towerofanimus | It's all in the knowledge of ages within the pages of time. (Open)

Characters: Elian Zigmarl (ou), Ishtar (au1), Ruler (ou), and YOU
Setting: Library
Format: Anything works for me.
Summary: Elian promised French lessons to Ruler, but before he starts, he's doing some educating of his own.
Warnings: None

Elian's feet swung back and forth while he sat at a desk in the library. He seemed relatively happy to finally have rested and confident that he could teach French. Small hands held up the book written entirely in French. He smiled and turned the page. The French Parodies of the Wayward Soldier wasn't exactly a reference book but it did make reading interesting for someone that was having trouble reading the language.

He giggled at few of the passages, laughed at others and certainly each page offered something new. Happy with his selection, he sat that one aside for the lesson and picked up another. The clone was acting more and more human each day. It was a personal growth and the step in the right direction. All that was left to do was to wait.

((OOC: Feel free to start a thread. Anyone is welcome!))

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Now that Gaara said it, Elian smiled gently in response. He was glad that he didn't miss something and that it was true now that they came from completely separate worlds. It was a small bit of satisfaction knowing the truth one step at a time.

In English, he responds slowly. "I am from an island called The Lost Ground. The village is called Muraji. It is more city than village. The title is too long."

He half wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of political names that often come along with the territory for special financial reason. This was all part of the lesson to not only learn a little bit more about each other, but for Gaara to learn more through the gentle push of the challenge.

Island… Village… Title…

While Elian was speaking, he wrote down the words that he didn’t understand, trying to spell them to the best of his phonetic knowledge. He misspelled the first two; hopefully, Elian would be able to decipher what he meant to transcribe.

“These words,” he turned the notebook around and showed the page to the other, “what is their… What… do they… mean?”

Elian corrected the spelling under the words for Gaara's reference. He opened one of the books he had to a page that showed an island. "This is an island. It is a little piece of land surrounded by water." Of course none of this is said with a hint of impatience or distraction.

To Elian, this was the part he enjoyed the most. Showing things to people that didn't understand it, information was his thing no matter how small it seemed. He gives Gaara a moment before he addresses the second word, Village.

Again, he took a book, opened it up to show a village full of people working a farm, tending to livestock and building a home. "This is a village."

His small chubby finger pointed to different points in a slow succession as he said the words. "The people work together to live and grow. Some take care of crops, animals and build houses. Some take care of the children. Some make the food they eat. They live together in peace like a family." Ideally, they would, but that could be saved for another time.

The last word, title would take a little longer to explain to some. Elian came up with a simpler explanation.

"Title is an easy way to find a leader or place." Elian had to make sure that it was kept simple just for this reason of learning. The use of complicated words were kept at a minimum. Still, he enjoyed teaching Gaara and it showed.

He took the misspelling in stride, copying down the correct forms of the words in his notebook – followed by a phonetic spelling using familiar characters, to help him remember.

“Island…” he repeated softly, and then nodded to show that he understood. Just for good measure, he also repeated a few other words that he recognized, “Land. Wa-ter.”

He blinked down at the picture of a village. It was a place that housed farmers? Perhaps an agricultural kind of setting. Though Suna was also a village, as well as Konoha, he couldn’t make the connection, foreign language-wise.

“Vil-lage…”

He understood a few of the words, and not the others. The keywords that caught his attention gave him some understanding.

Gaara asked his next question in his native language, “Why does this type of location only utilize farmers? They seem to lack military forces.”

Leader… Place? He shook his head and replied in English, “I do not understand.”

Elian was already impressed with Gaara's progress which really was a lot faster than he had anticipated. The questions made him nod. He chose to respond in Japanese this time, and tried to match Gaara's dialect. "Leader is General, king, chief, place is where we are."

The questions regarding the type of village, Elian decided that it was better to explain in small chunks. "Some villages only farm, some raise soldiers. They balance each other out."

In the past, whenever he had made mistakes, his father was quick to punish him. Too many failures rendered someone useless and equated death. This was the mindset Gaara had grown up with, and it definitely wasn't easy to discard.

His face brightened a little with recognition, and he nodded. He tried to speak a sentence using his new vocabulary; "I am a leader. I am... a title?"

"Sol-dier," he repeated, and then looked down at his notebook. It sounded like a familiar word... ah, there it was. "Soldiers... fight. Soldiers are like... shinobi."

Elian nodded his head with a small smile. Elian wasn't the type of taskmaster that would punish students for simple mistakes that were easy to correct through practice. It wasn't that kind of learning. However, if it was powers training, that was a different matter entirely and Elian was a perfectionist in that aspect, even if he was afraid of one of his abilities. "A title is what you are called for identification. You are a leader, therefore you are identified by your title when you are introduced."

He then nodded a second time at the association of soldiers and shinobi. "Yes, that is correct that soldiers are like shinobi. I am a soldier. You are shinobi." The only really big difference is how the training was done.

Identification…

“…I have two titles,” he revealed after digesting the definition of the new word. There was his position, his actual rank, and then there was the one that others had given him because of his role as the ultimate weapon of the Hidden Sand. "You have a title too.

“We are…” – trying to recall the word – “both soldiers.” In a manner of speaking. They were just classified differently, when it came down to the specifics. “But you… do not fight.”

"Correct." Elian gave a small, approving smile. Gaara was learning quickly and the correction was exactly what Elian was hoping to hear through the subtle challenge assignment.

"I do not fight, because my superior doesn't want me in danger." Which some of that is true. There was a lot more to it and the more he tried wanted to explain it, the more complicated the verbal assignment would be and the less likely Garra would learn.

His answer gave the redhead pause, and he thumbed through his notebook again. Those were words he and Ichiru hadn’t covered, since it wasn’t the everyday conversational type of usage.

He was really starting to remember how to ask clarifying questions, since there was so much he didn’t understand. “What is superior? And danger?”

"Superior is to be greater than. Danger is what could cause you harm."

Elian was very pleased that Gaara was asking these questions. He needed to learn these words in case the system failed and there was no means to translate anything on the network. He writes the words down and then the Kanji equivalent.

He copied the definitions down in his notebook, and then continued to exchange simple conversation with the boy, accompanied with plenty of questions.

At the end of their lesson, they parted ways with intentions of meeting up again the next day. It had been a very productive session. The Suna ninja kept mentally insisting that this was just a tactic of obtaining information. He didn’t need to forge any new bonds of significance at the tower. True to the nature of shinobi, he would interact with other people as long as it was necessary, or beneficial to him in some way.

At least, that was how he would try to convince himself.

It's all in the knowledge of ages within the pages of time. (Open)

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