FEB 2 Sunday. I make my way out of bed early in the morning, I spend some time making breakfast for me and Entropy before I start packing what I'll need.

I have everything ready, my flask is done and after some testing I've found the best place for it to be is on top of my backpack so it doesn't move too much while I walk, I also finished the large shield enchanting the large ruby to hold magic and create a shield wasn't too hard just taking some time over the past week.

The shield won't be extremely powerful or anything, but it will be good enough for where I'm going as I don't need it to hold off powerful beasts or monsters just keep the occasional predator or defensive animal away from my camp, in all honesty I probably don't need it but as the saying goes, better safe than sorry.

The shield I've made will be passive from the large rubies magic gain, so all I'll need to do is place it in the middle of my camp and activate it to keep me safe, I'm bringing my magic light, newly enchanted flask, my dagger, some emergency food and juniper berry seed in case I need to create more food.

And when I was shopping for food a few days ago I found a water resistant cloak that I bought as It's still spring and it rains fairly frequently, I've also packed anything else I'd need some cooking and eating utensils along with some tea and spices.

Now onto where I'll be going for my camping trip there is a forest named the White Tree Valley, It's a valley completely filled with birch trees it's a somewhat popular place to camp, although it's not too popular as it's not completely safe.

The forest doesn't contain any really dangerous things, only a few predators and wild animals this combined with the forest's lack of decent trails means that while some ponies camp here its mostly empty, when I finish checking I have everything I'll need for the next two weeks, I let Entropy sit on top of my backpack as we leave my apartment.

We begin walking to the train station to catch a train headed for the small town nearby the forest, the train will take several hours and will arrive near the end of the day and I'll need to walk the rest of the way to the forest, I'm not sure if I'll have enough daylight to reach the forest so I might need to stay at the small town or camp on the roadside for a night.

After some time walking I arrive at the train station, I have to wait on a bench for another hour as my train was late, because of course my first train ride in this world would be late, I eventually get on the train and find a cabin to sit in, I will be spending several hours in this cabin so I guess I'll get comfortable.

I pick up and place Entropy on the seats next to me and place my bags and backpack on a rack hanging above us, I spend a moment looking around the cabin although there's not much to see, two benches on each side of the cabin with a few feet in between them, two racks made of wood bars hang above my head and a window looking outside to my left.

I decide to use this time and grab two books my runic notebook written in English, my sketchbook, along with a quill and inkwell, I'm going to spend some time working on my understanding of several runic symbols, I've been learning and documenting as many runic symbols as I can.

After my last mental rant two weeks ago about runic symbols I decided to revisit the topic as when I first looked through books on the subject I only learned what I needed too before moving on as I wanted to learn other things more, and I'm glad I did as I've learned much I missed the first time.

I've found many books about the meaning and context of different runic symbols, but one thing I've not found is a book with all the known symbols and their meanings, I have found books with dozens or even hundreds of symbols but I haven't found a book with all of them.

I think the main reason is plain and simple greed, while ponies seem less greedy overall then humans it's still very much there, many ponies create new symbols and keep them for themselves or only pass them to family members, the result of this is that while many books have collections of runic symbols there is no public repository of all known runes.

This is one of the reasons that many unicorns don't learn new spells as not only do you need to learn a spell’s matrix if the book your learning from doesn't have an explanation on the runic symbols in the matrix and what concepts they use the spell will be harder to learn and use along with using more magic to cast.

This has been a source of endless frustration for me and also why I'm cataloging all the symbols I learn, I have come across several spells that I could learn but never master because the pony who created the spell didn't tell anypony exactly how the spell worked.

I've learned that this is almost standard practice for anypony that creates spells or runic symbols, keeping how the spell works to themselves or the exact meaning behind a symbol secret so only ponies they tell can use it properly, in hindsight this makes a great deal of sense explaining why so much magic knowledge gets lost over time, it only takes one pony not telling somepony else and dying before they can pass it on and its lost forever.

Well not forever as you can reverse engineer a spell and rediscover the meaning behind a symbol, the problem is that doing this is nothing but a time sink as trying to guess the correct meaning and context behind a rune is hard at the best of times, and if use mistranslate or mess up any part of a spell’s matrix it can be dangerous.

As for why it's so hard to recreate runic symbols, well as I've said in the past runes have their meaning and what the symbol means, the first is what the creator of the rune was intending it to do with it like create fire of steam, what the rune means is the word itself so a word for hot and cold or fire and ice.

A rune is a combination of both these things, let's say I wanted to create a new symbol for a rune I would start with a runic symbol like ice and add onto it to give it a meaning and turn it into glacier creating a new rune with a new meaning with different effects, you then use the process I described last time drawing and using the new runic symbol.

I've decided to use the term runic word for a runes actual meaning, and runic context for the meaning the creator of the symbol gave it.

My point in this rant is what happens when a runic symbol is forgotten?, well it depends on how much of the symbol is forgotten, if the runic word if forgotten then the symbols context is also lost as if you don't even know what it means as a word then how can you grasp the words full context.

When you try casting a spell without knowing the symbols meaning at all then you can still cast the spell but your chance of success is low and the chance that something in the spell will go wrong will only increase.

On the other side if you forget the symbols context but still know its word then you will still be able to cast the spell with a decent chance of success, but things can still go wrong there's just less of a chance of it happening, so it's best to know both before casting a spell.

This is also why learning high level spells, like healing spells, is difficult as they often use many rare or lesser know runic symbols, especially for healing magic as you often can't afford a spell failure when healing somepony, my new internal unhinged rant is interrupted by a knock on the cabin door I close my rune book and put it away quickly keeping my sketchbook out before answering "come in it's open."

After a moment I see a griffin enter the cabin, they look fairly regular for a griffin covered in a few shades of brown feathers and fur, they see me and I see them looking up and down looking me over just like I was before speaking, "you mind if I sit here?"

Their voice is distinctly female, I think for a moment before agreeing "sure I don't mind", I pause for a moment realizing that Entropy might not like being near others, but after a few moments of Entropy intensely staring at the griffin she relaxes and moves to sleep laying against my flank.

The griffin moves a bag into the overhead rack before moving opposite of me and sitting down, after a moment of silence I go back to my own business, I don't want to go through my runes when someone else is inside the cabin so I'll just do some sketches for now.

Some time passes like this before I'm asked another question, "what are you doing?", I look up to see the griffin staring at my book, the question was blunt but most griffins I've spoken to in the past where the same so I think most of their kind are just blunt with their words.

I spend a moment thinking before simply turning over my book letting her see the sketch of Entropy I was working on, she looks at the book for a few seconds before nodding at me "not bad I've seen many who are worse and they have fingers to work with", she moves her talons for emphasis.

I've not been using my field to hold things just my hooves, I'm silent for a moment before deciding to just take the compliment, "thank you" she nods again.

"So you like to draw?" I pause at this, is she trying to make small talk?, if she is then she needs to work on her skills.

But I keep my thoughts to myself, "yes it's a hobby of mine has been for years now, why do you ask?"

Her posture shifts she seems uncomfortable, before she lets out a sigh "this isn't going well is it" she asks more to herself then me as after a moment she seems to realize what she said, "sorry not that this is a bad conversation, or anything you said, it's just" she trails off her words ending as she tries to get herself to stop stumbling over her own words.

I'm now thoroughly confused, but then I realize what this is she's probably trying to learn small talk and from the looks of things her statement was correct that this isn't going well, after a moment of silence I decide to try offering some advice "well first you should have started with your name or asking mine and then probably have asked something like how my days has been so far."

She seems stunned for a moment before looking more embarrassed than before, "ya sorry about that, am I really that obvious?"

"Yes, if you don't mind me asking why do this?"

"Well as you guessed I'm not exactly the best at talking to others, and I moved to equestria recently and have been trying to learn."

"Ok I can understand that but why start now most griffins I've met that aren't traders are about as blunt as a brick in conversation."

She lets out what sounds like a laugh mixed with a bird chirps, "that sounds about right, well to tell the truth I'm an apprentice for a merchant and I need to get decent at talking to others, so I was told to learn by talking to anyone I can."

"Ah that explains it, well do you want some help?", we spend the next hour talking through several things as the train moves along the countryside, I learn her name is Violet and a few other things but after a while longer the train stops and she leaves, wishing me well as she does.

After that encounter I go back to my sketches and runic symbols, several hours later the train stops as I've reached my stop I grab my things and leave the train, there was a few small things that held up the train so we are almost an hour late, so I'll be spending a night in the town.

After asking a pony working at the train station and they point me in the direction of a small inn with rooms for rent, I walk the dark streets before finding the inn and renting a room for the night and heading to my room, after entering I spend some time eating some food with Entropy before we head to bed.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. Also we passed 1k views thank you all so much. I can't believe I've made it this far.