T : "I don't understand, Deku, what are these things called Runes anyway?"
As Totta played with Seiene's cheeks, she popped a casual question.
But Deku was too busy cooking in the kitchen space to answer her.
In a fit, Totta walked up to him and started hammering her little fists against his thigh.
T : "Deku! Deku Deku Deku Deku Deku Deku Deku Deku Deku!!"
D : "Totta, stop! I'm making lunch!"
But Deku was cold to her response.
Totta sulked, crawled out of the door and searched for a heavy book to stub his toe with
She headed for the return corner, a place for the students to place their perused library books so the librarians could reorganize it all properly.
It was there she noticed a rather interesting sight.
Two students were looking at each other intensely with their faces close, with the green-haired male toying and twirling the locks of blue hair around his finger.
C : "That's so thoughtful. I like a thoughtful man, Loar."
L : "It's not much, but I'll do whatever little I can to help your sister."
Strangely enough, he blue-haired girl did not seem to mind her hair being touched. If anything, she appeared to like the action.
Totta wanted to ignore them, but the contents on the table caught her eye.
It was a particularly attractive book which detailed a singular rune on each page.
T : "Runes! A runebook!"
L : "Oh, er..."
C : "Ah-..."
The couple was clearly startled by Totta's intrusion into their space.
T : "Teach me, teach me! Teach me about the runes!"
Totta begged the couple to teach her the mysteries of the runes. They glanced at each other to confirm their suspicions.
C : "... She's the kid with Deku, isn't she?"
L : "Yeah, she's Mr. Jiel's daughter."
The green-haired boy say up and faced her properly.
L : "You're... Totta, aren't you?"
T : "Yes, I am."
L : "Hoho. So, you're interested in runes, are you?"
He sat upright, while humoring the little girl.
T : "Yeah! There's some things I don't quite understand, and I need to know more about them!"
The blue-haied girl seemed to sense an imminent lecture, and thought ahead.
C : "Loar, do you want some water?"
L : "Ah, yes, please and thank you."
With that she excused herself from the library with two empty water bags.
L : "You've come to the right place, if anything! I've been studying these runes for a long time!"
He picked up the book on the table, and flipped to its very first entry - A Vanaelis rune.
L : "Look carefully at this rune. What do you see?"
T : "It's... A Vanaelis rune?"
L : "Yes, but look at the shape of the rune. What does it resemble?"
She squinted her eyes and struggled to give a good answer.
T : "... A... Person?"
L : "Exactly."
Snapping his fingers, he emphasized on the importance of recognizing the Vanaelis' similarity to a person.
L : "Notice how the runes nearing the edge seem to be skinnier than the middle stem portion, like a root spreading itself out in the soil?"
T : "Uh... Yeah."
L : "That's symbolic of the Vanaelis rune's nature of Recovery. Its roots can be seen as the arms and legs, and the thin parts suggest that they weren't originally there, rather they were regenerated."
Flipping to the next page, he quickly focused on the second rune - A Kaba rune.
L : "What do you think this looks like, then?"
It was weird to describe the rune itself - It looked like a wayward K with a dot above and an unusually long stem. But that could also represent UN, or UH given its bizarre figure.
T : "I... I don't really know."
Loar took out a small piece of charcoal, and scratched a simple figure against the scrapped papyrus to the side. He drew an almost-identical rune, spare for the dot itself, and he began to draw something additional onto it to assist his explanation as a form of visual aid.
He drew flames around the person from a specific angle, and turned the papyrus to show her.
L : "What do you see?"
T : "A person running frantically while he's on fire- ! Kaba runes ignite and combust!"
L : "Exactly. What about this one?"
Loar sketched another familiar-looking rune, one that looked similar to a swastika.
T : "An Uzab rune?"
He slashed across the paper with a zigzag, and showed her the art once more.
L : "Tell me, doesn't it look like someone had been struck by lightning?"
T : "It, it... It does, now that you mention it."
Without pausing at all, he proceeded to draw the figure of a kneeling woman with hands upon her face.
L : "Urdythari's rune was based off of her iconic sobbing figure. Tespi runes were based off of a long-forgotten warlock going insane, and the world around him collapsing and falling inward. Scura runes were based off of Lotz's impression of himself. It's pretty impressive, considering that he's blind."
Instead of telling Totta the answer outright, he led her to the chain of thought that allowed her to derive an answer herself. It was a caliber of teaching Deku would do well to learn from.
L : "To put simply, Totta, runes are manifestations of our ancestors' experiences. The memories of men before us, engraved in symbols that are incredibly easy to understand once you figure out the rune's nature. Did that help?"
T : "Yes, yes it did! Thank you, green man! You're almost as good as Bertund!"
Her limited knowledge of the world could only be sighed upon by the observers of the two. To compare Loar to Bertund was like saying a fish and a mountain were equals; it simply wasn't a fair comparison.
L : "Heh. That's a bit exaggerated. Bertund, now... Hoho. That man... His explanation will blow your mind away. He will say and explain it in such a well-crafted way that you would be able to cast runes right on the spot, even without a scribe or a tool."
That claim was not without precedent.
He quietly recalled the black-haired boy who managed to use Urdythari's rune through sheer image power alone.
L : (... Damn. I really want to fight him and see how far he's come.)
*** ***
*Cozy's Notes : Not much Deku action this time, but hey, next Deku Up! will be nice. You'll see how much love Deku puts into his cooking.*
