How I found out transmigration was a thing.

Chapter 22 - What's a little Poison between friends.

As it turns out, that single spark of inspiration three days ago was significant. Spotting those two men arguing over that poor bird was serendipitous, resulting in a bloody good idea if I say so myself.  

The morning after, the first thing I did was go to find the goose. I felt I had a new lease on life, a purpose no matter how trivial.  Adam as instructed had left it to recover from the ordeal in a small disused pen. When I arrived it was sitting in the dirt, its head tucked under its wing, asleep.

I watched Lady Chun from the corner of my eye as she stood at the kitchen door. I suspected she was considering calling the physician to examine me again. I suppose I did look odd collecting the feathers scattered around the enclosure. All the struggling had loosened a great many large wing feathers and I didn't want to waste them.

My audience grew with Lady Jiah and Taylor Swift...Lady Yira joining Lady Chun to watch me dig up sand from one of the rockeries. I could see them shaking their heads.

Back in my room, I went about cleaning the shafts of the feathers I'd soaked in water overnight. I cured them in the hot sand I heated in a pot on the braizer.  Getting the right temperature was a matter of trial and error. If I kept them too long in the sand they became brittle, not long enough they were too soft. Shaping the tips was fiddly and I ruined several feathers and cut my fingers in the process, as all I had to work with was a small pairing knife.  In the end, I was satisfied with two. I tested them and to my surprise, the old bit of technology actually worked well.

Unlike modern ballpoint pens, quills can't race across a page. I have to be slow and deliberate or else I flick ink on the page, and paper is precious. It's probably a good thing that I have to take my time, it gives me the chance to think carefully and economically about what I write. Also, the books I bought are expensive and I can't afford to be careless.

I can't describe the emotion I felt when I finished writing the first sentence and lifted the quill after the first full stop. I had found a way to restore my sanity and express all the thoughts and feelings I've bottled up since waking. I couldn't share my story with anyone, this was the next best thing. I felt liberated, DIY therapy. Considering the English language may as well be Martian in the Joseon era, I can safely write whatever I want.

It didn't take long for the news to get around the palace that I was up to something strange...again.  All my godmothers found excuses to come to my bedchamber and sneak a peak.  They gawked at me writing with a quill instead of a brush as if I was performing a magic trick.  None of them mentioned the fact I appeared to be writing nonsensical squiggles backwards.

Adam was the only one who saw the process of making the quills from beginning to end. He asked if I could show him how to use them.  It took him a while to change his mindset from sweeping strokes to pressing down.  Writing his name in traditional Chinese with a quill didn't work well, so I taught him to write it in English.  I told him a little white lie that I had made up a secret language and being the naive soul that he is, Adam believed me.  I've already got a reputation for being strange.  It isn't a huge leap to think that I would do something weird like that.

So on a clean sheet of paper, I wrote A D A M  in bold letters several times across the top and sounded out each letter.  He watched my hand move slowly over the paper.  When he was ready to try it for himself I left him to it.  I sat at my desk and wrote the first entry in my journal, a description of my death.  While he sat at the low table like a diligent pre-schooler learning their first word. He practiced it over and over again until he filled the sheet of paper with neat rows of ADAM ADAM ADAM. 

....

I should have known better than to start feeling happy, after all, I was living a melodrama, or was it a tragedy? I had a few days of peace and I got complacent.