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Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

Everyone's finding out about Crow's real name lately xD

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

Crow smiled as Penelope kissed him on the cheek and turned back to the paper in front of him to practice writing out his alias. As much as he would have liked to write his birth name, he knew he would probably be using the name ‘Crow’ more often once he got better at writing, since he didn’t want to give out his actual name to any more people than the few who already knew it. It was simply safer to keep the name ‘Collin’ between himself and Penelope, so no one else could find out about it.

However, he had just barely touched the quill to the paper again when a knock suddenly sounded at the door to his room. The thief spun around in his chair just as the door opened, only to see Penelope’s father step inside. The sigh of the older knight made him relax, since he’d been momentarily worried that Hunter had come back. It wouldn’t have been good if the attendant had caught him sitting so close to Penelope, since they didn’t want to tip him off about their relationship.

Despite the fact that he knew he could trust John, Crow supposed he should have been a little more attentive as the other man commented on the papers between them. The thief’s eyes flicked to them for a moment before returning to John’s face, and he hurriedly snatched the two sheets off the table to hide behind his back in one hand. It wasn’t a very subtle move at all, but he didn’t want the knight to see what they had been writing, since his real name had been on the papers.

Clearing his throat awkwardly, he averted his gaze off to the side. “Penelope was just teaching me how to write,” he mumbled in response to the question.

“I see,” John mused, knitting his brow as he studied the thief with a confused look, as if he wasn’t sure why he was trying to be secretive about something like that. His eyes wandered down to the thief’s torso like he was trying to see through him to look at the concealed papers as he added, “Who’s Collin?”

Crow blanched. It seemed he hadn’t hidden the papers quickly enough to hide what they’d written on them after all. He glanced at Penelope as he fumbled to think of a lie, but apparently, his initial reaction had been enough to give the sharp-witted knight his answer.

“I see,” John said again before the thief could make up an explanation. He turned to Penelope, moving on abruptly from the subject. “If you’re finished here, our sleeping quarters have been prepared for us. Come with me, and I’ll take you to them.”

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

Crow's really into it now xD
He also got a little more emotional about seeing his birth name written out

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

Crow eagerly passed off the writing quill to Penelope when she said she would show him how to write his name. He was surprised by how excited he was to learn such a skill, since it had never interested him before. Now that he was actually giving it a try, he found that he was fascinated by the way the letters came together to make words that had real meanings and could be understood by other people in the kingdom. Of course, the peasants had their own written stories too, but theirs were always in the form of pictures drawn with charcoal, since they didn’t have any other means of recording anything. Writing like this was much different than what he had grown up with.

As Penelope demonstrated how to write his alias, the thief leaned a little closer to her with interest. When she finished, he blinked as he realized he recognized the shapes she used and nodded when she said his name was written on his wanted posters. “Oh yeah,” he mused. “I do remember seeing it… I guess I just never realized that’s what my name looked like.” He studied the symbols on the paper a little more closely, finding a strange sense of identity in understanding how his name was written.

The feeling only increased when Penelope went on to show him how to write his real name. His heartbeat quickened with excitement as the letters appeared on the paper, forming the name his mother had given him as a child. He listened absently as Penelope explained a little more to him about the characters in both of his names, though his gaze never moved from the sheet in front of her as he stared down at the ink. He was too caught up in his own thoughts to fully pay attention to what she was telling him.

It felt like a whole different world was opening up to him as he began to gain a faint comprehension of the words. All of the scrolling letters he’d seen in books before that’d had no meaning to him would soon reveal their secrets. His lip curved upward in an amused smile as he realized he finally understood why Simon had been trying to learn to read and write before. Written books were like foreign languages—When he’d learned the tongues of Gorm, Waithen, and Medora, he had no longer been confined to communicating in his native language, but when he learned how to read and write, he would no longer be restricted to the spoken word. It was an empowering feeling.

When Penelope passed the quill back to him, he took it from her without hesitation this time. Resting the blackened tip on the paper, he decided to write out his real name first, finding more of a desire to memorize that word, since it had more meaning to him than his alias did. His eyes flicked between the letters Penelope had written and the ones he was trying to copy down as he marked the paper with painstaking effort, wanting to improve his ability to write the symbols legibly. When he was done, he lowered his hand and looked down at his name, pleased with the result.

In the next moment, he suddenly turned his head to meet Penelope’s lips in a deep kiss, feeling a strong burst of affection for her for teaching him how to write his own name. He lingered for a while before he pulled back again with a grin. “This is a lot more useful than I was expecting,” he said, reaching out with his left hand to rest on her thigh beneath the table. “Thank you, love.”

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

Crow got a little excited cx

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

Crow followed along with his eyes as Penelope wrote her name slowly, indicating which letters she was using to make which sounds as she went. As he suspected, it seemed like the symbols did represent multiple sounds, because two of the ‘E’s in her name sounded different than the last one. He looked over the word on the paper with a puzzled expression, wondering how he was supposed to know when the written letters were supposed to be pronounced in different ways, as well as how he was supposed to know which ones to use in different words when writing them out, himself. He sighed softly. It seemed like reading and writing were going to take him much longer than it took him to learn a spoken language.

He looked up at Penelope as she explained how the letter’s names were different than the sounds they made. That made him want to roll his eyes. Of course, it seemed that every part of writing was going to have some sort of trick to it. He wished it was simpler, so he could just learn a few general rules and pick it up from there. Instead, he was starting to think he was going to have to learn a lot of complex rules with exceptions. It was no wonder why Simon had still been barely literate after studying for so long.

As the knight offered him the quill, Crow hesitated for a moment before he took it from her. “I might as well,” he shrugged, looking down at the paper in front of him. “Just don’t laugh if my attempt turns out much worse than yours, okay?” Adjusting his grip on the tool to match the way she had held it before—the position made him use different muscles in his hand that felt foreign to him—he glanced between Penelope’s paper and his own as he meticulously copied down the way she had written her name.

As he’d expected, the lines and curves were a bit sloppy compared to the neat letters she had made, but when he finished, he felt rather pleased with himself. Though he still didn’t understand why he was using the particular symbols for her name, nor how to choose any letters for other words, he had written something that had a meaning for the first time in his life. The thought made him feel surprisingly giddy with excitement.

Looking up to meet her gaze again, he sat up a little straighter with newfound enthusiasm, “How do I write my name?”

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

Crow knew exactly what word he wanted to learn first ;3

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

Crow felt a wave of affection for Penelope when her features brightened at his agreement to learn how to read and write from her. Even though he didn’t care very much about the skill itself, he enjoyed seeing her get so excited about the prospect of teaching him. That alone was worth the effort of learning to be literate. He also liked the thought of being able to write to her if they ever found themselves apart for a long time during the war. It had already happened a couple of times, so even though he was going to try his hardest not to go so long without seeing her again, he figured it would be nice to have a way to keep in touch with her if it ever happened in the future.

He stood back as she pulled away from him to look over the various books and supplies on the shelves, watching from a distance as she retrieved some paper and tools that he had seen Hazel use to write in her journal before. It still felt a little strange to imagine himself learning how to use a quill, but he supposed it wasn’t too late for him to give it a try. He took her hand and followed her over to the table by the window, sitting down in the cushioned chair—it seemed all the furniture in the upper levels of the castle was padded for comfort—and waiting for her to pull up her own seat beside him.

As he did, he took some time to look over the things she had put on the table. Having watched Hazel write before, he remembered how the quill and ink worked together. The only thing left was for him to learn how to use them to make meaningful symbols, like the ones he had seen in the herbalist’s journal.

He glanced up as Penelope pulled up a chair beside him and set herself up with a fresh piece of paper. His eyes wandered to her hand that gripped the quill, studying the way she held the tool by letting the shaft rest against the crook between her thumb and index finger. Having learned plenty of other skills that required intricate work with one’s hands, he had learned that the position of a utensil could make all the difference sometimes, so he wanted to copy everything she did to the best of his ability.

When the knight began marking the paper with symbols, Crow leaned forward in his chair and observed her with interest. Every single character she made was different, although some looked quite similar to each other. He had a feeling the hardest part of writing was going to be remembering which symbol meant what. With spoken words, it was easy to tell what someone was saying because he could hear the difference in the syllables and phrases, but seeing that same difference in a visual form was going to take time.

And if I take my father’s job offer, I’ll have to learn the written languages of multiple kingdoms, he thought with a faint wince, feeling a bit overwhelmed. Deciding it was too much to focus on right now, he turned his attention back to Penelope as she explained that she had written out all of the ‘letters’ in order. At that, the thief quirked a brow in surprise. He had thought there would be many more than the ones she had already written down. After all, the Missenar language was full of a number of different articulations—certainly more than the few characters she had just shown him. Perhaps some symbols accounted for multiple sounds? Oh gods, he cringed. This might be harder than I thought.

As Penelope asked him to give her a word, Crow drummed his fingers on the table in thought. After a moment, he met her gaze again with a grin. “Your name,” he decided. “Show me how to write ‘Penelope.’”

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

She's in for a surprise later xD

Let Me Steal Your Heart [BuzzingBee + Dagger]

“Maybe,” Crow murmured absently, eyeing the books on the shelves as Penelope suggested that his father expected that he would be able to learn to read quickly. Having never tried it before, he had no idea how long it would take him to master something like that. Amongst all of the thieves in his group, Simon was the only one who had been even somewhat literate, and even after all the time he’d spent poring over books, he’d acknowledged that he hadn’t been able to progress very far. Based on that, it sounded like reading and writing was a difficult thing to learn. However, mastering spoken language was supposed to be difficult too, and he’d been able to pick that up no problem. Perhaps there was something to the knight’s theory after all.

As Penelope went on to say that the whole trip had been overwhelming, Crow nodded in agreement. When they had left the knights’ camp in the beginning, he’d expected the whole thing to go by quickly so he could return to the outer villages again after just a few days. Instead, the journey to the castle had been nothing short of exhausting, and now there was a chance he wouldn’t go home at all. In the span of just one evening, everything had changed. He didn’t even know what to think anymore.

He held Penelope a little closer as she reminded him that he still had time to make his decision. He knew she was right, but he couldn’t help feeling like a heavy weight was bearing down on his shoulders. Although his father had made it sound like he could take all the time he needed to choose a path, he didn’t doubt that the king would be expecting an answer soon. After all, he probably had more important things to do that sit around the castle, waiting for his estranged son to make up his mind about whether or not to take the job. The thief didn’t want to leave his father hanging for too many days. He would have to come to a decision eventually.

Crow was drawn from his thoughts when Penelope spoke up again to ask if he had ever tried to learn how to read or write before. “Never,” he shook his head, looking down to meet her gaze. “It wasn’t really something I thought would be useful to me, since I’ve never needed it before, so I haven’t bothered trying to learn.”

As she went on to suggest that she could teach him, his eyes wandered back to the countless books. “Hm,” he grunted thoughtfully. It honestly wasn’t something he had ever been interested in learning before, since he tended to prefer spending his time learning skills that he deemed useful to himself. However, she seemed excited to teach him, and he did have plenty of time to kill while they stayed at the castle…

“Alright,” he answered after a pause, turning back to her with a fond smile and running one hand through her hair. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t learn how. I mean, we’ve got all these books here already, so we might as well put some to use.” He leaned down to kiss her playfully on the nose. “Show me what you’ve got, teacher.”