Serial, Kherishdar's Exception, Episode 15: Puzzles

But I was who I was, so I smoothed my sleeves down over my forearms and walked to the table, there to sit and make an attempt at understanding my… predecessor. I suppose.

Do you love words, aunera? I do. I love listening to people talk, to their word choices and the music and rhythm of their voices, to the way they pause and the way they rush into pauses. One of the most attractive parts of being fathrikedi was my silence, because it freed me to listen. Maybe this is why I picked up your language so quickly. Which, when you think about it, is rather an astonishing accomplishment for someone from a monolingual culture. (See, I learned that word from you: monolingual. Why would we need it? We are one people with one language. We do not value diversity the way you do.)

Languages are like puzzles you unriddle with your ears and your mind. I never knew that I liked puzzles. I found my parents’ work so stultifying it didn’t occur to me that I might enjoy sorting things: I do. I just like sorting things that interest me, and words interest me.

But entire other languages, when you’ve only ever known one… how could I possibly convey the mystique of it? The way it seduces you? I first heard the tongue you use in your settlement from Jaran, when he was speaking to Lenore and Andrew Clark, and it fascinated me: that sounds might convey meaning and I could fail to understand. After that, I couldn’t help myself. Every opportunity I had to overhear their conversations, I seized. It helped that neither aunerai had a perfect understanding of Ai-Naidari, and that Jaran himself wanted to learn their tongue, for many of their conversations wandered onto linguistic tangents, and those in particular I absorbed like fabric did dye, and like that fabric, it changed me forever.

I have since learned that my ability to piece together meaning from observation this way is not usual, even among you, aunera. At the time I didn’t realize it, because simply being able to learn another language was… well. It was a ‘null concept,’ as you say. But looking at Lenore’s notes—the ones I could read, because reading is a skill separate from aural comprehension—I divined she was another one like me. I couldn’t tell if I hated having yet another trait in common with her or if was pleasing to know I wasn’t alone. In the end, my reaction to it mattered less than that it allowed me to begin arranging her notes into piles: things I could understand, and things I couldn’t. When I discovered the device I’d been lent could be pointed at the things I didn’t understand, and a rudimentary translation would appear superimposed on it, like a dream…

How could I leave this office? Turning to stare at the bookshelves, I grasped the treasure implied by its existence. I could spend years, studying this, and not be done. The only question was: should I?

I set the device down and leaned back in Lenore’s chair. Surely that would be one of the things Thirukedi expected of me? Not just that I learn these things, but that I have an opinion on whether that knowledge helped Kherishdar, or hurt it. He would make the final decision, but without data even Thirukedi was impotent. Wasn’t He?

I was still musing on this when a female aunerai burst into my office and said, “Oh! You’re here!”