The next day started my new routine. Awaken shortly before the breakfast bell, assume my human disguise and get dressed for the day. Do breakfast with Thuvvik and the crew in the common area and then spend the rest of the morning with Thuvvik in the cabin working on learning how to speak languages. Take a brief break to stretch a midday; walk the deck, look at the endless blue, and generally not be stuck in a small cabin, and then spent the afternoon until the dinner bell I spent time learning how to read. After dinner I would retreat back to the cabin where Thuvvik would read and I’d spend the evening practicing magic, typically drawing or small spells that I could safely cast in the small room, but the occasional meditation.

  Languages were frustrating to put it mildly, particularly the alphabet system all three used. Sylvan and Runna shared an alphabet, a consequence of Runna being an Old Elven derivative according to Thuvvik, which meant I only had to learn the characters once. There was a notable difference in some pronunciations, but few enough that it didn’t take too long to understand the difference. The blocky letters of Porforo on the other hand had some letters that were superficially similar to the Sylvan alphabet but were very different in pronunciation.

  Of the two, High Poroforo was the easier to pick up, but only barely. Alphabets were just… wrong. Well, they felt wrong at least. I was used to the idea that different arrangements could evoke different words, but the way the alphabet shifted made it hard to understand. Whereas a logam that Quori or Tho-myon used had two separate pronunciations based on context that was clearly defined based on the sentence structure, letters had as many as six different pronunciations that varied based on the word. There was one sequence that Thuvvik taught me that had nine different possible pronunciations depending not on the letters around it, but rather the word itself. While I could puzzle out some words after the first week, the vast majority required me to to guess or learn the word before I knew how it was pronounced and even then it might change based on context. I wasn’t sure why the word for ‘actively reading’ and ‘having finished reading’ had the same spelling but different pronunciation, but it made me want to give up even trying to learn Runna entirely. It was frustrating, grating, and by the end of the first week I was going mad enough to wear my fur thin.

  “Oh, to the endless abyss with this!”

  Thuvvik didn’t say a thing, instead quietly raising an eyebrow.

  “I’m going for a walk.”

  Thuvvik made a noise that could have been a snort of laughter, but nodded seriously. “We can pick this up tomorrow. Go, recouperate.”

  Somehow that made me even more frustrated which lead to me leaving the room in a flustered anger before remembering I was on a boat and there wasn’t really anywhere to go. That lead to me wandering the level our room was on for a bit before taking the stairs up to the deck and walking laps around the edge of the ship.

  “Stupid Runna and it’s stupid conjugations and it’s stupid homophones and it’s stupid…”

  “The only reason you are frustrated is because you are struggling and unlike the academy there isn’t anyone else struggling with you.”

  I sighed and splayed my fingers in frustration, wanting to grab and squeeze something. It wasn’t that she was wrong, because Rin wasn’t saying anything I wasn’t thinking in at least part anyways, it’s just having it spelled out like that made me sound so childish and stupid. I was better than this.

  “Says the person calling herself stupid while talking to a voice in her own head.”

  Or at least I liked to think I was. Annoyed, I slumped against a railing near the front of the ship and stared out at the sea. I hadn’t spent much time above deck during the day. Between the language lessons and how painful hot the sun was without the canopy coverage of the Wood it just didn’t seem the wisest choice. And besides, it always looked the same. Endless dark blue below, endless light blue above broken only by the sun and occasional cloud. In fact, generally the only time I saw the sky was on my way to and from meals. Breakfast just after sunrise and dinner just after sunset, which meant I was completely unprepared for what I saw in the final kedu of sunlight, where the sky was large uniform in color.

  Not right now. As the sun fell from the sky, approaching the horizon, streaks of color scorched their way across the water tinting the waves red and orange while the sky was a gradual fade from into the deeper purples of night. It created a spread of vivid colors I had never seen before and my breath caught watching the way the colors danced across my vision, reflections spreading and creating a dance of colors in the ripples the ship left in it’s passage and across the clouds on the horizon. It was enough that, just for a moment, I forgot all of my frustrations and breath seeing how striking the image was.

  “It’s just the interplay of light, water, and air. You could likely repli…”

  “Rin,” I murmured to myself, “Just be quiet.”

  She, thankfully, did just that. However, I wasn’t left in silence long. There was a creak at my side and then someone else was leaning against the railing next to me.

  “Gorgeous, isn’t it?”

  Reluctantly, I pulled my eyes away from the view to find Eninald leaning against the rail next to me. He was what would be inappropriately close back in Imardos, but given the size of the ship there wasn’t much room for him to be farther away. An unhappy fact, but one I wasn’t going to belabor.

  “It is,” I agreed, partially turning back to the view while keeping him carefully in the corner of my vision.

  The silence stretched comfortably for a bit and I could feel the last bits of my frustration flow away. Eventually, an appreciative sigh escaped my lips.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “You’ve been locked up in your cabin all week. Uncomfortable mingling with us sailor types?” Eninald asked.

  I spared him another glance, unwilling to fully turn my eyes from the horizon before shaking my head.

  “No. I’ve been busy. Learning Runna.” And High Porforo. And Sylvan. And practicing magic. And working on a meditative and focusing technique to keep all of the facts and bits of knowledge separate after dinner. He didn’t need to know all of that though, it wouldn’t have fit the story Thuvvik had crafted for me.

  “Ah,” he said before rattling off a question in Runna too rapidly for me to follow.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, finally turning to face him. “I’m still learning. I caught maybe four words of that.”

  He smiled wide and his eyes lit up, practically sparkling. It was a far more earnest and honest appearance than his normally overly confident grin.

  “I asked how far along you are in your lessons and if you needed someone to practice with.”

  “Well,” I said smiling at him, “I believe you have your answer.”

  He nodded, but his eyes never left mine. “You should come to the theater tonight,” he said, returning to Tho-myon. “Runna is the language most of the crew speaks most fluently, so we do all of our acting in that.”

  I blinked, ”Theater? Like a performed drama?”

  He shook his head, “I might know some of Wilderness, but the rest of the crew isn’t quite as well read. Now, it’s more… informal. Comedy. Improvisational.”

  I blinked, not really understanding. Apparently he understood that though, so he continued.

  “It’s mostly humorous. Get people laughing and help pass time while we’re at sea. But more relevantly for a Runna learner, it’ll get the words in sentences and in context. I found that’s a far better way to learn than books.”

  “You’ve had to learn languages?”

  He gave me a skeptical eyebrow. “I’ve never heard of anyone speaking Tho-myon outside of Tsuruga.”

  I blushed, “Yes, of course. I mispoke. What I meant is have you spent enough time learning languages that you have preferences on how to learn?”

  That got a laugh out of him. “Oh, yeah. I grew up speaking Werenal at home and Runna out in town. Then, when I started going to school I had to pick up Komen and Sylvan since a lot of old plays are written in one of those. Then I’ve picked up a smattering of Tho-myon, Urdesh, and Low Porforo while I’ve been on the ship.”

  I blinked, very impressed and slightly jealous at this man who couldn’t have been more than two winters my senior and how well… uh, multi-tongued? Multi-tongued he was. Here I was struggling to get past my second language and he had already mastered seven well enough to speak Tho-myon with me fluently enough that I hadn’t even considered he wasn’t a native speaker.

  “Regardless, you should come to the play tonight.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in it. His lips twitched a bit wider, showing a few more teeth and letting his enthusiasm show through some more.

  “It’s just after dinner. You can sit near the back and if you don’t like it you can sneak away. No one will notice. Well, except me, but I’ll understand.”

  I sighed but found myself smiling.

  “Okay, sure. I’ll come.”

  *****************************************************************************************************

  The ‘theater’ was nothing like anything I had ever experienced. I had seen a few spiritual dramas through the academy, though most of those were spent on proper form for attending to someone important enough to attend the performance on their own merit instead of watching them myself, and a travelling troupe came by once a year to put on a historical drama as part of an educational experience. They were always larger and longer affairs retelling events such as how the Emperor’s bloodline gained the divine favor to rule or Akari Nine-Tail’s war against the elves, alternative forms to help us understand what we had learned in lecture. Once there had been a small puppet show that came with a merchant, but that had been before Kyomi was even talking so I had been too young to remember much of it.

  The show here was much more… chaotic. There were clearly no prepared lines, no consistent costumes. Actors would dash onto stage with a prop and a posture and declare who they were before breaking into an argument with another. I didn’t get most of the words, but there was enough physicality to the entire affair I didn’t need to. All of them had the same general structure. A sailor would run into an authority figure, governors and elves seem the most common targets, and then spend their time mocking or physically abusing the poor person. It wasn’t direct violence, but rather seemingly ‘accidentally’ elbowing the official in the face or quietly tying their boots together so that they’d trip and fall when they took a step.

  Eninald, surprisingly, spent more time as the bumbling officials than anything else. And, I had to admit, he had a talent for this. His characters were so perfectly arrogant and stuffy that we all loved to see him get ‘abused’ by his crewmates. And his physical reactions were exaggerated enough to be funny without becoming overwrought. Several times I had heard a low snap or crack as he got elbowed or fell, and gasped expecting for him to come away bleeding, only for him to bounce back to his feet and bow with a flourish. By the time the ‘skits’ ended, I was weary from laughter. Once the rest of the crew had departed, he made his way over to me, slightly swaggering.

  “That was amazing!” I enthused, before he could speak. “When’s the next one?”

  He smiled warmly and leaned against the boxes where I had been sitting. “Depends on when we’re up for them. Probably a few nights from now, gives us time to think up some new bits. I’ll let you know when it’s happening.”

  I eagerly nodded before letting out a contented sigh. I didn’t want to leave yet, but there was a small feeling of discomfort at how much practice had gone neglected.

  “Well, until then, I should get back to my studies. Good night.”

  “Wait,” he said, his smile gone and face turned thoughtful. “If you’re interested, a few of my friends and I play cards every other night. Not necessarily as funny as this was, but still could be a chance to learn some Runna.”

  “Cards?” I asked.

  Be blinked, “Cards. Like card games. Poker, Pudge, Journey?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t even know what you mean by ‘cards’.”

  Eninald let out a whistle.

  “Well, uh, huh. Just find me after dinner tomorrow. It’s easier to explain with some cards in hand.”

  I blinked and then shrugged. “Okay.”

  For some reason that made Eninald smile very wide.

  pick up languages to be frustrating. And every issue Kara has with Runna is one I've either said or heard someone say while learning languages.