Blog

We haven't been posting much lately because a lot of things have come up at the end of the week. The mole, the dogs barking at five in the morning, the weird weather... But we're not complaining! Because that dragar - the same one who helped us write the list of stereotypes - decided to suddenly visit us in person.

Just this afternoon, someone knocked on our gate. I was very busy (lying on the couch and thinking), so Berenice went to open it - and there he was. Berry quickly led him inside, we made coffee, and then sat down and started asking questions.

First of all, he looks like a completely ordinary elf. Even Noid said that if no one had told him that this man was a dragar, he would not have had any suspicions. I do not remember his appearance, but that is not so important; I only remember that he was constantly smiling, a little ironically and very kindly.

He himself was born in 134 BC, high in the mountains on the Yashutsky Islands, in some godforsaken place. As he himself said, 「人里離れた山頂で」. He did not visit Orova until the fifteenth century AD; therefore, now, being interested in the history of our part of the globe, he came to us - especially since we are discovering some completely unknown and new pages of it.

Below we quote verbatim his answers to various questions.

"Do I miss [flying]?.. Yes; sometimes very much. My ability to fly seemed so natural to me that I couldn't even think about what would happen if I lost it... and yet. I could do it with magic, but my current body would hardly like it. And, yes, I wouldn't want to draw attention to myself either."

---

"No, libido is a purely physiological thing. I'm kind of an elf now, so I'm attracted to elves and... some people. When I was a dragar, my partners were also dragars. It's logical, isn't it?"

---

"If I had to choose again now, to stay in a Draghar body or to have one like the one I have now, I would choose the elf body again. I have been communicating with my kind for almost two millennia - it's time to learn more about you. In the elf body it is much easier - you are perceived as an equal. Or something like that."

---

"There are many more Draghars now than you imagine. Even those like me - not to mention those who did not change their bodies. I can hardly tell you the number - I have not counted."

Finally, Berenika asked the following question: "And how do you feel about our peoples? Like some funny little animals, I guess?"

Draghar didn't try to deny it. He sighed, shrugged and replied:

"Probably something like that. I know it doesn't do me any credit, but... maybe my opinion will change someday. It's not the same as it was a hundred or two hundred years ago."

As he left, he promised to drop in for a chat from time to time. I didn't quite understand why, but Noid said that he really liked it here, as he understood it.

Today is a chemical fast.

Firstly, I would like to tell you about such a creature as a mole. It looks very cute, cute and harmless, but in just a couple of days it can turn your site into a minefield. Trees can be seriously damaged - he doesn’t eat their roots, of course, but he can dig directly through them - and then the tree begins to become very depressed.

I've been fighting this monster (or monsters?) for a month now, and a week ago I decided to take drastic action. The first thing I thought of was to put a jar of calcium carbide in his hole and throw some water in it - then acetylene begins to be released very rapidly, which fills all the underground passages - and goodbye, mole. But I ran into a problem: it is sold in at least three kilograms, but I don’t need that much at all - a maximum of 200 grams. And it’s not clear where to store the rest, because it will absorb moisture from the atmosphere, release flammable gas... Dangerous and scary, in short.

The magic formula “mole-mole, MPH in your mouth” doesn’t work either - the mole, apparently, gets offended and starts digging even more. Then I walked around the house a little and came across a beautiful thing called “Whiteness”. If anyone doesn’t know, this is a bleach based on sodium hypochlorite - and in a very acidic environment (pH ‹ 3), hypochlorous acid (which is formed when hypochlorite is dissolved in water) decomposes, releasing chlorine.

Then I just took bleach, poured it into different jars and added vinegar essence to it. Even though I did everything outside, where everything seemed to be ventilated and so on, I inhaled a fair amount of chlorine. He stuffed the resulting chemical weapons into the holes, covered the top with some cardboard, and covered it with more earth. I don’t know if it helped, but the mole hasn’t dug anything else since then.

Be careful with chemicals!

Just as I was saying yesterday that the weather was great, it turned bad. It rained all day today, and it will rain tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and then some… And it doesn’t save us from having to be present at the excavation site anymore – all the work has moved inside this very storage-library that we dug up. At least it’s warm and dry there.

We found an interesting Glinnar work, the author of which, alas, we do not know - the first few pages of the thick manuscript were simply torn out. It is a very complete descriptive comparison of the phenotypes of all intelligent species inhabiting our planet (except for the Draghars, alas), and even touches on the peculiarities of thinking and psyche.

To give you an idea of how complete it is, I'll just say that there's a whole chapter dedicated to comparing the genital shapes of elves, humans, dwarves, and gearts. With pictures. We won't show you them.

But the author does point out some very correct facts: for example, if a healthy normal vision indicator for a human is considered to be 1.0, then for a dwarf (with certain conventions) it will be somewhere around 0.8, for an elf - 1.5-1.7, and for a dwarf - 0.9. Or, for example: the chapter on hair - did you know that dwarfs, elves and humans have different hairlines on average? Elves are generally almost not susceptible to androgenetic alopecia (male-pattern baldness), but humans and dwarfs suffer from this disease very much.

And in the end, the author comes to a very reasonable conclusion that although the Gearths have a different evolutionary ancestor (compared to everyone else), they still have many similarities with humans and others in culture, lifestyle, and even appearance, which they acquired as a result of convergence. In general, the book is very good, and we hope that one day it will be translated in full and published.

With you is a not-so-regular column about the events of the previous week, and as always, its permanent host is me.

1. For one of our friends' birthdays, we were brought some Jeart moonshine from a neighboring village. Its distinctive feature is that it has neither the taste nor the smell of alcohol - and its strength is about the same as regular vodka. Anyway, there's no need to explain how it all ended. The hangover from it is also strange: your head doesn't hurt, but you're so dizzy that you can't make out anything; your legs are weak and your hands don't obey you.
2. On the occasion of the birthday, Berenika decided to arrange a noble magofireworks. We specially drove away from the excavation site to reduce the likelihood of interference and... almost burned ourselves and the remains of the rapeseed field nearby. Everything is fine, everyone is alive.
3. Arim (a comrade who left for Eryakhshar) reports some news. He has plunged headlong into the socio-political movement, and now sits for weeks on end on pickets, seeking the final independence of his homeland. Let's wish him luck!
4. The nights are simply wonderful now - dry, long and very, very warm.

Socio-mytho-ethnogenetic post.

It is known that one of the early phases of the evolution of religion is the totemic stage, when society (clan, tribe) mystically identifies itself with some kind of animal, less often - a plant. In particular, many ancient Rechan (and not only) tribes even believed that their ancestor was a certain beast - in such legends/myths he turned into a man, took some girl as his wife, and that’s it...

There are several views on these legends:

• The (dangerous) beast in this case appears as a deity, by becoming related to which a person falls under its protection. That is, an absolutely pure myth without any real background;
• connection with werewolfism (very doubtful, this will be discussed in future posts);
• mythical ancestor - some metaphysical being who actually took the tribe under its protection.

We would like to focus on the latest version, and here's why. The guy (apparently the same Motley from the earlier posts) describes his meeting with the Ancestor:

“...ko rd bѣ, both orsta velikago; Whether we speak to a human voice, we don’t answer our mouth. and yet again, I saw others once, and again a third time, and even more so, I didn’t kill him and never flowed with him.”

“Like a red (irbis) [he] was, but of great stature; as if he spoke to us with a human voice, but did not open his mouth. And when time passed, [I] saw him a second time, and then a third time, but I never met him again and never communicated with him.”

Then he describes how this same Ancestor carried him on his back, and a whole cloud of ordinary snow leopards accompanied him. So, if this is not some kind of creepy hallucination, this Ancestor resembles some... not quite corporeal creature, let's say. I won’t say anything categorically, because this is not my field, and I don’t know much about it - but... something like that.

And another part of the stereotypes. No, not about people, as you might think - they will be the last. About the dragars! And I also have an assistant, he is one of our readers (not signed, by the way). He asked to keep his name and origin a secret.

1. Draghars = mythological dragons.
   Yes and no. Mythological dragons did indeed originate from legends about dragars, but there is one significant difference: many dragons are not very intelligent, but dragars are very intelligent. That is why in many languages, in order to avoid confusion (including Retsin), dragars are called by their own name. However, in older literature you can also find "dragons" and even "snakes".
2. Draghars do not exist.
   We simply won't comment on this in any way.
3. Draghars are large flying half-bird, half-reptile creatures.
   But this is very close to the truth. Evolutionarily, their species is somewhere in the transitional stage between reptiles and birds. Due to the fact that the Draghars can modify their bodies, now they can look like anything, but a couple of hundred thousand years ago they really looked like huge feathered lizards with wings and two legs.
4. Draghars can breathe fire.
   Mostly true, but that doesn't mean they have a natural gas factory in their stomach somewhere. This ability is purely magical, but they learn to spew fire in much the same way that human babies learn to walk, and subsequently don't even think about it when they do it. This is due to their specific ability to use magic intuitively and from childhood.
5. If you perform a specific ritual, you can summon/bind a dragar to yourself.
   Utter nonsense. However, our new friend claims that there are indeed some spells that a dragar can respond to - but only if he wants to.

P.S. I persuaded him a little, and he agreed to tell me something interesting about the modern life of the Draghars in the near future. So watch closely!

While sorting out the next documents, letters, documents about letters and letters about documents, we came across a funny phrase. Judging by the fact that this message was written in Dzheartoy, it was probably addressed to some Eryakhshar Dzhert (however, who the hell knows).

And the phrase is as follows: “place ɠādamad podēma nīvşyāseḑ vast": translated - “his smile is like a shoe on my foot.” Kind of weird, right? Let's explain.

Firstly, Gearts do not need shoes at all. They have the same pads on their feet as your pet dogs and cats, so unless it's minus fifty outside, we're quite comfortable as is. Even the word “shoes; shoe" - podēma - was borrowed into Geartoi from Hellenic hypodēma "shoes".

Secondly, of all the elements of human clothing, Gearts have always considered shoes the most inconvenient, stupid and useless. Have you seen how your pets behave when you try to put something on their paws? That's the same thing.

So the Geartian “shoe on the foot” can be roughly translated as “eyesore.” The person who wrote the letter apparently did not really like this friend of his.

A short summary of what we managed to do during the past week during non-working hours.

1. Hang a bungee cord on a nearby river and tear it off the next day. Everything is fine, everyone is safe, we got off with one bruise on the backside for four of us.
2. Use my violin rosin to solder microcircuits. By the way, it is completely unsuitable for this purpose.
3. It takes a long time to persuade me to growl loudly, and then listen to a dog concert for half an hour. Dogs, if you are reading this text now - sorry.
4. Find me a girl in the neighboring Jeart settlement. What is characteristic is that this happened without my participation; I have never even seen this girl. I hope I never will. Scary.

I listened to sad Lyric songs and now I’m sitting there. Because this is another part of the stereotypes. This time we'll look at the Gearts; consultant - myself, and also my close friend Zear, with whom I called today.

1. Geart smells like cats/dogs.
   More likely no than yes. It definitely doesn't smell like cats; If you have sniffed pure dogs of northern breeds (a very common activity, yes), then this is what Gearts smell like. And even most of them use all sorts of perfumes.
2. Gearts have trouble seeing.
   By human standards, probably yes. It is difficult for us to distinguish between stationary objects, especially those located in the distance, but we notice moving ones immediately. Therefore, when hunting, before shooting at game, Gearts must scare it away.
3. Gearts very quickly become attached to just anyone and have absolutely no understanding of people.
   This is a complex question, and it concerns more of the Eryakhshar Gearts, but in general I would rather agree. This is due not so much to the peculiarities of our thinking as to the cultural background, but Gearts are indeed very open and trusting.
4. Gearts are very emotional.
   But this is the honest truth. Therefore, if for the first time you see a good-natured overgrown cat in front of you, who suddenly for some reason tries to hug you, don’t be surprised, this is how it should be.
5. Gearts are pure predators.
   Not true! And the fact that we belong to the order Carnivora does not mean anything at all: bears, as it were, are not rodents either, but eat honey. Of course, to find a vegetarian jeart somewhere, you need to try VERY hard, but we also eat plant foods. For example, I just love cucumbers.