Serial, Kherishdar's Exception, Episode 14: Esse Quam Videri

      Falzon said something, coming to a halt beside a door. I glanced at my borrowed device. He’d said, “This is it.”
      I peered inside, expecting… what, I didn’t know. The austerity of Shame’s study, or the meticulous order of Farren’s studio. The cleanliness of my parents’ offices. Something tidy. But Lenore’s office was anything but tidy. The walls were covered in papers, some as small as a single word, others the width of my arm. Calligraphy. Sentences. Sketches of circles that looked like genealogies, and tiered abstractions scribbled on in haste or notated with deliberation. One entire wall was a board covered in chalk: more aunerai words and the entirety of the Ai-Naidari alphabet. Her desk was likewise stacked with papers and pens and inks and more pens and pencils and more papers. Her first desk. There was a second, propped up at an angle like Farren’s drafting table, and on it was a single piece of paper, translucent, on which had dried a single Ai-Naidari letter—our ‘jz’ sound.
      And books. So many books, filling a case behind the desk. Bound books and notebooks. There were more notebooks on the desk. A stack of them was leaning against the wall in the back corner.
      In all my admittedly limited interactions with Lenore Serapis, I had thought her a neat and organized female, an impression I derived from her stoic demeanor and perfect dress. I had found her inscrutable and strange. This office belonged to someone who could fall hopelessly and dramatically in love with an alien. This revelation startled me: that someone could appear to be something so different from what they were on the inside.
      The way I was.
      Was that typical of aunera? Some function of their never being in the place they belonged? My fur stood on end and I smoothed my sleeves over my arms.
      Falzon said something I thought apologetic from the tone, and which turned out to be, “It’s a little bit of a mess.” A pause. “We tried to tidy it up after she left.”
      This was the tidied version? I couldn’t help it. I started laughing.
      Falzon glanced at me, then stretched his mouth into a grin I recognized from Andrew Clark’s frequent flirtations with Jaran. Your expressions of happiness are a lot like ours, aunera. I’m glad of it. There’s enough room for misunderstanding as it is. He said something: “It’s all yours.”
      “Goddess help me,” I answered, and flashed the device at him with raised brows and ears canted forward, trying for a caricature so he would know I was trying for humor.
      It worked: he laughed and nodded agreement, a gross movement of the head rather than the more subtle thing we do with our ears. It made my joke seem far funnier than it was.
      “If you need anything,” he said, “I am…” He stepped back and pointed. “In that room there.”
      “Very well,” I said.
      “Keep it,” he added, pointing at the device. “While you’re here.” He paused. “It’s not perfect. The words.”
      “I can tell,” I said, because the lack of caste differentiation in the speech was enough warning that the translator had either missed things or failed to understand them. “Thank you, Ruben Falzon.”
      “Ruben,” he said.
      I canted my head.
      He rested a hand on his chest. “You are important Ai-Naidari,” the words on the screen said. “Alien dignitary. I am at your service.”
      Stunned, I stared at the words, then up at him. “I… see.” And, realizing I hadn’t introduced myself, I added, “I am Haraa nai’Qevellen-osulkedi.”
      “Osulkedi,” he said, and that word he said in Ai-Naidari. He knew that much, then, to pick out the caste title from my name. Switching to his own tongue, he finished, “Welcome to Hope Landing.”
      He left me there, holding the device and struggling with the realization that I had become an alien dignitary, one due respect from their leaders. Kor and Ajan had made me feel osulkedi with their camaraderie, but it took the respect of an unfamiliar aunerai to make me truly understand how much I’d changed from the fathrikedi who had been the object of the pitiable interest of aliens.
      I realized then that aunera, too, understood social castes. Perhaps not in the systemic way we did, but they knew, instinctively, that one did not treat a Decoration the same way one treated a Public Servant. Why had they left that knowledge instinctive instead of codifying it so it no longer created mistakes and misunderstandings? Was there some benefit to leaving it unspoken that we had rejected?
      And did this thinking constitute maien?
      I stared at the mass of papers on Lenore’s desk and began to tremble.

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If you were following the serial when it started running 2 years ago, this is the last episode ever posted. Next week we're into new material. :)