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

[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.

[kryptonian]

It's sad, the way that happens.

[heloise]

What do you know of war, Kara?

[kryptonian]

More than I'd like to know, that's for sure, but I bet our kinds of war are different. Really different. When you guys go to war, it's just men hitting each other with swords and arrows and stuff. When we go to war, entire cities of people die in the blink of an eye. Sometimes even entire worlds.