Trevor Tweesly held out his tray. Cookie took it and placed on it a slate of hard tack, a puddle of vegetables, and a wedge of fossilized meat.

　　"Thanks, Cookie," Trevor said with all his usual enthusiasm at meal times.

　　"Welcome, lad," the dwarf said hurriedly. He was already on the next in line.

　　Trevor carefully took the tray back, lest he slosh the vegetables or drop the bread or meat through the floor and out through the hull.

　　He sat down at one of the available tabletops, put his bread in the vegetables to soak. While he waited for either to become palatable, he gnawed on the salted meat.

　　The mess hall, for what it was on this ship, was at full occupancy with fifteen people lined up for their rations. A couple were sitting around the room, at tables or bracing themselves against the wall.

　　It had taken some time for him to grow accustomed to the way rooms would rock about, but by now he could stay upright and keep food down.

　　He pulled a tome out from his robe with his free hand and set it on the margins of the small table.

　　Gripping his salted meat in his teeth, he used both hands to unclasp the pages and open the book.

　　There was a click as the internal mechanism locked the spine.

　　With the book stuck half open, Trevor set one side flat on the table, the cover standing straight up.

　　"A weird way to read a book, Tweesly," a voice came from over his shoulder.

　　There was never any privacy on a ship.

　　He regretted not taking his food back to his bunk. But then I`d seem isolated and weird and people would inquire on principle, he thought.

　　"Hey Yggril," Trevor said idly.

　　"Usually you`re supposed ta hold it upright, with a page on the left and a page on the right," the halfling continued, unencumbered by things like greetings.

　　The halfling had two slates of hard tack and was chewing one of them.

　　"You should really consider eating some vegetables instead of trading them for more bread," Trevor chided. "You need the nutrients you can`t otherwise get when you`re at sea."

　　Yggril noticed the hard tack laying in the vegetables on Trevor`s tray and tutted at the waste of good bread. If that was the case, then he had to act quickly.. He ignored Trevor`s advice and continued on his thread. "So why do you have that book open halfway? And why`s it sideways?"

　　Trevor allowed himself a moment of gratification. It wasn`t often people asked him about his magical studies, and this halfling seemed persistent enough to listen.

　　"I have an idea for more efficient magical usage," he said in a casually academic tone. "Do you know the basics of spell theory?" He asked it as one would for the definition of rain, or if he knew how to tie a bowline.

　　The halfling shook his head before deftly biting off a piece of the bread. It was the closest thing you could get to leather from only wheat, Trevor noted.

　　"Spell theory is the basis of wizard magic, you see. The spells have to be crafted from ambient aether, which is simple enough for immediate use, but since the advent of vellum," and here Trevor motioned to his half-open book, "we can store less complex spells for use at a later date."

　　The halfling looked up from Trevor`s book with a blank look.

　　"It`s like canning strawberries in the summer so you can have jam in the winter," Trevor hazarded a second time.

　　If this took too long, the bread would soak through. "Ok, but you still didn`t answer my-" the halfling started.

　　Trevor cut him off. "Magical tomes are full of pages of vellum. In them, spell casters press their creations like flowers. I have a few minor creations lingering in the earlier pages, myself."

　　He swiped a finger on the flat page. It was trailed with a multi-color line, vanishing a half second after the motion was done, but tie-dye colors on the eye before it did.

　　Yggril almost dropped his bread.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it`s taken without the author`s consent. Report it.

　　"Usually, field spellcasters perform somatic and verbal components to cobble together living spells from the air." He pantomimed with meaningless gestures as he said this.

　　"But scrollmakers use runic thaumaturgy to express these same notions. I`m practiced in such, and with each finger I can simultaneously trace out a series of runes for the binding of magic."

　　"Trevor, mate-" the halfling started, but Trevor bent over his book, both hands on the flat page, with the cover side propped up in front of him like a screen.

　　His fingers went wild, swiping and tracing on the page in front of him, leaving brilliant trails of complex and mystical signals, arriving and vanishing in half-moments.

　　The vertical pages began glowing between themselves, almost thickening.

　　All of a sudden, Trevor stopped.

　　"Here, I have prepared the incantations necessary for a demonstration," and he reached into a pocket of his robes.

　　"That`s great, Trevor," the halfling said, trying to sound less worried, "it really is. But I was just trying to get your bread off you. I`m coming clean."

　　There was panic in his eyes.

　　To his knowledge, the crew wasn`t especially superstitious. Sailors had some strange ways, and beliefs about dolphins and weather, but there wasn`t any taboo about magic.

　　No, he recognized this fear. It was the common fear of education.

　　"You can have my bread," Trevor said despondently.

　　"No, you keep it," he said before backing away, hoping he might get out without a full-on lecture.

　　With no more captive audience, Trevor went back to carving nutrition from his tray. The bread wasn`t soggy yet, but he tried to cut his teeth on it anyway. The tang of the meat was getting overbearing and he needed a change of pace.

　　By now, the line had cleared out. All the trading had been done and Cookie was cleaning up in preparation for the next mealtime.

　　The only other person in the room, Trevor realized, was Tris. This he realized with a pang of guilt.

　　He hadn`t made his peace with Tris since his first and last game of Plucky`s.

　　Instead, Trevor had busied himself, avoiding social responsibility which waited for him just out of sight, like a back alley thug.

　　His glance had caught Tris` attention.

　　To his horror, Tris was crossing the room to him.

　　"Uhh, hey, listen-" he started to say when the faerie was in earshot.

　　Tris was intent on the tome, which was still open in front of Trevor.

　　When Trevor realized this, he almost sighed in relief.

　　"Tris, I`d been meaning to make it up to you," he had started, but before he could finish the sentence, Tris had picked up his tome.

　　Tris was leafing through the pages, specifically the ones charged with spells. Trevor wanted to reach out and take the book for fear of the magic being spent haphazardly.

　　But faeries are creatures of magic, he remembered. A relaxing thought, despite the apparent mishandling of the tome happening in front of him.

　　"Do you want to see a demonstration?" he asked carefully.

　　Tris returned the tome.

　　Trevor produced a wrinkled scrap of parchment, now carefully folded in thirds, and a stoppered jar of ink. He did not produce a quill.

　　"I have an idea for a method of spellcasting that is much more precise than the current field method," he explained.

　　Setting his tray aside, he spread out the piece of paper, no more than a foot square at the widest. He set his tome next to it.

　　He unstoppered the ink bottle and carefully dripped one drop onto the paper.

　　"Do you see how the paper absorbs some of the ink readily, but that the drop stays mostly wet?"

　　It was true. There was a convex dome of ink sitting on the paper even as it spread out into the fibers of the paper.

　　Trevor put both hands on his tome as before with Yggril.

　　"I have already prepared for this demonstration. You saw the spells nestled in the pages already. They didn`t make much sense, did they?"

　　Tris made a complex lyrical noise that Trevor took as confirmation.

　　He began tracing runes again.

　　As he did, the dot of ink moved around on the piece of paper like a living thing.

　　"There is no detectable energy loss when transcribing or expending spells," he said matter-of-factly while his fingers traced luminescent paths on the vellum. "So there is no reason why we cannot store spells for immediate use."

　　Tris burbled contradictorily.

　　"I know the transcription is resource-intensive," he defended, "but, as you can see, it doesn`t have to be."

　　The dot of ink started leaving a trail as it rolled around the page.

　　"With this simple translocation transform, and the proper manipulation of real-time variables, I can manipulate the ink with mathematical precision."

　　There appeared shapes on the page, drawn with straight-rule exactitude. There was a triangle, which then faded and was replaced by a circle.

　　When the circle faded, the dot transcribed a cylinder with radius and height notation.

　　"I have some pre-fabricated settings in here I`ve been working on," Trevor said.

　　The cylinder disappeared. In its place were words.

　　"There are some issues with the typing," he said almost to himself, "but I can have it write in a concise and readable hand."

　　The words jumped.

　　Ye quick browne fox jumpeth over yon lazie dogge.

　　"I`ve always thought the scribes indulged themselves too much in embellishing the script," he said, noting the simpler font.

　　And with that, the exhibition was over. Trevor looked at Tris expectantly.

　　The faerie merely looked at the paper. There was no discerning any emotion under those clothes.

　　He turned back to his book.

　　I am sorry

　　The faerie looked at him.

　　"I feel bad for hurting your feelings," he added.

　　Trevor watched as Tris seemed to examine the paper more closely.

　　In a blink, Tris picked it up and secreted it somewhere in the purple robes before racing out of the mess hall, leaving Trevor whiplashed and baffled.

　　Dwarven laughter came spilling out of the kitchen door. Cookie was coming from the opposite direction, carrying a pot half as big as himself.

　　"Ha ha ha! The fae folk have their ways, am I right, lad?"

　　Trevor looked at him sternly. "What do you know about it? Did Tris accept my apology?"

　　"Aye, I was watchin` you two. It`s my mess, my responsibility," he admitted, hefting the pot onto a tabletop.

　　"I think ya can take that as acceptance," he said. He didn`t sound out of breath from carrying the pot. Not even from laughing while doing so.

　　The dwarf scratched his scalp under his greasy chef`s hat.

　　"I think, lad," he said in a more sober tone, "that one`s keepin` an eye on ya."