[HORSE]

[bloodyashes]

[There is no text in this message. All there are are some drawings of rather strange creatures. After some time, a drawing of a completely different creature is scribbled into one corner.

However, anyone in or passing near Dorm 25 will be able to hear a soft argument between Asch and Murtagh (oneformisery) along the lines of "That's not a horse, it's some kind of monster." "Of course it's a horse! Do you think I'm making this up?"]

Comments

[angel_of_death]

[Finally back in his dorm room bed for a rest, Walter opened his notebook for a glance at things that had happened since his last foray into the world of writing.

He hadn't expected to be greeted by a lot of drawings. They sure seemed to be sparking quite the conversation, but were they really relevant? With a sigh, the butler took up his pencil, jotting down a brief message in his usual cursive handwriting.]

I'm going to pretend this is a morale boosting exercise.

[humble_scholar]

[Thancred's handwriting...is honestly a little idiosyncratic when translated to English; it's very neat but it's angled weird.]

It's educational! We're learning about each other's varying worlds and wildlife.

[angel_of_death]

Is it because of that time all sorts of wildlife started showing up with people?

[humble_scholar]

Apparently there are some here who have never even heard of horses before.

And as usual, a great many who have never heard of chocobos.

[bloodyashes]

Our horses are different.

[humble_scholar]

So I see!

I wonder if it's some strange faculty of whatever effect allows us to understand each other or merely an even stranger quirk of convergent evolution in linguistics that your world uses the same word for riding beasts as our word for a completely different animal.

[FOUND THE (Limsan) (Fake) SHARLAYAN]

[angel_of_death]

[Unseen to the two exchanging words, Walter sinks a little lower into his mattress, youthful voice grumbling about grown people acting like children.]

If it's that much of a bother, label them differently. Use the place they are from as well as whatever you call them. It's really only important if they're dangerous or they're edible, anyway.

[bloodyashes]

[Asch's handwriting is a little less neat than it was in earlier replies; bringing up Van tends to do that to him.]

It was the only paper I had available.

[Not going to admit that he had no idea this would happen, nope.]

[angel_of_death]

I'm sure some can be tracked down if you're in need of it.

[bloodyashes]

I didn't expect to have to sketch livestock. It probably won't come up again.

[And if it does, well, this method proved that Dist can be useful for something?]

[angel_of_death]

Are any of them edible or dangerous? Since you've gone and drawn them already.

[bloodyashes]

You could eat a horse in an emergency, but the taste isn't great. Don't even try fighting a uniceros, they're plenty powerful enough to overwhelm most single fighters, but they generally keep to themselves.

[angel_of_death]

The horses of my world look a lot like this [Here he drew an arrow up to Thancred's drawing.] with some differences between breeds. They have flat teeth and aren't dangerous like monsters, but they can kick. They're edible.

[humble_scholar]

...Technically our horses don't have sharp teeth outside of stories, unless you manage to find a Nightmare of some sort, but I did hear the stories long before I had ever seen one.

Chocobos are edible, although that's... usually a matter of desperation in most places.

[angel_of_death]

[Walter takes a moment to look up the page to see what a chocobo is. Looks like a large bird to him. An oddly proportioned one, at that.]

Same thing goes for horse meat where I'm from.

Hey, do you think the flying deer here are edible? I saw some large wings getting roasted over a fire in the market.

[humble_scholar]

It was perfectly good meat; not too far from a hammerbeak or a zuu, maybe a little more red-meat quality to it.

[angel_of_death]

I don't know what a hammerbeak or a zuu is, but that's good to know. Nothing odd happened after you ate it?

[humble_scholar]

They're both large cloudkin - hammerbeaks are flightless and are a fairly common hazard around Thanalan. Zu are larger and more rare, we usually only see them if one of them strays in from the western seas.

[angel_of_death]

[So... they were like birds. Or at least that was what Walter gathered from the words on the page. Why else describe something as flightless?]

So your hammerbeaks are dangerous, too. But still, there wasn't anything odd about the deer meat, was there? I heard the last time around that some of the monsters used to be people, but I've no clue if the deer are as they originally were or if they were something else before.

Contagious monsters are a [There's a short pause where he struggles for a suitable term to use, then opts to use the one above to save the time.] common hazard I've dealt with in the past.

[humble_scholar]

The deer seem to be local wildlife - they've usually behaved like large predators, and the girl who was bonded to one last cycle handled it as an animal. I wouldn't try to eat the ones that climb the walls, though from what I've managed to glean of the way things work, I don't know if it would be contagious the way some other things might be.

[angel_of_death]

That's very good to know. Thank you.

[Now he can go and kill one without being too concerned about potentially cursing whoever or whatever he gives the meat to, himself included.]