Pause for Effect

Are you sure you don’t need help carrying things? I’d hate for you to fall again.

Well, if you’re on your way to the Languages classroom, a second pair of hands could be appreciate but I don’t want to make you go out of your way.

“I’ll take your word for it. Well, I should get going, Hufflepuff has a practice in an hour.”

“Goodbye Mr. Darling. Good luck at practice.”

“I can imagine.”

“And really, our modern sense of only one correct way to spell a word is really artificial, so you get all kinds of interesting spellings based on the way the word sounds. Then again, how do we know how the words actually sounded? Each part is full of questions like that.”

“Huh. You should probably work on that, then. Students might not respect you too much if they thought you were too much of a walking accident or something.”

“I've been here for awhile, usually they listen to me well enough inside the classroom, but I don’t think I’ll ever have Professor Calhoun’s level of respect among people. I can’t do intimidation.”

Stop fucking being you, it’s fucking annoying.

Oh, um...well I’m not going to stop being me, regardless of how annoying it is to you.

“That’s definitely not an everyday occurrence.”

“Exactly! And I mean, of course the languages have their differences, but whenever you start to look at dead languages it can get a little tricky.”

“Nah, they don’t like to hired dead people to animate stuff, besides…it’s sort of depressing now, you know? Anyway, you keep at that book stuff, I don’t get it but I’m sure it’s wicked.”

“How so? And you don’t have to worry on that front, I’ve been working at this for years, I have no desire to stop now. Not when its just getting exciting.”

“It’s Corona, actually,” she says quickly, “I hope you don’t get any bruises from that fall…”

“Right! Right I heard about that. Sorry.” At her comment her took stock of himself, trying to check, before scrambling to his feet. “I don’t think so, or at least none that I notice yet which comes out to about the same thing.”

“That’s pretty impressive, I used to be super into drawing when I was human, I wanted to be an animator…I thought it would be cool to animate my sisters stories and then I could rope John into it somehow too. Oh well, that’s sort of impossible now, take it from me, you have to go after things before it’s too late and say no to drugs professor.” he gave the older gentleman a serious look, “I know they look fun and they are as fun as they look but they ruin everything. Also, your mess is stressing out my brother, I’d tell you to clean up but like, it really isn’t even that bad and I think he could benefit from existing in a place like that. Anyway, these pictures look more book of kells-ey to me but not. You know, in that they’re super intricate but the stylization is very much so not dark ages British? Do you know why that is?”

Milo stared at Michael as he rambled, slowly filing away the separate threads to the conversation and the bits he wanted to reply to. “If you wanted to be an animator before, why stop? You’re still going to need some way to support yourself after, and you’d have plenty of time to practice. I’ll keep that in mind about the drugs. I know John doesn’t appreciate my organizational system, but there is actually a system. Even if it sin’t his. I’m working on it...when I remember. No! That’s the brilliant part of them. You can find historical similarities, but no exact replicas of this style of artwork. If I could finish translating, maybe I could identify when this book is from and why the art work looks this way, but I haven’t accomplished it yet. It’s only a matter of time though!”

“It does make seeing obstacles a bit more difficult.”

“Sometimes I can manage to do both at once, but when you get excited about something, what are you supposed to do? I mean, how often do you figure out that a word you thought was in sumerian is actually thessalonian which is why it didn’t make sense before?”

“You would think…but thinking has a funny way of leaving a man more lost than when he started and more confused than when he began.”

Milo stood up and looked at the student, curious about the comment. “Ah, but if you don’t think at all, you may be confident but you never have a chance to discover if you’re wrong or new ways to be right.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

“Yeah...supposedly not everyone trips over their own feet as much, but I have yet to see it.” Milo picked up all his papers and stood up again, smiling slightly.

“…that was only slightly painful to watch. Did you it your head?”

“I suppose that’s reasonable enough…still, try to be mindful of your surroundings, it would be just awful if someone murdered or kidnapped you while you were distracted.”

“Um...murdered? That’s, uh, a bit extreme don’t you think? I mean, not that many people actually get murdered just for being distracted I would think.”

“Oh no! Are you okay?”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine Miss Gothel, nothing to worry about.”