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Willow doodled lazy flowers in the margins of her notes, paying special attention to the curve of the hyacinth petals. She'd been drawing with Gus a lot lately and she thought that she was getting a lot better, especially at drawing flowers. They were something that she was intimately familiar with the details of, and she took great pride in getting them accurate.
"...Though this particular myth would undergo several revisions through history depending on the storyteller," their professor droned on, "It would not be until the Deadwardian era that it would settle into the narrative that we are familiar with today. In the last century this folktale has remained largely unchanged, and while popular amongst–" She stopped, narrowing her eyes. "While popular amongst–"
She glared at where Hunter was leaning back in his chair, arms crossed, head tipped back and snoring loudly. Willow giggled at the sight, not an unfamiliar one for the days Hunter chose to attend classes. Their professor approached his desk, waited a moment for him to react, then sighed and snapped her fingers, summoning an illusory horn that blared directly in his face.
"Wah!" Hunter cried. He jolted to his feet, kicking the leg of his chair around with his ankle to pick it up like a shield, bracing himself in a defensive posture.
Their professor was stood very smartly just out of range. This had not been the first time that someone had dealt with a startled Hunter, but it only took one incident to learn one's lesson about standing at least five feet away when they did.
Or at least ten if he had a staff within grabbing range. Any staff.
"H– wh?" Hunter burbled groggily as he blinked at his surroundings. He looked around in visible disorientation before his eyes fell on their professor. "Oh. Sorry." He sat back down as their classmates giggled.
"Why do I feel as if you come to my class just to nap?" she asked dryly.
"Well," Hunter replied coolly with a tired grin, "I don't come just to nap."
Another chorus of giggles.
"Perhaps you were dreaming of the history of Savage Age myths and legends, hm?" she prompted.
"Oh, definitely."
"Well in that case, would you like to discuss the origins of The Emperor's Palisman?" she asked. "And its conception in the Obsidian Period?"
"Is that a trick question?" he said, raising an eyebrow.
The mood in the room shifted. A smile spread across Willow's face as their classmates began to giggle quietly again, and their professor suddenly looked very nervous. Willow had seen that look before, and not just on this particular instructor.
"No…" she said carefully, "I know that you think you know everything, Hunter, but–"
"Cuz I do know everything," he yawned, crossing his arms over his chest and kicking his feet up on his desk.
"Care to answer the question, then?"
"I can answer part of it," he said with a smug expression, the corners of his lips pulling up against stiff scar tissue. "The Emperor's Palisman was a short story written by Amalfis Vordakin at the tail end of the Deadwardian era, based on–"
"Based on the oral culture of the Third Hand diaspora whose ancestors came to the Isles as refugees as a result of the great northern sinking," their professor interrupted pointedly. "I'm asking about the origins Hunter, not the popularization."
Hunter rolled his eyes. "Uh, duh, I heard you. If you'd let me finish–" He cleared his throat dramatically. "Based on the made up stories of the Third Hand diaspora. Vordakin claimed to have spent over ten years collecting myths from pre-sinking Third Hand oral history and putting them to paper for the sake of posterity, but he made it all up to sell books. Deadwardian readers ate that shit up though and there were too few Third Hand peoples left to dispute his version of their folklore. Not to mention Third Handers didn't have a written language and couldn't read his shitty book anyway."
"While Vordakin may have embellished and altered many of the stories he collected," she said, narrowing her eyes, "He did not make them up completely. Those same myths still existed within Third Hand oral history."
"Oh, don't give me that crap," Hunter scoffed. "The Third Hand didn't even have an emperor, nor did they have a concept of one. Vordakin translated the word 'emriys' as 'Emperor' because it sounded similar, but it's closer to, like, 'respected elder.'"
"Again," she said through grit teeth, "I am not arguing that his interpretation was not biased, I am asking about the origins, as you clearly know plenty about."
He stared right back at her challengingly. "The original Third Hand myth is about a bird in a cage that tricks the elder into trading places with it so that it can free the other creatures in the menagerie. Vordakin's version is about a stolen palisman in a cage that dies because it misses the sky."
"Different versions of the same base story."
"As if Vordakin's version isn't clearly ripped straight from the Open Arms Dynasty myth about a baby wyvern in a cage that dies because it grows too big and the emperor won't free it." He paused for effect. "And they actually had an emperor."
His professor glared at him for a long moment.
"You can read my paper about it if you want," he handwaved. "I published it in the Journal of Literary History spring solicitation, 2019." He cast his eyes back up at her and leaned forward on his desk, setting his chin in his hand. "It won a Tibbles award."
"Let's move on," she hissed, spinning around to walk back to the front.
The room erupted into hooting and hollering and cheering and laughter. Hunter shrugged with a comical air of false humility before he made a show of leaning back and pulling his hood over his face again to return to his nap.
Willow could barely contain her own fit of snickering. She was so glad that she had three classes with Hunter.