fandomhigh | Creature Languages, 1/09

As the last Classics students filter out, Dream waits for most of the Creature Languages students to have taken their seats before he begins to speak again.

"Hello, and welcome to class. I hope this will be an enlightening experience for all of you. It is based on a premise that many of you may be ignorant of; all beings have a language. While humans may not be physically equipped to speak or understand them in the wild, so to speak, studying those tongues allows greater communication throughout the environment. This is especially true when it comes to animals that are feared by humans, such as snakes or spiders, and for that reason I plan to concentrate on those languages.

Before class starts, please review the class rules. I would like each of you to sign them at the bottom and turn them in to me. This will serve as our contract for the semester.

After that is done, I would like for each of you to stand and tell the class a little about yourself, including any languages you have studied before, either creature or human-based, and any particular goals for this class. In addition, I am in my office after class for any questions or concerns."

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Dream is here if you need to talk to him.

"Hey. I'm Jake Gavin junior. I am a junior too," he added after a brief sip of his coffee. "From before I speak English - believe it or not - French, German, Italian and Swiss-German. I know a bit of other Swiss dialect as well, and random stuff in Russian, Korean, Japanese, Spanish and Arabic. My dad travels a lot," he explained. "I'm here because, well, I thought it could be useful. Like in talking to or at least understanding the new Librarian."

Dream looks bemused at this recitation. "I have heard about the Librarian. He is an interesting choice for this school. Welcome to class, Mr. Gavin."

Paige signs in and hands over over her signed copy of the class rules.

"I'm Paige Matthews, sophomore I took Cat last semester and I took a French at my old school, other than that it's pretty much just English for me."

"Thank you." Jake grinned and leaned back to listen to his classmates.

Blair grinned and bounced as he stood to talk. "I'm Blair Sandburg, and this is my first time being in a class at a school. I've traveled all over the world during my life, living with all sorts of different people. I speak a little hodge podge of a few languages, mostly enough to converse with the people when I lived there." Blair waved his hands around as he talked, continuing to bounce.

"French, Spanish, German, Swahilli, a bit of Quechan and Hindi and sign language." Blair bounced. "I learned the sign language to talk to monkeys! But I know it's not anything close to what they probaly talk like normally so I'm excited to learn how to talk to them! Oh! And elephants and dogs and possibly snakes...but I'm not sure about spiders because I don't really care for them and if I had to talk to them before smushing them...it would be really bad karma."

"I'm Walter Dornez. I'm a freshman. I'm here from London. I don't speak a bunch of languages the way Jake does. I'm taking the class because my employer wanted me to have the sort of education I couldn't obtain in London, and Creature Languages definitely fits the bill."

Jake blinked and wondered how much coffee Blair had had.

Jake held his coffee up towards new dude in greeting.

"Thank you for continuing your studies, Ms. Matthews."

"That's interesting, Mr. Sandburg. Thank you. We'll probably do a unit on primate languages.

I'm not sure about the karma of killing spiders."

"I doubt you could study this subject at any other school in the waking world, Mr. Dornez. Thank you for joining us."

Walter nodded back to Jake and wondered vaguely if he'd ever found his disappearing boyfriend.

"Hello, I am Pippi Longstockings. I'm from Sweden were I lived in Villa Villekulla, that's my Papa's house. I spent most of my life sailing around the world with my Papa on his ship until he was washed overboard. But he didn't drown, he's to fat for that. Instead he floated to a tropical island. I had to rescue him when he was captured by another group of pirates who wanted our money. But we're all okay now... This is Mr. Neilson. He's a monkey. Is it okay that I brought him along?"

Mr. Neilson bows to the class and doffs his hat to Dream.

"Cool!" Blair bounced happily and sat down. "Yeah, I know it's probably bad karma killing them anyway. They just crawl up and over and all those legs and..." Blair shuddered. "But it's got to be way worse if you can talk to them and like know their names and that they have kids or something, don't ya think?"

Jake looked over at him. "You think spiders have names?"

"Hi, I'm Skank Zero Hopeless-Savage, Zero's fine. I speak English and Chinese and a bit of French, as well as Cat, which I learned last semester and through, um, unexpected practical experience. I'm here because, well, it's not exactly a class you see every day, is it? I want to take advantage of it while I can get it, y'know?"

Blair smiled and shrugged. "I don't know. But maybe, I mean, what would they call each other if they didn't have names?"

Xander signed in and stood, shifting a little uncomfortably - which you could put down to the standing up in class thing, or the still-slightly-damp-shirt thing, and probably collect your winnings whichever way you bet.

"Xander Harris. Who usually doesn't smell quite so much like Folgers Dark Roast, but there was a thing in Shop Class today. I've taken about two years of French, which means I can just about say where's the bathroom, do you sell Twinkies, and my French is really crappy, please don't hit me. I'm from Sunnydale, California, where... well, let's just say we meet a lot of creatures. Some of them are even not trying to eat us. I figured it might be useful to be able to tell that without getting in fang-range." He sat down, then added, "Also, I have a pet frog. I'm not sure I want to know what he's actually saying to me sometimes, though."

"An excellent question," Dream interjects. "And one of the things we will discuss is how different beings speak to each other specifically. In the case of spiders, for example, they have family names, but not individual names. Dogs go entirely by scent. And so on."

Dream raises a hand in greeting to Mr. Neilson before addressing Pippi. "He is more than welcome in this class, Miss Longstocking. I'm glad both of you could join us today."

Dream smiles. "It's good to have you back, Miss Hopeless-Savage. Did you get to talk to your college about the question you asked me yesterday?"

"Whoa." Blair scrambled for his notebook and pens, writing furiously.

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Creature Languages, 1/09

Creature Languages, 1/09

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