Tangon, Apprentice Scribe

Tangon, apprentice scribe, had fingers long and quick like spiders’ legs, spattered with dark blue ink and incredibly, impossibly precise. That was a requirement for the job, you see. One couldn’t risk tarnishing the names of the great scholars and inestimable poets by ascribing to them things they had not said. Every word, every letter had to be perfect—even the last curlicue of the most insignificant little O. 

And the quicker Tangon copied them, the quicker the sundial marks would pass until he could head home.

So his fingers flew across fresh parchment as he transcribed his master’s scrawled notes into a more legible form. Irregular angles were made more uniform, lumpy cursive was smoothed into submission, questionable conjugations were tweaked into perfect clarity. Soon another man’s words were organised in even lines, every tail of every L looped through its neighbours like a twist of beribboned curls. 

He had no time to admire his handiwork. The ink had not yet dried when Master Golvad called him to a different task.

“Have you quite finished, Tangon? Come! I must dictate a letter.”