Kherishdar's Exception, Episode 28: Not Easily Understood

Sharing my notes with Kor was rewarding and alarming. The former because he didn’t pretend interest in it for my sake; he was as curious about how aunera speak as I was, and smart enough to have begun picking up pieces of it while we were there. He also didn’t fear contracting maien from the study, which was a relief. Working with unnatural knowledge was enough trouble without having to console people who come into accidental contact with it that it’s not going to destroy their minds.

The latter because… when Kor pays attention to something, he invariably does so completely. We prefer more prolonged eye contact than you do, aunera, and we’re more sensitive to blinking—I think, anyway, or Emma does because once I put it to her she started investigating what we might be perceiving—but even we might find the undivided attention of a significant individual…

I don’t even know what we’d find it. But Kor’s intense, and knows it. Thankfully, because now and then he’ll suddenly grin and I’ll have to decide whether I’m relieved for the respite or irritated because I revealed my discomfort and didn’t notice.

He still does that, to this day. And laughs about it. I pretend to be annoyed, just for appearance’s sake.

That first night we were up half the night while I explained your lack of pronouns and how it doesn’t seem to hobble you, and the weird floppiness of your castes and ranks and how your language fails to formalize it, and I told him all about how bitches were both animals worthy of aunerai love and objects of scorn and derision, and your puzzling beliefs about eating the things you love.

He had no insight on your contradictions, save to say that all thinking beings harbor them. “No person is completely consistent, Haraa. We are too complex for simple explanations.”

“You understand people, though,” I said.

Kor smiled another of those mischievous smiles, but his eyes were serious. “Because I begin from the premise that people are too complex for simple explanations. It is the habit of simplifying people that leads so many astray in their quest for understanding. You can’t learn a person you’ve decided you already understand.”

I thought about that after I retreated to my bed. I certainly didn’t understand the aunera, and there was no simplifying them. I also didn’t understand myself very well, if I were to tell the truth… and I do, aunera. To you. Because you won’t tell my secrets, and even if you did, who among you would know why they matter?

*** 

I have mentioned my bed, and suppose I must. I’ve mentioned lavash, or maybe Farren has, ‘sleeping arrangements.’ I’m sure you assume that as community-minded people who enjoy one another’s company, we sleep in a giant pile in the same room all the time. What a mess that would be if true! As usual, reality is more complicated. Some people can’t rest when smashed against multiple bodies—others love it, but kick and flail and disturb the sleep of those around them. Some are sensitive to noise, or to temperature. Some can’t bear to be alone, and some need something different every other day.

Lavash, then, is continuously re-negotiated. In Qevellen, it’s understood that Kor sleeps either with Farren or Ajan, and never anyone else. Farren is also a… a… monogamous sleeper? In that he’ll only sleep with Kor. We call that mesore yulundari, a “tethered dreamer.” Yes, I see you language-hungry ones pulling that apart. Yulun is specifically restful dreams, so it implies that a person only sleeps well when with a single, specific person. I’m told some people use kibashone for the same concept now… it’s the word we use for mitosis.

Yes, we know what cells are.

Anyway, back to my bed. (That’s vara, beds. Varani, one bed.) I never liked the mounds of entangled limbs and bodies most fathriked default to when left alone in their quarters. Once in a while to cuddle, yes, but not to sleep. I prefer an alcove to myself, or occasionally with someone else. Qevellen has more than enough space to accommodate me, so I woke the next morning by myself, in the empty third floor room, with the sunlight striping my body and falling across my face. The summer sunlight. Because I had left for the Gateworld in late spring, and the weeks had passed, and delivered us to the new season…

…and Farren’s ambitions.

I groaned and rolled onto my face, breathing into my pillow until the floral water it had been sprinkled with started making my nose water. I had to face him sometime. Maybe if I approached him this early he would be so intent on whatever project was engaging him, he’d forget that he wanted to marry me off.

Yes, aunera, you can guess how it actually happened.