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Post by Morgan on May 14, 2020 14:43:55 GMT -6
Ryuusei was not very confident with this part, of course, and looked very bashful. Morgan frowned for a moment, head tilted. "What's w-wrong, Ryuusei?" They asked. The tat-lung tapped a claw against a nearby rock. It occurred to Morgan quickly that Ryuusei was embarrassed because he had no idea how. "Ah, that makes sense Ryuusei. N-no one knows how to do anythin' without being taught." The human tells him, giving him a pat on the shoulder comfortingly. "Le-let's see..." Morgan tapped the underside of their chin, thinking. They could recall seeing Ryuusei spit embers out of his mouth whenever he was angry, or afraid. It must be a natural response, they thought. "H-how about we get you w-worked up. You naturally produce sparks w-whenever you are running high." Morgan said, stretching in the sun.
Ryuusei shits his golden scales, and ponders on this, before agreeing.
[5]
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Post by Morgan on May 14, 2020 14:55:49 GMT -6
They spent the next ten minutes trying to get Ryuusei worked up, and finally, after all of that hard work, Ryuusei was spitting sparks from his nostrils. Morgan could not have been more pleased! "Alright, n-now we've just gotta fi-figure out how ta get you to get that out i-in a stream..." Morgan pondered. It made Ryuusei even more excited that he had just been able to produce even a few sparks. "A-alright, I think it's probably uh, will-power based?" They didn't want to say magic, persay, but the understanding of it got through to Ryuusei, who of course was beyond the 'magic isn't just science that hasn't been studied properly yet' camp that Morgan had never really moved out of despite becoming a chaos elemental. "So maybe just c-concentrate on something over there... That wet log- and see what happens?" Morgan was really trying to help.
[6]
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Post by Morgan on May 14, 2020 15:13:20 GMT -6
The human used the cue whistle, and since Ryuusei had already gotten pretty skilled at picking out that specific cue whistle, Ryuusei immediately turned and looked at the wet log. He knew what Morgan was meaning, it was sort of like his flight. He'd had to learn how to force his will to put himself in the sky, and now he was learning how to force his will to allow him to breathe fire. He focused that thought on the log, and then tried, opening his mouth. He felt pretty silly, until he noticed the smallest of little fire breaths having erupted from his mouth, singe-ing but not lighting the wet log on fire. Morgan was STOKED but not nearly as absolutely excited as Ryuusei was. He did everything to celebrate short of convey 'look what I did!' Still, Morgan gave him a quick pat on his golden scaled shoulder. "Good job." Morgan said.
[7]
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Post by Morgan on May 14, 2020 15:21:36 GMT -6
Now it was going to be the usual, smooth-sailing, repetition training. Along with the repetition work, the pair also was going to work on getting the fire breath to be much more broad and powerful. Ryuusei was really and truly stoked by this point, so he was having a much easier time getting the flame to actually brew and come out now. Morgan continued to use the whistled cue to let him know when to start again. The dragon got much better at producing the flame on cue, as well as producing a flame that was both much more controlled and also much more powerful. They continued working on this for a good thirty minutes, until Ryuusei was behaving on the cue without any hesitation, but the human knew that they needed to continue, only this time with Morgan peppering in wrong cues. Ryuusei was never fooled by the wrong cues, and the human was sure that he had gotten it.
[8] - [End of 'Breathe Fire']
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Post by Morgan on May 14, 2020 16:30:16 GMT -6
Now that they were done, the pair took a quick break. Ryuusei went to go get a drink, and Morgan flipped through the books they'd chosen in order to find the one that had the alphabet in it in common, first, along with an LSL print below it, showing the hand signs for them. At the back of this book, there was a good example of a few short sentences, about different MML creatures, complete with pictures. It was going to be rough going, they could tell already. Whenever Ryuusei returned (he'd also stopped to inspect the wet log to make sure it wasn't going to catch fire- though it was mostly charred and wet now) Morgan sat the book aside. 'Am I going to learn how to read now?' He asked, curiously flicking his tail. "N-not yet, there's one more thing first. I want to work on your roaring." The human said. [9] - [Start of 'Roar']
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Post by Morgan on May 14, 2020 16:42:24 GMT -6
Ryuusei was sort of dumbstruck for a moment. Of all of the high-minded things Morgan had been teaching them, or at least high-minded for a human, the human wanted to work with him on roaring? 'Are you just nervous about teaching me how to read? I won't bite.' He conveyed, punctuated with a vicious grin flashing teeth. Morgan waved him off. "N-naw... Well, sorta. But w-we were gonna work on this too, anyway. Easy stuff outta the way first, right?" Morgan grinned back at him. The pair stared at one another for a moment, before Ryuusei moves his head to the side slightly, and Morgan nodded at him. "W-we'll work on this first, and then getcha fixed up. I promise." They said, and Ryuusei finally agreed, standing back up. "This will be the cue for t-the roar." Morgan said, giving a cue on the whistle. "The goal with the roar is t-to stop an enemy in t-their tracks."[10]
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Post by Morgan on May 14, 2020 19:49:50 GMT -6
Roaring for a lot of creatures is probably more of a difficult affair. First one needs to find their voice, and then they need to learn how to project it. In fact, the creature might have more of a difficult time with learning the command than anything else. However, tat-lungs hardly ever had difficulty learning cues, in Morgan's experience, and of course they were also big beings, and loud as all get out. For Ryuusei, Morgan was sure that the most difficulty they would have was that Ryuusei was sort of genteel, and disliked being caught out of sorts.
Morgan gave the whistle as soon as Ryuusei conveyed that he had heard and understood it, and they watched him get a little bent out of shape as he puffed out his chest, and with quite a bit of embarrassment gave a roar that nearly shook Morgan- running all the way through them.
[11]
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Post by Morgan on May 14, 2020 20:00:50 GMT -6
Well, the command was going to be worked on a little more with the repetition work, but the technique was down pat already. The tat-lung was easily already in control of his roaring. The human was more than a little confused at it, but the tat-lung simply reminded them- 'I sort of taught myself how on the fly, whenever you were attacked by that horrid tree thing.' Ah, that would explain it, Morgan thought- they hardly remembered that. At least the QP had been worth it and the nyssa had only glanced them, not quite killing them in one hit. Nyssa were huge beasts, glancing or no. "Good, you did great. Ss-certainly stopped me in my tracks." The human nodded at this. "W-we'll work on the cue whistle a few more t-times, and you should be good." Morgan decided. Ryuusei was proud of himself, even if it was quite undignified of him.
[12]
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Post by Morgan on May 14, 2020 20:19:03 GMT -6
The pair continued to work on Ryuusei's reaction time to the cue whistle over the next thirty minutes. Though the repetition aspect was easily Morgan's least favorite part of both teaching and training, they recognized that it was an important part and the process. It also helped quite a bit that the ever fun-loving Ryuusei found ways to keep it fresh, joking with Morgan whenever they peppered in 'wrong' cue whistles to make sure that the tat-lung wasn't simply roaring at every cue whistle. Of course he wasn't, tat-lung were far too smart to really mess up in that way, at least under most circumstances. Morgan kept the lesson going a little further than they normally would, even though they were sure that Ryuusei knew what he was doing, because they were still quite nervous about starting on the main event for today; the reading. However, after about an hour they couldn't really hide the fact that Ryuusei knew 'roar' down pat.
[13] - [End of 'Roar']
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Post by Morgan on May 14, 2020 20:38:12 GMT -6
Now, for the hard part. Morgan knew that this would be a multiple-day experience, but how long would it take to teach a dragon to read? Tat-lungs were beyond smarter than humans, and though it took a little bit to get a child up to snuff, a mature dragon would probably be easier. Or at least the human was banking on it. "Alright Ryuusei, time. C'mere." The human conveyed to the tat-lung in triplicate, as they usually spoke to the tat-lungs. Ryuusei was quite excited, the white fluff of his hair all up on end as he bounced over. "This 'ere is a book that will show you the alphabet." The human said, opening the big book, with the laminated pages. On the first page, the whole alphabet was printed on the page in both uppercase and lowercase. The tat-lung looked dumbfounded, for a moment. The human was expecting that.
[14] - [Start 'Read']
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Post by Morgan on May 14, 2020 20:47:54 GMT -6
"The alphabet shows all of the symbols t-that we use in common for writing stuff down." Morgan explains, feeling fairly comfortable now that they had started. "E-ach one has a pronunciation, and then a few sounds it could mean. I'll teach you a few, and you parrot them back t-to me, okay?" Morgan said. They weren't quite sure if this would work, but they hoped that Ryuusei's patience and intelligence would make up for any of their mistakes. They wanted to try it with Ryuusei first, after all, because Seimei was not patient, and Millicent was only as intelligent as Morgan theirself was- bumbling through that with Morgan not knowing how would be a nightmare at best.
Morgan then proceeded to go through the entire alphabet, with Ryuusei repeating after them. At this, they went through it again. Ryuusei was quicker on the draw this time, already committing the names of the letters to memory.
[15]
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Post by Morgan on May 14, 2020 22:22:07 GMT -6
After a few more passes, Morgan noticed that Ryuusei was looking quite bored, so they mixed it up the next time around by simply pointing to the letter, and then looking pointedly at Ryuusei without saying which one it was. Ryuusei looked incredibly anxious for a long moment, before finally doing a soft reply- 'Ayyy' in his tat-lung conveyance. "Good, what a-about this one?" A moment passes. 'Beee?' He conveyed, curiously. "A-a-and this one?" Morgan asked, and this time, the tat-lung looked much more confident. 'Seee.' There we go, Morgan thought. The rest of the alphabet passed with no issue, in the same stilted-halting way, but Ryuusei was much more intelligent than Morgan was, that was for sure. He picked it up over the next three attempts doing it just like this. "Okay, now, what sounds can 'A' make?" Morgan asked. The next hour was filled with such questions about the alphabet, and then they had to call it quits for the day.
[16]
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Post by Morgan on May 16, 2020 14:00:01 GMT -6
The next two days were more of the same. Ryuusei was a whiz at puzzles, and he was a quick learner, too. He had the alphabet memorized after those two days of hard work (harder work for Morgan, in all honesty, than for Ryuusei) as well as all the sounds they could technically make. That was when Morgan decided to move on to the next piece of technique he'd need to know- and that was the sounds that most of them make together, as well as which ones the vowels were. This took another two days, but by the end of those two days, Ryuusei had it down pat, and was honestly pretty bored with it. Still, Morgan knew that they could not be too careful when it came to teaching him to read. Ryuusei was very ready to begin the process of reading, and on the fifth day, they started. [17]
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Post by Morgan on May 16, 2020 14:03:16 GMT -6
The next book that they used was one with pictures of labs creatures doing something. Each page had a really simple sentence, with the parts of the sentence clearly labeled, and then a picture that explained what was going on. It took a surprisingly long time, at fifteen minutes, for Ryuusei to read his first sentence. 'See... the houluh... run.' He conveyed, and then suddenly looked incredibly excited. Almost childlike, he reached out and pointed to the running houluh in the picture. 'So the 'subject', or noun in this case, is houluh. And the verb is run?' Ryuusei asked. He was learning incredibly fast, but of course that made sense. Tat-lungs were naturals at patterns, puzzles, and other such knowledge-based activities. This was a game for him, at best. "Yes, you're right." Morgan said. Ryuusei looked at his own 'hands', and wiggled them around. 'After this, will you teach me sign language?'[18]
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Post by Morgan on May 16, 2020 14:14:57 GMT -6
Morgan smiled at him. "It m-might be a while. I've gotta t-teach Seimei, after all, and then maybe even Millicent. The younger tats have g-got to be worked with, too." the human mused, head tilted slightly. Ryuusei nodded. 'But eventually?' Morgan cracked another grin. "Of course. It's o-on my list for y'all." And that was that. The rest of the day, the tat-lung worked to figure sentences out, until finally he got it down pat. Short sentences at least, were readable for him. They left for the day, and then the next two days were dedicated entirely to trying to show him how complex sentences worked out. The tat-lung learned relatively quickly, but it took quite a bit of work to work out the kinks when it came to when it was okay to put two sentences together. After that, Morgan presented him with his first short book.
[19]
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