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Concavenator:
The room in which Kukri and Giya were being hosted was not unpleasant, all considered. There was only one proper bed, the other being a mattress on the floor, and the ceiling was badly stained with soot, but it was warm, reasonably dry, with a comfortable table and a discreet cabinet for the chamber pot. If there was a cause for complaint, it was that the only door and window were locked from outside.
But the door briefly opened, and the sergeant strode in, her uniform now clean from the snow and mud of the forest, clutching Kukri's notes. “Good morning, philosophers. The bats have been sent; we'll see what the guildmasters in Grikaa have to say. Now, since we've time to pass, would you care to tell me what these numbers mean, exactly, and what has this ice done to caught your attention so?”
pinkgothic:
Kukri's echo of the sergeant's greeting was quite automatic and polite, and her body language was unambiguously appreciative at the comment about the bats. At the sergeant's question, though, she tilted her head with mild confusion. Speaking of her work was not out of the ordinary, per se, but the questions about it were usually quite different, and the manner of question she was hearing here seemed like the sort that couldn't well be satisfied; not because she wasn't willing to speak of it, but because it suggested itself sourced from a degree of ignorance that wasn't easily banished.
Still, there was no use being rude about it.
“Likely the latter part of your question is the simplest to begin with,” she mused, her tone friendly and patient, as she would when teaching anyone. “The ice is a measure of the longer trends of our weather. The philosophers of Grikaa have taken note that the cold of winter seems to be lingering longer as the generations pass, as old written records suggest.
“So we look to the ice, which builds a chronicle of past winters in layers…” - she gestured with her hands to indicate the same - ”…telling us much about the variability of the cold over time. It gives us information about whether the records are misleading, because those who wrote them had a different perception of time, or because units of time were redefined, or because they were giving subjective measures rather than objective measures.“
She was not at the stage where she was willing to draw conclusions without careful analysis and discussion with other philosophers about it, so she did not yet say what her gut was telling her about the readings, but she did say what science compelled her to say: “I do not yet know what the numbers mean, beyond that they are measurements of the depths of these layers and their composition, but it will take careful analysis to map them to the correct generations and draw the correct conclusions. It's nothing I would want to blunder, and there is plenty of room to blunder. It's not anything like reading a book - but it is valuable data to help us understand if the winter's cold is strengthening.”
Concavenator:
The sergeant listened to all that politely, stealing some glances at Giya but otherwise fixed on Kukri. When the explanation was over, she tapped the notes and said: “Yyou say you don't yet know what these numbers mean. Not that these winters are cold, surely; I could tell you that, and I don't need to trudge all the way to the Thunder Mountains with observation tools. Mind you, I *have* trudged across frozen mountains with all sorts of tools in my time, but back then it was serious business, very serious business indeed”.
She stood up and paced around the room for a while. “So, say the winter is turning worse. When will your numbers tell you that? And what do you plan to do about it?”
pinkgothic:
“I would expect it to take perhaps a moon cycle of analysis to be sure of it,” Kukri pondered openly. “But if the trend is truly toward longer and colder winters, it is quite beyond me individually to do anything about it. It would provide a seed of discussion amongst the philosophers, though, and then a matter of giving advice to those women and men in the best position to orchestrate necessary changes. If the trend is real, the good news is that our societies have learnt to adapt to the winters we already have now, and it seems possible we may be able to adapt to even longer winters as long as we put our minds to it.”