To Speak, To Dream, To Commune (Kail Language Training)

[Taithrosa Eldytia]

He focused on what Kail was teaching him, but he resisted the urge to learn over and just let the sweet smell of her hair fill his sences. He enjoyed her presences and now more for her then because of the reasurances her presences had provided. He turned his silver eyes away from her face and down to the konti letters she was showing him. Taithrosa had noticed earlier that the language of these woman was not like Akalak. They said hello in half the time it took them to say hello. Which said they placed far more meanings to a word. Akalak required usually two or three words for a single word in common. He focused though on the letters. Watching as her elegant hand move across the paper. He looked at her as she pronounced each of the letters. His own deep voice would make the following sound practicing what was being said. In the space of about half a chime he had memoriesed the basic sounds, and was able to quickly resit them back to Kail.

[Kail D'Rea]

Taith's focus and intelligence had made learning the alphabet go quickly and smoothly. Kail was glad, as she was more accustomed to being the student then the teacher and didn't know that she was doing things properly. She did know enough to resist her urge to giggle and most of Taith's pronunciation. It’s not that he wasn’t doing it well and correctly, it was just that his deep voice was already making her native tongue sound strange to her ears. She wasn’t used to hearing from a man in Kontinese or used to the slight accent he brought to the letters. This was going to be difficult just because she was happy with him and inclined to let her feelings out, even the ones that lead to giggles.

She didn’t though and once he was reciting correctly she was ready to move on. “Shall we start with a greeting conversation?” she asked, before moving directly into just that. “I’m sure you’ve picked up on ‘hello’.” She restated the brief word just in case he hadn’t. “So let’s do some other standard greeting and replies.” She started with “good morning” and said each one in Kontinese and Common, also writing them down and a fresh sheet of paper so he could get the visual. She felt that at his rate, by the end of the day they might make it to a point where he could use all the pleasantries easily, not just hello, but please, thank you, how are you… that make a stranger seem more at home and more welcome in a distant land.

While she very much wanted Taithrosa to feel at home here, she had a secret motivation for wanting him to get these down quickly, too. She thought it would be absolutely adorable to see and hear him talking in Kontinese and fully expected to get entertainment as well as satisfaction out of these lessons.

[Taithrosa Eldytia]

Taith smiled up at her as she taught him. After having learned Tukant and still remembering the celestial speach these words were much easier to learn. Not that they weren't hard, but they weren't long drawn out words and phrases. It was very much this word for that word in common. He did prounouse the sounds correctly when said individually, but like in common he did have an accent when he started saying the words. Those sounds which were more natural because of the celestial tongue always want to fight and win, but he focused on the actual words hiding his accent fairly well. He listened and repeated as she gave him the basic introductions and pleasentries. He felt that this was an excellent way to start. Now it was true he wouldn't only be able to do the basic communication, but it would at least be a start. He worked out the words practicing each and working on memorisng them. As he spoke he would look over at Kail and give her a half smile before returning back to his own work and memorizing.

[Kail D'Rea]

Kail used the time Taith was studying to gauge how comfortable he was with the current words and phrases and think about what would be practical to add next. After a while, when Taith seemed to be at a breaking point, she smiled right into his eyes and held her look steady. Then in a very serious tone in Kontinese, said hello and asked him how he was. She decided that they should try a bit of conversation, then start to clean up.

The library would be closing soon and she didn’t want to make an issue of being asked to leave. On the other hand, she didn’t want to finish too early. Apart from the fact that they had a lot of work to do, Kail knew Taith liked to be on the beach by moon rise and she wanted to give him a reason to go straight there rather than walk her home. After that little moment earlier today, and her own thoughts that were actually going in a commitment direction, she wanted the walk home to clear her head and think. She didn’t want to make a stupid decision. He might want time to think too. Of course if he offered, she would enjoy the walk and think later, but she wanted to ensure there would be no pressure.

[Taithrosa Eldytia]

Taithrosa nodded as they finished working the selected vocabulary. He was briefly surprised as she seemed to stop the lesson, but then she spoke to him in that sweet voice of hers. He looked back at her, his silver eyes bright with merriement but his voice was calm and soothing as he spoke. He returned the kontinesse greeting, that was the extent of his flawless speach. He paused for a moment the words in answer to the next question coming but not as quickly, and then trying to remember the grammer as well. While this simple question wasn't to hard in word choise or grammer, he had still learned a lot today. He eventually answered with a simple responce that he was good. Once they were finished Taith realized that they were finishing for the eveing. He stood and smiled. "Thank you for the lessons. Can I walk you home?" He figured given they were on a highly female based island he she would be safe, but something from his past lives told him, one walked a lady home.

[Kail D'Rea]

Speaking Kontinese, just for fun, Kail said, “Yes, thank you,” knowing he would get it and then adding “it will be nice to have the company,” in common.

While excited to walk home with Taith and certainly ready to be home for the evening, Kail was still thinking about the language problem. Taith had done very well and Kail had already started to think ahead to what to work on next. She was going to keep things in the present tense for a while, wanting to make sure that Taith was comfortable with the words, phrases and conjugation of the here and now before trying to get into the past and future. Kontinese had not gone through very many generations or even that much time, so it was still mostly pure and simple. Slang, irregular verbs, odd plural words and other irregularities were so rare that learning the vocabulary, the fairly simple grammar, the conjugation and the tenses would really give him a handle on the language. It would take time and practice, but what language didn't?

On the way out of the library, Kail asked Taith “would you like to work on vocabulary next time, or do more conversation? And when would you like to meet again? If I have a little time and know what to prepare, I think we can cover even more ground next time. I can make some lists in advance so I don’t forget anything important and, well, what would you like to do?” she finished lamely.

[Taithrosa Eldytia]

As they began to walk home Taith thought for a moment. "Well how about we plan to contiune our Kontinese lesson in two days, and tomorrow we can meet and I can teach you some of the basics of the Akalak tongue. I fear that one will take longer to learn then Kontinesse it is a very involved language and can some times ramble on." He said with a hummored smile. "I can meet you again at the library, and I will show you the basics, and we can keep trading off like that. It will also give us some time to practice the languages on our own."

[Kail D'Rea]

"Great. We can both have a little time to decide what direction we want to go. Since you're up tomorrow and I don't want to start with nothing, what if you just teach me a biasic 'hello' on the way home. Then I will know how to greet my teacher tomorrow," she said while smiling up at Taith. She added silently to herself "that will also make conversation on the way home easier. Maybe I won't say anything too dumb." She was rather nervous, thinking about how much she enjoyed his company and wondering what was expected when she reached her house. The nerves might lead to some dumb comment she would regret and that would spoil the walk home. Keeping it something she could focus on would help. Maybe she could relax enough to enjoy standing on her doorstep with him, rather then over-analizing the situation. "Just stop thinking and focus on Taith," she told herself, then looked at him expectantly.

[Taithrosa Eldytia]

He smiled at the small konti woman who walked next to him as they headed towards her house. "I can teach you a simple greating." Given the complexity of the Akalak language there were a number of greetings. He thought about the best one.

"There are several greetings, but I think I will teach you the one for greeting a teacher, and also for greeting a friend." His silver eyes looked into hers. He then began to teacher her the words. The structure would take a while and so he figured he would explain to here on the next day why it was that the structure was as it was.

Taithrosa enjoyed his lessons with Kail. She was a gentle and quiet person with a inner strength. His memories told him that this wasn't the first life time they had lived together, he wasn't sure how he knew that but it was something that he couldn't deny.

By the time they got to her place he had taught her how to greet others. He smiled at her and gave her a kiss on each check before departing for the evening.

[Kail D'Rea]

Kail had set aside her assigned work at the library and had set up a room again for her language lesson with Taith. She now had only to wait his arrival, which gave her time to make sure she was saying the long word she had taught her as a greeting correctly. She had known in Tukant it took a long time to say anything, but this much for “Hello?” maybe this was going to be a lot harder than she thought. Well, knowledge was knowledge and anything she gained was more then she knew now.

After practicing until she was confident enough to make an attempt, her mind wandered back to last night. The greeting she had received at the start of her first lesson made her expect more on the doorstep last night, but Taith seemed to understand that she was taking her first faltering steps in to the world of relationships with men and had let her off lightly, with affection, but without giving or asking for more than she was prepared for. She wished again that there were more examples of function relationships between males and females on the island so she knew more what she was doing. She didn’t even have her own parents as an example since as long as she could remember, it had just been her, her mother, her older sister and her grandmother living together in a house with an aunt and a cousin. It was a great way to grow up and she loved her family, but really, there just wasn’t anything to learn about this type of situation. Instincts were great, but her academic mind just required more.

At the moment, her instincts and emotions were in the fore-front of her mind, hoping that Taith would initiate another kiss. Her academic mind worked in the background, wondering if he didn’t if she could, and how. “This is going to be great. I’ll just make myself look like a fool who can’t learn by focusing on everything going on the room but the lesson. If I can’t follow Taith’s instruction because I’m too distracted, I’m failing us both. I need to prepare to get this awkwardness out of the way and then move on to learning,” Kail quietly murmured under her breath. She hoped this mini-lecture to herself would help her focus and learn quickly everything Taith had to teach. She really felt she had to.