Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Memoirs of a Mercenary ❯ Chapter 10
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: marriedmiko 
Miscellaneous: Original Stories Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Mystery / Martial Arts / Adventure | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 08.06.2012 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.2K | Visits: 232 | Status: Completed
Miscellaneous: Original Stories Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Romance / Mystery / Martial Arts / Adventure | Type: Other | Uploaded On: 08.06.2012 | Pages: 2 | Words: 2.2K | Visits: 232 | Status: Completed
Chapter 10
And explain he did. As we walked he prattled on endlessly about various aspects of language. Apparently there was more to talking than just talking. Each word had its own little name, determined by it’s function, and they had to be put in the proper order or you wouldn’t make sense. Well, anyway that’s how it was in Gana, in Arjuni the meaning was determined by the end of the words… on and on until I gave up listening and just watched my feet.
As the last of the huts faded behind us, Horiho finally quieted. Perhaps he had realized I wasn’t listening, or maybe he’d just gotten tired of the sound of his own voice. I certainly had. The air was fresh, and I realized I had become accustomed to the smells of the town: bread baking, manure, perfumes, sweat, and a variety of spices. It felt good to breathe clean air again, like my lungs had been smaller while I was in the town.
We had been walking over an hour before Horiho spoke again. “So,” he said out of nowhere. “You don’t speak Gana.”
“Not much,” I agreed.
“And I don’t know too much about Arjuni culture,” he went on.
I smiled. “I’m beginning to think that only the Arjuni do.”
He chuckled. “I propose another trade: I will teach you to speak Gana if you will tell me about your people.”
I shrugged. “I suppose we’ll have to talk about something. And I didn’t really understand all that stuff about particles and nuns.”
“Participles and nouns,” he corrected, but then he smiled. “I guess I threw all that at you a little quickly, huh?”
So it was that I started learning to speak Gana from Horiho. It was difficult, as I could only seem to absorb so much in one day. I just couldn’t keep track of everything. As we passed trees and flowers, he would ask their names in my language. Most of the time I knew, but as time went by we encountered plants I had never seen before.
The second day we were walking, it began to rain. At first it was just a light drizzle, and our straw hats were adequate, but as we walked the clouds got darker and the rain got heavier. Horiho wasn’t bothered much, but I was miserable. Finally Horiho suggested I unroll my oilcloth bedroll and wrap it around my shoulders. It was a little awkward with all of the items still hanging inside one end, but it helped a little. I was still wet underneath, but at least I was able to stay warm.
When the rain finally stopped, it was already evening. Horiho decided we should set up camp early, since it would take a while to get a fire going. I went out to find firewood as Horiho gathered rocks for the fire ring. When I returned, he had unrolled his oilcloth bedroll and laid out on it were several strange objects. They looked to be made up of many stiff, white squares of cloth bound together, and there were strange black patterns on the cloth.
“What are those?” I began to arrange the firewood in the circle of rocks.
“Books.” he said simply.
“Books?” I didn’t know the word, it sounded like Gana.
He thought about it a moment. “I don’t know the word for it in Arjuni. Maybe you don’t have them. Come look.”
I brushed my hands off and crouched next to him.
“See, this is writing. Each of these little symbols makes a sound, and when you string the sounds together, they make words. Like this one here.” He pointed to a string of symbols on the right hand edge. “These symbols are vej, ta, and bul. Vegtable.”
I stared at the pattern. I couldn’t see how a picture could represent a sound, but I suppose it was a convenient system. “We have symbols for our names.” I traced mine in the dirt. Normally at my age there would be a mark to one side indicating my gender, but I just left it as it was. “But I don’t think we have anything like that,” I admitted.
He nodded. “Well, that’s to be expected. You’re not a civilized culture.”
I frowned. “Civilized?”
He sighed heavily. “It’s very complicated…” he thought for a moment. “In your village, everyone does something very useful, right?”
“Well, everyone’s got to make a living,” I argued.
He shook his head. “No, I mean no one does anything unnecessary for their living. You don’t have any artists, for example.”
“We have a potter,” I said indignantly.
“That’s not an artist, that’s an artisan. The things he makes may be beautiful, but they’re also useful.”
“She.” I corrected.
“Well, alright, how about government officials?”
“We have a shaman and a chief.”
“Ok, but you don’t have any teachers.”
“We do too, we have fighting instructors. I was a fighting instructor.”
“Were you really?” Horiho’s tone had changed from frustrated to fascinated in the blink of an eye. For some reason the attention made me blush.
“Well, yes…” I said quietly. “For the lower levels, anyway.”
“How interesting. I had no idea the Arjuni were so liberal with their women.”
I laughed. “They’re not. I’m not a girl.”
Horiho looked at me as if I had flowers sprouting out of my ears. “You’re not?”
Again, I blushed. “Well, not technically.” He continued to stare at me in a vaguely horrified sort of way, so I went on. “I mean, physically I look just like a girl, but I’m not, on the inside.”
Horiho scrambled to get something out of his bag; a pot of black stuff, and a stick with a tail. He flipped the squares of cloth until he reached a blank one. “This, you must explain to me.”
I hesitated. “It’s rather personal…”
“I won’t write your name down. Besides, I’m more interested in the system than personal details.”
I frowned. “Alright. But let me set up my stuff. It’s a long story.”
After the fire was made and our things laid out, I sat down to tell him my story. It took a long time, because he often stopped me to ask about details. He wanted to know every last bit of information about ceremonies and traditions: what people wore, what we ate, the meanings behind the symbols. It was very late when we finally went to sleep, and I was only able to convince Horiho to let me stop with the promise that I would tell him more tomorrow.
It was the first time in quite a while that I had thought about home, so I wasn’t too surprised that I dreamed about it that night. I dreamed that I was little, and I was playing a game with the other children. We were picking teams, and I was surprised I didn’t get picked early on. I was quite athletic, and usually I got picked right away. But the captains kept calling other people’s names, and as it dwindled down to the last few kids I realized there were an odd number of us. When there were only two of us left, the other child’s name was called, and before I could ask what I should do, they all ran off to play. I ran after them, yelling “What about me?” but none of them answered.
At the time, I didn’t think much of the dream. It bothered me a little, on waking, but as the day wore on I forgot about it. In the morning, it looked like it might rain again, but the afternoon turned sunny and we passed a melon farmer on the road, who was more than happy to sell us some of his goods. Horiho and I ate the melon as we walked, and talked about words for food.
That evening I finished my story, up to the point where I was teaching the boys swordplay. Horiho continued to write for a while after I finished speaking, and I watched him. His brush traced the symbols on the paper carefully—he had explained brushes and paper and ink earlier that day—and he moved with a speed that impressed me.
“So, are those my words?” I watched the ink go from shiny to matte as it dried.
“Well, some of them,” he said absently. “I’ve added in some of my own comments. See, I’ve kept the Arjuni word for sword,” he wrote a few symbols, “to describe your short, curved blade, as opposed to the kind of sword Gana use.”
I stared at the symbols with interest. It fascinated me that you could make words permanent. “Can you teach me to read and write, too?”
Horiho stilled his brush and stared at the page for a moment. He sighed, and I knew the answer before he said it. “I don’t think so. It takes many years, even for young children. Even if I could I don’t have the right materials, I haven’t any experience teaching this sort of thing…”
“It’s alright,” I stopped him. “I was just curious.”
He smiled. “That’s what I like about you. You’re curious. You always want to know more, to know why. You’d make a half-decent scholar, for a woman. I think I’m starting to believe this stuff about you not being a girl.” He laughed, and I laughed along with him.
That night, I had another dream about home. This time I was 11. I knew that because I wore girl’s clothes. I was sitting with some other young girls, and I was weaving a basket. One of the girls had a new doll, and they were passing it around, oohing and aahing over it. One of them tried to hand it to me, but I ignored them.
“Don’t you want to see the doll, Tera?” she asked.
I just kept weaving. “I can see it fine from here,” I said, a little irritated.
“Oh, but you should feel how soft it is!” She pushed the doll towards me, and I shied away. The other girls started laughing at me, but I knew I really, really didn’t want to touch that doll. The girl next to me jabbed it at me like a sword and I ducked to avoid it. Finally she tossed it at me, and it landed in my unfinished basket. I looked down at it, and now, instead of it being a doll, it was a baby, and the baby was dead. It was covered in blood, and I looked at my hands, which were also covered in blood. I looked down at myself, and saw blood blossom out of my stomach, soaking my dress.
I screamed and sat up, awake. In the silence that followed, I could hear only my own heartbeat, but I had the strongest feeling that I was being watched. Not wanting to risk anything, I grabbed my sword and got up, standing over Hohiro’s sleeping form to protect him. I turned in a slow circle, listening hard. I peered into the darkness, but it was a cloudy night and I could barely see Hohiro below me. I shifted my feet to see behind me, and bumped Hohiro in the process.
“Hmm… what?” He blinked a few times. “Oh Gods!!! Don’t kill me, please!” He shielded his face with his arms and whimpered.
“Shut up, you idiot,” I hissed. “There’s something out there.”
To his credit, he stilled instantly. I continued to listen, but heard nothing but the two of us breathing. Even the bugs were quiet. Slowly, my sense of unease lifted, and the normal night sounds resumed timidly. I lowered my sword, and Hohiro gasped. I scowled at him through the dark and sheathed it, sitting back down on my pallet.
“Whatever it was, it’s gone,” I said.
Horiho was very quiet, and there was an uncomfortable tension between us. We were both tired and neither one wanted to bring up the problem, but neither wanted to blow it off, either.
“Go to sleep,” I said, and that was the end of that.
And explain he did. As we walked he prattled on endlessly about various aspects of language. Apparently there was more to talking than just talking. Each word had its own little name, determined by it’s function, and they had to be put in the proper order or you wouldn’t make sense. Well, anyway that’s how it was in Gana, in Arjuni the meaning was determined by the end of the words… on and on until I gave up listening and just watched my feet.
As the last of the huts faded behind us, Horiho finally quieted. Perhaps he had realized I wasn’t listening, or maybe he’d just gotten tired of the sound of his own voice. I certainly had. The air was fresh, and I realized I had become accustomed to the smells of the town: bread baking, manure, perfumes, sweat, and a variety of spices. It felt good to breathe clean air again, like my lungs had been smaller while I was in the town.
We had been walking over an hour before Horiho spoke again. “So,” he said out of nowhere. “You don’t speak Gana.”
“Not much,” I agreed.
“And I don’t know too much about Arjuni culture,” he went on.
I smiled. “I’m beginning to think that only the Arjuni do.”
He chuckled. “I propose another trade: I will teach you to speak Gana if you will tell me about your people.”
I shrugged. “I suppose we’ll have to talk about something. And I didn’t really understand all that stuff about particles and nuns.”
“Participles and nouns,” he corrected, but then he smiled. “I guess I threw all that at you a little quickly, huh?”
So it was that I started learning to speak Gana from Horiho. It was difficult, as I could only seem to absorb so much in one day. I just couldn’t keep track of everything. As we passed trees and flowers, he would ask their names in my language. Most of the time I knew, but as time went by we encountered plants I had never seen before.
The second day we were walking, it began to rain. At first it was just a light drizzle, and our straw hats were adequate, but as we walked the clouds got darker and the rain got heavier. Horiho wasn’t bothered much, but I was miserable. Finally Horiho suggested I unroll my oilcloth bedroll and wrap it around my shoulders. It was a little awkward with all of the items still hanging inside one end, but it helped a little. I was still wet underneath, but at least I was able to stay warm.
When the rain finally stopped, it was already evening. Horiho decided we should set up camp early, since it would take a while to get a fire going. I went out to find firewood as Horiho gathered rocks for the fire ring. When I returned, he had unrolled his oilcloth bedroll and laid out on it were several strange objects. They looked to be made up of many stiff, white squares of cloth bound together, and there were strange black patterns on the cloth.
“What are those?” I began to arrange the firewood in the circle of rocks.
“Books.” he said simply.
“Books?” I didn’t know the word, it sounded like Gana.
He thought about it a moment. “I don’t know the word for it in Arjuni. Maybe you don’t have them. Come look.”
I brushed my hands off and crouched next to him.
“See, this is writing. Each of these little symbols makes a sound, and when you string the sounds together, they make words. Like this one here.” He pointed to a string of symbols on the right hand edge. “These symbols are vej, ta, and bul. Vegtable.”
I stared at the pattern. I couldn’t see how a picture could represent a sound, but I suppose it was a convenient system. “We have symbols for our names.” I traced mine in the dirt. Normally at my age there would be a mark to one side indicating my gender, but I just left it as it was. “But I don’t think we have anything like that,” I admitted.
He nodded. “Well, that’s to be expected. You’re not a civilized culture.”
I frowned. “Civilized?”
He sighed heavily. “It’s very complicated…” he thought for a moment. “In your village, everyone does something very useful, right?”
“Well, everyone’s got to make a living,” I argued.
He shook his head. “No, I mean no one does anything unnecessary for their living. You don’t have any artists, for example.”
“We have a potter,” I said indignantly.
“That’s not an artist, that’s an artisan. The things he makes may be beautiful, but they’re also useful.”
“She.” I corrected.
“Well, alright, how about government officials?”
“We have a shaman and a chief.”
“Ok, but you don’t have any teachers.”
“We do too, we have fighting instructors. I was a fighting instructor.”
“Were you really?” Horiho’s tone had changed from frustrated to fascinated in the blink of an eye. For some reason the attention made me blush.
“Well, yes…” I said quietly. “For the lower levels, anyway.”
“How interesting. I had no idea the Arjuni were so liberal with their women.”
I laughed. “They’re not. I’m not a girl.”
Horiho looked at me as if I had flowers sprouting out of my ears. “You’re not?”
Again, I blushed. “Well, not technically.” He continued to stare at me in a vaguely horrified sort of way, so I went on. “I mean, physically I look just like a girl, but I’m not, on the inside.”
Horiho scrambled to get something out of his bag; a pot of black stuff, and a stick with a tail. He flipped the squares of cloth until he reached a blank one. “This, you must explain to me.”
I hesitated. “It’s rather personal…”
“I won’t write your name down. Besides, I’m more interested in the system than personal details.”
I frowned. “Alright. But let me set up my stuff. It’s a long story.”
After the fire was made and our things laid out, I sat down to tell him my story. It took a long time, because he often stopped me to ask about details. He wanted to know every last bit of information about ceremonies and traditions: what people wore, what we ate, the meanings behind the symbols. It was very late when we finally went to sleep, and I was only able to convince Horiho to let me stop with the promise that I would tell him more tomorrow.
It was the first time in quite a while that I had thought about home, so I wasn’t too surprised that I dreamed about it that night. I dreamed that I was little, and I was playing a game with the other children. We were picking teams, and I was surprised I didn’t get picked early on. I was quite athletic, and usually I got picked right away. But the captains kept calling other people’s names, and as it dwindled down to the last few kids I realized there were an odd number of us. When there were only two of us left, the other child’s name was called, and before I could ask what I should do, they all ran off to play. I ran after them, yelling “What about me?” but none of them answered.
At the time, I didn’t think much of the dream. It bothered me a little, on waking, but as the day wore on I forgot about it. In the morning, it looked like it might rain again, but the afternoon turned sunny and we passed a melon farmer on the road, who was more than happy to sell us some of his goods. Horiho and I ate the melon as we walked, and talked about words for food.
That evening I finished my story, up to the point where I was teaching the boys swordplay. Horiho continued to write for a while after I finished speaking, and I watched him. His brush traced the symbols on the paper carefully—he had explained brushes and paper and ink earlier that day—and he moved with a speed that impressed me.
“So, are those my words?” I watched the ink go from shiny to matte as it dried.
“Well, some of them,” he said absently. “I’ve added in some of my own comments. See, I’ve kept the Arjuni word for sword,” he wrote a few symbols, “to describe your short, curved blade, as opposed to the kind of sword Gana use.”
I stared at the symbols with interest. It fascinated me that you could make words permanent. “Can you teach me to read and write, too?”
Horiho stilled his brush and stared at the page for a moment. He sighed, and I knew the answer before he said it. “I don’t think so. It takes many years, even for young children. Even if I could I don’t have the right materials, I haven’t any experience teaching this sort of thing…”
“It’s alright,” I stopped him. “I was just curious.”
He smiled. “That’s what I like about you. You’re curious. You always want to know more, to know why. You’d make a half-decent scholar, for a woman. I think I’m starting to believe this stuff about you not being a girl.” He laughed, and I laughed along with him.
That night, I had another dream about home. This time I was 11. I knew that because I wore girl’s clothes. I was sitting with some other young girls, and I was weaving a basket. One of the girls had a new doll, and they were passing it around, oohing and aahing over it. One of them tried to hand it to me, but I ignored them.
“Don’t you want to see the doll, Tera?” she asked.
I just kept weaving. “I can see it fine from here,” I said, a little irritated.
“Oh, but you should feel how soft it is!” She pushed the doll towards me, and I shied away. The other girls started laughing at me, but I knew I really, really didn’t want to touch that doll. The girl next to me jabbed it at me like a sword and I ducked to avoid it. Finally she tossed it at me, and it landed in my unfinished basket. I looked down at it, and now, instead of it being a doll, it was a baby, and the baby was dead. It was covered in blood, and I looked at my hands, which were also covered in blood. I looked down at myself, and saw blood blossom out of my stomach, soaking my dress.
I screamed and sat up, awake. In the silence that followed, I could hear only my own heartbeat, but I had the strongest feeling that I was being watched. Not wanting to risk anything, I grabbed my sword and got up, standing over Hohiro’s sleeping form to protect him. I turned in a slow circle, listening hard. I peered into the darkness, but it was a cloudy night and I could barely see Hohiro below me. I shifted my feet to see behind me, and bumped Hohiro in the process.
“Hmm… what?” He blinked a few times. “Oh Gods!!! Don’t kill me, please!” He shielded his face with his arms and whimpered.
“Shut up, you idiot,” I hissed. “There’s something out there.”
To his credit, he stilled instantly. I continued to listen, but heard nothing but the two of us breathing. Even the bugs were quiet. Slowly, my sense of unease lifted, and the normal night sounds resumed timidly. I lowered my sword, and Hohiro gasped. I scowled at him through the dark and sheathed it, sitting back down on my pallet.
“Whatever it was, it’s gone,” I said.
Horiho was very quiet, and there was an uncomfortable tension between us. We were both tired and neither one wanted to bring up the problem, but neither wanted to blow it off, either.
“Go to sleep,” I said, and that was the end of that.