[Fanfic, 100% Orange Juice] Speaking in Tongues

Genre: Slice of Life

Length: 4015 words

B/D: Part of a little experiment, which I'll explain somewhat at the end. It'll seem a little weird until then, but sometimes you just have to try something to see if it'll work.

The veil of winter had begun to draw in. A fine layer of frost, no thicker or darker than a sprinkling of icing sugar, had been deposited upon the rolling countryside by Nature’s great, unseen hand. It would perhaps have been a fine day for a walk; we had on a recent excursion sighted the long-footed tracks of a hare, no doubt striking its way through the year’s first snow. Regretfully I found myself still vulnerable to inclement weather at large, and snow in particular; the pale light of mid-morning found me ensconced upon Suguri’s beanbag with a duvet over my knees, slowly toiling my way through a miscellaneous volume I had plucked from Hime’s shelves. Though I would love to embellish my account with a friendly jest on her taste, my progress was sufficiently slow that I had lost all interest in stylistic considerations, and was merely busying myself with understanding the events of the book. It might have been the finest collection of drivel ever put to paper, or a genuine classic rescued from the mists of time; I had no way to be sure.

The problem, of course, was language. I was blessed in that the common tongue of the area had descended from my own, with sufficient similarity to hasten me on the track to basic understanding. The written word was a separate beast entirely, although my comprehension had come on well with a little drilling on the fundamental concepts; I had stopped viewing this strange alphabet as a picturesque-yet-useless procession of symbols, and had begun to understand them as something meant to be read and understood. This by itself was source of some small satisfaction, but it had been marred by a larger problem.

With increasing and distressing frequency of late, I had begun to run up against the limits of my expression. To truly put one’s feelings into words is hard enough at the best of times, but the added impediment of an alien tongue put it within a hair’s breadth of impossible for me. I had to content myself with such small, simple sentences, striking at the skin of what I meant without coming close to the heart; I knew that my friends had begun to characterise me by the pause I took before speaking, when I hurriedly lashed words together into some approximation of my true thoughts.

After thirty pages of meticulous plodding between the lines of the book (a guide to the plants in the local area, which I had picked for its lovely pen-and-ink naturalist drawings more than anything else), my focus had waned to a sliver – one which snapped like an overdrawn bowstring at the tinkling of the telephone. I quietly set my book upon the floor and huddled closely to my duvet as Hime broke free from the whorls of her knitting and set about answering the caller. To see her on the phone was a rare treat, for she had established a reputation as the terror of telemarketers everywhere. Nobody could extract a half-hour of your profitable time as quickly and pleasantly as Hime could; she was of the opinion that people are more important for who they are than what they can sell you, and took a naked interest in the life of anybody who dared call us. The force of said interest had resulting in grown men pouring their hearts out over the phone as she listened patiently, and it wasn’t unknown for them to simply forget what they were trying to sell.

The best thing of all about eavesdropping on Hime’s phone conversations was that she smiled quite as brightly as if she had been talking in person. She had a fine smile, all the more admirable for the speed and frequency with which she deployed it. In comparison, everybody else seemed glacial in their expressions. Nath never smiled all at once, but little by little, as the sun breaks over the horizon and eases into a new day, and mountains changed their faces quicker than Suguri did.

“Hello! How wonderful to speak to you… Oh? Oh, no, not at all. You are never a bother, my dear. Always a pleasure…” she spoke into the mouthpiece, although the flicker of emotion across her visage gave the game away. Some people’s desire to truncate a phone conversation is quite equal to Hime’s skill in elongating them, and as the hostess, she was obliged by politeness to yield. “I assume you’re calling for Sora? Of course. I shall pass you you over to her,” she carried on, and covered the mouthpiece with her long, slender fingers. She turned to me and winked. “It’s Nath. She says she wants your help with something.”

My seat was jettisoned backwards, such was the immediacy with which I rose. Hime tossed me the phone with an easy underarm throw; I plucked it carelessly from the air and began speaking, only to discover that in my excitement, I had begun a conversation with the wrong end of the phone. I righted it and began again. “Yes.”

“Oh, Sora. It sounded like the reception was bad for a moment,” Nath returned; her voice was quiet, although she sounded like she was speaking forcefully. She had, if my gut feeling was to be trusted, dialled the number with her feet and was sitting hunched over, so she could speak into it without having to pick it up. “I need your help with something.”

“Yes.” Sometimes, and much to my relief, a tone of voice can say much more than the composition of what is said. In this case, my voice could leave no doubt, or room for further questions.

“…wait, that’s it? You don’t even know what I’m asking yet.” Even over the phone, her voice was curled with a tinge of amusement.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I could abuse that so easily.”

“You’re you, so you won’t.” I brushed the suggestion away. For me, there were some parts of being a soldier that I had yet to overcome, and did not really want to. Part of that was the readiness to live and die for the sake of the people on my side – and Nath was definitely one of those people. I informed her that I would be there in twenty minutes, although privately I thought I might make it in ten with a good tailwind, and put the phone down. (For reasons that should be obvious, I am also not enamoured with long phone conversations).

Hime, who for all her refinement has no particular reservations about eavesdropping, took me to the side. “If you’re leaving, make sure you take a coat. It will be very cold out there. Oh, and I left some cookies in the jar. Take them with you and tell me what Nath thinks of them, won’t you?”

I nodded my assent: not, of course, because I had been covertly sampling those very cookies when I thought I would not be noticed, but because Hime is also on the very short list of people who I would fight, kill and die for. After only a minute or two of preparation I was out of the house and on my way, the cruel wind teasing tears from my eyes; Hime, waving me off at the entrance to the house, faded quickly into the distance.

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In some respects, I have led a blessed life. There are many people in this world that will never know a true miracle, and nowadays it seems that my life is composed of those and nothing else. The fact that the world is here to begin with, when it was so very nearly destroyed in my time, is a miracle. That I somehow lived through the experience is a second. From there, they have unfolded easily, one after another: that the first people I met when I awoke were strong enough to restrain my rage; that I awoke in a time of peace to begin with; that my new friends were prepared to take me in, and give me a peaceful life; and, far from the least, my chance reunion with Nath.

To this day, I have still not asked why Nath called out to me when she saw me on the street. Closure, perhaps, after ten thousand years? Or just plain bewilderment at seeing a face she had consigned to history? In retrospect, it was equally unlikely that I should have gone with her, completely alone and without my weapons; we had been enemies, albeit unwilling ones. But I was lost, not just in town but in the world at large, and the lure of somebody familiar and nostalgic was too great to resist. Indeed, it seemed she had been placed there to answer that need for me, and soon I had decided that she would answer another, that we would be friends since I had not yet made any of my own. (Suguri and Hime, and I mean this in the best way possible, do not count. They are family to me, as much as anybody has ever been).

It was, I admit, both childish and selfish of me to cling to her like that, without any genuine knowledge of her character. We had exchanged a few words in a war, once; did that really mean we knew each other? But before long, I had observed her, and learned the fundamental truths that I still believe about her to this day.

She is – and I believe this with all my heart – a large person with many small, beautiful things within her. The changes in her expression are so gradual that you must focus deeply on her to see them at all, and yet once you do, they are as clear as day; in so many small and quiet mannerisms, her character is writ bold for the world to see. If you stand next to her, she will slouch ever so slightly so you do not feel short in comparison. When she walks, she curls her toes at the end of each step, like a cat kneading on a duvet. She cannot tell a joke, but bravely continues trying where lesser people would have given up.

And, as I had observed during our trip to the lingerie store, she likely knew of some secluded and private beach, for she had not a single line of untanned skin on her body, and I doubt she would be so bold as to bare herself beneath the sun with other people around to admire the sight.

Those thoughts, among others, kept me occupied on the flight over – a blessing, as the sky had arrayed itself with thick, dark clouds that hung low with the weight of snow in their bellies. Although snow was preferable to thunder, neither inspired comfort or confidence within me; winter had in my opinion lingered far beyond its welcome, and I had already begun casting my mind forward to spring, when there would be flowers of every type dotting the wilderness and turning the landscape into a feast of colour from a bird’s eye view.

Although inclined by habit to let myself in from the balcony, as indeed was Nath herself, my instincts told me it would be better to knock on the door when I came to the apartment. I took the stairs two at a time; although I could easily have flown up them, I was beginning to realise the joy of exercising once again. I had trained precious little since I awoke, and if I hesitated any longer I was sure to run to fat. Furthermore, my body had been made, from the bottom to the top, to be in motion; how I ever sat still for so long before was a mystery to me.

I rapped the door with my knuckles; it was opened a good minute later by a rather dishevelled looking Nath, who was wearing a sweater of duck-egg blue and a skirt that had been put on with obvious haste. I surmised that she had very recently finished a shower, for the tips of her hair were beginning to curl where they were too fiddly for her to dry with a towel, and she smelled strongly of green apples.

“You’re early. I only just had time to get dressed,” said she, by way of greeting; to me, that seemed a fine reason to be even earlier next time. Of course I said no such thing to her, since I was almost certain to miss-phrase it and launch us both into a sea of awkwardness. Instead I smiled – prettily, I hoped – and she stood aside to grant me entry.

“Getting cold out there,” she said, when I was comfortably seated on one of many cushions. Tables were simply not an option in her household, and without tables there was little point in chairs; instead, she had arranged a ring of cushions around the perimeter of the room, and kept the centre clear for eating and working with her feet. She also kept the lights dimmed, so it was as though the room was lit by candles; she loved candles, she had confided to me, but she felt them too much a risk to light. “I can fix you a hot drink. I have tea, coffee. No hot chocolate.”

“What will you have?”

“Mulled wine. Just the one cup, though.”

I licked my lips despite myself. Wine is not generally to my tastes, but I knew Nath to have a fine stock of it, and a fantastic recipe for mulled wine to boot. There is something to be said about a drink made with the finest ingredients, by a woman with fine tastes and millennia of experience. However, I still had Hime’s cookies in my pocket. I took them out for Nath to see, and answered: “Tea is good.”

She nodded, and filled the kettle with water enough for two before folding herself onto a cushion opposite mine. I watched her as she moved, as I had often taken to doing. Due to the extensive internal modifications she’d endured, Nath was heavier by far than her size would suggest; yet, she didn’t lumber, and her tread was as quiet as a cat’s. I asked gently how she managed to be so quiet around the house.

“I have practice. A lot of it is about balance, and a lot of balance is about body strength,” she explained, to the background sound of a slowly rumbling kettle. “Have you ever seen a ballet dancer?”

I shook my head. There was much in the world that I hadn’t seen and didn’t know, for reasons I couldn’t control. Sometimes I felt ashamed of those great gaps in my experience, but tried not to.

“I’m sure Hime will show you at some point. Anyway, the concept is similar – you need a good, strong core. In my case, I need a strong core just to move around,” she continued. “Humans are built on the assumption of two legs, two arms and a head. If you start removing things, it throws off the balance of the whole structure, and the core needs to compensate.”

I nodded; it made perfect sense to me, and I had seen evidence to bear it out. My second observation when I had joined her in the changing rooms was that she was fabulously toned, particularly at the abdomen, and had thick slabs of lean, sculpted muscle around her shoulders and upper back. I was almost envious of it, and if I was truthful it was one of a few driving reasons for my attempts to get more exercise.

Presently the kettle had boiled, I had brought two cups of tea into the living room, and Nath was good-naturedly trying one of Hime’s cookies. They were, perhaps, just a tiny bit burned, but they had been made with love. Love, copious amounts of sugar, and enough butter for a farmer’s market. She had received the recipe from an old friend that I had yet to meet, and hadn’t quite managed to replicate the results.

“Hm. Not bad,” was Nath’s verdict, and I was forced to concur; they were a touch too sweet for tea, but coffee would have suited them. “Anyway. I wanted your help with something.”

I sat up straighter on my cushion, and bade her to continue with a nod of the head. She rose from her seat, and brought out a binder from one of the shelves.

“One of my contacts sent me something. Some old design documents from our time. I don’t think they’re blueprints – specifications, from what I can tell,” she said, letting the binder fall open on the floor and flipping through the pages with her toes. “It was on an ancient data chip, so I had a nightmare trying to get it printed.”

“It still worked,” I pointed out.

“Yeah. Those scientists back then sure built stuff to last,” she said, and winked at me to let me know it was a joke. Of course they built things to last; if they hadn’t, neither Nath nor I would be having this conversation. But I felt I had missed some point in what she had said before, and fumbled my way back to it.

“From what you can tell?”

“That’s where you come in,” she said, continuing to flip the pages. Eventually she settled on one. “Recognise those characters?”

I let my mouth fall open as a wave of nostalgia overtook me. Of course I recognised them. Were they not the same blocky, reassuring letters I had grown up with as a child? And this was my language, too, so easy and light. The new tongue, I felt, was like building a wall; I had to construct the sentences brick by laborious brick. Language shouldn’t be like that. Speaking should be like flying. The text, the text was dry and scientific, but that instant flash of comprehension was almost addictive, especially compared to this morning when I had fought for every sentence.

“Hey. I never thought I’d say this, but you’re talking too fast. Slow down,” Nath instructed, her brows furrowing; it was only then that I realised I had been babbling, most likely in a broken mix of Ancient and Modern. “You can read this, then?”

“Yes. You can’t?” I asked, although the question came out as blunt as a hammer.

“It’s been a few thousand years since that alphabet was in common use. It’s true what they say – if you don’t use it, you lose it. Truth be told, I can’t even understand the dialect anymore. I don’t know what you were saying just now, but it was gibberish to me.”

“You can’t? Not at all?”

She shook her head dourly, and I, too, was dismayed; it would have been so much to fun to have a language for just the two of us, like a secret code. Part of me couldn’t believe that she had forgotten, though I had no reason for doubt. There was just a singular portion of my mind that could not reconcile that what for me seemed like a recent part of life, was in fact buried under millennia of memories for her. Experimentally I slipped back into my mother tongue and said something of a private and delicate nature, that I would probably not repeat if I thought she would understand, and will not replicate here. She gazed back at me with blank eyes, and I was at once relieved and sorely disappointed.

“Listen. I know you aren’t too comfortable with reading and writing our language yet, but I was hoping you might be able to translate these for me,” she said, and my mind latched onto the ‘our’. She hadn’t meant it that way. Of course she hadn’t. But she had still separated the groups: ‘us’, who speak modern, and ‘you’, who does not. My feelings must have shown, because after an awkward pause she began speaking quickly again: “But of course, only if you want to. I’m mainly looking for old specifications that might help me figure out these damn arm connectors, but in a way, stuff like this is our history. Either way, it’s not that important, and–”

I held up a finger for silence. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t need to justify it. She didn’t need to give a reason. She was Nath. She was my friend, and she wanted me to help her. I wanted to take that thought and say it in a way that meant something. A way that was beautiful. I couldn’t, so I just summoned up some words that did the job. “Of course I’ll do it. You’re you. It’ll be slow, though.”

Her shoulders relaxed, and slowly a look of relief settled across her features. “That’s fine. When you get to my age, you’re not in a hurry for anything. …Thank you, Sora.”

She took a deep sip of her tea, and for a while the prevailing mood was one of sweetness. I had settled down to look at the binder a little more by the time she spoke next, and when she did, she spoke haltingly, like a horse trying to find purchase on a slippery mountain road.

“Just to… uh… clear this up. I didn’t…” – she paused for a deep breath – “…make friends with you, because I wanted you to do this for me. It’s not like I had an agenda.”

I frowned, puzzled. “We’ve been friends for a long time.”

“We met in… what? Spring? Summer? It’s been half a year. Half a year is nothing.”

I screwed up the courage in my breast. Nath, for all that she was wise and capable and not as prone to silly antics as Hime or I, was wrong. She was wrong, and the fibre of my spirit would not permit it, and my heart would not permit it, and even my tongue, which disobeyed me day after day, would not permit it. If she argued I would refute her, and if we were to clash then I would throw myself into it whole-heartedly, for if this point was allowed to stand then we would forever be distant and never close enough to touch. So I let my words ring out with full conviction, language be damned and all obstacles thrust aside. I spoke with my heart, and bade her answer:

“Half a year is everything.”

For a moment she was shocked, and I saw the beginnings of many feelings flicker across her face. Hurt, because I had been forceful. Confused, because I had been sudden. Worried, because I had been angry. But those things were transient, gone in the space of seconds, and replaced by something great and small at the same time. A single drop of water, falling into a still pond. A moment of realisation, of stillness coming into motion.

“Yeah,” she said quietly, and closed her eyes as if in bliss. “Yeah. I think you’re right.”

I allowed myself to smile; perhaps the look on her face was just a mirror of mine. “I’d like another.”

She looked at my mug, which I had put my hands on without even realising it, then up at me. “Another cup of tea?”

“Another half a year. And another after that.”

“Maybe. If you’re on your best behaviour,” she said, and stood up. “I don’t know about you, but I’m having some mulled wine.” She glanced over at the balcony door, and the thick, dark clouds beyond. “Looks like a snowstorm. If you don’t want to fly home in bad weather, you can stay the night. I have a sleeping bag.”

With the mention of sleeping bags we had arrived upon a subject in which both my knowledge and my enthusiasm were voluminous, and I accepted the invitation without pause. I was amazed at the ease with which passion loosened my tongue, a cup of wine loosened Nath’s. We spent an afternoon in chatter, and when night came, I found I had gotten no reading done at all.

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A/N: Alright, so there's a lot of things I have to explain here. For a while, I've been somewhat dissatisfied with the progression in quality for my work, and have been thinking about ways to fix it. One way I want to do that is to try more first person stuff, and generally experiment more.

The main aim for this piece was to try and find a voice for Sora, and if I'm honest, I don't think I really succeeded. That's fine, because Sora is perhaps the most difficult character to find a voice for as a result of how I've written her previously. The voice that the reader sees Sora speak with in most stories -- i.e, her dialogue -- is in a different language to the one she actually speaks in her own thoughts, and I was faced with the challenge of trying to represent and accommodate that while still making her sound like the same character.

The way I approached it for this experiment was to choose a deliberately archaic style of narration, to show that the language she thinks in is very old in comparison to the 'standard' language of the setting. I didn't want to go down to the level of faux 'Ye Olde English' levels, since I personally think that's lazy on behalf of a writer, so I instead decided to work with a slightly dated style model in mind and then alter the voice as I became more comfortable with it. The style model I chose was Jane Eyre.

The weakness of this, I think, is that the style failed to establish itself as Sora-like, since it naturally trends towards complex sentences and wordiness, neither of which is anything like the way I normally portray Sora. There are a couple of ways I could proceed from here: the first to is to try looking for a more fitting style model -- probably something from older, American literature rather than the English literary canon. The second and more intuitive (though probably more work) is to go through all the games again, take notes on Sora's portions of the script, analyse her canon voice, and then adopt that as her narrative voice while slowly phasing her current speaking voice into it, so the end result is a Sora who has (in-story) mastered the language and approximated her old style of speech in it.

Overall, while I would consider this a failed experiment, it was fun to do and I believe it has some value in it, so I'm content to put it up in case somebody enjoys it. I'll return briefly to whatever it was I was working on before this piece, and think about the next way I want to challenge myself and my work.

Oh, by the way: one other way for me to try to improve my work is to do exactly this, and sit down to write in detail about a finished piece. Blogspot and Twitter, while lovely and very useful in connecting me to new friends, aren't ideal for generating detailed feedback on what I'm doing -- which is making me lazy when it comes to thinking of new ways to improve and identifying mistakes. I'm not going to ask people to review or comment more, but what I will do is start to make detailed write-ups of a story after I've posted it, probably in a separate (but linked) post.

One last and very important thing: since blogspot doesn't allow horizontal rules, which I typically use to indicate a scene break, I asked Coffgirl to make me the little Poppo banner as a substitute. As usual, she did a fantastic job. Thank you very much!