Chapter 10 - Part III

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"You've made incredible progress, Vren.  A couple more tides and you'll be speaking the middle tongue fluently." 

"Te bhur."Onion replied, trying not to let the quick beam of pride impact her accent on one of the first words she learned upon entering the classroom, Thanks.  Yibouhese was anything but difficult to pronounce for her, but basking in a rare moment of self confidence in the language was the exact moment she seemed to always slip up.  "It is a little strange, but the middle tongue is not so different from my home language.  All the words are different, but the music of it feels the same."

"The music?  Perhaps you mean rhythm.  I don't know much Nüish," the slight teacher admitted, "but there is some debate that maybe long ago we gave you our language and you warped it to fit your needs."

Onion twisted her mouth at the reflexive derision the Yibouhese often bestowed on other tongues, but said nothing.  It was becoming far too commonplace for her to fret over much anymore. 

"Vocabularies," she continued, "are completely different, but both languages are monosyllabic, loose word order surrounding a general subject, verb, object rule and..."

Onion stared at the woman in her pale blue and lilac flower robe as she went on, completely ignorant to what her teacher was saying.

Shar-Wu caught herself eventually, realizing she was getting lost in terms the Nü girl likely didn't know in her native tongue, much less the words of Pho-Boteth.  She offered a nervous smile and fidgeted with her hair scarf as an offer of recompense.  "You know these things, by how quickly you've picked up the language.  Dagleth-dor, it has only been a tide and a half!  You understand this in your heart, just maybe not your mind."

"Perhaps.  Is this what you study at the University Shar-Rduap?" Onion asked.

"Foreign languages?  No.  Not technically.  The University on High prides itself on being a center of learning and openness, but we are the center of the world.  What use have we to learn the tongues of the outer provinces or our other neighbors?  When students come to Pho-Boteth, they learn Yibouhese.

"But," Shar-Wu smiled mischievously, "I think even the empire understands that we have to communicate with others from time to time.  That is why we do have the study of linguistics.  One of the Learned, Waar-Rduap, the Empress's top advisers, is the head of our wing.  I hear he is rarely called on for private meetings, but that is all gossip anyway."

Shar-Wu and Onion were probably about the same age, although she had been in university for the past 7 tides, and before that a well-to-do daughter of pottery artisans.  Though she was the teacher and Onion was the student in language and easily her senior in the ways of the university, she was still young and green to the world.  She spoke too much.  She knew she spoke too much.  But knowledge had yet to foment behavioral change and probably wouldn't until one day she spoke too much about the wrong person.

Her black, wavy hair was long, but kept tidy under a transparent purple scarf before dangling down her back.  She did not have the look of a teacher, but the university did not take it upon themselves to educate their newest students in the middle tongue - they were expected to come with a full knowledge of it, so she was the best hope for the job.  Her appointment to Vren had been by direct request by the head of linguistics.  Who requested her tutelage from Waar-Zhe was a mystery not soon to be solved.

Their one-on-one lessons consisted mostly of the middle tongue, but every Rel'ir, perhaps in symbolic deference to the Keeper of the Eirdren, Onion had asked to study the tongue of the Red.

"However good you may be getting at the middle tongue though, Vren, you need a lot more work on your Eirdren." she confided to her student.  "Your writing is passable, but your sentence structure is barely understandable.  Try a little harder."

"It is difficult when I never have the chance to practice.  I go to the dining halls, and I am asked if I want thuoz and fruat, not nohl and paek.  My peas and carrots are Yibouhese, not Eirdren."

"Do you still write to your friend?" Shar-Wu asked.

"He has not responded in some time.  I think he has forgotten me."

Vren had more anger than hurt in her golden eyes.  Shar-Wu couldn't blame her, this friend of Vren's, so she told her, had brought the girl to this world of the unfamiliar and just left her here.  Luckily the University on High was willing to accept this girl in cultural exchange, but it was cruel abandonment by that man nonetheless.

"Ah," exclaimed Onion when she looked up as the mechanical clock chimed to the tune of the half hour.  "I'm late.  I need to get to Fourth Hall."

"The Fourth Hall?  What classes do they have there?  I thought that was just a laboratory for the Alchemy and Chemistry Scholars."

"I don't think it is a class.  I don't know.  This was slipped under my cell door this morning." Onion passed a folded piece of manilla paper to her teacher and budding friend.  On it were scribbled only:

Fourth Hall

Noon and Half

Alone

But the seal was an official Message Relay mark.  It was one of the few characters she could read in Yibouhese.

"Strange." Shar-Wu commented.  "Perhaps a professor is interested in taking you on as an apprentice?  How have your alchemy studies gone?"

"Not well," Onion replied sheepishly. 

"Maybe better than you thought." Shar-Wu smiled.  "You better get going.  Chatting with me, while improving your fluency, is just going to make you more late!"

Onion returned the smile.  "Thanks Shar-Rduap.  I will see you tomorrow then."

"I look forward to it."