for a human week prompt, what about beau getting her monk langauge abilities and related shenanigans/feels?
‘translate it, caleb, quickly!’
‘it—i do not have it prepared as a spell, it will—ten minutes,’ he tells them, words jumbling in his frustration as he draws out his spellbook and slaps it down onto the stone floor, presses his hand to the carven jagged words like splintered elven they recognise from past interactions as being undercommon.
‘let they who enter here be remembered as champion among champions, confronters of death,’ beau says from behind him.
there is a moment of silence, then,
‘that’s what it says,’ she tells them. her eyes are hidden behind the goggles but her fingers trace over the letters.
‘but how—you don’t read undercommon.’
‘oh beau knows magic now!’ nott shrieks. ‘great work, caleb!’
‘what? no,’ beau snaps, flips nott off. ‘i can’t—i still can’t do that,’
‘oh, well, that’s not his fault, you really should dedicate yourself to your study better.’
they do not need to see beau’s eyes to know that she rolls them.
‘wait—if you didn’t cast anything, how do you know what it says? are you guessing?’ jester asks.
caleb, by this point, has finished his spell and it hits, feels almost like a fog settling across his vision that covers the words, pulling the meaning from them to sit atop the letters.
‘no—that is what it says,’ he tells him with a faint hint of surprise. ‘beauregard?’
‘it’s not a big deal or anything. i just learned it.’
‘yeah. i mean, we were gonna deal with the bright queen for her contracts and stuff and i figured hey, one of us should probably know how to speak their language. literally.’
‘so you just…learned it.’
‘yeah,’ beau says again, more forcefully. ‘what’s your fucking problem, caleb?’
he blinks, blinks away the fog of the spell, and stands. tucks his book away into its holster. ‘no problem. i am just very impressed. it is hard to learn a language, especially if one is not familiar with the root languages. i am very impressed.’
beau grimaces. takes a few steps back. ‘don’t make it weird dude, it’s not a big deal.’
it may be his imagination, but even so, he imagines she is the smallest bit pleased by the praise.
‘to learn a new language?’
beau squints across at him. her goggles are perched atop her forehead, with the hut giving them a faint light by which to see, so the squint is all suspicion.
‘i dunno. a few weeks, maybe.’
‘if you say impressive again, caleb, i’m gonna knock your block off.’
‘same fuckin’ thing,’ she grumbles, but doesn’t move to assault him as she had threatened. ‘it wasn’t that hard. i know elvish and dwarvish so i do know the root languages, actually,’ she tells him, badly mangling his accent as she repeats his words back to him. ‘plus, i mean, it uses a lot of the same phonemes as a lot of other humanoid languages so it’s not nearly as fucked up as deep speech.’
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