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 Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 12:04 pm
Recess was one of those things that Orli enjoyed on some occasions and loathed on others, particularly when she was in the middle of doing something that did not agree with going outside to get all sweaty and smelly. She was in the middle of reading a book about space travel that her great-grandfather Nat had sent her, and assembling a model starfighter that he had also sent her.
No, recess was not generally conductive to these activities at all. To top that off, Orli was shorter than short, so playing basketball or football or dodgeball was really something of a dangerous endeavor.
However, her book said that the first Cosmonaut had been something like 5'2" as a grown man, so she felt like she was right on track. Even if space travel was readily available to those who partook in intergalactic culture, IE, her mother, they still liked the serious solo pilots on the petite side.
Orli brought the model she was working on close to her face and tried to line up a pair of stubborn pieces. What she really needed was a desk lamp and a workbench, not sunlight and a picnic table. She bit her lip and tried to make the miniature pieces slip into place.
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Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 1:20 pm
It was a good thing Orli was leaned in close to work on her model. Had her head been back any further, she would have been hit by the ball that went whizzing past the back of her head and bounced into the bushes along the wall. As it was, there was only a whoosh of air behind her and shouts from the children on the playing field. "Hey! Heyyyy! We need the ball!"
This call barely seemed to register with Orli, who was rather intent on what she was doing, but it did register with a boy laying in the grassy shade on the other side of a tree. Even though he was a good dozen feet away from the ball's trajectory, he sat up on his elbows and yelled at the ball-players, "Oy! You nearly hit me!" This, of course, only elicited more screaming demands for the return of the ball, and Merroth grudgingly got up and went to get the ball from the bushes.
Ball in hand, Merroth walked to a point roughly behind Orli and kicked it back to the other children. It was a lousy kick that did not send the ball precisely in the right direction and forced the players to go running after it again. Though this was hardly intentional (Merroth was not the most physically adept child) Merroth was smugly proud of the result. He cupped his hands and offered a parting call: "You ******** idiots!"
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Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 1:41 pm
Orli cast a sidelong glance at the boy behind her and debated commenting on his colorful use of the English language. It wasn't like she had virgin ears or anything - Nahuel and Ranza both swore like sailors - but hearing it at school was just asking for a licking.
"They nearly hit me, too," she said, frowning at her model. "But you don't hear me asking for a week's detention as compensation."
There were big words like that in her book. She wanted to try out using them.
"And besides," she added, "They're not worth wasting good cuss words on."
That was another lesson from courtesy of her older siblings: you had to save your really good dirty words for when you really meant it. And ******** was really dirty - when she had tried it, she'd gotten a stern talking to. Eshaa had given up trying to get her older two children to speak like civilized beings, but apparently that didn't mean Orli could go around swearing up a storm.
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Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 1:56 pm
Merroth looked sidelong at Orli, arching an eyebrow. He'd discovered text-based RPGs recently and in his head he thought the words con girl. Had this been a game, that command, consider, would have brought up an estimation of his combat chances with her. This target is much more powerful than you, or this target is no match for you. Since this was real life, the data was absent, but the intent was the same.
"Wasting words? It's not a waste if I can convey how much they suck to them, that's the whole point of language," he said. In his estimation, the English language needed more words to help convey more specific ideas (particularly with regard to disdain), but it seemed most people were already struggling with the number of words extant in the dictionary, so Merroth would have to stick to the words they had and just keep mixing and matching them to convey his emotional displeasure. "This stupid language needs every word it has, plus some it doesn't."
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Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 2:08 pm
Had this been a text-based RPG, considering Orli would have brought up this target is far more powerful than you. Or perhaps no match for you. Consult the stars. "So find another language," she shrugged, and went back to working on her model. It was a fighter, scaled down to be a foot long, but painstakingly accurate.
After a while, she piped back up, "My mom swears in Shaper sometimes. I've got no idea what she's saying, but it sounds absolutely terrifying. Lotsa hisses and phlegm."
Any word that you had to choke yourself in order to pronounce it right had better be damn dirty. In Orli's mind, this made perfect sense. She clicked a component onto the wing of her model, then set it down and consulted her book for a while. It was a fancy one, the kind that if you clicked into certain images they'd come up in holo. Birthday presents were allowed to be fancy.
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Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 2:14 pm
Since this conversation was officially started, Merroth sat down opposite Orli at the table, using his hand to shield the sun from his eyes. He might have grown up on an island, and be living on one now, but he still held to Black's opinion when it came to suntans. They were not desirable. The sunscreen he had put on this morning would probably hold out for a little while. He seemed not to think anything of the fact Orli had a holobook, it was not a wholly unfamiliar technology. "Shaper? What's that?"
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Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 2:21 pm
Orli looked up at the boy now that he had deemed her worthy of his company. "It's a language they speak in the outer regions," she shrugged. "I don't know any of it - it's hard. My mom's only half-human, and she travels a lot for work? So she speaks all kinds of alien languages."
She prodded the book and it projected a holo-map of the galaxy. Orli pointed to a region of space. "So, Gaia's here?" she said, like she wasn't entirely certain of it. "It's a hub-world, the way Mom and this book explain it. All the space lanes end here. Everything in the Universe eventually winds up on Gaia. Anyway, so here are the outer regions?"
She motioned to a sparse area off to the side.
"I've never been there, but they speak Shaper there," she nodded. She clicked out of the map projection, rather than let her new toy attract too much attention.
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Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 2:42 pm
Merroth had to admit he was a little impressed, eyes dancing across the map. He pressed one hand to his chest so he could feel the beating of both his hearts. With the other hand over his eyes, it almost looked like he was saluting while pledging to a flag. "Where's the Earth? Can you bring up the Sol system?"
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Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 2:56 pm
Orli wrinkled her nose and clicked the map open again. She pointed to one of the spiral arms. "There," she said, "Or close to there. Earth's the opposite of Gaia, the way my mom explained it. Gaia's a hub world, so everything in the universe eventually ends up here. To get to Earth, you have to be trying really hard."
She sighed and pinched the map into a closer view. "Mom really wants to study there, but you have to look fully human to get a visa, she says."
"Why'd you want to look at Earth?"
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Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 3:27 pm
Merroth had been hoping she would bring up a display of the solar system, if not the Earth itself, and was disappointed by the vague gesturing. "I live there," he said. To him, Earth seemed the most important planet in the universe. To suggest it was anything less was annoying. Merroth dropped his hand from his chest. His voice was low and bitter. "Never mind."
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Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 3:36 pm
"Oh," said Orli, and pinched the zoom larger. She singled out a star system and brought up the image of a swirling planetary disk around a yellow star. Being the child of a planet-hopping mother and a Star to boot, she'd always had the habit of thinking on a galactic scale, but that didn't mean that everyone else did. Some people were particularly loyal to their home planets. Like Nat. And apparently Merroth.
"I've been reading about their space program some," she said, watching the planets on the holo spin.
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Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 3:44 pm
"Yeah," said Merroth noncommitally, looking for the Gulf of Mexico. There it was, right there, and Merroth quickly deduced the exact spot where Clark Island lay by figuring the latitude and longitude relative points he already knew. Given Key West and the tip of the Yucatan peninsula, Clark Island was right there, invisible but comforting. He wondered what Boston and Emma were doing right now. Probably working in Boston's case and doing an art project in Emma's. She had been on a papier-mâché kick lately. "What about the space program?"
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Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 3:53 pm
"Well," said Orli, "It's very primitive."
She picked up her model and fiddled with it for a bit longer.
"But that makes it all the more fantastic," she explained. "I like reading their books about it because they get so excited about it! Everywhere else kind of brushes space travel off as a fact of life."
Part of her maintained that there was an enormous difference between being in Space in a ship and whizzing through Space like Stars tended to do. Never mind that Orli could do neither of those on her own at present.
"Do you know anything about it?" she asked. "You're from there."
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Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 4:04 pm
Merroth could feel the snarl tugging at his upper lip. Primitive. His eyes narrowed. The thumb resting on his temple registered the pulse of blood in his body, in perfect time to the drums. He was from Earth, and as far as he was concerned, the only thing primitive about it was something universally primitive across all species and cultures: the idiocy of people. No matter where you went, no matter who you met, it was hardly a trait unique to the Earth.
"There is nothing primitive about my planet," Merroth said possessively. "It's got me."
For Merroth, that was the distinction between primitive and not. His presence automatically reclassed all things about Earth as wonderfully magnificent.
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Posted: Sat Feb 21, 2009 4:12 pm
"Sorry," said Orli, and clicked the map back into a flat image. She flipped the page. She gave the boy a look that indicated she thought he had something of an ego problem, and went back to work on her model.
"I'm talking on a galactic scale, that's all," she said.
She leaned over the book and clicked up a pair of holos. "Earth has orbital shuttles, the rest of the galaxy has interstellar cruisers," she shrugged, motioning to the pair of images. She stuck out her lower lip in a way that seemed to say 'So there'.
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