Challenge #01532-D071: Unseen Flaws
"What? What is it?" "Give me a minute. I've been an idiot and I'm trying to compensate." -- RecklessPrudence
"No, no, no, no, no!" Paper snowed from its fountaining upwards. Judging by the look of things, inspiration had been going in entirely in the wrong direction. "It's all shit! It's nonsense! Rubbish! Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish..." And then Maester Kadfel fell to sobbing at her desk.
Thaldrik fielded as many pages as he could catch, and laboriously rounded up the others. Months of work, obviously. He had been fetching the Maester's tea and meals for the duration. And now it had come to... rubbish.
He lined up some of the pages in the order he remembered. The Maester's work was always beautiful, even when it did turn to bad conclusions.
"Burn all that, Theldrik," the Maester growled from her place of defeat.
"You always say I should learn from mistakes, Maester," said Theldrik. "I should study yours, too. Right?"
Maester Kedfyl snarked, "I knew my own words would bite my ass..." A sigh. "Go on. Study the mistakes of the studied teacher. You may well find something I missed. I'm just going to wallow in misery right here."
Thaldrik collected the disordered papers and puzzled them all together into a logical order, spread out on the floor. Maybe it was because Maester Kadfel worked at a narrow desk and didn't check back, but... he thought he found it. He read over all of it, just to be sure, but there was the point where things went downhill. "Maester..." said Thaldrik.
"Mrgh...?"
"On the thirty-fourth page, you forgot to carry a numeral. Everything built up from that."
Now the Maester was up from her desk and hovering over Thaldrik's shoulders. Peering anxiously at her own writing. Then she dashed to her desk for a pencil and dashed back, crouched over the pages and urgently correcting her working as she muttered to herself.
"Maester? What is it?"
"Just a moment, I've been an idiot and I'm trying to compensate." Mutter, mutter, mutter, scratch scritch, scratch... "Of course. I was on the right track, I was so close... What do I always say about arithmancy, Thaldrik?"
"Triple-check your working?" guessed Thaldrik.
"And that is the mistake I made. I didn't triple check a thing. You watch and catch me out, eh?"
"Yes, Maester."
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Ancello]
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