Death and Rebirth: Roleplay with TheNovaSwag #2

Chapter 5

N: Heinrich nodded, "And so do you," he replied, glancing at his wings, "when my Mutter comes back, I'll explain it to her, then go to the main village and send the message." He stood up and went over to the drawers, coming back with a yellow ribbon and a metal rod. He crouched by the fire and allowed the rod to heat up until it was red, then sat back on the sofa and spread the ribbon out flat.

"When we were kids, we made up our own code," the knight said as he worked, burning a series of vertical lines along the ribbon, "it made it easy to communicate when we were apart, so we would send our pets to each others' homes and our parents wouldn't be able to deliver them." He finished by singing the entire end of the ribbon black, and he held it up to admire his handiwork, "This says-"

"Heimat," Johann interjected, "home. You're telling them to come here."

"Ja," the knight smiled, "how do you still remember?"

"You forced us to remember," the other grumbled, "to the point when I forgot how to write normally." He looked at the ribbon and added, "it has been a long time so I forgot most of it, but heimat was the first word we put on a ribbon."

M: Mandoria hummed, fascinated with the secret code, "you could give BE a run for his money with that, he has always been fascinated with cryptic messages and the likes, whenever he was at war and needed my assistance, he would send messages via carrier bird in a writing style he called 'dot 'n dash', here, can I have a paper, Johann."

When Johann brought over a paper and pencil, Mandoria started writing lines and periods in specific patterns, much like a written version of mores code, he handed the paper to Heinrich when he was done.

"It's pretty simple, the different patterns of the dots and dashes mean different letters and words; A is one dot and one dash, B is one dash and three dots, C is dash dot dash dot, and so forth. When we were in the stronghold, we modified it to be used with knocks so we could communicate with each other, a quick knock is a dot and a knock followed by a long pause is a dash, I'm still surprised we remembered it after so long."

"Are you talking about BE's dot-dash communication," Rowen asked when he came into the house, "be careful, he created that because he didn't want others to know about it."

"Sorry," Mandoria said, "what were you doing outside."

"Checking in with Saxon, making sure everything was fine, and other than Edel stealing Wald's tent I think they were pretty uneventful last night, now what did I miss, not breakfast I hope."

N:   "I made enough porridge for everyone," Heinrich replied, "I will get you a bowl now."

When the knight has left, and Johann had recovered from laughing after hearing what happened with Edel, the young man spoke, "I think we were able to convince Heinrich to come with us, along with his Mutter, but that means that he has to bring our friends too since if he goes then they would be killed."

Heinrich came back with the breakfast and placed it before Rowen, "I think the dot and dash system is better than the one we have, in terms of making sentences. With the system we have, we have different patterns for entire words, although similar words have similar patterns, but it lacks the flexibility of practically writing a word."

"We were kids," Johann reassured him, "the only things that concerned us were home, play, sleep, chores, and food. Simple."

M: "Unless you're Mandara and Derogan," Rowen said with a smile, "they would add pranks to that list, even as young adults they couldn't shake their trouble-making tendencies, remember when they slipped alcohol into the knights' coffee?"