xvii. dictated, action

[heloise]

Paradisa
For my Giovanni. If you would be so kind.


[ Lucrezia can be found at highest roof with a wooden box inlaid with pearls at her feet. It is small and finely made, but the real (belated) gift is within: a white silk shirt fit for a little prince with golden narcissus embroidered on its sleeves. She turns away after enough time, retracing her steps back to her room. ]

Ovid once wrote, est etiam placuisse sibi quaecumque voluptas: virginibus cordi grataque forma suast.

But mirrors never turned out for good.

[ Translation goes: Besides, all women take a secret pride in being fine or else they are belied; for when the conscious maid explores her mirror and finds she's handsome, she herself adores. ]

Comments

[heloise]

Soon I can at least tell them I speak no English.

[kryptonian]

Ah, yes. "I do not speak English."

[heloise]

[ She laughs. How do you say "English." ]

That is too difficult!

[kryptonian]

Take it slow!

"I. Do. Not. Speak. English."

[heloise]

"I do not speak English?" [ Though that doesn't sound like English, at all, and she says a bonus 'e' at the end. ]

[kryptonian]

Close -- very close! Try again. "English."

[heloise]

[ She bites her lip. Kara that sounds like what she said. ]

"English"?

[kryptonian]

Right! You've got it.

[heloise]

[ She laughs. ]

What is the strangest language you speak?

[kryptonian]

Strangest to you would probably be Kryptonian -- my people's language.

[heloise]

What does it sound like?

[kryptonian]

A bit like German?

[She speaks a line:]

[heloise]

[ Bzuh. She smiles politely. ]

It-- yes, it does sound like German.

[kryptonian]

It's weird, I know. Humans always think it's weird.

[heloise]

Do you think our languages are weird?

[kryptonian]

Admittedly, yeah, but I've gotten used to them. I can think in English just as easily as I can think in Kryptonian.

[heloise]

And here we are given another language.

[kryptonian]

Yet another. The "Common Tongue" or something? "Paradisian?" "Paradisan?" Hell if I know.

[heloise]

I prefer Paradisian. [ So that's how it will be. ]

[kryptonian]

Fair enough. Nobody seems to talk about this weird Paradisian language much, it seems to just be taken as a given.

[heloise]

An experiment, perhaps, whether a common language can foster peace?

[ She chuckles to herself. ] But the Italians already know the opposite is true.

[kryptonian]

Oh? Why is that?

[heloise]

We speak the same tongue, yet all the nations know the Italian appetite for war knows no bounds.

[kryptonian]

Lots of civil war, then?

[heloise]

Yes. Everyone wants more than they have.