Solo Watch --

[Maore]

Winter 46th

For three days Ennoia was absent from Ciraaci's cell. He didn't come in bearing a tray of goodies, swearing vows of safety and protection, proclaiming his trustworthiness, offering his company. She'd become used to him sitting there with her, talking with her, watching and learning whatever tidbits of information she was able to provide without outright interrogating her. If not for the bars on the door, Ciraaci might think their visits a pleasantry between neighbours.

Despite knowing better, she really did miss him.

So it was on a quiet day that Ennoia returned to her cell, sweeping in like a man on a mission with newfound purpose, lifting her gaze from the blotched stone floor to watch him as he settled in on his customary chair and set down his flickering candle. She leaned forward out of habit, keen for whatever it was he wanted to talk about, and he smiled an indulgent, affectionate little smirk.

“I have a treat for us today,” he said. He waited for her to express interest with an arching of a blonde brow before continuing, his smile growing until it beamed brighter than the memory of the sun. “We are going to learn Common!”

Her interest peaked at that, both of her eyebrows lifting high under her hairline as she reclined back on her straw bed. Learn Common? That would be a boon in this place; she could listen to the conversations held by the guards beyond her cell, understand the questions thrown at her from her captors, perhaps even carry on a little conversation of her own with Ennoia, and then one day use the skill to speak Common in order to escape this prison. Oh, there was promise there. Danger too, of course, as Ennoia may have an ulterior motive for teaching her this language, and it would make sense he’d have been told to do so by whatever shadowy individual directed his actions, but Ciraaci had to trust t̶r̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶m̶e̶ him, so she nodded.

Ennoia seemed to vibrate with pent up energy, clapping his hands together. “Let’s get started, then! First, a few basics.”

He cleared his throat before beginning, and the ethaefal figured he’d done so as a way to gather his wits about himself before blustering into the lesson without keeping track of what he was meant to be teaching her. After a moment, he nodded to himself, looked at her again, and offered her a softer smile than all his previous ones had been.

“First thing’s first, my dear. Introductions.”

And that was how it began.

Ennoia ran her through the means to say ‘hello’, like he had earlier on in the season, insisting she not gesticulate so much with her hands in order to enunciate the importance of the spoken word. Common speakers didn’t use their hands so much. They put their inflection in their spoken words. Hand-sign was a crutch.

Ciraaci stumbled through ‘hello’ and ‘good morning’, recognizing the sounds as things he’d uttered to her at the start of their meetings without fail. She pushed through general pleasantries, from ‘welcome’ to ‘greetings’, not wholly understanding their meaning.

“Welcome,” explained Ennoia once she’d asked why they were any different from the first two when used as he wanted them used. “Is like ‘hello’, but more for a place, I suppose. Like ‘welcome home’, ‘welcome in’. Do you understand?” She hadn’t really, but he seemed patient to continue with it, helping her to understand the distinction, until she understood that saying ‘welcome’ when she saw someone for the first time was far different from saying ‘hello’, and that she should ‘welcome’ him to her cell when he came to see her. “It’s only polite,” he said. “We want to be polite.”

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[Maore]

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When a guard came to see them, Ciraaci welcomed him into her cell. Ennoia lead her through thanking him for the tray he’d brought, and then they continued.

“Pavi and Common are built differently,” said Ennoia as Ciraaci ate an overripe apple he’d offered to her. His wording was unclear; built, used the way as he’d just done, related to people and connections. Building relationships. The ethaefal blinked away the brief confusion and ran on context; he meant structurally, she assumed, like how the way pavilion tents were built, or a wagon is put together.

He introduced her to Common verbs, but only the most basic: To Be, a verb that made up just about everything having to do with people. He told her it was the ‘I am’, the ‘you are’, the ‘she is’ of the world. It defined people and, to an extent, their actions. ‘I am walking’ and ‘they are human’ were made with the same verb, even though the meaning was far different.

He spent a bell on this, having her finish the statement. “He,” Ennoia would say. “Is,” Ciraaci would answer. “They,” Ennoia would then say. “Is,” Ciraaci would answer, only to be rewarded by a tsk and a correction. “Are,” she would amend. “They are.” They were the plural of he and she. We were the plural of he and she and I. You was not I. You are. I am. They are. He, she, is.

“I am,” Ciraaci said at one point, long after she thought she’d gotten the idea of what he was trying to impart. “I am,” and she waved her hand over her body. I am divine. I am CIraaci. I am a slave. I am trapped. I am angry. I am Forsaken.

Well, there were a lot of things that Ciraaci was, and both herself and the man knew that she was going to learn how to say these things. She would need to, for the future.

“Ciraaci,” Ennoia said. “You are Ciraaci.”

“I am Ciraaci,” Ciraaci said. “You are Ennoia.”

Ennoia smiled and offered her a piece of bread. “That’s right,” he praised. “I am Ennoia, you are Ciraaci.”

“We are in Ravok.”

Oh, that was something new.

Ciraaci took a moment to tear a piece of bread and pop it into her mouth. She shouldn’t be hungry, and indeed wouldn’t be if she’d ever been given sunlight, but she was, and she needed to eat.

“Ravok?” She asked, repeating the word. “What is Ravok?” Back into Pavi, with her hands fluttering signs of uncertainty, confusion, curiosity,

“It’s our city,” Ennoia responded, sounding richly indulgent and soft. “It’s my home.”

She nodded, piecing it together. “In?”

“A place. We are in a room. They are in a hallway. We are in Ravok. Well, sort-of place. It has to do with places, I suppose.” The man made a gesture to suggest he didn’t care that much about the distinction, and he allowed them to devolve into a patient silence, eating bread together and sharing drink from a flask.

“We are Ravok,” Ciraaci said, when she’d finished and Ennoia had looked at her with expectant eyes. “We are Ennoia, Ciraaci in Ravok.”

Ennoia raised his eyebrows and nodded slowly. She thought she must have impressed him why he was so silent, or that she’d confused him with the strange cadence of her words, the accent that showed itself when she tried to speak his language.

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[Maore]

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“Tell me who you are and where we are,” Ennoia said once he’d had time enough to think about her words and they’d sat in quiet silence.

“I am Ciraaci,” said the ethaefal. She paused. “I am in Ravok.” Ennoia shook his head, making a gesture with his hand that equated to ‘try again’ in bastard Pavi. “We?” Ciraaci offered, testing it out. “We, in Ravok?”

“We are, sunlight,” Ennoia said, though the pet name went over the ethaefal’s head, complete gibberish, but sounding nice in an uncertain way. She’d have cringed to hear it Pavi and he knew that. “We are in Ravok,” Ciraaci amended, nodding at him. “We are in Ravok.”

She then gestured a hand around them, indicating the dark stone walls which today were weeping moisture; it must be warm, wherever they were, and she was just lucky that it also wasn’t humid in here. “In Ravok?” The ethaefal asked.

Ennoia shook his head. “Not today,” he answered the implied question, dropping back into their shared Pavi. “Tell me the verbs again.”

And she did; Ciraaci ran through them several times, and when prompted she tacked on the added bit of ‘in Ravok’. We are in Ravok. They are in Ravok. I am in Ravok. I am in Ravok had a nice sound whenever she said it, often echoed by Ennoia’s voice, but on her lips it tasted strange, clinging like oil to the back of her teeth, weighing her tongue with an unknown dread--or an uncertain hope.

“Love,” Ennoia said next. He must be tired, thought Ciraaci, watching as he paced the cell in front of her. He’d run her through those statements several times until she got it in her head. “Love,” he repeated in Pavi, and then echoed again in Common. “To Love. That is its whole identity. I love. She loves. They love. We love. It seems easier, right? Two differences. Love and loves.”

But Ciraaci also knew there were other ways to say love, to whisper it for the future and to promise it to the past. This must be the present; to love, not to have loved or to be loving. Was there a future to be? Was there a past? She tried not to think of it, tried not to distract herself with the possibility of variations, and exhaled a calm, cool breath.

“I love,” said the ethaefal, trying to hold her hands still. It was an emotional word and she ached to enunciate the emotion behind it. She wanted to tell him that, though she loved, it wasn’t him. “I love,” she repeated, and her hands said dishonestly, a lie, someone else. “You love,” she said next, and her hands gripped the hem of her tunic, white-knuckled in the coarse fabric so she wouldn’t receive the disapproving glare in his eye again. “We love.” Not together, her fingers whispered into the bunched fabric on her thighs. Different things.. “They love. He loves, she loves.”

“Not bad, Ciraaci,” Ennoia said. His praise felt like the blooming warmth of the early sunrise near the last days of winter. “Again. No Pavi.”

And she did it again and again and again. He put her through To Be and To Love and Ravok.

“I love Ravok,” he said at one point. She echoed the words on instinct alone, though the feeling wasn’t there. “I love Rhysol.”

She said that too, but then her voice caught. She knew that name in the same way someone who’d heard of a distant cousin recognized their name. Rhysol was a god of convenience among her pavilion once, many many years ago, long after her husband had died and long before the pavilion had changed its name. Rhysol meant something. It was a god’s name.

“I do not love Rhysol,” Ciraaci swore into the sudden quiet. “I will not deceive a god,” said a woman who no longer remembered what it was that Rhysol represented. She no longer remembered why they’d prayed to him so long ago. She’d have not even remembered the name had Ennoia not said it.

If Ennoia wasn’t smiling, Ciraaci might have thought she’d done something wrong.

“I don’t think he’ll mind,” he said. “Say it. Keep saying it. All the ways you can say it.”

She did that then, barely comforted by his reassurances but not comfortable with denying him. “I love Rhysol,” she said, though it felt like a sour lie. “You love Rhysol,” sounded more genuine; Ennoia certainly preened. “They love Rhysol. We love Rhysol.” Her hands struggled to stay still, she fought to not insinuate otherwise with her body, she wanted to appease his insistence.


790

[Maore]

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They must be almost done. They had to be almost done. The day had stretched long for them both, though for Ciraaci it was one of the more engaging days she’d had in this cell since her capture and a far better way to spend her time than be mounted by Kelvic. She preferred this, and though their time must be up soon, she didn’t want it to end.

Fortunately there was no way to actually tell time in the cell except through the natural cycle of her body’s changes.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t pretend they weren’t happening.

After the light had faded and she’d taken refuge on her bed of straw again, folding long tawny limbs together, Ciraaci considered the progress she’d made as Ennoia had things removed from her cell. Their candle was close to burning out, the flame wavering on the short wick, and she watched it as the man moved about the cell and the guard who’d been intermittently watching throughout the day took the chair.

“You did well today,” Ennoia said. “Give me a quick recital.”

She did so, as asked. The To Be and To Love in Common peeling off her lips on command, the ethaefal eager to please because she trusted t̶r̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶m̶e̶ him and wanted to do this again, regardless of how bitter some of these words felt on her tongue and how much she would rather be speaking her Pavi out of frustration for holding her hands still. She didn’t hate this, but she was ready to be done.

Ready to be done but not willing to let it end. How complex, the feelings of a pitiful human creature like herself. At least the threatening pulse of a distant headache had gone with the damaged horn.

“Very well,” Ennoia said when she’d finished. “I will come back again soon, Ciraaci. Keep it up. I want you to practise this every day until we next visit.”

That seemed fair to her and she nodded. The next day couldn’t come sooner than tomorrow, but she knew she wouldn’t see him then. He was busy, he’d said once when she’d asked why he stopped visiting frequently.

On the way out, Ennoia paused at the door.

“Say ‘good night’ to me, Ciraaci,” he said, swaying in a half-step. “Good night. Like you would a child, or your friend, or a husband. Say ‘good night’.”

She did just that, repeating the words with a hollow feeling nestled deep in her chest, a discomforting contrast to the dry affection she’d layered into the sentiment. He was not her child, her friend, nor her husband. Oh, she so hated to lie.

Trust me his eyes said.

“Good night,” her mouth said again, just for good measure.

“Good night,” Ennoia said with a fond smile as he completed his step and left the cluttered space of her cell.

The door closed between them.

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