[OH PFF THAT LOOKS TOTALLY EASY. Though he's not sure how the hell just babbling what sounds like gibberish is supposed to light a candle.]
[carefully reads the incantation several times, then speaks it aloud]
[... and gets y'know.]
[nothing]
[FRUSTRATION IS GO. BECAUSE SSRLY THIS DOES NOT FOLLOW. Talking in some ancient language to light a candle grumble that's stupid]
[TRIES IT AGAIN ANYWAY B| ]
[... and gets noooothing]
[this repeats a few times, with him getting progressively more frustrated each time]
[and makes like he's about to slam the book shut and start ranting about how this whole exercise is pointless]
[... but pauses]
[and considers]
[because in point of fact, how is this not unlike programming? How do a few simple lines of code - things he himself knows - give rise to something resembling life? How can one make the seeming of a landscape on a computer screen?]
[Is not what Loki said earlier something like programming reality?]
[And if that's so, then he's back to the beginning, sitting at a terminal, trying to get the fragging machine to spit out "Hello World!" without throwing him an error message]
[And he remembers almost putting his fist through the screen the first time back then, too.]
[ponders. So the key here is to, perhaps, accept the premises that words can control the shape of things, that one can re-write the fundamental underlying structure of reality. That one can, in effect, alter the code.]
[rubs his temples. It seems absurd, but, well, so did that whole about e raised to the i pi power being equal to negative one. And the idea that one could fold space itself to cross infinite distances]
[Keeping this in mind, he tries again, pronouncing the syllables slowly and carefully, imagining it like he's inputting a command prompt]
... sorry for tl;dring with introspection here XD
[carefully reads the incantation several times, then speaks it aloud]
[... and gets y'know.]
[nothing]
[FRUSTRATION IS GO. BECAUSE SSRLY THIS DOES NOT FOLLOW. Talking in some ancient language to light a candle grumble that's stupid]
[TRIES IT AGAIN ANYWAY B| ]
[... and gets noooothing]
[this repeats a few times, with him getting progressively more frustrated each time]
[and makes like he's about to slam the book shut and start ranting about how this whole exercise is pointless]
[... but pauses]
[and considers]
[because in point of fact, how is this not unlike programming? How do a few simple lines of code - things he himself knows - give rise to something resembling life? How can one make the seeming of a landscape on a computer screen?]
[Is not what Loki said earlier something like programming reality?]
[And if that's so, then he's back to the beginning, sitting at a terminal, trying to get the fragging machine to spit out "Hello World!" without throwing him an error message]
[And he remembers almost putting his fist through the screen the first time back then, too.]
[ponders. So the key here is to, perhaps, accept the premises that words can control the shape of things, that one can re-write the fundamental underlying structure of reality. That one can, in effect, alter the code.]
[rubs his temples. It seems absurd, but, well, so did that whole about e raised to the i pi power being equal to negative one. And the idea that one could fold space itself to cross infinite distances]
[Keeping this in mind, he tries again, pronouncing the syllables slowly and carefully, imagining it like he's inputting a command prompt]