The Gold Scroll
Feb. 16th, 2016 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
twilightponyI got back just a few hours ago from my day trip to Canterlot. What Moondancer and Dr. Quest are working on is big. Really big.
This morning, my train ride to Canterlot took a lot longer than anticipated. For some reason the engineer was unable to shake the train into a shorter path. We started out fast enough but halfway there the train was going so slowly that we were just crawling along. Ponies were hopping off the train and trotting the rest of the way to the Canterlot station. I finished the reading I'd brought, and since I didn't want to miss my appointment, I too got off the train. By then the train driver had stopped the locomotive and the brakepony and secondmare were hooking up the express halters to the engine (the conductor was busy with the passengers that were leaving and the engineer and firepony were monitoring the pressure in the boiler). The crew were going to pull it the rest of the way. It was the best solution to getting the locomotive to go fast enough to get back on schedule. I wasn't going to wait. I levitated my bags ahead of me and flew to the landing in Canterlot. Moondancer wasn't there to meet me, she'd left when ponies trotting in earlier had told her about the delay. She left a note on the train station notice board saying to find her in the research archives of the Physical Equinology and Archaeology department of Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, so I went to find her there.
After a bit of running around, getting lost and getting directions, I finally found my way through the labyrinthine stacks and cases of pony artifacts to the cramped office space granted to Dr. Quest down in Sub basement D. There was no one there, so I checked the name on the door. Dr. Quest. Right place, no sign of Moondancer. I went in to wait and looked around for something to read. There was clutter everywhere, but in a cleared place on the desk there was a long glass-topped tray cradling several fragments of an ancient scroll, puzzled together and held down on a velvet bed by delicate crisscrossed threads. FRAGILE was written on a piece of paper at one end of the tray. Bookending the tray at the other end, another note: DO NOT BREATHE ON IT. But that what wasn't why it caught my attention. The scroll was made of gold.
The writing appeared to be in pony runes, like the ones in my Piaffle game, but I couldn't quite make out the sentences. The spelling and words were very strange. I was casting about the room for a lexicon when I heard a soft pop and Moondancer appeared. She was dripping with sweat, panting from exertion and looking more than a bit wild eyed. I thought she was going to pass out. Instead, she pushed pass me without a word, grabbed a quill, ink and paper, and hastily jotted down notes. By the time she put the quill down, she had stopped shaking. Now she just looked very tired. I followed her out into the corridor where she collapsed on a cushion. I sat down on another cushion and waited.
When Moondancer had recovered enough to talk in full sentences, she told me what she had been up to. She was using the Haycartes spell to try and piece together the history stamped on the gold foil fragment I had been looking at, and on other gold scrolls as well. Because it was such an old text, written before the advent of standardization of spelling, the words were written how they sounded. Back then, words were pronounced very differently from how they are pronounced now. Language is fluid and it changes much more than we think, especially if you can go back far enough to make a comparison. Trying to get a bridle on that bronco was Moondancer's first challenge. The other is filling in the gaps.
Haycartes' spell is a good way to get a feel for the entire story in a book. I read therefore I am the book. Or in this case, the ancient scroll. Moondancer has become an expert in the use of the Haycartes spell, but these are broken scrolls and those gaps, in a dialect long forgotten, make getting the whole picture very difficult. Moondancer couldn't be happier. I think she's lost a lot of weight.
I pushed her out of the archives, up a few levels and out into the bright sunshine of Canterlot to buy her a big lunch. Between mouthfuls of mixed hay salad, sweet and sour silage soup, stir-fried hay, alfalfa crackers and green tea, she told me about what was on those gold foil scrolls and what else Dr. Quest had found so far in her excavation site in the San Palomino Desert.
I'll tell you what she said tomorrow.
This morning, my train ride to Canterlot took a lot longer than anticipated. For some reason the engineer was unable to shake the train into a shorter path. We started out fast enough but halfway there the train was going so slowly that we were just crawling along. Ponies were hopping off the train and trotting the rest of the way to the Canterlot station. I finished the reading I'd brought, and since I didn't want to miss my appointment, I too got off the train. By then the train driver had stopped the locomotive and the brakepony and secondmare were hooking up the express halters to the engine (the conductor was busy with the passengers that were leaving and the engineer and firepony were monitoring the pressure in the boiler). The crew were going to pull it the rest of the way. It was the best solution to getting the locomotive to go fast enough to get back on schedule. I wasn't going to wait. I levitated my bags ahead of me and flew to the landing in Canterlot. Moondancer wasn't there to meet me, she'd left when ponies trotting in earlier had told her about the delay. She left a note on the train station notice board saying to find her in the research archives of the Physical Equinology and Archaeology department of Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, so I went to find her there.
After a bit of running around, getting lost and getting directions, I finally found my way through the labyrinthine stacks and cases of pony artifacts to the cramped office space granted to Dr. Quest down in Sub basement D. There was no one there, so I checked the name on the door. Dr. Quest. Right place, no sign of Moondancer. I went in to wait and looked around for something to read. There was clutter everywhere, but in a cleared place on the desk there was a long glass-topped tray cradling several fragments of an ancient scroll, puzzled together and held down on a velvet bed by delicate crisscrossed threads. FRAGILE was written on a piece of paper at one end of the tray. Bookending the tray at the other end, another note: DO NOT BREATHE ON IT. But that what wasn't why it caught my attention. The scroll was made of gold.
The writing appeared to be in pony runes, like the ones in my Piaffle game, but I couldn't quite make out the sentences. The spelling and words were very strange. I was casting about the room for a lexicon when I heard a soft pop and Moondancer appeared. She was dripping with sweat, panting from exertion and looking more than a bit wild eyed. I thought she was going to pass out. Instead, she pushed pass me without a word, grabbed a quill, ink and paper, and hastily jotted down notes. By the time she put the quill down, she had stopped shaking. Now she just looked very tired. I followed her out into the corridor where she collapsed on a cushion. I sat down on another cushion and waited.
When Moondancer had recovered enough to talk in full sentences, she told me what she had been up to. She was using the Haycartes spell to try and piece together the history stamped on the gold foil fragment I had been looking at, and on other gold scrolls as well. Because it was such an old text, written before the advent of standardization of spelling, the words were written how they sounded. Back then, words were pronounced very differently from how they are pronounced now. Language is fluid and it changes much more than we think, especially if you can go back far enough to make a comparison. Trying to get a bridle on that bronco was Moondancer's first challenge. The other is filling in the gaps.
Haycartes' spell is a good way to get a feel for the entire story in a book. I read therefore I am the book. Or in this case, the ancient scroll. Moondancer has become an expert in the use of the Haycartes spell, but these are broken scrolls and those gaps, in a dialect long forgotten, make getting the whole picture very difficult. Moondancer couldn't be happier. I think she's lost a lot of weight.
I pushed her out of the archives, up a few levels and out into the bright sunshine of Canterlot to buy her a big lunch. Between mouthfuls of mixed hay salad, sweet and sour silage soup, stir-fried hay, alfalfa crackers and green tea, she told me about what was on those gold foil scrolls and what else Dr. Quest had found so far in her excavation site in the San Palomino Desert.
I'll tell you what she said tomorrow.
no subject
Date: 2016-02-17 03:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-18 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-17 04:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-18 02:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-17 08:02 pm (UTC)"Language is fluid and it changes much more than we think, especially if you can go back far enough to make a comparison."
Indeed it is. For example, the oldest english document over here, "Beowulf," is quite a strange thing to look at. Here's an excerpt:
"HWÆT, WE GAR-DEna in geardagum,
þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!"
Translated into modern english, this means:
"LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings
of spear-armed Danes, in days long sped,
we have heard, and what honor the athelings won!"
no subject
Date: 2016-02-18 02:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-18 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-02-18 04:30 am (UTC)