How Green Becomes Wood

While Xander built the general shape of a blacksmith shop, Dark escaped the wall to find shells to decorate his church with. After feeling satisfied, he spent some time helping Daizi and Ivy. One of them was working on adding till lines, and the other was working on trying to eat sand. The lines were not too badly done, having been excised deep enough into the sand to be easily felt, a feat accomplished by wetting the sand as she worked, because otherwise they wouldn't have lingered.

"If you can find some driftwood, babe, you could probably make a rough approximation of a person or an animal." Daizi suggested.

"I could, but I thought this was a crab city." Dark replied, teasing as he looked over at one of the crabs scuttling around to Ivy's delight.

"Animals, then."
 
"This is an all crab city," Alec reported, returning with his last bucket of shells. As he tipped them out, another crab came scuttling out to join the other three. "It's a very inclusive and very singular city."

Xander snorted as he used a stick to try to get a doorway into the workshop. "Elitist, you mean?"

"Crabist," Alec retorted. "Probably for the best considering they either eat or would be eaten by many of the things that would share a space with them."
 
"No livestock, then?" Daizi asked, putting Ivy into her lap to stop her from trying to grapple a crab. "Do you know, its a pretty common joke that, given enough time, all things become a crab. Maybe this is actually a future city, rather than a historical one."
 
"If crabs kept livestock, I wonder what kind it would be," Alec mused. "They probably would, but I don't know enough about livestock to even guess."

"Well, while you're thinking about that, why don't you build a couple of houses? The king took up residence in the castle, so it's only fair the others have some place to stay," Xander said.

"Good idea," Alec agreed.
 
"Likely small fish." Dark suggested, recalling what he knew from the lobster videos he inexplicably had seen, "We do not consider them as livestock, but crabs would likely have different classifications than we do. I suspect, rather than having pastures, they would have hatcheries to raise fish instead of cattle."

Daizi rent to draw another line in the sand, but upon poking the back of a crab, immediately withdrew her hand, "I regret to say we did not think this one through."
 
"I think they eat some kind of plant stuff," Xander observed, watching one poking at the sand. "I'm not sure what else they'd be getting out of that pile."

Alec used a stick to very gently guide the crab away from Daizi. "There we go, Mama. Your area is now crab free! And I have a little hut for him or her to live in." He'd fashioned a dome just roomy enough for the crab to fit in and then etched swirls in the surface of the house.
 
Ivy squeaked and reached out, very badly wanting to grab one of the crabs. "No, baby," Daizi cooed, "The crabs are going to hurt you! They are going to pinch you!" She tickled Ivy's side, making her squeal with laughter, "She wants to crawl around so badly, but she's just going to grab a crab."

"And then probably try to eat it raw," Dark chuckled, standing up, "Let me take her, I can let her crawl around outside of the wall."
 
Alec inched around carefully, picking a new spot in their rapidly filling area and took a good look at Dark's church. "Oh, Ba! That church is fantastic! A real work of sand art."

The twins settled down to work, trying to fill the wall with everything they could think of that a feudal land would need, starting with more homes for crabs. They encouraged Daizi to make something and kept the sand properly damp with water and a supply of shells and stones.
 
"Well thank you," Dark nodded, setting Ivy down in the sand and then moving a little bit away from her, so she would crawl after him, cheering her along as she did so. The sand, Ivy learned, was not as easy to crawl on as the floor. Although it was where she had first made her attempt, she had been on a blanket then, which smoothed things out for her. It was a rather different animal now. Still, she did her best, and since she was outside the wall, she was not risking destroying everything they had built.

Daizi did help to build things. It being a purely tactile activity, hers wasn't immediately obvious as the one made by the blind family member. It may not have been as detailed as her husband's, but she didn't spend most of her freetime sculpting like he did, but it was a pleasant addition. "That," she announced, "Is the apothecary."
 
"I like it!" Alec announced. "I wish we had a tiny bottle or something to put on top to mark it as the apothecary."

"I guess we could find a tiny skeleton or something?" Xander suggested. He'd moved to the outside of the wall and was starting to add stonework detail.

"I haven't seen any. I think they are too fragile for this area," Alec mused.
 
"Oh! I saw some sea glass. One moment," Alec said, turning to look in the moat. "Ah! Here it is." He picked it out and stuck it in the top of the building so it stood upright. "There we go! Just like that!"

"I like the language idea," Xander agreed.
 
"We can do both," Daizi said cheerfully, carefully feeling the piece of glass, "I find sea glass so fascinating, really. I bet it's gorgeous to see. But you should add the language, Xander, I wouldn't know where to start!"

"If you think about how crabs behave," Dark said, lying on his back on the other side of the wall but lifting Ivy so her head peeked over it, "The way they write would probably mimic their movements."
 
"Alright," Xander agreed after a moment of thought. He stepped over with great care and sat down next to the newly built apothecary. Using the smallest stick he could find, he started carefully tracing in tiny dots and dashes, a bit like a cross between Morse code and Braille, moving around the building in a circular pattern.

Alec stepped outside of the walled boundary and moved to a safe distance before building up another castle. This one was quite simple and took shape quickly.
 
Dark sat up after a little bit to look at what Xander had decided on before nodding approvingly, "Well done. Do you know, the theory for why the direction languages read in comes from how they were initially written? A language first chiseled onto stone is different from one first written on reeds."

The moment Alec was outside of the walls, Ivy began to crawl over to him, although she was slow to get there.
 
"Smudging?" Xander guessed. "Versus being able to see what you're going to carve next? I dunno. Why?"

Alec grinned and called to Ivy. "Come on! You can make it! Come on!" At least while she was crawling, she wasn't actively trying to eat the sand.
 
"Most people are right handed, and when people use a chisel, they typically hold it in their non-dominant hand and strike it with their dominant hand. That motion moves the chisel from right to left. And that is one theory for why some languages are written right-to-left, because that is how they were more easily written down." Dark explained, miming it with his hands, before explaining the theories on how other language directions came to be.

She made it all the way to him and then sat, grinning up at him, her smile only made up a few scant teeth.
 
"Oh. That actually makes sense and is kind of cool," Xander admitted. "So, if you're left-handed, is it easier to just learn to write backward?"

"Hi, you!" Alec grinned at her. He patted his sandcastle. "Do you want to break this one? You can break it if you want, but no eating it."
 
"Luckily Arabic is not still written by chiseling into stone," Dark chuckled, "Part of why I prefer writing in Arabic is because since I am left-handed, I do not smudge the ink. I found it frustrating learning English and encountering that for the first time incredibly frustrating, which is why I forcibly taught myself to write English right-handed."

Scooting a bit closer, Ivy touched the sandcastle, trying to mimic how he patted it.
 
"I remember reading somewhere that left-handed kids used to be taught to write righty because that's how it was done, and something about it being evil or something?" Xander said with a little shrug. "I dunno. Can't remember. Might be one of those things where one person or place did a thing, and word spread, and now that's all people remember. Like the ankle thing."

"Nice!" Alec praised her. "Watch this." He took his finger and poked the sand, going in just a short way before pulling it out. "Can you do that?"
 
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