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The last time Shephard made it to Milliways, he wound up spending a good deal longer than he'd intended teaching Bumi the alphabet through alcohol (find a bottle with a label that begins with the letter, drink an appropriately sized amount of the contents). They got a pretty fair portion of the way through before the attempt sort of melted down- at least as far as Shephard remembers it. For all he knows Bumi remembers more of the material.

But there's this whole thing where there's more to English than the alphabet alone, so Shephard had a discussion with some of the teacher types back in Rowlesburg when he got the chance. They're a little short on supplies to begin with, so it's not as if he can ask for assistance to use with somebody who isn't even on Earth, but he got some titles and program names and ISBN numbers to bring to Bar.

Long story short, Shephard's currently settled in at one of the tables with a spiral-bound copy of Tutor: A Collaborative, Learner-Centered Approach To Literacy Instruction For Teens And Adults, seventh edition, taking notes as he goes. If this shit works for Bumi it'll work for Mari and anybody else who turns up at the Greenbrier with a bad case of Combine-induced lack of reading and writing skills.

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A chicken-horse racing form slaps down on the table, announcing Bumi's arrival before he even gets a chance to open his mouth.

"Shephard," he says as he pulls out a chair across the table from the other man, pausing half way through the motion for permission to do so.

The form gets a glance before Shephard looks up. "Hey there, Bumi," he says. He makes a by-all-means gesture at the chair. "How's it hangin'?"

"Barely, which is to be expected, considering my advanced age and misspent youth. You?"

The Old Man Grunt as he sits down might just be hyperbolic more than anything.

"Managing," says Shephard. "Been too busy lately to pull together much more'n that. I got my first crop of boots in training back home, plus we got harvest season comin' and the winter wheat to-"

He stops a minute, thinking.

"Shit. I forget, do y'all use much wheat where you come from, or is it more rice'n sorghum'n such?"

"More so now than in the past, but it depends where you are. Earth Kingdom's really the only nation with the horizontal space for it, so for a long time they were the only ones who consumed most of it. Well, them and the Air Nomads. Made good feed for the Skybison, solid bread that kept for long trips, that sort of thing," he rolls his hand in gesture of yadda yadda yadda.

"Long story already too long, I know winter wheat."

"Just checkin'," says Shephard. "We got some time before things git ugly weather-wise but when you live the fuck up in mountain country you don't much care to take chances with the next year's crop. Folks back home're scarin' up every last jar, bottle, 'n workable lump of clay they c'n find so's they git to preserve anything extra from the harvest comin' in, too. I already staked my claim to a fair little piece of space for dryin' and smokin' whatever I c'n shoot, but we ain't too geared for livin' on meat alone."

"I hear that. My mother's people are from the South Pole, so...that's pretty much every winter, and most days in the spring, summer, and fall too. How's your haul thus far? Need me to drag a seal-turtle or two your way?"

"Doin' okay so far," says Shephard, "but we only just hit the equinox and we ain't had serious frost yet, so that's got a fair chance of changin'. I got my boots usin' any kind of Xen oogieboogie that crosses our path for target practice, so that helps some."

He scratches his nose and adds, "Got to admit, I wouldn't mind seein' seal-turtle huntin' or fishin' in person, only it ain't like I speak nor read your language."

Edited 2013-09-24 17:00 (UTC)

"Reading won't be a problem," he says with a snort. "I'd be richer than the Sato's if I had a yuan for every new recruit who couldn't read anything more than their own name at the start of Basic. But...I have to admit I don't rightly know what you'd sound like on the other-side of the door."

He scratches his beard as he thinks.

"Could be a boon really, you not being able to understand. Means you'd be spared hearing all the slights against that baby skin of yours. Told Voodoo I'd take him home for the Solstice Festival, but only if he wore something so I wouldn't lose him in the snow."

"Fair 'nough," says Shephard, unfazed. "Ain't like I didn't stick out like a corpse on two feet when I went down to Mari's people anyways. His folk're darker'n you, little more in the copper line than tan, and most of 'em're shorter'n me by a good head or so. No point in me tryin' to pass for somethin' I ain't."

"I got some books, though, speakin' of readin'. This shit here-" He indicates the stuff on his table. "The folks back in my hometown tell me this here's the shit they use to teach folks how to teach adults to read. Reckoned it'd make for an easier time for you if you still wanted to git caught up."

"Makes two of us." His is a dry laugh. Bumi's several shades lighter than his mother and sister, which easily marked him as mixed nation when he entered the service, as a result he's navigated his way through more than his fair share of bigotry over the years.

And that's not even getting into the fact that he's a non-bender.

Up goes an eyebrow at the introduction of the reading materials, and even though he's reaching for them he can't help but quip: "What's the matter? Liver not forgiven you yet?"

"I read somewheres that you remember shit better when you're in the same frame of mind as you were when you learned it," Shephard says as he flips to some of the more relevant parts of the book- there's a section towards the back with many, many similar words arranged in lists, the easier to show patterns of sound. "I reckoned it might be a good idea to make sure you could read sober, not just when you're drunk off your ass."

"Ha! You're assuming there's a time in my day when I am sober." He cranes his neck for a better view, but eventually just snags the book and flips through the pages.

Bumi taps at the page. "O. Ouzo."

"Point taken," says Shephard. He cranes his head. "Yep. Also, Old Grand-dad, that's a kind of bourbon. Which is spelled like this."

He grabs a pen off the table and scribbles out the word 'bourbon' in the margin.

"Thing is, 'ouzo' ain't English to start with, and 'bourbon' ain't neither, so you just got to remember that 'ou' sounds like 'oo' when you want ouzo and it sounds like 'uh' when you want bourbon."

Hey, the book says that the easiest way to make sure students stay interested and engaged is to teach from material that they relate to and that has to do with subjects of importance to them personally.

His face screws up as he repeats the sounds under his breath.

"This is a very silly language, and not just because it's dooming me to a life like Midshipman Ling." Bumi looks up and explains: "His lips move when he reads."

"English ain't so much a language as a shit-ton of invasions," Shephard says. "Either folks invaded England'n left their language'n their bastards behind, or England invaded somebody else'n went home with all the good words they could carry. There's a couple languages harder t'speak back on Earth, but that's on account of them havin' real specialized sounds to make. English's a pain in the ass to learn because it don't so much have rules as real fuckin' loose suggestions, half the time. You got my apologies for that."

"Well if ever there was a silver lining to the long storied history of warfare in my world, that's surely it. Even after one hundred years of war my world's language hasn't changed much at all, save for generational slang of course."

Damn kids these days, with their jazz music.

"Oh, you could understand folks speakin' English from a hundred years back if you learned it in my day," Shephard says. "But I kinda git the feelin' we might have more people back in my world than y'all have in yours."

A thought occurs to him, and his expression twists wryly as he says, "There's a real old story in my world- couple thousand years old at the least- 'bout how way back when there wasn't but a good couple thousand people in the world, tops, and everyone spoke the same language'n lived in the same place, they all got together to build the biggest fuckin' building they could. Wanted to git it tall enough so the towers'd reach the heavens. Story goes that... well, I reckon you'd say it was one of the sky spirits... took one look at that'n said, fuck, if they keep this shit up ain't nothin' gonna stop these people from doin' whatever the fuck they want. So it went among the people'n changed all their languages up, so only a couple of people could understand each other, and they scattered all over the world because fuck them if they were gonna hang around neighbors they didn't understand no more."

"Ain't sayin' the story's true, necessarily, but we got enough languages and enough people in the world back home that a shitload of folks believe it, or at least figure it's a good enough story to fall back on."

"And that right there is the power of a good story. Don't even need an actual grain of truth, just the suggestion of one. And of course if one happens to believe in the spirits to begin with, well then all the better."

"Pretty much," says Shephard. "Anyways, I dunno how many people you have where you come from, but back before everything went to shit in my world there were... shit, somethin' like... I dunno. Six and a half billion, I think. Somethin' like three hunnert million of 'em spoke English as their first language. Changed a lot, in different ways in different places."

He whistles his amazement.

"Big number. Probably way bigger than the population back home, though to be honest I have underlings to handle my logistics, so I could be entirely wrong about that.

And all those people learned it through conquest?"

"Not all of 'em. England started sending out colonies a couple hunnert years back," says Shephard. "Some of the colonies got real attractive'n folks from other countries started movin' there'n havin' kids who grew up speakin' English, so you got that along with the conquest shit. English wasn't even the most common language in the world, I reckon that was probably some kinda Chinese dialect, only Chinese's more of a bitch to learn than English on account of a fuckload of people ain't too good at learning tones'n memorizing three thousand fuckin' characters just to be able to read."

"Three thousand character, huh? Sounds to me like we're moving back towards familiar territory. At least for me, at any rate. If and when you ever decide you want to swap places and become the student, lemme know. I'll write my brother and get some suggestions on what the kiddos are learning to read with these days," he says reaching into his coat pocket for the small picture of his nieces and nephew he keeps there.

A reminder of why he's still active duty.

Bumi looks at the picture and can't help but smile. It's a year or two old by this point, which doesn't mean much for Jinora and Ikki, but Meelo is much tinier.

"He's got three and one more on the way."

"Wouldn't hurt to learn, one of these days," says Shephard. He gets an odd look for a moment that swiftly turns into a laugh. "Reckon it'd be one more bug up Dr. Augustine's ass- she all but told me I was too fuckin' smart to be in the military, last time we got to talkin'."

He leans over to get a better look at the picture. "Cute kids," he says. "Shit, I wish him luck. My momma thought she was gonna have four. Turned out she wound up havin' five- pair of twins came along after me."

"Smart's a double-edge sword in the service. Leads to ideas and thinking and possibly not following orders."

Not that Bumi knows anything what so ever about that. Nope. Not him.

"HA! Much as Pema loves Tenzin and the kids, I'm still pretty sure she'd flay his tattoos off if she found out the one she was carrying was more than that."

Bumi considers this for a second.

"I should write Kya and tell her to lie the next time she sees Pema..."

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