There I was, in the middle of class, bored out of my mind.

To my left was my classmate and future wife, Roza. She was also bored, our eyes met, and she waved. She set her quill down and I was hit with an overwhelming sensation of burning curiosity.

What exactly is a quill? Do they take it right off the bird? I studied mine for a moment. I used it so many times but had no idea where it came from.

So I left in the middle of class and went to my father. He’s a scholar and I always see him working on quills.

He escorted me down to the stables outside the second wall.

“Now, son,” he said, “writing quills come from zemtak. They’re friendly creatures so you can’t just go yanking their feathers. You need to wait for one to die and then harvest the feathers, or preen them yourself.”

Talking with the kindly stablemaster, we helped clean the zemtak, and the birds are so friendly and big and strong! They chirped happily as we cleaned them, and one plucked out a long tail feather as a reward. Normally, only one or two feathers drop per preening.

From there, my father and I soaked the tips of these feathers for two shifts. Then we heated some sand and stuck the tips in.

“This is to harden them so they last longer. Every scholar maintains their own supply, so if they break too often that’s annoying.”

My father gave me a knife and walked through the process. Sharpening, carving, shaping, and finally cutting a little slit in the end which I guess allows the ink to travel down the length and onto the page.

Put where do pages come from?