Gone for a walk

[Rudi]

Rudi stands on the deck, enjoying the cold air in contrast to the heat of the Inn. There's the gentlest covering of snow on the ground and trees, just enough that it will be melted when the sun rises higher. She sighs, thinking belatedly of her pack- her other family. Usually, this time of year she's with them, but something is telling her it's not yet time to leave. She thinks about how she should tell them of the location change... Rudi shakes her head. No, there's still so much to do here in Holdfast. When the snow falls heavier.
She stretches, grabs her polearm, and heads off the deck at a slow pace to go on a stroll through the woods. It was a nice day for it, anyway.

[Dog]

Dog's inside while Rudi is standing wistfully on the deck; he's hanging around--not awkwardly, just aimlessly. A lot of his time is spent just sort of relaxing in the company of his friends, flitting from table to table and joining in and dipping out of conversations where they catch his fancy. It is, then, pure chance that takes his attention out the window to Rudi's departing form. He only just so happens to be glancing out the window as he sees her leave. A quick apology to the table he was about to sit down at, he grabs his sword and hurries outside.

"Hey! Rudi! Wait up!"

[Rudi]

Rudi's thoughts wander; when will she eat blueberries again, who is out in the woods today. She's broken out of her series of unconnected thoughts by Dog calling out to her. Her pace slows to an almost stop, to let him catch up.

"Hey! Joining me for my walk?" She smiles at him. "I could use the company, i'm useless with herbs and ores." Though, she hasn't seen much in the woods lately.

[Dog]

"Oh, I'm great at those!"

The woods have been quiet, it's true... but hey! Going for a nice walk is fun anyways, plants and rocks notwithstanding. Besides, he does actually have an ulterior motive here. The two of them are a little bit through the walk before dog really says much of anything. He spends the first few minutes past the treeline just taking in the sights and sounds and smells.

"I wanted to ask you, actually..." He pauses. "I don't really. I'm not, like. A great Arluru. But I think I'd like to be? If that-. You know?"

He makes a small frustrated noise.

[Rudi]

"You sure are!"

She listens patiently as he stumbles over words, and is silent as she thinks. He doesn't need to be a great anything.. but she gets it. "I wasn't a great human, either. But I found out about how humans live when I came here. Though, I already knew common."

She thinks for a bit longer. "I could teach you about Arluru culture. I'd love to teach you! I'm just not sure where to start." She laughs.

[Dog]

"Thanks!"

"Yeah." It's weird. To be something, and yet to be so far removed from that thing that it feels almost alien. To have an entire culture that he should have gotten to be a part of but didn't. Do the other people in Holdfast feel like this? The lonely fauns, the disgraced elves, everyone using fake names and hidden identities because nobody is ever really allowed to have connections to themselves.

Maybe this is going to be a good thing. He hopes this is going to be a good thing. He fears that learning more will just make him more aware of how much he didn't ever get to learn.

"Yeah. I'd like that. Maybe we start, like. History is a big thing, but. I'd like to learn the language. There's just... something about not being able to speak what should be my native language."

[Rudi]

Rudi is happy he's interested. This is nice to share- what she imagined sharing, after he was born. Getting to it a little late, perhaps, and a little different... but it's still nice. "History is a big thing, yeah. Language is a good start!" A errant thought to sit down and teach him but, no, she's far too excited about this to sit.

"Arluru is different than common, there isn't really much of a written language at all. Packs tend to keep to themselves and other packs, so anything that is shared is verbal. Arluru is also different from common. There are no pronouns, for one. For two, adjectives follow after nouns and numbers are before nouns. So, the sentence 'I see two red apples' in common is actually 'I see two apple red' in Arluru." She draws in a breath, both to catch her breath and ease her enthusiasm. She stops, realizing that's likely a lot of information.

[Dog]

Dog's deeply concentrating as Rudi speaks. He's looking around at their forest surroundings, but the way his ears are turned towards her as she's running through the explanation makes it clear that any fidgeting he's doing is just to keep the rest of his body occupied so that he can fully focus on the words she's saying.

Dog knows what adjectives are. And nouns. He can read and write, speak a language. The inversion of the order may trip him up somewhat, but he's more clever than he gives himself credit for.

"Wait, so there's no, like. He or She? Do you have to use someone's full name every time?" He knows what a pronoun is too.

[Rudi]

She bounces just a little as she gears up to explain more. "So! All arluru use they for eachother. Sometimes, they'll use a name or someone's title but the only pack members that are referred to with gendered language are the alphas and betas in a pack. Nu is the term for they in Arluru, and Pu is what you'd use to mean yourself."

She takes a breath. "Not that it's useful to you right now, but you'd refer to male alphas as Dragga, female as Drappa, and gender neutral as Drazza. Betas follow this with Drakna, Drasna and Drayna. But everyone else it really doesn't matter. Rkta is the word for a general pack member, but you wouldn't really use it to refer to someone. You'd use their name! It'd be silly to call you 'holdfast town member' rather than your name in any language."

[Dog]

"Oh, that makes sense! Okay!"

He's nodding along as the duo walk down their forest path. Stepping over branches and roots, and making affirmative humming noises at the right times to show he's paying attention and really listening.

"Do Arluru have, like, last names? I've sorta always wanted one. It's, like. A name you have to show who your family is."

If they didn't, would he just take Holdfast? Put an 'of' in there? Dog of Holdfast? 'Dog Holdfast' sounds a bit silly. Then again, he's a bit of a silly guy.

He spends some time testing out the noises of the new words he's learning. Dragga, Drappa, Drazza. The words are unfamiliar, but easy to say. Consonant and vowel sounds that his anatomy is meant to make.

[Rudi]

Rudi nearly slips on a patch of ice, but manages to catch herself. she should really watch where she was going. "Arluru don't really have last names like other races do. I suppose you could consider the name of your pack, or ahtta, your last name. If we're going with that, i'd be Rudi Marja, since my original pack wasn't Barjovan, which is the one where I am now."

She gets lost in thought for a moment. Did her human parents have last names? She should really put more effort into finding them. Ner Batin was such a long trek, though, especially this time of year. Maybe in the spring. Maybe after she tells Barjovan about the location change.

[Dog]

Dog almost slips on the exact same patch of ice, in an ironic twist of fate. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, perhaps.

"That's pretty cool! But..." He trails off. "What does that mean for me?"

The air grows thick and heavy as the conversation pauses for a beat. What Does that mean for him? What pack does he really belong to? Perhaps, like all his life before, he still doesn't really belong anywhere at all. A tangle in the weave; a mistake, never quite fitting in anywhere.

"You know what, nevermind. Not important. Teach me some vocab."

[Rudi]

The silence grows heavy for a moment as it's obvious that he's lost in thought. What does that mean? She opens her mouth to speak, before his next comment comes and cuts off her train of thought. "I'll start with the name I gave you. Most languages you start off at hello, but I think your name is a good place to start- you should know what it means, even if you don't want to use it."

She smiles at him. "Kahjir means freedom. You were, in a way, our freedom. And we were hoping you'd be able to follow your own path, even if that path lead somewhere far away." Ironic that fate decided he was more than free to follow it. "In my old pack, they called me sikla and lowsi, omega and weakling.. or coward, depending on the context. We didn't want that for you." She puts her hand on his cheek, briefly. Omega could be positive, affectionate even... but not in the way they called her it.

[Dog]

"I don't... not want to use it. That's not it. I just..."

He once again makes a noise of frustration. This conversation is about a difficult as he'd expected it to be, which is to say not an insignificant amount.

"I just don't feel any connection to it. I wish I did."

"Does that make sense? I WANT to. I want to feel like it's my name, I want that so desperately. I want to be able to have everything I missed out on but I just can't- and"

It's clear he's getting more emotional than he intended to. The strain on his voice gives it all away.

Rudi's touch on his cheek calms him, and his ever-more-fervent rant comes to an abrupt end. He leans into the touch and closes his eyes.

[Rudi]

Rudi is silent during his rant. She keeps her hand on his cheek, just simply listening until he's done. "I understand. It's rough being born to one but raised by another." She barely stops herself from apologizing. She did what she had to, at the time, but it didn't make it any better now. Dog didn't need her apologies now, though. That would only make things worse.

"Maybe you never will connect to it, maybe you will. But you'll understand it, and you'll have what knowledge I can give you. You will have love, and family, and belonging, even if that's not in a pack. Even if you never go by Kahjir, you will find your path." She smiles at him, then her mind wanders. "When I first came here, I didn't understand how anyone could follow anyone else- you had no alphas! And so many different groups that agreed on nothing. I understand it now, but back then I thought of the champions as the alphas of Holdfast."

[Dog]

He wipes away an angry tear.

"Yeah. Yeah."

"Yeah."

He, ever so slowly, calms down. He doesn't move away from rudi's touch, though. That's still grounding and comfortable.

"We're a strange bunch, huh? I think if it was any other group of people living in any other place, nobody would be able to tolerate eachother. But it's us, here, and somehow it works."

He gently (and somewhat reluctantly) peels himself away from rudi's hand, and turns to keep walking.

"Though, I do kinda defer to Auron and Degren. Like, the way the Guild works they're technically not in charge of me, still. I definitely, like... tend to just do whatever someone tells me to do, especially if I see them as stronger than me. And those two are like, The Strongest. Except for Val."

He's placing his footsteps with some thought by now, being careful not to slip while so lost in thought.

"You know what I mean? Though, I bet if I started calling people Dragga and Drappa it'd be kinda weird. It'd definitely go straight to Theo's head, so I'm never doing that."

[Rudi]

"Holdfast is a good example of people being bound together by connection. Packs are like that too, actually. I still defer to the champions, too. They're strong. Auron is smart, Degren is more honorable than people give him credit for." And he's smart, too, but she doesn't say that part. "Caj Tala called Theo a shaman one time and now he's considering himself a shaman. though, Theo has a good heart and I think he makes a pretty good one. Just don't tell him I said that."

"Anyway! Arluru!" She clasps her hands together and changes the topic to the original one they were on. She was in the middle of a lesson. "While we're on the topic of champion, I can go over magic. Mir is majic in Arluru, and Ja means maker. So Mirja is magic maker or, in other words, a mage. You use air magic, and air is Lut in Arluru. So... what would air mage be?"

[Dog]

"Yeah! Everyone here is so nice."

He smiles softly to himself as he steps over a bug. Everyone here IS so nice.

"Does lut go in front of mirja, or after? You mentioned adjectives and stuff are backwards. It's either lutmirja or mirjalut."

[Rudi]

"It's before. Lutmirja is 'air magic maker', or 'air mage'. There's words for pure and prime element. Fyri is fire, Vessein is water, Yord is earth. Haz is essence, or light if we go with the literal translation, and Myrk is void, or dark. Arluru is very literal, if you're just translating it back into common. Myrk and Haz in particular are used in other ways, since they don't directly translate to void and essence."

She takes a breath. "There are also words for psychics- synmirja. And bards! Saezamirja. What would the first words there mean?"

[Dog]

"Cool! Is there a word for champion?"

He laughs a little.

"Lord Yord."

Gone is the abject misery of generational trauma, and in it's place returns the more familiar, happier Dog.

"Well, okay. Arluru is really literal, so 'syn' is probably, like, 'thought' or 'mind' or 'head' or something. I can't imagine 'saeza' is anything but 'music'."

[Rudi]

"The closest would be Drakna. Drakna Degren." She laughs quite a bit at 'Lord Yord'. When she catches her breath "The lords are Alphas to us. Arluru place high value in elemental magic- so Lord Earth is Dragga Yordmirja. Since the lords would be alphas, the champions would be betas."

"Syn is mind! Saeza is a tricky one. It actually means word. But it's the closest Arluru gets to 'bard'. Human magic is pretty foreign." She thinks. "Oh. Wow. I haven't taught you hello, have I? It's Hanyooo." She drags out the last syllables, almost howling it. As much as she can anyway.

[Dog]

He awooos. It's adorable.

It's safe to say they do this for some time. They go over phrases and verbs and adjectives and grammar and so on and so forth until dog complains about his 'brain being full'. He seems passable at it; clearly having put a lot of effort into doing his best to learn. It'll take him some time to really lock in the lesson (and even more time to become fluent), but as it stands he seems pleased with himself.


Aaaaaaaaand scene!

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