ORIGIN

"Okay!" Bentley began. "-Welcome back!" His tail swished contentedly. "So every sound we make, it has a symbol, called a leteter! And the letter, if you read it, then you know what sound it makes! So this letter... I'll write it now, it's called 'A'!"

Apparently, these lessons were simply in English; and Bentley set about drawing a big 'A,' and a lowercase 'a', on the chalkboard. He paused as he worked, and touched upon his magic, creating a small ball of light. It was a bit weak, but enough to add to the dim firelight, so that Wild could better see the chalkboard.

The letters themselves--drawn by a piece of chalk in a dog's mouth--weren't perfect, but they were recognizable enough. A little shaky, but everything was in the right place. He spit the chalk back down, tail wagging. "Every letter has two forms! A capital, or uppercase--that's this one!--and a lowercase! Don't worry about them now--it just shows the start of a new bit of talking or a name! But just know they're both the letter 'A.' So! If you see that letter, you know it's an 'A.' That can mean it makes an 'a' sound, or an 'ah' sound! It's complicated, learning which one makes a noise when. But they taught me to do was, learn all the letters and the sounds they make, then sound out words!"

He paused, stepping back and looking at the board, giving this time to sink in. Then he plodded forward again, picking the eraser up in his teeth and swishing his head all over to wipe the letters away. He spat it out, and picked up the chalk again, this time writing a new word:

Then he put the chalk back down. "So that's a 'W'! It makes a 'wuh' sound! The I--that's the second latter! Says 'aye' or 'ih.' The L is 'LLL!' And 'D' is 'duh!' So all together it's--Wuh--aye--lll--duh! Wild! That's your name!" he said, happily turning back to Wild.

He hoped this would explain the very basics of how language worked, at least--and then he could show her a few more tricks, like how the library system worked!

"Right!" he said, cheerful, and then looked around. "It'll take awhile to learn the whole alphabet--that's all the letters!--but I'm going to write it all down in order anyway. That's because it'll help with the organization! So that's what we do! Here, in the library. We make sure the books are in order!"

Bentley turned, peering at the chalkboard for a moment in thought. "Go around to some of the books and look at the words on the spines--that's the little outside bit! Even though you can't read yet, you can see the letters that the titles start with. The titles are what's on the spine! So-... Go do that while I write this so you can see what I'm going to teach you next."

For the next few minutes, the dog painstakingly wrote the entire alphabet with his chalk. Once or twice he had to pause, examining his work, and correct some mistake or other but by the end, it was all there. He put the chalk down and turned to Wild. "Okay! This is the alphabet. This is all the letters in this language! They go in order, see, and we have to memorize them, but I'll leave them on the board for now. What's important is, in each section of the library, the books are sorted by category--then by title! So... That one, there, it starts with P! So it'd go..." He turned, finding P in the alphabet, then pointing his nose to it. "That's P, there! So it'd go between any books that start with O and Q! There's more to everything than that, and I've gotta teach you all the letters but that'll take time. For now, do you think you understand how we organize the books? I can show you while I do it, too, so you get a better idea!" he said.

Bentley beamed, tail wagging. "Okay! I think you will be good at this! AND you have hands!" he added, admiration in his tone. Too many of them didn't have hands, which made handling the books a little more difficult, and sometimes rough.

"We have magic!" he went on. "Maybe you've been here long enough now that you can try to use it? Pick a book out and open it and see!" he suggested, wagging his tail even harder as he plodded to the shelves. "It helps with learning--it lets you understand something you read, even if you don't know the letters just yet!"

It wasn't a super powerful magic--it just gave him a few sentences at a time. But it helped a lot whenever he reached a point where he was stuck, or a sound he didn't recognize, or a word he didn't know.

"Oh! And we are called the Archives of Light--did I say that?! You can be an Archivist now too!"

Bentley nodded, his tail briefly wagging. "You're welcome! I'll clean up a little in here. You can stay, or go!"

Then he turned, amiably ambling over to the nearest few books. He'd need to sort out where they all went--which meant studying the names, finding the category and slotting them in alphabetically.

Of course, for that, it'd be best to have a light to work with!

He created one to float overhead, and then--cheerful--nosed over the few books. One by one he lifted them, carried them to where they belonged in careful jaws, and tilted his head sideways to slide them onto the shelves.

One book gave him trouble: written in a language he didn't know, its title made of letters he'd never seen before. He wasn't sure when this one had been picked from the shelf, or by whom, but he would sort it out.

His first attempt--paw gently pressed to cover--brought no magic with it, and he was left nosing at the strange text with some puzzlement.

He decided to take a quick break--instead picking up all the cushions and putting them back where they belonged, and settling the chalkboard, chalk and eraser back away.

When Bentley was done he stood back and looked over his work: clean! For the most part. There was just this one last book to deal with.

Taking a break from something always helped, he'd found. Within moments of his second attempt, he could tell what the book was about--and where it should go.

He picked it up in his jaws, tail wagging, and carried it to the proper shelf. Once it was put away, he looked around the room again--and hopped up into his favorite chair, nosing open the book he'd been slowly reading over the course of the last few days.

His lessons for this new Archivist were over, for now; he was sure she'd be back for more, but in the meantime, he was going to relax and read.

His light had dimmed out overhead--but the firelight was enough to read by, really, and with the crackling warmth as a pleasant backdrop, the dog settled in for the evening.