nautical

[aetheling]

Cymbeline doesn't really like boats, but they're the only way to get anywhere in a reasonable period of time, especially when "anywhere" isn't on the mainland. Today he is sailing to Vectis, to oversee the change of governorship; his father the king is needed for courtly matters back home and his mother the queen, despite being the source of his royal blood, declines to involve herself in affairs of state when she can avoid it. Zoyah takes more after Ranae than after Charles in this department. So, it falls to Cymbeline.

Walking on a boat is even more difficult than walking on land, and Cymbeline is no great shakes at the latter to begin with. Unfortunately, neither he nor Kerem, the court magician and Cymbeline's confidante, have been able to figure out how to apply the principles of practicable magic to alleviating princely clumsiness. So Cymbeline is clinging to the railing of the boat, watching the waves, trying to avoid having to walk anywhere.

Comments

[treasuresuntold]

She nods.

She draws something that looks sort of like a jagged cave entrance, and a figure peeping out of it with arms and a head and eight wiggly tentacles.

She draws a dolphin-person approaching the cave. She draws the dolphin-person a mouth, with wavy lines straggling out of it. She draws an arms-and-legs person on the other side of the cave, and puts both her hands over her own mouth, and points at her legs.

[aetheling]

Cymbeline blinks slowly.

The study has a few repositories of transferred things in it. He picks up one of them; it holds something not readily identifiable, moving around inside. "You gave your voice -" He touches the corner of her mouth, then the quartz chunk - "and got legs?" He touches the chunk again, then her knee.

[treasuresuntold]

She nods again, and smiles.

[aetheling]

He puts the quartz down.

"Okay..."

There's another test. He remembers the words very clearly. If he pays attention to what he's saying, he thinks he can reproduce the sound of them and not just the sense. "C'mon, I didn't drag you all this way to have you die on me," he begins, and he waits for a glimmer of recognition.

[treasuresuntold]

She beams and nods several times.

"Pretty boy," she says, although there is no sound to the words.

[aetheling]

Cymbeline matches remembered sound to the way her mouth moves, and he smiles. "Well then."

[agnatic]

"Cymbeline's got a cru-u-ush," coos Zoyah.

[treasuresuntold]

The green lady giggles silently.

[aetheling]

"Kerem, if you'll go tell my parents what's going on? I'd like to see about teaching her to write Loegrian," says Cymbeline.

[pleasantsurprise]

"Of course," agrees Kerem, and off he goes.

[treasuresuntold]

The green lady gazes adoringly at Cymbeline.

[aetheling]

"In the meantime I need to call you something," says Cymbeline. He considers, then says, "As long as it's going to be temporary I suppose I needn't be terribly creative. Jade? Jade," he says decisively, pointing at her. "Okay?"

[treasuresuntold]

She shrugs.

[aetheling]

"All right." And he sets about drawing little pictures and writing words next to them, which he speaks aloud so she'll recognize the terms when people say them to her. (Since she is after all not deaf.)

[treasuresuntold]

The green lady - 'Jade', if you must - pays attention.

[aetheling]

After he's made enough little pictures to incorporate all of the letters of the alphabet, he teaches her the alphabet with these examples. And then he hands her the pen again.

[treasuresuntold]

She shrugs.

[aetheling]

"Nothing to say?" he asks. And he shrugs and goes back to teaching her words; Zoyah has long gotten bored and left.

[treasuresuntold]

Nothing to say, or no idea how to say it. One of those.

[aetheling]

He talks to her, while he's drawing the pictures, leaning on the vocabulary he's already provided but not restricting himself to it. Immersion was how he learned Iberiola.

[treasuresuntold]

She seems attentive, but vaguely frustrated.

Eventually, she interrupts the lesson by pushing the paper away. She looks him in the eye, to get his attention. She touches her legs. She points to the quartz crystal he used in his earlier demonstration of magic. She touches her legs again and mimes with her hands something jumping off them and fluttering rapidly away.

[aetheling]

He frowns, considering interpretations, then draws a little stylized Jade-with-legs, and a little stylized Jade-with tail, and an arrow from the one to the other. "Your legs are going to go away? How long - how many days -" He sketches the path of the sun; they've already done numbers. "One day, two days, three days -"

[treasuresuntold]

Jade shrugs.

[aetheling]

Cymbeline hmmms. "Okay, so this is a temporary visit. I wish I knew what you wanted to get out of it..." He sighs and goes back to writing. Names, this time - himself, Zoyah, Kerem, Jade's temporary moniker.

[treasuresuntold]

She puts up with the lesson long enough to learn his name and hers, but she's frowning.

After labeling her various drawings of Cymbeline with "Cym" (apparently his full name is too long to bother with), she repeats the legs-flying-away mime and this time leans away after her fluttering hand and grabs it and hauls it back. But when she attempts to stick it back onto her hip, it just keeps stubbornly fluttering.

She looks at him expectantly.