#god damn fantasy conlang nerds

[dragonagitator]

Another snippet from my "Modern Girl in Faerun" WIP.

[Context: It's my author self-insert's second evening in Faerun and I haven't told them where I'm from yet. We're in camp and I'm attempting to write down everything I can remember about the game into a blank journal purchased at the Grove.]

"GOD DAMN MOTHERFUCKING COCKSUCKING SON OF A BITCH PIECE OF SHIT!" I exclaimed as I splattered ink all over the page again.

"Are you quite alright?"

I startled at the sound of Gale's voice from behind me.

"Gale," I pleaded. "Could you please show me how to write with this fucking thing? Pens back home are different."

[need to research how to write with an old timey quill pen and write about the actual lesson here]

"...and with those strokes you can write any letter, for example," he began writing out a sentence on the page, reading out loud as he wrote, "Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow."

Written on the page was

"Um... what language is that?" I asked, a sinking feeling in my stomach.

"...Commonspeech?" Gale seemed confused by my question. "The Calant dialect, to be specific."

"And is that the language we're speaking right now?" I continued with trepidation.

"Yes; what language did you think we were speaking?" he inquired.

"Oh no," I exclaimed as the realization hit, "I'm illiterate."

"Illiterate? But you weren't before?" Gale asked with concern. "Do you think perhaps the tadpole--"

"No," I cut him off. "What I mean is I'm illiterate in whatever THAT is," I gestured at his foreign squibbles. "I'm speaking English, and written English looks nothing like that."

"How fascinating! Every other dialect of Commonspeech I'm familiar with uses the Thorass alphabet," Gale mused before continuing sympathetically, "I suspect you must be even farther from your home than I am from mine."

"You have no idea," I laughed bitterly, then muttered "god damn fantasy conlang nerds" under my breath.

"Pardon?"

"Nothing, never mind," I said and started hurriedly packing up my writing supplies as I fought back tears of frustration and embarrassment.

"'Thorass alphabet,' huh?" I continued brightly, trying to put on a brave face. "I'll probably need to impose on your tutoring skills some other evening to learn how to read, but for now, I think you've shown me enough that I can at least write down all my notes in English. It's probably for the best that I'm the only one who will be able to read them, anyway. So um... thankyouverymuchforyourhelpandhaveagoodnight."

I walked away quickly before Gale could see me cry.

Useless! I can't even fucking read!

As always, criticism is very welcome.