Birch Manor - 10 - Seed Savers' Congress

Også dette kapitel ligger på dansk HER, der skal scrolles en hel del ;)

The prompts will be at Elephant's Child's blog again this month but are provided by Hilary Melton-Butcher.
This week's prompts are:

1. Dredge
2. Hedgerow
3. Curmudgeonly
4. Scruffy
5. Pink
      AND/ OR
1. Disgruntled
2. Hispid (covered with stiff hair or bristles)
3. Plying
4. Dolphins
5. Sea-cave

  Uffda. I think that Hilary Melton-Butcher has continued contributing to the compilation of funny-sounding words started by Alex J. Cavanaugh, with the February prompts. I had to look up several of them - actually the only ones I was quite sure of, were: Pink, Dolphins, Sea-cave and Hispid!
  I have words for more than one chapter again this time.
  This is a spin-off from The tales from the Unicorn Farm. Just for fun, and I hope to amuse you as well. A light chapter amid all the gloom and doom of killing off all the former apprentices. The chapter number, 10, is totally random, there might be way more or way less than 6 chapters between last week's tale and this one.

Birch Manor is the place Susan and Knud is moving to upon retiring and re-discovering their magical identities. I had that chapter (Unicorn Farm - The Epilogue) public for a short while, but it has long since been taken down again.
Now we're some time into their retirement (In the future actually, as I'm not retired yet 😉). They are practising old, half forgotten skills, teaching those of their children and grandchildren who have any magic, still planning how to re-open the magic school, and in general enjoying their life in the countryside.

"Knud, now that I'm going to the seed-savers congress next month, I would like to avoid some of the fuss and confusion we had the last time. Well, I obviously had no trouble. Swedish is almost a second language for us from Elsinore, as you well know, and you know too, that I am a nerd when it comes to languages. Do you remember how we were wondering how easy learning Icelandic at Duolingo was for me? Now that we remember the years at Unicorn Farm, it's not that strange ... but I talk. To get on with what I really wanted to say: Some of the slightly older and more mathematically oriented people really had a hard time at the congress three years ago. There were a ginormous number of interruptions what with the interpreters posing clarifying questions or having to catch up, or plain did not understand what was meant. Most of the interpreters were just volunteers, participants - I took a turn as well - and even the one professional did not have the necessary vocabulary in order talk about to plants, soil types, micronutrients, and so on, imagine trying to explain 'hispid' in Finnish! To get to my point: I am going to use the language spell."
  "But," Knud protested. "You can't. People will think you are mad, or that you are a witch ... which is true of course ... But you can't do it. You must not. Please don't!"
  "Of course I do not intend to simply face the audience at the conference and swing my magic wand at them, dear Knud. But the world wants to be deceived, Heidi's father taught us back at the Farm, don't you remember. And do you remember that BabelFish-App-Hoax from YouTube? I can exploit this.We can build a gadget."
  "A gadget. You mean like a 'real' Babelfish?" said Knud, still not quite convinced.
  "Yes exactly. Some kind of a box with small coloured bulbs and antennas and buttons and so on. I am sure that Mikkel can help me do it when he comes home for the weekend," Susan said. "I think I'll do a sketch, any good ideas?"
  "It must be yellow I think. Babelfish are yellow. And maybe some green, soothing letters on the outside. Then blinking lights and so on. I do actually think you can pull it off," he said warmly. "You are a true witch!"
  "I'll take that as a compliment," Susan replied smiling.

The initial speech  was as Susan had predicted  interrupted innumerable times by people who asked the President to speak louder, by the Finnish translator, who could not keep up and became more and more disgruntled, and innumerable other comments and questions. Susan rose and spoke: "Dear friends!" she began, "I don't know how many of you saw the YouTube video some years ago. It was about a BabelFish-thingie, a small, handheld device, that could translate all languages just like that? It was a hoax of course. But a friend of mine got an idea. He actually made such an apparatus and I have been allowed to test a prototype today."
  Susan was interrupted by thundering applause.

"Of course it's not that small yet." Susan said when calm had been restored. She pulled a strange box with cables in several colours, pink antennas, small lamps and buttons to press and turn, out of the bag. It was painted yellow, with the words BabelFish-in-a-box painted in a reassuring green letters on the side.
  "I have to adjust the settings first," she continued. "How many languages do we have? Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and English? Have I forgotten any?"
  An elderly lady at the back of the room rose and spoke in a badly broken Danish with a hefty accent, Susan could not place: "Can it also clear Estonian, do you think? My husband and I are from Tallinn, and we have difficulty in the Danish language. And even worse with the others ones."
  "I'll try," Susan said. "It only works in this room, and I'll have to ask you not to touch the box or use your mobile phones or other devices near it. It is a little delicate." Susan twisted some knobs, pressed another button and adjusted the pink antennas a bit. Of course she knew that there was nothing inside the box but a large battery, diodes in different colours, a transistor that translated volume to different colours and lit the relevant lamps, and a small green bulb flashing in a random pattern. When everyone's eyes were at the Babelfish-in-a-box she took her wand, lightly tapped the antennas, swung it in the linguistic spell's pattern and said in a low voice: "Mál sameinast!" and pressed the big, red button.
  "Now it should do its magic," Susan said smiling. "I give the word back to our honoured President."

The seed savers' congress was a success. In the evening Susan 'turned off' her wonderful appliance and took it with her up into her room. The next morning she 'turned it on' again. When the conference was almost over, she pulled her wand and surreptitiously cast a small fire spell on the box. She and Mikkel had built in some pieces of sparklers and a small amount of gun powder at the end of a fuse. And now the Babelfish-in-a-box began to smoke and sparkle. Susan got up and ran to the box. But before she reached it, a loud puff came from it. It went quiet and all the bulbs extinguished.
  "What a luck it lasted this long," Susan said. "My friend had warned me that this could happen. But I think I'll be able to ask him to continue the development of this Babelfish-in-a-box."