(no subject)
Nearly a week had passed since Alcuin had added Daniel Jackson's name to the drawing he'd pinned up on the wall in his house. He'd named it in his head the Tree of Loss, and tried to think of it now as a sort of memorial. But it was the worst sort of irony that it wasn't very long ago at all that Alcuin had confessed his fear that Daniel, as one of the last people left on the island who truly cared about him, too would disappear. And for the second time in such a short period, Alcuin fell into melancholy.
He needed distraction, and the notes that Nikola left him with challenges and tests were a welcome one. The latest contained two, even though they may not both have been intentional - the first, a circuit to complete, and the other, an inscription in a copy of Nikola's book, written in a tongue Alcuin did not know.
The circuit he set aside for now (though he knew he could make good on the test), and he concentrated on translating the text. He was unsurprised when he did not find a Serbo-Croatian dictionary on the bookshelf; that simply would have been too easy. What he found instead was what appeared to be a translation of the complete works of Shakespeare into the language. Which was a rather more roundabout way of learning a language, but Alcuin felt up to the challenge.
He had both books - the one with the inscription and the Shakespeare - laid out on the table in the kitchen as he sipped tea and flipped through the latter. He had always had a prodigious memory, and his familiarity with Shakespeare was such that he felt that he was beginning to learn a fair amount of vocabulary.
He needed distraction, and the notes that Nikola left him with challenges and tests were a welcome one. The latest contained two, even though they may not both have been intentional - the first, a circuit to complete, and the other, an inscription in a copy of Nikola's book, written in a tongue Alcuin did not know.
The circuit he set aside for now (though he knew he could make good on the test), and he concentrated on translating the text. He was unsurprised when he did not find a Serbo-Croatian dictionary on the bookshelf; that simply would have been too easy. What he found instead was what appeared to be a translation of the complete works of Shakespeare into the language. Which was a rather more roundabout way of learning a language, but Alcuin felt up to the challenge.
He had both books - the one with the inscription and the Shakespeare - laid out on the table in the kitchen as he sipped tea and flipped through the latter. He had always had a prodigious memory, and his familiarity with Shakespeare was such that he felt that he was beginning to learn a fair amount of vocabulary.