We had headed over to the Bazaar. Apparently Edrick was going to stock up on supplies before heading off to whatever came next. As he bartered with the merchants, I began thinking about how I could make this work.
So Edrick was going to be looking for an item that could lift curses. So all I should have to do is convince him to let me touch it, and I could see if it could fix me. It was starting to get old, all the feathers, and being sat on and expected to carry him around. (The thought of how nice he was drifted past my consciousness, but I knew where that was coming from, and tried to ignore it.)
I wondered if I could communicate with him, and convince him to try the item on me. Or even just let him know that I was a player, just like him. He certainly hadn't been mistreating me, but I'd feel better if he knew. Maybe he could think of other ways to help me turn back.
I already knew that my voice at this point consisted of unintelligible chirps and whistles. I experimented a bit anyway, just in case I had some hither-to-for undiscovered talent for vocalization. (Hey, parrots can do it, I figure. How hard could it be?) Harder than I could manage, apparently. I never got anything besides chirps and clicks, before Edrick shushed me. (And I found myself really WANTING to do what he said, even though I knew this was just the game making me play along. It was easier to just go with it, for now.)
So talking to him was out. Could I write him a message, I wondered? While he was busy dickering over the price of a wineskin full of some pungent-smelling, but otherwise unidentifiable liquid, I studied the sandy road. It looked like it wouldn't be too hard to write in. What should I write? "I AM A PLAYER TOO" seemed like a good place to start. I set about it with a will. I... A... M... A... I got about that far, before I started wondering. I looked at what I had written, but it looked wrong. I suddenly couldn't remember. Was the I supposed to have 2 branches, or three? And I was almost sure I had drawn the M wrong. I thought at first that it just needed the dots above it to look normal, but after I added them, it still seemed wrong.
The more I looked at what I had written, the more I was convinced I had written it entirely wrong. But I couldn't for the life of me remember what they were supposed to look like. With growing horror, I began to realize that I couldn't remember quite what shapes the letters were supposed to be in. The game was messing with my head again, and interfering. Apparently, it didn't feel that bird-mounts needed to know how to write.
With a mounting sense of panic, I looked around the bazaar for signs or other sources of writing. If I couldn't remember what the letters needed to look like, I should at least be able to copy the shapes off of signs.
With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I realized it was not going to be that easy. I could see plenty of signs, no problem there. But no matter how I looked at them, I could not figure out what they were trying to tell me. It was frustrating. I could see them. I could see the letters on them. I KNEW that they contained writing, and writing in a language that I knew. But somehow, when I focused on the individual letters, they were just meaningless collections of strokes. I wasn't even sure always where one letter stopped and the next began.
According to the game, at least, I was illiterate. And the game seemed quite willing to enforce that.
With my spirits at an all time low, I gradually gave up trying to decipher the signs, while Edrick finished up his bartering.
After that...
