A School Incident At Home

Lithos was navigating between the tables with a tray of drinks when the inn door opened. He didn't immediately turn to see who had come in; he'd learned better over the years. Instead, he slid the tray onto the surface of one of the long wooden tables, then hopped up onto an empty space on the bench beside it and looked around. The four merchants here -- three men and one woman -- were dwarves by birth as well as citizenship, and he glanced around at them in a quick count to make sure he was oriented.

When he was sure, he began distributing the drinks: "Dark ale, rice wine--" He paused, realizing that two of the men had switched places, and quickly readjusted. "--spiced wine, and al'cul." 

"Very good, lad," said one of the men, "but you've gotten the two of us backwards."

"No, Sir," Lithos said cautiously. "The two of you switched places after you ordered."

The woman laughed, and the man who'd spoken looked sheepish. "Well done, then," he said. "You're one of the Foundingstones, then?" 

"Yes, Sir. Adopted, obviously."

The man across from him laughed. "Adopted, obviously," he repeated. "Still a Foundingstone, though, it seems. Here, lad." He laid a silver on the table. "'Tis my will to buy this round, and the extra is for you, to make up for the mischief these two attempted."

"Thank you, Sir," said Lithos, and hopped back down to the floor before carefully pulling the tray from the table. He wouldn't put it past these four to balance a drink back atop it, or place one to be knocked from the table. 

"A moment," said the man who'd accused him. "When you have a moment, would you fetch me a tumbler of port? We'll share the al'cul around."

"Of course," answered Lithos, and set back off across the common. The trouble with being a dwarf who'd been born a goblin was that he was essentially the same height as the tables. Navigating between them limited his visibility, and the dwarves who'd been born as dwarves had a tendency to bump into him before they noticed him -- most of them accidentally. He'd learned early on to be quick and nimble, and to anticipate their movements as best he could. 

Aside from being tested by traveling merchants, it had been a fairly ordinary night; so when he reached the bar and found Mistress Richvent leaning against it and looking down at him, it came as something of a shock. On the far side of the bar his father looked up quietly and asked, "Failing GSL? How can you possibly be failing GSL?" 

Lithos swallowed, but first things first: "The merchant asked for a tumbler of port after I delivered their drinks." 

Marduk Foundingstone glanced up, found the table with his eyes. "He did, did he? Go on, I'll send your brother over with it. Now tell me, how can you possibly be failing your GSL class?"

Lithos felt a touch of anger rising up in him. Defiantly he looked at his father and then at Mistress Richvent. "Because it's a stupid language," he said, "and you only want me to learn it because I was born a goblin." 

"That's not true," said his father, and Lithos raised an eyebrow. "Not entirely," his father amended. 

"James doesn't have to learn it," he pointed out. 

"Your brother," said Marduk Foundingstone, "does not have your talent for languages."

"Goblin," he said carefully in Elvish, "is a simple squirrel chattering in the imitation of speech."

Mistress Richvent sighed and answered in the same language: "You are a blank scroll filling itself with spilled ink to spurn the recording of knowledge." 

Lithos blinked and swallowed, while his father simply waited. 

Cautiously, in Goblin, he asked: "You say what?"

"I say you are stupid because you want to be smart," she answered, and then she switched back to the Dwarvish that he'd grown up with. "Goblin is a simple language, but only on the surface. Nuance in Goblin isn't a matter of finding exactly the right word, the way it is in Dwarvish or the Common tongue of humans. Yes, the words in Goblin are simple, a basic framework; but they are informed by context and more importantly by tone, and if you haven't figured that out yet then you haven't been paying attention."

Lithos scowled, because the truth was that he hadn't been paying attention. Goblin was a simple language, too simple to hold his attention. He knew the grammar and most of the vocabulary already; what else did he need? Tone, he thought. Tone and context, apparently. "I know the words," he said quietly, defensively.

"Yes," said Mistress Richvent. "You know the words." She paused, then added: "But you don't know how to say them, because you didn't think you should need to learn that."

I shouldn't need to learn that, he thought, but then shoved that thought down because apparently he did. "Tomorrow I listen," he said in Goblin, this time trying to remember how Mistress Richvent pitched her voice when she was telling them what to expect for the next day's lessons. 

"Good," she said in Dwarvish. She studied him for a moment longer, then added: "I will see you tomorrow. We have a guest teacher, and I want you to pay careful attention to him and to his speech."

Lithos nodded, and Mistress Richvent nodded back; then she turned and made her way back out of the inn. 

"You're actually failing Goblin as a Second Language?" asked James, materializing beside him. 

"Shut up," Lithos answered automatically. "You can barely speak Halflingo."

"Yeah," said James, "but I'm not supposed to be the smart one here."

Lithos tipped his head back and looked at the ceiling, then walked past his father and into the kitchens. There was a servant's stair along the left wall; he went up. He knew he was leaving James with the majority of the work in the commons, but he also knew that he wasn't going to be any use down there until he sorted this out in his head. He was too distant, too distracted.

So instead of trying to work, he went to his room to think.