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Between The Lines

Detraeus frowned at the text before him. The lettering of the common tongue — used in all cross transactions between the races and most prominent on Eowyn — was familiar to him by now, as was that of Soudulian script. After piecing the alphabets together some extended time ago, he had begun working through words, then sentences, and combined that with the rote work he had started with to begin practicing writing in earnest: original sentences, instead of purely copied work. He had also begun reading. That, while easier in many ways than writing, was still a chore on more difficult occasions, though he was pleased with his progress.

No more children’s books hidden amongst other purchases. No more basic missives or practice with skimming over the notes on posters strewn about town. He had worked with relatively simple literature after moving up from the most rudimentary materials, but now had moved onto a key point of interest: religious texts.

Unfortunately, biblical text tended to include a variety of ornate, challenging language and sentence structures — words he’d never seen, grammars he wasn’t familiar with, and even the occasional letter he was sure wasn’t a part of the modern written form. After over an hour longer than he intended to spend on the given text with less than half the progress he planned on making behind him, he growled, bunching his fists to either side of the parchment. The tip of his tail twitched, motions erratic as he frustrated himself over one specific paragraph that had been tripping him up for far longer than he cared to count.

Finally, he swore, sitting up with a jerk of motion and pacing his room — once, twice, three times, four — before emerging. At the sight that greeted him, he paused. Lingering in the doorway as though caught in an invisible net, he leaned his shoulder to the frame and trailed his gaze down, down over the woman he shared the house with: tucked against the main room couch, feet curled up against the pillows, bare, and book nestled in her lap, fingers idly hovering over the next page as her eyes scanned the text, blissfully engrossed. For longer than he ought to have, he watched her, the stiffness in his shoulders easing and the irritable flick of his tail slowing to a curious swish.

Eventually, ignoring the rise in his pulse — fearing rejection, derision, or ridicule — and before he could properly censor himself, he said, “You read.”

“Mm.” Detraeus took a moment, but shook his head to indicate the negative. “No. I—” He breathed out a short, curt breath as he re-gathered his nerve, still barely convinced that he seemed to have made the decision to ask with half of his brain before the rest of him caught up. “Help me.”

It was a question — a request — or, at least, he had intended it to be. Unfortunately by the time the words actually left his lips, they came out sounding less genial and more like a stiff mix between a confused inquiry and a frustrated demand. He winced. Opened his mouth. And then shut it again, reaching up in spite of himself and rubbing fingers over his ear as he looked away.

‘Or not.’ ‘Unless you’re busy.’ ‘It was a stupid thought.’ ‘I should go.’ ‘Go. Leave. Now. Turn away before she says something and you make a fool of yourself—’

‘Nothing. I made a mistake. Sorry to interrupt you. I should go. It wasn’t important. It’s not worth it. I’m sure I can figure it out, actually. It—’

Detraeus grit his teeth, flushing hotly and opening and closing his mouth several times before pushing himself into his room. He had started it. The request had left his mouth. He might as well finish it. Gathering the religious text carefully in his hands and holding a thumb to the page giving him difficulties — the first, embarrassingly enough — he moved out towards her and drew another breath.

“It’s…different. The language is that of Soudana but…older. There are strange letters, and words, and it is written as though—” He closed his mouth again, tail flicking again in a mirror of his uncertainty. “Perhaps you know nothing of it, either, and it was foolish to bother you with it…but the language in the center columns, following that written in the language of my people, is text that more closely resembles the common alphabet here. That, too, though is older and more difficult than…” ‘…the books with which I was teaching myself to read.’ “It is…complicated.”

Detraeus felt his pulse stutter again, for entirely different reasons, as she motioned to the spot beside her. After only a moment’s hesitation, however, he moved in and sat, stiff but presentable, and nodded, ignoring — as best he could — the slow burn to his ears as he pulled the text in. It frustrated him — half mortified him — to ask for aid, terrified that at any instant, she could turn around and laugh at him for his failures. But she didn’t, and continued not to, and there was a strange, brittle sort of comfort in that.

“I also…” ‘…ignored everything anyone ever attempted to teach me thanks to the ridicule of those a half decade younger than I who had already mastered the material and the belittling, draconian attitudes of those appointed to ‘teach’ us.’ “…experienced complications.”

Leaving that comment as it was, Detraeus pulled the text in between them, and pointed wordlessly to the source of his frustration, shoulders bunching again silently as he realized how truly minuscule the amount he’d made it through was.

Detraeus tilted his head, attention locked on the text, so engrossed that for a long moment, Araceli’s question barely registered. Then, when it did, he glanced over and frowned before looking back to the text. He thumbed over the parchment of the pages, worn smooth over time and stained with pristine black ink. The religious doctrine of his goddess. And this, his first opportunity to ever read it himself.

“I have never…had the opportunity to read Soudana’s text. I…” He let his finger pause at the book’s edge, feeling the ridged bunch of the many pages. “I believe I am her soldier, her son…and her servant. These…are only the translations of a frightened priest, but I would read them, just the same. And take from them what I deem to be Her true design…”

Whatever her opinions on that take on things, Araceli conceded to let the topic drop for the moment, and proceeded to guide Detraeus through the text for over an hour to follow. She slowed when he asked it of her, indicated where they were when needed and explained the workings of grammar in the Old Tongue which seemed to confuse him. Over time, it became an unspoken ritual of theirs. In the evenings, they sat together, and worked through parts of the text that he struggled with. When he became more confident, Araceli eventually coaxed him into reading aloud for her — something he struggled immensely with at first, but persisted with in all his usual stubbornness, and gradually grew more competent as a result.

By the end of that seasonal year, Detraeus had made his way, with her help, through the first testament of the Goddess of Darkness, Soudana, the Nightbringer.