I'm not really sure why this proved to be so hard to write, but it did.


ii. arrival


When he reluctantly requests help with this whole 'not talking' thing — because he did not come here on a ship that caught on fire, just to die from something this stupid, alright? — he is told to ask one Aaron Burr for help, because the man has apparently perfected the art.

Alex has luckily been blessed with a number almost three times the average for his age. They tell him that that simply means that he will have the misfortune of meeting his soulmate late, but Alexander doesn't think so. After all, he knows how much talking he does. He says as much, too.

They disagree and they do it in writing, of course, because until he has this sign language thing down, everything either is or should be in writing.

He means 'everyone willing to converse with him in writing', when he says 'they', of course. Not everyone is, and Alex can think of a number of reasons for that, his continued verbal communication being one of the more obvious ones.

He's gotten horribly off track, hasn't he?

Someone suggests Alexander goes and find Aaron Burr to teach him. Alexander is familiar with him, some of the repeating customer in the trading charter back on St. Croix had mentioned his name — though for some reason no one seemed it fit to mention the abnormal aspcat of the continent. Mayhap they thought it irrelevant?

Either way, Burr is someone Alexander had actually had an interest in speaking to before, so all seems to work out in that sense. After all, the man has managed to complete Princeton University in a mere two years and with his twenty-one years — nineteen, he reminds himself — he has already gotten a late start by roughly half a decade.

He needs to find this man as soon as possible if he wants to rise above is station.