but he could be dangerous. Gaven gently bit his lower lip, pinning it under a long eyetooth as he considered her words and the certainty that supported them. Maybe he wasn’t a wolf, but he was close, wasn’t he? Even if she hadn’t noticed it yet; it would come out in time.

“Well, at least one of us knows what’s going on,” he relented on the first point. On the second he added: “Wise words from someone so young.”

Thea didn’t take to him trying to stroke her ego, her gratitude weighed with hesitation of unknown origin. Her doubt in herself was as physically present in the way she spoke of her questions that it could be a physical person that stood amongst them and bore down on her with a hypercritical eye. Where had she learned to think like that? Certainly not from her mother. The Starreaver chalked it up to these sorts of things being innate. Maybe she felt she needed a reason to own confidence.

"My questions might get annoying though, I'm pretty sure of it. I mean they might just go on, and on, and...on.”

“Mmm, maybe. I think I have the patience for it. You aren’t the first and soon there will be less of them and one day you will know what to say when someone asks you many, many, many, many, many questions,” Gaven teased. “That is how this whole thing works, really. You learn so you can teach others.”

So it began.

"So how do you make sure it doesn't get destroyed? Anyone could just walk in and try to break it.”

It was Gaven’s turn for a lackadaisical shrug of his shoulders. The question seemed so casual and it begged for other questions to follow behind it in a neat procession, but the answer was complicated. “We can’t. Not really. Even if no one tries to break them, consider that all things are subject to the entropy of time. Living things die and rot and even stone is eroded. It will be millions of wolf-generations before these slates are washed clean though, so we will do our best to protect them in the meanwhile.”

"Hellions, like some of my family might be maybe?

“Exactly.”

The young she-wolf thought hard about the implications of written languages, face contorting for a brief moment as she pondered. Gaven watched her with a fixed smirk.

"But some things don't have real things like them so how do you even start there?"

“Make them up?” he laughed, not at her in particular, but the honesty of his answer. “That’s the fun thing about language and…well…everything. Really.”

The Starreaver glanced at his marks in the dirt and looked over at Amalthea. He could admit she was filled with a natural curiosity, a scientific mind, a gift for learning. Maybe even in ways that he had not. He was a mere storyteller and he was good at speaking but that was where his natural talents regarding matters of the mind ended.

“Perhaps you could become a Whisper someday. It could be a good start for you,” Gaven told her. “The Whispers are supposed to be helping with the library but they also do-“he gestured vaguely at nothing with his hand-“diplomatic stuff, sometimes. It’s mostly been the diplomatic stuff. You wolves are insufferably gregarious. It’s difficult to find help with the Library. It’s here though and you are welcome to peruse it, rank or not.”