Fandom High School

Dream stands before the class, arms folded, Matthew perched on his shoulder.

"This is my very last class at Fandom High, and it is not without regret that I take my leave. I know this class was difficult for many of the humans among you; thank you for being open to other languages, other creatures, other cultures. I hope it will prove useful, or at least interesting, as your lives progress."

"After you turn in your final projects, you may leave, or talk to me or to each other."

Dream went to close the classroom door at that point, and Matthew hopped onto his desk; in sotto voce Raven, the bird added, //Thanks for listening to my boss. I think you guys made him pretty happy. He'll miss you.//

Overhearing some of this, Dream fixed him with a glare, but his lips quirked into a slight smile.

[OOC: Hand in the interview if you got a chance to do one; if not, handwave away. I do need to know what grade your character got on the project by Friday evening so I can get the final grades in. I know courier_gavin is AFK; please let me know if anyone else is.]

Dream looked stern as he handed out the final quizzes of the year to the Creature Languages students.

"Hello. I hope you have all begun work on your creature interviews for your papers on Thursday; see me in my office this afternoon if you have encountered difficulties. You have a quiz today. I wish all of you luck."

The quiz consists of a true/false section, some translations from Shark, Lobster and Monkey, and a writing exercise. It is designed to be completed quickly, so that students can use the rest of class working on their final papers.

[OOC: Handwave yay! Tell me what grade your character got.]

There are books about animals, including some written in creature tongues, piled on every available surface in the classroom.

"Hello," Dream says. "As promised last week, you have today and Thursday to work on your final projects for this class. There will be a final quiz on Monday, May 1, and then the projects are due May 4. They should be short and possibly handwaved accounts of a conversation you had with a creature whose language you have learned this term, and what you learned from them. If this poses a problem for you, please let me know, and I will suggest an alternative assignment."

He nods to a pile of papers teetering on the top of one of the stacks of books. "That should give you some ideas as to what to speak to the creature about. They are suggestions, not mandates."

Possible Topics to Address
1. Most creatures have some natural enemies. Why is that? How does the creature you are writing about feel about his or her enemies?
2. How is the creature's language adapted to its habitat? For example, why is Lobster so different from Spider?
3. What is the role of parents in the creature's culture?
4. What is the creature's favorite work of art by his or her species? Why?
5. What does the creature wish humans understood about him or her?

There is candy and soda for the students, as well as herbal tea.

Dream waits for the students to assemble, then begins his lecture.

"Hello. Today we begin our study of the last animal language we will discuss this semester. It is one that may be perhaps closer to your own tongues than many of the others we have studied -- that of simians, especially monkeys."

Dream cues up a videotaped lecture in the DVD player. "This speaker makes the unfortunately common error of conflating monekys with apes, but it is still a reasonable discussion of the similarities and differences between the uses made of languages by simians, and those by man."

"I also have a handout containing a touch more information about monkeys, and a second handout about squirrel monkeys specifically, such as our own Mr. Nielson."

"Ask questions, should you have them."

There is a rather interesting creature [OOC: The little one, not Kermie!] perched on a parrot lobster stand at the front of class today.

Dream nodded toward him as he passed out vocabulary sheets. "Hello. I enjoyed watching you work on the Lobster folk dance on Thursday. Today, we are going to learn Lobster in more depth. Our guest lecturer is Polly, who was "raised from a fingerling" on a pirate ship."

"Review your vocabulary sheets, then ask Polly questions at will."

Dream appears preoccupied as he hands a quiz to each student upon their entrance to class.

The quiz is ten questions on Raven and Parseltongue, mostly translations.

When most of the quizzes are in, he starts a video.

It's possible Dream may not be entirely recovered from directing the play, but he hides it well as he4 stands before the class.

"Hello. This week, we will study the language of snakes. We'll begin today with a discussion of snake mythology -- human mythology about snakes, though most of it has parallels in the snake culture.

( No, they aren't all on planes. )

Dream passes out a second handout listing additional myths about snakes.

"I would like for each of you to read and think about these stories and choose one as a favorite. For extra credit, imagine it from the snake's point of view."

The DVD player has been set up at the front of the room, and a stack of handouts sits on the table up front, along with coffee, juice and breakfast pastries.

"Hello. I hope you all had pleasant breaks.

We will concentrate on non-mammalian languages for this half of the semester, beginning with birds. There is a documentary in the DVD player; we are watching the episode, "Signals and Songs".

In addition, study the handout about the raven. It will help prepare you for our lecturer on Thursday."

Dream sits at his desk, hands folded.

"You may use this period as a review session for your midterm, which will be on Thursday. There are audio recordings of the Creature languages you have studied available for your individual use, as well as handouts on the languages and culture of each being."

Spider
Dragon (Lockheed)
Rat
Cat

"We are now transitioning to the language of cats.

The cat, also called the domestic cat or house cat, is a small feline carnivorous mammal of the subspecies Felis silvestris catus. Its most immediate pre-domestication ancestor is the African wild cat, Felis silvestris lybica. The cat has been living in close association with humans for at least 3,500 years; the Ancient Egyptians routinely used cats to keep mice and other rodents away from their grain, and also believed that cats were sacred to the goddess Bastet. The history of the domestic cat may stretch back even further, as 8,000-year-old bones of humans and cats were found buried together on the island of Cyprus. Because the domestication of the cat is relatively recent, cats may also still live effectively in the wild, often forming small colonies. The cat's association with humans leads it to figure prominently in the mythology and legends of several cultures, including the ancient Egyptians, Vikings, and Chinese.

The unique sound a small cat makes is written onomatopoeically as "meow" in American English; "meow" or "miaow" in British English; "miaou" or "miaw" in French; "miao" in Mandarin Chinese and Italian; "miau" in German, Spanish, Finnish, Lithuanian, Polish, Croatian, Romanian and Portuguese; "miau" or "מיאו" in Hebrew;"miyav" in Turkish; "mjäu" in Estonian; "mowa'a" in Arabic; "nyaa" or "nyan" in Japanese; "meong" or "ngeong" in Bahasa Indonesia; "ngiau" in Malay; "nyau" in Swahili; "yaong" or "nyaong" in Korean; and various ways in other languages. The cat's pronunciation of this call varies significantly depending on meaning. Usually cats call out to indicate pain, request human attention (to be fed or played with, for example), or as a greeting. Some cats are very vocal, and others rarely call out. Cats are capable of about 100 different vocalisations, compared to about 10 for dogs. And that is only the vocal language that humans can detect; when combined with gestures and other means of expression, cats have a vocabulary and culture that nears that of many humans."

Consider this all the next time you encounter a feline. I am playing a documentary on jungle cats with subtitles, so that you may learn to recognize their language."

"Miss Hopeless-Savage, Miss Matthews -- I will expect you in my office on Wednesday to discuss next Thursday's class."

"You have now learned to speak, if haltingly, in Dragon, Rat and Spider. Those are all difficult tongues, with rich histories and their own quirks -- from the choppy vowels of Spider, to the crooning of Rat, to the rhyming of the dragons. I applaud your sincere efforts to learn.

Today, I would like for each of you to pick a so-called nursery rhyme and translate it into the Creature language of your choice. I trust that you will have no problems in finding appropriate substitutes for words that may not be on your vocabulary sheets."

There is a small white rat sitting on the lectern, while Dream stands to one side. At Dream's nod, the rat addresses the class in English in a voice that is clear, though high-pitched.

"Hey, kiddos. I'm Racso. I'm supposed to help teach you guys Rat. Heh. Might be easier to just teach all us rats English. But whatever, I ain't getting paid for my opinion.

Anyhow, your professor is passing out a vocabulary sheet. You're supposed to try to ask me a question from it in Rat. Go into English if you hafta. But study it over the weekend, 'cause on Monday, you're gonna need to talk to each other in Rat."

He turns to Dream. "Anything else I gotta say?" At the shake of Dream's head, Racso gnaws on the lectern briefly, then addresses the class again. "So who wants to go first?"

[OOC: Racso is loosely borrowed from "Racso and the Rats of NIMH", though my memory of the book is imperfect. Forgive any canon fumbles. Also, work is looking busy, so I may be slow.]

"Hello.

We have our first quiz in class today, covering what you have learned about Spider, Dragon and general creature communications.

After you finish the quiz, you may watch a DVD showing a woman who claims to psychically communicate with animals.

I cannot speak to her psychic gifts, but it is worth noting the extent to which she uses relatively obvious Cat, Horse and Dog in speaking with the animals on the DVD. This may even be unconscious on her part. In any event, watching this communication should help you prepare for Monday, when we will launch our unit on mammals."

Dream waits for most of the class to gather before beginning to speak.

"Hello. There is juice and tea at the front of class, should you want them.

One of the advantages of this class is that we can study some creatures who you would not have access to in the course of your normal lives. Today, the subject is dragons; specifically, Professor Tick's companion, Lockheed, who has graciously agreed to join us on Monday.

As some of you may know, Lockheed has origins in outer space, and looks like a cat-sized version of the dragons that lived in Europe and China in earlier centuries on some versions of Earth. He has purple skin, sharp claws and teeth, two small, curved horns protruding from the back of his head and wings that enable him to fly. He can breathe fire with extreme intensity and is a surprisingly formidable combatant for his size, having once destroyed a nest of Sidri hatchlings and at another time bested a fully armored medieval knight-in-training.

He is an empath, and therefore can understand questions posed to him. However, he rarely hears his own tongue in Fandom, though it is possible for humans to pronounce. The language of Dragon has a storied past; its most interesting feature is that, in truly formal Dragon, all words are spoken in rhyming couplets. However, that is not essential to its speech. I am handing out a vocabulary worksheet; please pair off and practice greeting each other and having simple conversations in Dragon. The rhyming is not necessary at this stage in your studies."

"For class on Monday, please show Lockheed the respect you would any other guest speaker by preparing a question to ask him in advance."

A fishbowl-sized terrarium has been placed on Dream's desk, and students who look closely may notice a small brown arachnid within it, crouched between two rocks.

"Hello.

I have decided to start the term with a discussion with a creature who many of you might be wary of, a Brown Recluse Spider. Like all spiders, brown recluses are arachnids, not insects. This means they have only two body segments instead of three; a fused head and thorax (called a cephalothorax or prosoma) and an abdomen (called the opisthosoma), supported by an exoskeleton composed mainly of chitin.

Spiders also have eight legs (insects have six), no antennae, and their eyes are single lenses rather than compound eyes. Additionally spiders have pedipalps (or just palps), at the base of which are coxae or maxillae next to their mouth that aid in masticating food; the ends of the palp are modified in adult males into elaborate and often species specific structures used for mating.

In short? Do not refer to our guest, who you may call Aunt Nancy, as a "bug."

And do not fear her. Brown recluses bite only when disturbed, and she is bold for her breed. No harm will come to you from her."

As he speaks, Dream reaches into the terrarium and draws out the small brown spider. She crouches on his palm, then waves a foreleg.

//Hey there, children.//

"She is greeting you. I will interpret for the duration of class, but I believe you will pick up on her cues soon enough."

"As always, I am in my office after class."