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"You'd be surprised--I rather like history." An understatement if she ever spoke one. Gilead, she knows, is from the Bible, and from that hymn, but its symbolic meaning escapes her. One more reason to wish Jonathan was around; even inebriated, he'd likely know. "And I'm not sure it's going to make much difference if you break my concentration briefly."

"Why not?" He studies her a moment. She's not working like someone who expects they'll fail. Maybe he's misunderstood, but just in case. "You're more organized than most who try to do this. You'll learn." It's not meant as optimism, nor even as encouragement. Only fact.

"Next, press this. While you do, unscrew this, here."

"I'll either get it right or I won't," she answers, moving her fingers in answer to his words. Evy doesn't expect she'll fail, though she thinks it's a reasonable enough possibility, and she's not too worried about the consequences if she does. Her voice reflects that; it's purely no-nonsense, not self-pitying. "And then I'll do it again until I've got it. Thinking for a moment about your Gilead won't change that."

She glances up from the gun, hands pausing a moment, and gives him a crooked little smile. "You're not the first person to set me tasks like this, Mr. Deschain. I speak and read dead languages fluently; some things, you simply must get down, and it takes more than one go to do it. Of course--you are the first to make me do that with my hands rather than my head."

"Hm. Maybe one way of learning is much like another, then." He leans forward to check the gun's innards against what he knows, voice going distant as he thinks on what the next few steps should be. "Though I was ever quicker in the field than in the classroom. Move that down and back. Then take this - slowly, if you can - from that hole. Only one more piece after that, I think."

"No matter what you're trying to learn, it takes a great deal of practice." That's the main similarity--though the way each piece must be categorized, its placement and apparent purpose stored away, certainly appeals to her librarian's sense of organization. She watches him look the gun over...if it can be called a gun, now that it's mostly in pieces on the table. "When did you start learning this?"

Examination done, Roland leans back again, taking a breath as he sorts through his memories. "Probably near the time time we were all moved into the apprentice barracks. So maybe about... six years. Or seven. Though we weren't trusted with working guns for some time, and never unsupervised. At least not until we'd earned it.

"And you? With your dead languages and love of knowledge? When did that begin?" It may sound a bit like they're paralleled, in his mind. Probably because they are.

"I don't know." She shrugs, carefully pulling out the piece he'd indicated before. The thought of a child taking guns apart and putting them together is rather off-putting to her...but she supposes it was merely the done thing. "You have to understand, my brother's nearly ten years older than me--and I was an awful tag-along as a little girl. Anything he could do, I wanted to do. Including languages. My father didn't start teaching me in earnest until I was around five or six, but I picked up a bit of the spoken vocabulary before then."

"That screw, there. Then pull that plate to the side. Your father taught you and your brother himself? How long has your family been gatherers of knowledge?"

"We had tutors, too--and eventually, we went away to school--but we learnt a great deal from Father. And Mother, too, really." Evy had to learn her Arabic somewhere, after all. As she speaks, she fiddles with the screw he pointed out. "My father was an Egyptologist--the same field I'm interested in--and his father was a painter. Of birds and landscapes, mostly things like that."

"You study one of your countries? Egypt? You keep its history?" His old teacher would have a thing or two to say about what he's doing now. Talking pleasantly, instead of really teaching. If she were a gunslinger, that might be right, and he'd only talk enough to see her lower her guard. But Evelyn's right that this stage doesn't require much concentration, and he's honestly interested.

Evy nods, her hands stilling for the moment. They don't, she supposes, have the concept of archaeology in Gilead--or perhaps they do, and calling it Egyptology has thrown him off. "It's a subset of archaeology. We study the past by looking at the artifacts people left behind. Specifically, those of the ancient Egyptians. There's a lot of history to sort through--thousands of years' worth."

Roland looks pointedly down at her hands, then back up at her with his eyebrows raised. "Thousands of years of looting too, I'll warrant," he says, once he thinks his message has been received. "It always was so, in my world. Vannay used to say books were the most difficult to find and maintain. Not nearly so durable as the machines."

All right, all right, back to work. She's not sure how much more of this can come apart, though. "To be fair, grave robbers visited most of those tombs long before we showed up. Sometimes, all we have to go by are the carvings on the walls and the mummies. Sometimes, just the carvings."

"And the spirits that lay with them, aye." Roland nods. "Vannay had plenty of stories about that. Pulling that plate aside should be the last step. Then time to reassemble it." He looks over the pieces one more time. They seem well organized; she might not have too much trouble remembering where they go. "Probably best we don't have the right kind of oil to clean it right now. One thing at a time."

"For the most part, those are superstitious nonsense, of course, but--well, unfortunately, not always." Evy pulls it aside and sets the resulting pieces on the table, looking over the whole thing. It seems daunting now, these dozens of little screws and plates and who knows what else--but also rather satisfying. She took all this apart, and she'll be damned if she can't also put it back together. There's a hesitant little smile growing on her face.

"So--do I start where I ended?" she asks, one hand hovering over the pieces she just set down. "Or go back to the beginning?"

Roland eyes her expression and smiles a little himself. It's a good sign. "Doesn't matter so much," he says, shrugging a shoulder. "Most find it easier in reverse order. Some like to put each piece together at whim, which can help you learn how your weapon works if you've time to disassemble it a thousand more times trying to figure out why your gun won't fit together the way it used to."

"And as fascinating as I'm sure that would be--" She laughs, shrugging back at him--"I'm afraid I haven't."

Besides, if she starts where she ended, she has some better hope of remembering what she just did. Evy reaches again for the pieces she just set down, fitting them back together carefully. "So if we'd had the right sort of oil for it...that's how we'd clean it?"

"I've done without many a time, but yes. In part. The most important thing is the tools. A brush with the right sort of metal for its bristles, in a certain pattern. A metal rod of the best length with the right sort of clasps at the end. That sort of thing. I'll show you when we get them. The most important thing is knowing what the pieces are supposed to look like, getting familiar with them like you are now so you'll know when anything's off. Do that much, and a good gun can last you a very long time." He's keeping the chatter to a minimum, now. For the moment, he's sure she needs to concentrate.

In this case, Mr. Deschain is right; she does need to concentrate at the moment. She gives a sort of mm-hmm in reply to his explanation and begins fitting the pieces back together. It's quiet, diligent work, and the first few go easily enough. She only took them apart a few minutes ago.

When she does, inevitably, get stuck, she frowns down at the pieces she's choosing from. "No hints, now."

"Of course not." Roland watches her, patient, and if at any point she's stuck what he judges long enough, he'll pull out his own gun and start absently looking it over. He'll turn the finely grained sandalwood grip this way and that, looking over the almost ludicrously long barrel and the symbol at its tip as if he's never seen it before. Then he'll run his finger along the gun's blue-grey metal in a certain specific spot, with a certain peculiar motion almost as if he's inserting and then twisting something. He's just probably gotten bored and decided to amuse himself. Pay no attention.

Edited 2014-04-11 12:50 (UTC)

It takes longer than it did to take apart--and no surprise there, since she's on her own this time. But it's a satisfying puzzle nonetheless, one she only occasionally grows frustrated with.

The first time she's about at the end of her rope, she sees Mr. Deschain's hands moving out of the corner of her eye. When she glances up, she realizes what he's doing. He's miming her next step, isn't he? She grins, looking back down at the partially assembled gun in her hands and redoubles her efforts.

And eventually, eventually--she doesn't want to know how long it took--she's got it all in one piece again. Evy stares at the revolver with a delighted expression, turning it over in her hands. It looks just the same as it did when she first took it apart...but now she knows its innards, and that makes all the difference.

She holds it out to Mr. Deschain, all hope. "Everything's in the right place, isn't it?"

It's hard not to respond to that look, but Roland keeps it down to just a pleased smile. He glances at the bullets lying on the table to double check her gun's unloaded, then raises his eyebrows at her instead of taking it. "Pull the trigger. Let's see what happens." As if he doesn't already know what will happen. But this, like the rest of it, is something best discovered on one's own.

A smile is enough for Evy at that moment; surely that means she's succeeded. She's trying to keep from grinning as she pulls the trigger as asked. It still seems a little miraculous that the mechanisms hiding within work together, but she can feel that it moves, and with it, no doubt plenty of the bits and pieces she so carefully put back together.

Once she has, she looks up at Mr. Deschain again. "Is that right?"

He nods, smile widening a bit. "Sounds like it." If he's listening right, there might be some pride in her voice, and it's good to hear it. Some little pride can help that learning along quite nicely.

"Would you stay and do this at least once more, so you'll remember it next time? Or do you have other business?" Typically, that wouldn't even be a question. But this is no longer that journey where he set the pace and can demand a whole evening's work; this is a city in which they've both started to make their lives, and he's not at all in doubt about whether Evelyn will be willing to continue.

"Oh--no, I haven't any other business tonight." Without knowing how long this lesson might take, she made sure to finish everything else up before she arrived. All that's waiting for her at home is a cat desperate to smash his face against hers and a half-read book. "This time I'm on my own, is that right?"

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