![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerin10/19/2011
5:00-5:30 - ~500 words
5:30-6:00 - ~1000 words (+500)
10/20/2011
5:30-6:00 - ~1600 words (+600)
6:00-6:30 - ~2200 words (+600)
[Beginning.]
"I remembered that there was a story about a boy who got lost in the desert and encountered a demon," Amaranth said. "So I decided to start with that."
"But we know that Twyla's horned parent or ancestor wasn't a demon," I said. "Apart from demons not having horns, she prays."
"I know, baby," Amaranth said. "But I had to start somewhere, right? But I couldn't find that story. 'The Demon in the Wastes' apparently doesn't exist in the Nights of Fire and Wonder... it's 'The Ghul in the Wastes' in the original. Same story. The boy runs away from his evil uncle, gets lost, encounters a hungry and intelligent predator, they have the same wager, he tricks the predator, the predator is impressed so instead of just honoring the wager he gives him a basket full of jewels... but it's not a demon in the original, it's a ghul."
"That makes sense," I said, "but I'm pretty sure that Twyla's not part ghul, either."
"I know," Amaranth said. "But it got me thinking. Most versions of that story that are told in Pax make the antagonist a demon because if they translated 'ghul' to 'ghoul' it wouldn't make any sense to us. The story works with a demon, but it's no longer the same story. That's exactly the kind of detail that might have sent Professor Bohd looking for an older, less watered-down translation. So, when I started looking for tables of contents, I specifically tried to find versions that showed different titles for the same stories... more modern or Paxified ones versus ones that were more of a straight translation."
"So, what did you find?"
"Well, interestingly enough, the ghul/demon substitution only seems to occur in that story," Amaranth said. "When it's a horde of ravenous ghuls, or a single ghul haunting a necropolis and not actually having much in the way of conversation, they tend to either translate it as 'ghoul' or leave it untranslated."
"That also makes sense, but since Twyla's not half-ghul I still don't see how it gets us closer."
"Well, it's still interesting to consider the way trying to reconcile the story to fit a specific cultural lens alters it," Amaranth said. "I mean, we could read a story about a group of starving 'ghouls' and just see it as normal, while someone with a cultural understanding of ghuls would see a theme of desperation and want in the circumstances that reduced them to that state... but you're right, it's not directly relevant. What is relevant is that they're not the only kind of being to get this sort of treatment."
I could tell from the way she was grinning that she was pretty sure she'd solved it... but however proud she was of that, she was also pleased with the learning that had brought her to that point. So instead of asking her to get to the point, I asked her, "What other beings got mistranslated?"
"This is where it gets really interesting," Amaranth said.
[1 hour in.]
"I remembered that there was a story about a boy who got lost in the desert and encountered a demon," Amaranth said. "So I decided to start with that."
"But we know that Twyla's horned parent or ancestor wasn't a demon," I said. "Apart from demons not having horns, she prays."
"I know, baby," Amaranth said. "But I had to start somewhere, right? But I couldn't find that story. 'The Demon in the Wastes' apparently doesn't exist in the Nights of Fire and Wonder... it's 'The Ghul in the Wastes' in the original. Same story. The boy runs away from his evil uncle, gets lost, encounters a hungry and intelligent predator, they have the same wager, he tricks the predator, the predator is impressed so instead of just honoring the wager he gives him a basket full of jewels... but it's not a demon in the original, it's a ghul."
"That makes sense," I said, "but I'm pretty sure that Twyla's not part ghul, either."
"I know," Amaranth said. "But it got me thinking. Most versions of that story that are told in Pax make the antagonist a demon because if they translated 'ghul' to 'ghoul' it wouldn't make any sense to us. The story works with a demon, but it's no longer the same story. That's exactly the kind of detail that might have sent Professor Bohd looking for an older, less watered-down translation. So, when I started looking for tables of contents, I specifically tried to find versions that showed different titles for the same stories... more modern or Paxified ones versus ones that were more of a straight translation."
"So, what did you find?"
"Well, interestingly enough, the ghul/demon substitution only seems to occur in that story," Amaranth said. "When it's a horde of ravenous ghuls, or a single ghul haunting a necropolis and not actually having much in the way of conversation, they tend to either translate it as 'ghoul' or leave it untranslated."
"That also makes sense, but since Twyla's not half-ghul I still don't see how it gets us closer."
"Well, it's still interesting to consider the way trying to reconcile the story to fit a specific cultural lens alters it," Amaranth said. "I mean, we could read a story about a group of starving 'ghouls' and just see it as normal, while someone with a cultural understanding of ghuls would see a theme of desperation and want in the circumstances that reduced them to that state... but you're right, it's not directly relevant. What is relevant is that they're not the only kind of being to get this sort of treatment."
I could tell from the way she was grinning that she was pretty sure she'd solved it... but however proud she was of that, she was also pleased with the learning that had brought her to that point. So instead of asking her to get to the point, I asked her, "What other beings got mistranslated?"
"This is where it gets really interesting," Amaranth said, "because this could actually explain where the whole demon/horns thing comes from."
"It's just common iconography for evil or bestial or scary," I said.
"That's certainly the prevalent theory," Amaranth said. "And it may be why the image was so easily accepted and wide-spread. Or if demons were already thought of as horned for other reasons, it might have influenced the way these stories were adapted..."
"You're saying that there's a horned creature in Nights of Fire and Wonder that got depicted as a demon," I said.
"Sometimes," Amaranth said. "When it wasn't made into a genie. You know the story of the ring and the bottle?"
"Yeah," I said. "The two dueling djinn with the same master."
"Except they aren't both djinn," Amaranth said. "They're both called 'genies' in every adaptation I've seen, but this is what the bottled one looks like in the original."
She flipped open the book to the page she had marked, and it showed the tiny figure of the story's thief cowering down in front of a towering being of billowing orange smoke. It looked about like I would have expected a powerful and frightening 'genie' to look in a story about how powerful and frightening said genie was, except for one detail that had been left out of every version I'd ever seen: the small curved horns that jutted from his forehead.
"The genie in the ring is a djinn," Amaranth explained. "But the one in the bottle is an ifrit."
"That's a type of fire elemental," I said. I tried to think of what else I knew about ifrits, but that was about it.
"So are djinn," Amaranth said. "Though djinn are airier. I haven't had time to do any serious research into their origins, but it seems like they're of the same order of creation... what angels are to the celestial realms, 'genies' are to the elemental ones.
"And djinn and ifrits... djinns and ifrits? Whatever the plurals are, they're rivals?" I guessed.
"Worse," Amaranth said. "Ancient enemies. One of the biggest stories in Nights is about a war that transformed a lush paradise into a desert. It doesn't get translated or adapted very often because there's no reason for demons and djinn to be fighting, and calling both sides djinn also doesn't work because it doesn't really convey the reason for the fighting. Well, the story doesn't convey that anyway... I assume its intended audience would already know about the conflict's origins, or else take it for granted that the conflict exists."
"But the bottom line is that djinn and ifrit are... or have traditionally been... enemies," I said.
Amaranth nodded.
"The story ends with a human king who's also a sorcerer of some kind forcing them to accept a compact that stops them from making war on the mortal plane," Amaranth said. "That is, making war on each other while on the mortal plane. But later stories, like the one about the ring and the bottle, show that they still feud and plot against each other."
[1.5 hours in. Starting to take shape.]
Amaranth had a sort of pleased, knowing smile on her face all through dinner. She didn't say anything about the book, though, and I didn't ask. It would have taken too much explanation to everyone else. Not that I had any interest in keeping the whole thing secret... I just didn't have it in me to do a whole recap so soon after Callahan's class. An hour of thinking on my feet, pushing myself past my normal boundaries of behavior... it took a lot out of me, more mentally and emotionally than physically.
"So, did you talk to Bohd?" Ian asked eventually.
"Yeah," I said.
"How'd it go?"
"Weird and... inconclusively," I said.
[]
"I do think I've made some progress, actually," Amaranth said.
She dabbed her napkin around her mouth, a thoroughly unnecessary gesture... if anything, the napkin came away cleaner for it... and then started clearing some space off the table. She produced a terrycloth towel and laid it out, then placed the enormous book on top of it.
"I'd kind of like to be able to do that just so I didn't have to haul my books between classes," Ian said. "Though it would have really been handy in high school. We only had five minutes between bells, so you were pretty much stuck carrying the books for every class you were taking all morning or afternoon."
"We only had two minutes," I said. "It wasn't a big school, but that pretty much only gave you time to get from one door to another without any margin of error. I don't know how the people who had social lives managed it."
"Of course, the fifteen minutes they give us here doesn't seem like a lot when you have to book across campus," Ian said. "The people who have classes on west campus have got to be freaking zephyrs."
"That's why I don't get classes in a row, when I can help it," I said.
"I never have a problem," Steff said.
"Isn't anyone interested in knowing what I found out?" Amaranth asked.
[]
"So, I knew an hour wouldn't be enough time to make a serious dent in reading it," she said. "It probably would have been plenty of time to go down to a ballroom and do some gazing around the ethernet... but it seemed like such a shame to ignore such a big, beautiful book to go read about the book... so I decided to start with the book itself. The only question was where? I couldn't think of any story about a djinn being foiled by anything other than another djinn, or a tricky human or elf... but then I remembered that there was a story about a boy who got lost in the desert and encountered a demon, so I decided to start with that."
"But we know that Twyla's horned parent or ancestor wasn't a demon," I said. "Apart from demons not having horns, she prays to Khersis. That's not something anyone infernal could manage."
"I know, baby," Amaranth said. "But I had to start somewhere, right? The funny thing is that I couldn't find that story, or at least I couldn't find it in the form I remembered. 'The Demon in the Wastes' apparently doesn't exist in the Nights of Fire and Wonder... it's 'The Ghul in the Wastes' in the original. Same story. The boy runs away from his evil uncle, gets lost, encounters a hungry and intelligent predator, they have the same wager, he tricks the predator, the predator is impressed so instead of just honoring the wager he gives him a basket full of jewels... but it's not a demon in the original, it's a ghul."
I'd heard that story, too, and as I thought about it, the rather inexact translation didn't seem too surprising. Nothing I knew about ghuls would require any change in the story I knew to swap out the antagonist... only my mental image changed.
"That makes sense," I said, "but... I'm pretty sure that Twyla's not part ghul, either."
"They can reproduce, though, can't they?" Ian asked. "I mean, ghouls are supposed to breed in the wild. I'd assume the Maravayan version can, too."
"Yeah," Steff said. "Zombies and skeletons animated by outside magic are dead-dead, but
ghouls are technically living dead. I've never studied ghuls, but most corporeally intact self-animated undead can breed. It's hard to imagine anyone breeding with a ghoul, but the desert ones are probably a bit less... squelchy."
[]
"I know," Amaranth said. "But it got me thinking. Most versions of that story that are told in Pax make the antagonist a demon because if they translated 'ghul' to 'ghoul' it wouldn't make any sense to us. The story works with a demon, but it's no longer the same story. That's exactly the kind of detail that might have sent Professor Bohd looking for an older, less watered-down translation. So, when I started looking for tables of contents, I specifically tried to find versions that showed different titles for the same stories... more modern or Paxified ones versus ones that were more of a straight translation."
"So, what did you find?"
"Well, interestingly enough, the ghul/demon substitution only seems to occur in that story," Amaranth said. "When it's a horde of ravenous ghuls, or a single ghul haunting a necropolis and not actually having much in the way of conversation, they tend to either translate it as 'ghoul' or leave it untranslated."
"That also makes sense, but since Twyla's not half-ghul I still don't see how it gets us closer."
"Well, it's still interesting to consider the way trying to reconcile the story to fit a specific cultural lens alters it," Amaranth said. "I mean, we could read a story about a group of starving 'ghouls' and just see it as normal, while someone with a cultural understanding of ghuls would see a theme of desperation and want in the circumstances that reduced them to that state... but you're right, it's not directly relevant. What is relevant is that they're not the only kind of being to get this sort of treatment."
I could tell from the way she was grinning that she was pretty sure she'd solved it... but however proud she was of that, she was also pleased with the learning that had brought her to that point. So instead of asking her to get to the point, I asked her, "What other beings got mistranslated?"
"This is where it gets really interesting," Amaranth said, "because this could actually explain where the whole demon/horns thing comes from."
"It's just common iconography for evil or bestial or scary," I said.
"That's certainly the prevalent theory," Amaranth said. "And it may be why the image was so easily accepted and wide-spread. Or if demons were already thought of as horned for other reasons, it might have influenced the way these stories were adapted..."
"You're saying that there's a horned creature in Nights of Fire and Wonder that got depicted as a demon," I said.
"Sometimes," Amaranth said. "When it wasn't made into a genie. You know the story of the ring and the bottle?"
"Yeah," I said. "The two dueling djinn with the same master."
"Except they aren't both djinn," Amaranth said. "They're both called 'genies' in every adaptation I've seen, but this is what the bottled one looks like in the original."
She flipped open the book to the page she had marked, and it showed the tiny figure of the story's thief cowering down in front of a towering being of billowing orange smoke. It looked about like I would have expected a powerful and frightening 'genie' to look in a story about how powerful and frightening said genie was, except for one detail that had been left out of every version I'd ever seen: the small curved horns that jutted from his forehead.
"The genie in the ring is a djinn," Amaranth explained. "But the one in the bottle is an ifrit."
"That's a type of fire elemental," I said. I tried to think of what else I knew about ifrits, but that was about it.
"So are djinn," Amaranth said. "Though djinn are airier. I haven't had time to do any serious research into their origins, but it seems like they're of the same order of creation... what angels are to the celestial realms, 'genies' are to the elemental ones.
"And djinn and ifrits... djinns and ifrits? Whatever the plurals are, they're rivals?" I guessed.
"Worse," Amaranth said. "Ancient enemies. One of the biggest stories in Nights is about a war that transformed a lush paradise into a desert. It doesn't get translated or adapted very often because there's no reason for demons and djinn to be fighting, and calling both sides djinn also doesn't work because it doesn't really convey the reason for the fighting. Well, the story doesn't convey that anyway... I assume its intended audience would already know about the conflict's origins, or else take it for granted that the conflict exists."
"But the bottom line is that djinn and ifrit are... or have traditionally been... enemies," I said.
Amaranth nodded.
"The story ends with a human king who's also a sorcerer of some kind forcing them to accept a compact that stops them from making war on the mortal plane," Amaranth said. "That is, making war on each other while on the mortal plane. But later stories, like the one about the ring and the bottle, show that they still feud and plot against each other."
[2 hours. Nearly done. I think the chapter's going to end on the ifrit-reveal, with the next chapter being more explanatory.]
Amaranth had a sort of pleased, knowing smile on her face all through dinner. She didn't say anything about the book, though, and I didn't ask. It would have taken too much explanation to everyone else.
Not that I had any interest in keeping the whole thing secret... I just didn't have it in me to do a whole recap so soon after Callahan's class. An hour of thinking on my feet, pushing myself past my normal boundaries of behavior... it took a lot out of me, more mentally and emotionally than physically.
"So... did you end up going to talk to Bohd?" Ian asked eventually, after everyone else had excused themselves and it was just him, Amaranth, and me at the table.
"Yeah," I said.
"How'd it go?"
"Weird and... inconclusively," I said.
"Sounds like it's complicated," he said.
"Yeah," I said. "A little more complicated than I really want to get into."
"Is it okay if I explain it, or do you just not want to talk about it at all right now?" Amaranth asked.
"Feel free," I said, and she gave him a quick version of what I'd told her.
"That is weird," Ian said. "You're sure she was afraid?"
"Everyone keeps asking me that," I said. "Yes. It wasn't a subtle and understated thing. She looked like she thought she might have to fortify her office against a mystic siege, honestly."
"It's not that I don't believe you," Ian said. "It's just... I really can't picture Bohd scared."
"Yeah, I guess you said that."
"I was just thinking social anxiety bullshit," Ian said. "Now you make it sound like she thought Twyla was there to kill her or something."
"I really can't picture Twyla threatening anyone," Amaranth said.
"I can't picture Bohd being threatend," Ian said. "I'll always be convinced she eats rock and breathes fire."
"She probably could do both of those things, if she wanted to," I said. "I mean, breath leaving the body has been warmed by heart's fire, so it's not a complicated tweak to push that to the surface. Eating rocks would be more complcated, but most mundane earth, including stones, has dormant nutrition in it so she'd just need to draw that out while softening it..."
Amaranth cleared her throat.
"Sorry," I said.
"It's okay, baby," she said. "Anyway... I've been looking at the book and doing some research, and I do think I've made some progress, actually."
"Ooh, I want to hear this," Steff said, slipping back into her seat.
"Didn't you leave?" Ian asked her.
"My feet travel faster than my ears," she said. "So, what do you have for us, Amy-Doll?"
Amaranth dabbed her napkin around her mouth, a thoroughly unnecessary gesture... if anything, the napkin came away cleaner for it... and then started clearing some space off the table. She produced a terrycloth towel and laid it out, then placed the enormous book on top of it.
Ian let out a low whistle, which I kind of envied. I couldn't whistle at all. If I pursed my lips and blew I could sometimes make a blowing sound with a kind of high-pitched overlay, but that was it.
"That is serious book," Steff said. "Though I'm more impressed you were able to fit it in your nymph-pocket."
"She did have a whole bed in there before," Ian said.
"There isn't any there for things to be in," Amaranth said, and I would almost swear that she was blushing.
"Hey, I'm not making fun. I'd kind of like to be able to do that just so I didn't have to haul my books between classes," Ian said. "Though it would have really been handy in high school. We only had five minutes between bells, so you were pretty much stuck carrying the books for every class you were taking all morning or afternoon."
"We only had two minutes," I said. "It wasn't a big school, but that pretty much only gave you time to get from one door to another without any margin of error. I don't know how the people who had social lives managed it."
"Of course, the fifteen minutes they give us here doesn't seem like a lot when you have to book across campus," Ian said. "The people who have classes on west campus have got to be freaking zephyrs."
"That's why I don't get classes in a row, when I can help it," I said.
"I never have a problem," Steff said.
"Isn't anyone interested in knowing what I found out?" Amaranth asked.
"I'm interested," Steff said.
"Sorry," I said.
"Okay, so... I knew an hour wouldn't be enough time to make a serious dent in reading it," she said. "It probably would have been plenty of time to go down to a ballroom and do some gazing around the ethernet... but it seemed like such a shame to ignore such a big, beautiful book to go read about the book... so I decided to start with the book itself. The only question was where? I couldn't think of any story about a djinn being foiled by anything other than another djinn, or a tricky human or elf... but then I remembered that there was a story about a boy who got lost in the desert and encountered a demon, so I decided to start with that."
"But we know that Twyla's horned parent or ancestor wasn't a demon," I said. "Apart from demons not having horns, she prays to Khersis. That's not something anyone infernal could manage."
"I know, baby," Amaranth said. "But I had to start somewhere, right? The funny thing is that I couldn't find that story, or at least I couldn't find it in the form I remembered. 'The Demon in the Wastes' apparently doesn't exist in the Nights of Fire and Wonder... it's 'The Ghul in the Wastes' in the original. Same story. The boy runs away from his evil uncle, gets lost, encounters a hungry and intelligent predator, they have the same wager, he tricks the predator, the predator is impressed so instead of just honoring the wager he gives him a basket full of jewels... but it's not a demon in the original, it's a ghul."
I'd heard that story, too, and as I thought about it, the rather inexact translation didn't seem too surprising. Nothing I knew about ghuls would require any change in the story I knew to swap out the antagonist... only my mental image changed.
"That makes sense," I said, "but... I'm pretty sure that Twyla's not part ghul, either."
"They can reproduce, though, can't they?" Ian asked. "I mean, ghouls are supposed to breed in the wild. I'd assume the Maravayan version can, too."
"Yeah," Steff said. "Zombies and skeletons animated by outside magic are dead-dead, but
ghouls are technically living dead. I've never studied ghuls, but most corporeally intact self-animated undead can breed. It's hard to imagine anyone breeding with a ghoul, but the desert ones are probably a bit less... squelchy. Still not seeing the connection here, though, Amy-Doll. Twyla's a little... robust... for a demidead. And it still wouldn't explain the horns."
"Well, I'm not saying that I think she's part ghul," Amaranth said. "But it got me thinking. Most versions of that story that are told in Pax make the antagonist a demon because if they translated 'ghul' to 'ghoul' it wouldn't make any sense to us. The story works with a demon, but it's no longer the same story. That's exactly the kind of detail that might have sent Professor Bohd looking for an older, less watered-down translation. So, after that I started looking around for complete listings of the tales, but I specifically tried to find different versions that showed conflicting titles for the same stories... more modern or Paxified ones versus ones that were more of a straight translation."
"So, what did you find?" I asked her.
"Well, interestingly enough, the ghul/demon substitution only seems to occur in that story," Amaranth said. "When it's a horde of ravenous ghuls, or a single ghul haunting a necropolis and not actually having much in the way of conversation, they tend to either translate it as 'ghoul' or leave it untranslated."
"That also makes sense, but since I still don't see how it gets us closer," I said.
"Well, it's still interesting to consider the way trying to reconcile the story to fit a specific cultural lens alters it," Amaranth said. "I mean, we could read a story about a group of starving 'ghouls' and just see it as normal, while someone with a cultural understanding of ghuls would see a theme of desperation and want in the circumstances that reduced them to that state... but you're right, it's not directly relevant. What is relevant is that they're not the only kind of being to get this sort of treatment."
I could tell from the way she was grinning again that she was pretty sure she'd solved it... but however proud she was of that, she was also pleased with the learning that had brought her to that point. So instead of asking her to get to the point, I asked her, "What other beings got mistranslated?"
"This is where it gets really interesting," Amaranth said, "because this could actually explain where the whole demon/horns thing comes from."
"Horns are just like common iconography for evil or bestial or scary," I said.
"That's certainly the most popular theory," Amaranth said. "And it may be why the image of horned demons is so wide-spread and easily accepted. Or if demons were already thought of as horned for other reasons, it might have influenced the way these stories were adapted..."
"You're saying that there's a horned creature in Nights of Fire and Wonder that got depicted as a demon," I said.
"Sometimes," Amaranth said. "When it wasn't made into a genie. You know the story of the ring and the bottle?"
"Yeah," I said. "The two dueling djinn with the same master."
"Yes!" Amaranth said. "That's the story I was thinking of when I was talking about djinn thwarting each other... except they aren't both djinn. They're both called 'genies' in every adaptation I've seen, but this is what the bottled one looks like in the original."
She flipped open the book a the page she had marked, and it showed the tiny figure of the story's thief cowering down in front of a towering being of billowing orange smoke. It looked about like I would have expected a powerful and frightening "genie" to look in a story about how powerful and frightening said genie was, except for one detail that had been left out of every version I'd ever seen: the small curved horns that jutted from his forehead.
"The genie of the ring is a djinn," Amaranth explained. "But the one in the bottle is an ifrit."
They were bigger than Twyla's, but the thing they were attached to was much bigger. My first impulse
"That's a type of fire elemental," I said. I tried to think of what else I knew about ifrits, but that was about it.
"So are djinn," Amaranth said. "Though djinn are airier. I haven't had time to do any serious research into their origins, but it seems like they're of the same order of creation... what angels are to the celestial realms, 'genies' are to the elemental ones.
"And djinn and ifrits... djinns and ifrits? Whatever the plurals are, they're rivals?" I guessed.
"Worse," Amaranth said. "Ancient enemies. One of the biggest stories in Nights is about a war that transformed a lush paradise into a desert. It doesn't get translated or adapted very often because there's no reason for demons and djinn to be fighting, and calling both sides djinn also doesn't work because it doesn't really convey the reason for the fighting. Well, the story doesn't convey that anyway... I assume its intended audience would already know about the conflict's origins, or else take it for granted that the conflict exists."
"But the bottom line is that djinn and ifrit are... or have traditionally been... enemies," I said.
Amaranth nodded.
"The story ends with a human king who's also a sorcerer of some kind forcing them to accept a compact that stops them from making war on the mortal plane," Amaranth said. "That is, making war on each other while on the mortal plane. But later stories, like the one about the ring and the bottle, show that they still feud and plot against each other."
5:00-5:30 - ~500 words
5:30-6:00 - ~1000 words (+500)
10/20/2011
5:30-6:00 - ~1600 words (+600)
6:00-6:30 - ~2200 words (+600)
[Beginning.]
"I remembered that there was a story about a boy who got lost in the desert and encountered a demon," Amaranth said. "So I decided to start with that."
"But we know that Twyla's horned parent or ancestor wasn't a demon," I said. "Apart from demons not having horns, she prays."
"I know, baby," Amaranth said. "But I had to start somewhere, right? But I couldn't find that story. 'The Demon in the Wastes' apparently doesn't exist in the Nights of Fire and Wonder... it's 'The Ghul in the Wastes' in the original. Same story. The boy runs away from his evil uncle, gets lost, encounters a hungry and intelligent predator, they have the same wager, he tricks the predator, the predator is impressed so instead of just honoring the wager he gives him a basket full of jewels... but it's not a demon in the original, it's a ghul."
"That makes sense," I said, "but I'm pretty sure that Twyla's not part ghul, either."
"I know," Amaranth said. "But it got me thinking. Most versions of that story that are told in Pax make the antagonist a demon because if they translated 'ghul' to 'ghoul' it wouldn't make any sense to us. The story works with a demon, but it's no longer the same story. That's exactly the kind of detail that might have sent Professor Bohd looking for an older, less watered-down translation. So, when I started looking for tables of contents, I specifically tried to find versions that showed different titles for the same stories... more modern or Paxified ones versus ones that were more of a straight translation."
"So, what did you find?"
"Well, interestingly enough, the ghul/demon substitution only seems to occur in that story," Amaranth said. "When it's a horde of ravenous ghuls, or a single ghul haunting a necropolis and not actually having much in the way of conversation, they tend to either translate it as 'ghoul' or leave it untranslated."
"That also makes sense, but since Twyla's not half-ghul I still don't see how it gets us closer."
"Well, it's still interesting to consider the way trying to reconcile the story to fit a specific cultural lens alters it," Amaranth said. "I mean, we could read a story about a group of starving 'ghouls' and just see it as normal, while someone with a cultural understanding of ghuls would see a theme of desperation and want in the circumstances that reduced them to that state... but you're right, it's not directly relevant. What is relevant is that they're not the only kind of being to get this sort of treatment."
I could tell from the way she was grinning that she was pretty sure she'd solved it... but however proud she was of that, she was also pleased with the learning that had brought her to that point. So instead of asking her to get to the point, I asked her, "What other beings got mistranslated?"
"This is where it gets really interesting," Amaranth said.
[1 hour in.]
"I remembered that there was a story about a boy who got lost in the desert and encountered a demon," Amaranth said. "So I decided to start with that."
"But we know that Twyla's horned parent or ancestor wasn't a demon," I said. "Apart from demons not having horns, she prays."
"I know, baby," Amaranth said. "But I had to start somewhere, right? But I couldn't find that story. 'The Demon in the Wastes' apparently doesn't exist in the Nights of Fire and Wonder... it's 'The Ghul in the Wastes' in the original. Same story. The boy runs away from his evil uncle, gets lost, encounters a hungry and intelligent predator, they have the same wager, he tricks the predator, the predator is impressed so instead of just honoring the wager he gives him a basket full of jewels... but it's not a demon in the original, it's a ghul."
"That makes sense," I said, "but I'm pretty sure that Twyla's not part ghul, either."
"I know," Amaranth said. "But it got me thinking. Most versions of that story that are told in Pax make the antagonist a demon because if they translated 'ghul' to 'ghoul' it wouldn't make any sense to us. The story works with a demon, but it's no longer the same story. That's exactly the kind of detail that might have sent Professor Bohd looking for an older, less watered-down translation. So, when I started looking for tables of contents, I specifically tried to find versions that showed different titles for the same stories... more modern or Paxified ones versus ones that were more of a straight translation."
"So, what did you find?"
"Well, interestingly enough, the ghul/demon substitution only seems to occur in that story," Amaranth said. "When it's a horde of ravenous ghuls, or a single ghul haunting a necropolis and not actually having much in the way of conversation, they tend to either translate it as 'ghoul' or leave it untranslated."
"That also makes sense, but since Twyla's not half-ghul I still don't see how it gets us closer."
"Well, it's still interesting to consider the way trying to reconcile the story to fit a specific cultural lens alters it," Amaranth said. "I mean, we could read a story about a group of starving 'ghouls' and just see it as normal, while someone with a cultural understanding of ghuls would see a theme of desperation and want in the circumstances that reduced them to that state... but you're right, it's not directly relevant. What is relevant is that they're not the only kind of being to get this sort of treatment."
I could tell from the way she was grinning that she was pretty sure she'd solved it... but however proud she was of that, she was also pleased with the learning that had brought her to that point. So instead of asking her to get to the point, I asked her, "What other beings got mistranslated?"
"This is where it gets really interesting," Amaranth said, "because this could actually explain where the whole demon/horns thing comes from."
"It's just common iconography for evil or bestial or scary," I said.
"That's certainly the prevalent theory," Amaranth said. "And it may be why the image was so easily accepted and wide-spread. Or if demons were already thought of as horned for other reasons, it might have influenced the way these stories were adapted..."
"You're saying that there's a horned creature in Nights of Fire and Wonder that got depicted as a demon," I said.
"Sometimes," Amaranth said. "When it wasn't made into a genie. You know the story of the ring and the bottle?"
"Yeah," I said. "The two dueling djinn with the same master."
"Except they aren't both djinn," Amaranth said. "They're both called 'genies' in every adaptation I've seen, but this is what the bottled one looks like in the original."
She flipped open the book to the page she had marked, and it showed the tiny figure of the story's thief cowering down in front of a towering being of billowing orange smoke. It looked about like I would have expected a powerful and frightening 'genie' to look in a story about how powerful and frightening said genie was, except for one detail that had been left out of every version I'd ever seen: the small curved horns that jutted from his forehead.
"The genie in the ring is a djinn," Amaranth explained. "But the one in the bottle is an ifrit."
"That's a type of fire elemental," I said. I tried to think of what else I knew about ifrits, but that was about it.
"So are djinn," Amaranth said. "Though djinn are airier. I haven't had time to do any serious research into their origins, but it seems like they're of the same order of creation... what angels are to the celestial realms, 'genies' are to the elemental ones.
"And djinn and ifrits... djinns and ifrits? Whatever the plurals are, they're rivals?" I guessed.
"Worse," Amaranth said. "Ancient enemies. One of the biggest stories in Nights is about a war that transformed a lush paradise into a desert. It doesn't get translated or adapted very often because there's no reason for demons and djinn to be fighting, and calling both sides djinn also doesn't work because it doesn't really convey the reason for the fighting. Well, the story doesn't convey that anyway... I assume its intended audience would already know about the conflict's origins, or else take it for granted that the conflict exists."
"But the bottom line is that djinn and ifrit are... or have traditionally been... enemies," I said.
Amaranth nodded.
"The story ends with a human king who's also a sorcerer of some kind forcing them to accept a compact that stops them from making war on the mortal plane," Amaranth said. "That is, making war on each other while on the mortal plane. But later stories, like the one about the ring and the bottle, show that they still feud and plot against each other."
[1.5 hours in. Starting to take shape.]
Amaranth had a sort of pleased, knowing smile on her face all through dinner. She didn't say anything about the book, though, and I didn't ask. It would have taken too much explanation to everyone else. Not that I had any interest in keeping the whole thing secret... I just didn't have it in me to do a whole recap so soon after Callahan's class. An hour of thinking on my feet, pushing myself past my normal boundaries of behavior... it took a lot out of me, more mentally and emotionally than physically.
"So, did you talk to Bohd?" Ian asked eventually.
"Yeah," I said.
"How'd it go?"
"Weird and... inconclusively," I said.
[]
"I do think I've made some progress, actually," Amaranth said.
She dabbed her napkin around her mouth, a thoroughly unnecessary gesture... if anything, the napkin came away cleaner for it... and then started clearing some space off the table. She produced a terrycloth towel and laid it out, then placed the enormous book on top of it.
"I'd kind of like to be able to do that just so I didn't have to haul my books between classes," Ian said. "Though it would have really been handy in high school. We only had five minutes between bells, so you were pretty much stuck carrying the books for every class you were taking all morning or afternoon."
"We only had two minutes," I said. "It wasn't a big school, but that pretty much only gave you time to get from one door to another without any margin of error. I don't know how the people who had social lives managed it."
"Of course, the fifteen minutes they give us here doesn't seem like a lot when you have to book across campus," Ian said. "The people who have classes on west campus have got to be freaking zephyrs."
"That's why I don't get classes in a row, when I can help it," I said.
"I never have a problem," Steff said.
"Isn't anyone interested in knowing what I found out?" Amaranth asked.
[]
"So, I knew an hour wouldn't be enough time to make a serious dent in reading it," she said. "It probably would have been plenty of time to go down to a ballroom and do some gazing around the ethernet... but it seemed like such a shame to ignore such a big, beautiful book to go read about the book... so I decided to start with the book itself. The only question was where? I couldn't think of any story about a djinn being foiled by anything other than another djinn, or a tricky human or elf... but then I remembered that there was a story about a boy who got lost in the desert and encountered a demon, so I decided to start with that."
"But we know that Twyla's horned parent or ancestor wasn't a demon," I said. "Apart from demons not having horns, she prays to Khersis. That's not something anyone infernal could manage."
"I know, baby," Amaranth said. "But I had to start somewhere, right? The funny thing is that I couldn't find that story, or at least I couldn't find it in the form I remembered. 'The Demon in the Wastes' apparently doesn't exist in the Nights of Fire and Wonder... it's 'The Ghul in the Wastes' in the original. Same story. The boy runs away from his evil uncle, gets lost, encounters a hungry and intelligent predator, they have the same wager, he tricks the predator, the predator is impressed so instead of just honoring the wager he gives him a basket full of jewels... but it's not a demon in the original, it's a ghul."
I'd heard that story, too, and as I thought about it, the rather inexact translation didn't seem too surprising. Nothing I knew about ghuls would require any change in the story I knew to swap out the antagonist... only my mental image changed.
"That makes sense," I said, "but... I'm pretty sure that Twyla's not part ghul, either."
"They can reproduce, though, can't they?" Ian asked. "I mean, ghouls are supposed to breed in the wild. I'd assume the Maravayan version can, too."
"Yeah," Steff said. "Zombies and skeletons animated by outside magic are dead-dead, but
ghouls are technically living dead. I've never studied ghuls, but most corporeally intact self-animated undead can breed. It's hard to imagine anyone breeding with a ghoul, but the desert ones are probably a bit less... squelchy."
[]
"I know," Amaranth said. "But it got me thinking. Most versions of that story that are told in Pax make the antagonist a demon because if they translated 'ghul' to 'ghoul' it wouldn't make any sense to us. The story works with a demon, but it's no longer the same story. That's exactly the kind of detail that might have sent Professor Bohd looking for an older, less watered-down translation. So, when I started looking for tables of contents, I specifically tried to find versions that showed different titles for the same stories... more modern or Paxified ones versus ones that were more of a straight translation."
"So, what did you find?"
"Well, interestingly enough, the ghul/demon substitution only seems to occur in that story," Amaranth said. "When it's a horde of ravenous ghuls, or a single ghul haunting a necropolis and not actually having much in the way of conversation, they tend to either translate it as 'ghoul' or leave it untranslated."
"That also makes sense, but since Twyla's not half-ghul I still don't see how it gets us closer."
"Well, it's still interesting to consider the way trying to reconcile the story to fit a specific cultural lens alters it," Amaranth said. "I mean, we could read a story about a group of starving 'ghouls' and just see it as normal, while someone with a cultural understanding of ghuls would see a theme of desperation and want in the circumstances that reduced them to that state... but you're right, it's not directly relevant. What is relevant is that they're not the only kind of being to get this sort of treatment."
I could tell from the way she was grinning that she was pretty sure she'd solved it... but however proud she was of that, she was also pleased with the learning that had brought her to that point. So instead of asking her to get to the point, I asked her, "What other beings got mistranslated?"
"This is where it gets really interesting," Amaranth said, "because this could actually explain where the whole demon/horns thing comes from."
"It's just common iconography for evil or bestial or scary," I said.
"That's certainly the prevalent theory," Amaranth said. "And it may be why the image was so easily accepted and wide-spread. Or if demons were already thought of as horned for other reasons, it might have influenced the way these stories were adapted..."
"You're saying that there's a horned creature in Nights of Fire and Wonder that got depicted as a demon," I said.
"Sometimes," Amaranth said. "When it wasn't made into a genie. You know the story of the ring and the bottle?"
"Yeah," I said. "The two dueling djinn with the same master."
"Except they aren't both djinn," Amaranth said. "They're both called 'genies' in every adaptation I've seen, but this is what the bottled one looks like in the original."
She flipped open the book to the page she had marked, and it showed the tiny figure of the story's thief cowering down in front of a towering being of billowing orange smoke. It looked about like I would have expected a powerful and frightening 'genie' to look in a story about how powerful and frightening said genie was, except for one detail that had been left out of every version I'd ever seen: the small curved horns that jutted from his forehead.
"The genie in the ring is a djinn," Amaranth explained. "But the one in the bottle is an ifrit."
"That's a type of fire elemental," I said. I tried to think of what else I knew about ifrits, but that was about it.
"So are djinn," Amaranth said. "Though djinn are airier. I haven't had time to do any serious research into their origins, but it seems like they're of the same order of creation... what angels are to the celestial realms, 'genies' are to the elemental ones.
"And djinn and ifrits... djinns and ifrits? Whatever the plurals are, they're rivals?" I guessed.
"Worse," Amaranth said. "Ancient enemies. One of the biggest stories in Nights is about a war that transformed a lush paradise into a desert. It doesn't get translated or adapted very often because there's no reason for demons and djinn to be fighting, and calling both sides djinn also doesn't work because it doesn't really convey the reason for the fighting. Well, the story doesn't convey that anyway... I assume its intended audience would already know about the conflict's origins, or else take it for granted that the conflict exists."
"But the bottom line is that djinn and ifrit are... or have traditionally been... enemies," I said.
Amaranth nodded.
"The story ends with a human king who's also a sorcerer of some kind forcing them to accept a compact that stops them from making war on the mortal plane," Amaranth said. "That is, making war on each other while on the mortal plane. But later stories, like the one about the ring and the bottle, show that they still feud and plot against each other."
[2 hours. Nearly done. I think the chapter's going to end on the ifrit-reveal, with the next chapter being more explanatory.]
Amaranth had a sort of pleased, knowing smile on her face all through dinner. She didn't say anything about the book, though, and I didn't ask. It would have taken too much explanation to everyone else.
Not that I had any interest in keeping the whole thing secret... I just didn't have it in me to do a whole recap so soon after Callahan's class. An hour of thinking on my feet, pushing myself past my normal boundaries of behavior... it took a lot out of me, more mentally and emotionally than physically.
"So... did you end up going to talk to Bohd?" Ian asked eventually, after everyone else had excused themselves and it was just him, Amaranth, and me at the table.
"Yeah," I said.
"How'd it go?"
"Weird and... inconclusively," I said.
"Sounds like it's complicated," he said.
"Yeah," I said. "A little more complicated than I really want to get into."
"Is it okay if I explain it, or do you just not want to talk about it at all right now?" Amaranth asked.
"Feel free," I said, and she gave him a quick version of what I'd told her.
"That is weird," Ian said. "You're sure she was afraid?"
"Everyone keeps asking me that," I said. "Yes. It wasn't a subtle and understated thing. She looked like she thought she might have to fortify her office against a mystic siege, honestly."
"It's not that I don't believe you," Ian said. "It's just... I really can't picture Bohd scared."
"Yeah, I guess you said that."
"I was just thinking social anxiety bullshit," Ian said. "Now you make it sound like she thought Twyla was there to kill her or something."
"I really can't picture Twyla threatening anyone," Amaranth said.
"I can't picture Bohd being threatend," Ian said. "I'll always be convinced she eats rock and breathes fire."
"She probably could do both of those things, if she wanted to," I said. "I mean, breath leaving the body has been warmed by heart's fire, so it's not a complicated tweak to push that to the surface. Eating rocks would be more complcated, but most mundane earth, including stones, has dormant nutrition in it so she'd just need to draw that out while softening it..."
Amaranth cleared her throat.
"Sorry," I said.
"It's okay, baby," she said. "Anyway... I've been looking at the book and doing some research, and I do think I've made some progress, actually."
"Ooh, I want to hear this," Steff said, slipping back into her seat.
"Didn't you leave?" Ian asked her.
"My feet travel faster than my ears," she said. "So, what do you have for us, Amy-Doll?"
Amaranth dabbed her napkin around her mouth, a thoroughly unnecessary gesture... if anything, the napkin came away cleaner for it... and then started clearing some space off the table. She produced a terrycloth towel and laid it out, then placed the enormous book on top of it.
Ian let out a low whistle, which I kind of envied. I couldn't whistle at all. If I pursed my lips and blew I could sometimes make a blowing sound with a kind of high-pitched overlay, but that was it.
"That is serious book," Steff said. "Though I'm more impressed you were able to fit it in your nymph-pocket."
"She did have a whole bed in there before," Ian said.
"There isn't any there for things to be in," Amaranth said, and I would almost swear that she was blushing.
"Hey, I'm not making fun. I'd kind of like to be able to do that just so I didn't have to haul my books between classes," Ian said. "Though it would have really been handy in high school. We only had five minutes between bells, so you were pretty much stuck carrying the books for every class you were taking all morning or afternoon."
"We only had two minutes," I said. "It wasn't a big school, but that pretty much only gave you time to get from one door to another without any margin of error. I don't know how the people who had social lives managed it."
"Of course, the fifteen minutes they give us here doesn't seem like a lot when you have to book across campus," Ian said. "The people who have classes on west campus have got to be freaking zephyrs."
"That's why I don't get classes in a row, when I can help it," I said.
"I never have a problem," Steff said.
"Isn't anyone interested in knowing what I found out?" Amaranth asked.
"I'm interested," Steff said.
"Sorry," I said.
"Okay, so... I knew an hour wouldn't be enough time to make a serious dent in reading it," she said. "It probably would have been plenty of time to go down to a ballroom and do some gazing around the ethernet... but it seemed like such a shame to ignore such a big, beautiful book to go read about the book... so I decided to start with the book itself. The only question was where? I couldn't think of any story about a djinn being foiled by anything other than another djinn, or a tricky human or elf... but then I remembered that there was a story about a boy who got lost in the desert and encountered a demon, so I decided to start with that."
"But we know that Twyla's horned parent or ancestor wasn't a demon," I said. "Apart from demons not having horns, she prays to Khersis. That's not something anyone infernal could manage."
"I know, baby," Amaranth said. "But I had to start somewhere, right? The funny thing is that I couldn't find that story, or at least I couldn't find it in the form I remembered. 'The Demon in the Wastes' apparently doesn't exist in the Nights of Fire and Wonder... it's 'The Ghul in the Wastes' in the original. Same story. The boy runs away from his evil uncle, gets lost, encounters a hungry and intelligent predator, they have the same wager, he tricks the predator, the predator is impressed so instead of just honoring the wager he gives him a basket full of jewels... but it's not a demon in the original, it's a ghul."
I'd heard that story, too, and as I thought about it, the rather inexact translation didn't seem too surprising. Nothing I knew about ghuls would require any change in the story I knew to swap out the antagonist... only my mental image changed.
"That makes sense," I said, "but... I'm pretty sure that Twyla's not part ghul, either."
"They can reproduce, though, can't they?" Ian asked. "I mean, ghouls are supposed to breed in the wild. I'd assume the Maravayan version can, too."
"Yeah," Steff said. "Zombies and skeletons animated by outside magic are dead-dead, but
ghouls are technically living dead. I've never studied ghuls, but most corporeally intact self-animated undead can breed. It's hard to imagine anyone breeding with a ghoul, but the desert ones are probably a bit less... squelchy. Still not seeing the connection here, though, Amy-Doll. Twyla's a little... robust... for a demidead. And it still wouldn't explain the horns."
"Well, I'm not saying that I think she's part ghul," Amaranth said. "But it got me thinking. Most versions of that story that are told in Pax make the antagonist a demon because if they translated 'ghul' to 'ghoul' it wouldn't make any sense to us. The story works with a demon, but it's no longer the same story. That's exactly the kind of detail that might have sent Professor Bohd looking for an older, less watered-down translation. So, after that I started looking around for complete listings of the tales, but I specifically tried to find different versions that showed conflicting titles for the same stories... more modern or Paxified ones versus ones that were more of a straight translation."
"So, what did you find?" I asked her.
"Well, interestingly enough, the ghul/demon substitution only seems to occur in that story," Amaranth said. "When it's a horde of ravenous ghuls, or a single ghul haunting a necropolis and not actually having much in the way of conversation, they tend to either translate it as 'ghoul' or leave it untranslated."
"That also makes sense, but since I still don't see how it gets us closer," I said.
"Well, it's still interesting to consider the way trying to reconcile the story to fit a specific cultural lens alters it," Amaranth said. "I mean, we could read a story about a group of starving 'ghouls' and just see it as normal, while someone with a cultural understanding of ghuls would see a theme of desperation and want in the circumstances that reduced them to that state... but you're right, it's not directly relevant. What is relevant is that they're not the only kind of being to get this sort of treatment."
I could tell from the way she was grinning again that she was pretty sure she'd solved it... but however proud she was of that, she was also pleased with the learning that had brought her to that point. So instead of asking her to get to the point, I asked her, "What other beings got mistranslated?"
"This is where it gets really interesting," Amaranth said, "because this could actually explain where the whole demon/horns thing comes from."
"Horns are just like common iconography for evil or bestial or scary," I said.
"That's certainly the most popular theory," Amaranth said. "And it may be why the image of horned demons is so wide-spread and easily accepted. Or if demons were already thought of as horned for other reasons, it might have influenced the way these stories were adapted..."
"You're saying that there's a horned creature in Nights of Fire and Wonder that got depicted as a demon," I said.
"Sometimes," Amaranth said. "When it wasn't made into a genie. You know the story of the ring and the bottle?"
"Yeah," I said. "The two dueling djinn with the same master."
"Yes!" Amaranth said. "That's the story I was thinking of when I was talking about djinn thwarting each other... except they aren't both djinn. They're both called 'genies' in every adaptation I've seen, but this is what the bottled one looks like in the original."
She flipped open the book a the page she had marked, and it showed the tiny figure of the story's thief cowering down in front of a towering being of billowing orange smoke. It looked about like I would have expected a powerful and frightening "genie" to look in a story about how powerful and frightening said genie was, except for one detail that had been left out of every version I'd ever seen: the small curved horns that jutted from his forehead.
"The genie of the ring is a djinn," Amaranth explained. "But the one in the bottle is an ifrit."
They were bigger than Twyla's, but the thing they were attached to was much bigger. My first impulse
"That's a type of fire elemental," I said. I tried to think of what else I knew about ifrits, but that was about it.
"So are djinn," Amaranth said. "Though djinn are airier. I haven't had time to do any serious research into their origins, but it seems like they're of the same order of creation... what angels are to the celestial realms, 'genies' are to the elemental ones.
"And djinn and ifrits... djinns and ifrits? Whatever the plurals are, they're rivals?" I guessed.
"Worse," Amaranth said. "Ancient enemies. One of the biggest stories in Nights is about a war that transformed a lush paradise into a desert. It doesn't get translated or adapted very often because there's no reason for demons and djinn to be fighting, and calling both sides djinn also doesn't work because it doesn't really convey the reason for the fighting. Well, the story doesn't convey that anyway... I assume its intended audience would already know about the conflict's origins, or else take it for granted that the conflict exists."
"But the bottom line is that djinn and ifrit are... or have traditionally been... enemies," I said.
Amaranth nodded.
"The story ends with a human king who's also a sorcerer of some kind forcing them to accept a compact that stops them from making war on the mortal plane," Amaranth said. "That is, making war on each other while on the mortal plane. But later stories, like the one about the ring and the bottle, show that they still feud and plot against each other."