"A bizarre question."

I look up. "Oh, you're back then. What question?"

"The one implied by suggesting that one might be attracted to one's ajzelin."

"Does that happen?" I ask.

"Of course." He flips through the dictionary to see where I am with the vocabulary. "Does that matter?"

"Some people would say it matters a lot," I say. "What do you do?"

Shame lifts his brows. "The person who feels it doesn't call attention to it. The person who notices it ignores it."

"That's it?" I say.

"Is that so hard?"

"What if it's really hard to not call attention to?"

He points:

ril [ reel ], (verb) – to relieve oneself; this refers to any bodily need from hunger and thirst, to passing waste, to any sexual requirement

"Just like that," I say. "You walk into a bathroom, take care of it and come back."

"Why not?"

"Isn't that rude?"

He stares at me. "I admit, aunerai... you have defeated me at last. How is that any more rude than emptying your bladder so you can sleep?"

"Because... " I trail off. "I don't know. Do you have frank talks with your ajzelin about... responses? Assuming you have one."

He snorts. "I'm a little younger than him, so yes, it happens. Why would we need to discuss it? Frank discussions exist to set boundaries... but the boundaries of the relationship between ajzelin are already understood. We both know what to expect. Why would we need to talk about it?"

"He doesn't apologize?"

"For my bodily response?" Shame stares at me. "Do you truly apologize for such things? For being attractive? Is it something you do to someone else, to which they become captive and then they suffer?"

"I don't know," I admit, glancing at all the discussions I've been reading for days.

"Do your people have no concept of self-control?" Shame asks.

"I don't know," I say again, because I don't.


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Tags: ai-naidar, meta-conversations
Current Mood: tired

"Strange..."

"What's that?"

I am leaning forward over my desk, tangled hair over one shoulder and all my brushes in front of me. "Well, they've seen you thrown people around. Tie them up and expose them in public. Threaten to rape them—with the implication that you'd follow through if necessary—you've shown you're good with a whip for a reason we'll see in a while. You've sedated people, blinded and gagged them, had them thrown into rooms for solitary confinement, cut them... and throughout all that, people responded uneasily, wondering what keeps you from abusing your power. Now that I've revealed it, some of them think you've been tortured and the sympathy shifts."

Shame laughs.

"What?" I say, looking over my shoulder.

"It's very aunerai, forgive me," he says. "Perhaps you should have used a different metaphor."

"Like what?"

"Tell them it's like a chef having to sample his entire menu before serving it."

I stare at him. "You think this is funny."

"It was a transcendent experience," Shame says quietly. "And I was in good hands. What should I fear from what people think they know?"

"Some people would argue torture can't be transcendent."

"Then you should not explain at all the Ai-Naidari definition of torture," Shame says. "Besides, even humans know better. The book you just read, yes? "In some rare cases, this shift in consciousness [toward spiritual enlightenment] happens dramatically and radically, once and for all. When it does, it usually comes about through total surrender in the midst of intense suffering." "

I eye him. "You're reading Oprah Book Club picks."

"No, you are," he says, laughing. "I'm just reading over your shoulder."

"It really doesn't bother you?" I ask.

"No," he says. "And it shouldn't bother you."

"Right," I say, and drag myself off to start the day.


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Tags: ai-naidar, meta-conversations, philosophy
Current Mood: sleepy

"What now?" Shame asks as I stare at the lexicon, my pen still in my hand.

Wordless, I point. He looks and says, "Ah. I wondered when you would find that."

"You wondered!" I exclaim.

He nods. "Since I saw that you make... strange distinctions. "Submissive." "Dominant." "Switch." "

I look over my shoulder at him. "Exactly what were you reading to find stuff like that?"

"A culture's attitude toward sex is revealing," Shame says. At my expression, he says solemnly, mimicking the Calligrapher, "I used the tool of the Firefox."

"Lord preserve," I say, covering my eyes. "Did you...."

"Turn Safe Search off," he says. He nods toward the dictionary. "But you see, we are different."

ieqera [ ee yeh KAIR aa ], (noun) — balance between desire to lead and desire to follow. Every person's ieqera is different, leaning more towards one or the other, but every Ai-Naidari has both qualities in them.

"You perceive," he says as I stare at it, "all of us must have both. As Farren noted, "Ever is there one born below you... and one above."

"Even you?" I tease.

"Particularly me," he says.

"Even Thirukedi?"

"The Emperor answers to his people, does he not?"

"The Exception?"

He smiles without humor. "Is the Exception. That question answers itself, and you should know better, aunerai." He taps the page. "Read on."

naima [ neye MAH ], (noun) — need to lead, be in charge, take care of many others, be aggressive, make decisions (one side of the scale of ieqera).

fijza [ FEE jzah ], (noun) — need to follow, be subordinate, serve one particular person, be receptive/submissive, be given clear direction (one side of the scale of ieqera).

"Taking care of people is in both these definitions," I say, quiet.

"The more responsibility you have, the more people you are responsible for. Yes? And yet the servant serves a master." Continuing the lesson, he says, "The adjectives are manaimas, to be leaderish, and mefijzan, to be followerish. Both are necessary and honorable. It is possible to be bad at both... and very good. A good servant is as invaluable as a good leader."

"My head hurts," I say.

"Is it your head, or your heart?" Shame asks.

I eye him.

He touches my shoulder, startling me. "I didn't mean to wound you. But... this is another form of destructive independence your society practices, yes? Pretending that everyone must be a leader, and that cooperation is somehow accomplished by many leaders coming together and mysteriously deciding to help one another. It's ridiculous. It drives the truth into your bedrooms."

"I'm not sure that's true," I say, quiet.

"I'm not sure it's not," he says, and leaves me with the dictionary.

Ieqera... always someone above and someone below. But that would require more trust in one another than we have, wouldn't it.

I put the pen down and close the book. I'm done for the day.



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"Oh, this is awful," I say, covering my eyes.

The Calligrapher looks over my shoulder, then takes the paper away from me. "Well," he says, and stops.

"Just say it, it's awful."

His ears flick sideways. Then he says, "It is an irony."

I eye him, glum. "What. That the word means "best when smaller" and I've gone and made it this gaudy, overblown thing? It's not even pretty-overblown. It's just... ugly."

He gives me a new sheet. "You are trying to paint words the way I do. Calligraphy comes from within, aunerai. Paint your own mind."

"Fine," I mutter, taking the T-square again. I am going to get this piece of calligraphy done for the bookmarks I'm sending to reviewers, I swear. I settle down to paint, and a slim, spindly line wobbles from my ragged old brush.

"That's good," he says, startling me. "Keep going."

So I do. And the end is long and thin, kind of like naked twigs in winter.

"That," the Calligrapher says, arresting my painting hand by setting his hand just above my elbow, but without touching. "Leave it so. Don't embellish."

"Just like that?"

"Like that," he said. "That is calligraphy. And it is the substance of ikirim. Yes? Understated."

"Right," I say, and put it aside to dry.


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Tags: ai-naidar, linguistics, meta-conversations
Current Mood: working, tired

"This Admonishment is not work-safe!" I exclaim.

The Calligrapher glances at the draft, then asks, "The others were?"

I pause for a long moment. Then mutter, "Point."




(My friends have since assured me that the draft is not pr0ntastic. Apparently I still blush at the drop of a hat and am not a good measure of these things.)

(Yes, this means what you're thinking.)

(archangelbeth, you may now commence with the schoolgirl fantasies.)

(Fwooshtastic!)

(>.>)

(<.<)


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Current Mood: blushy

"What... is with... your spines???"

"We have more vertebrae."

"Nothing should be this bendy. I can't make it look right."

"That's because you've given me a girl's chest. I'm not female, you note."

"Oh, shut up. I'm having to figure out how to draw a stocky light-gravity-worlder with extra vertebrae bent almost backwards! You can stop smirking now!"

"Perhaps you should have done some anatomical renderings fir—don't do that!"

"Hahahahaha! YOUR HAIR IS MOVING AND YOU CAN'T STOP IT!"

"I look..."

"...like something out of an adolescent girl's fantasy? You are nude... I can move your leg, you know."

"You're a little old to qualify for adolescent girl fantasies."

"Oh, low blow. You'd better take the pencil from me, because it's no quarter now!"


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Current Music: Assemblage 23 - Longevity

"Don't," Shame says, making a face as he sets a hand on my forearm. "If you're going to choose one story to illustrate my preparation, don't choose that one."

"Well, you could at least explain it to them at least this once," I say. "Because they don't understand your methods, and they spend a lot of time speculating on it."

"Fine," Shame says. "But briefly."

"Briefly," I agree, poised to take these notes.

"From the records given to me by the rapist's Regal and from interviews I conducted with his family and peers, the rapist's pattern indicated someone selfish, whose first thought was almost always how something affected him." He eyes me. "You understand that this is not rare. Ai-Naidar are as prone to such things as aunera appear to be. It's just that the rules of Kherishdar are so well codified one doesn't have to guess how to act in relation to others, most of the time, and so it's easier for such people to get along. Clear?"

"Yes," I say.

"My interview with the victim afterwards confirmed those findings, and also that he was willing to help," Shame continues. "I bought the diqut—yes, you may tell the aunera that I am not perfect—and arranged for a proper theater. That's theater as in "operating," not as in "dramatic," as this is not art, but precision work."

I nod.

"I had the assistants bring him in. They stripped him, but I chained him, though I was dressed as one of the assistants so he didn't know. At this point, half of what I do is for the benefit of the Corrected... the actual Correction. The other half is for me, to make sure I'm on the right track," Shame says. "So I wanted to make sure he was afraid. My dialogue was designed to both evoke the fault I wanted to Correct, and to gauge his answers so I could fine-tune what I did." He flicks his ears back. "My hand was on him, not just to evoke the revulsion, but also to make sure he was reacting to it properly. My nose was at his neck so I could smell him for fear or arousal. And the diqut was not just to make sure he felt threatened, but also so that I could make good on the threat if necessary.

"I judged," Shame finishes, "from his history and from the sorrow and nervousness his family reported after the crime, that what he needed was to feel what he had perpetrated, and when he understood how terrible it was, to be faced with the victim so that he was forced to make the connection between what he'd done and who he'd done it to.

"Vessan's forgiveness," Shame says, "was much of the healing afterwards. And for those who wondered... no, they were never alone. For the trial period, one of my assistants shadowed them, as I promised Vessan so he would feel safe; after it, for another half a year, I had the Regal's Guardians do the same and neither of them knew. But I would not have left Vessan without that surety.

"Hopefully," Shame finishes, "This is sufficient to assure your readers that I am neither thoughtless nor superhuman."

I glance at him. "Was that a joke?"

He picks up my Kindle and retreats. To his back, I say, "What about the last part?"

He looks over his shoulder.

"That part where you promised to rape him if he ever came back."

Shame smiles faintly. "I've told you enough. The rest of it I leave as an exercise to the reader." And then goes to read.

...hey, four of the books I've written are on that thing....

O_O


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"Weird," I say.

"What's that?" Shame asks from where he's reading nearby.

"Well... ashgeten sounds wrong, in the whole "adding ash- to a word makes it "person who has this quality." " It doesn't sound at all like one of your words. It doesn't even match some of the other ways you denote "person who has this quality." Is it archaic?"

"No, it's a Third World word. Or maybe Second," Shame says. "I'm not a linguist."

I turn over my shoulder to star at him. "What?"

"A word from one of the other worlds?" Shame asks. "Are you so busy thinking of us as fantasies that you forget we are a multi-world empire?"

"Uh, no," I say, though I'm guessing my face says "guilty as charged."

"Even with instantaneous transit, Kherishdar is too big for us to have a homogenous language. Or it would be, if we didn't have linguists. They go from world to world, notating the local changes and bringing them to the other worlds. They write the common dictionaries. That way a colonist can still talk to someone from the capital."

"You... correct... for linguistic drift," I say.

"I trust that wasn't a pun," he says, returning to his reading.

"No," I say, because I'm too busy squealing to myself. I want that job!!

"You might want to look up keva," he adds, absent.

So I do. And giggle.

keva [ keh VAH ], (noun)—people who are into everything, trying to figure out how it works. This applies equally to children asking "Why" all the time and busybodies who want the latest gossip and elderly relatives who want to know if you really know what you're doing. Linguists and anthropologists in particular often earn this appellation.

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"Not that one," Shame says. "That one belongs in the middle of the cycle."

I grumble. "Fine. This one?"

"Needs the context of at least three more before it will resonate."

I wave my arms. "Then this one!"

"That one requires an illustration," he says. "Are you prepared to paint it?"

"The illustrations aren't released until the physical copy!" I exclaim.

He eyes the very very late last piece for the Aphorisms chapbook. "And that worked so well for you before." He shakes himself. "The illustrations for the Admonishments are not, as you noted, illustrations. They are part of the story."

"Fine," I mutter. "But I'm not ready. Even if the blueline for the first one is done." I throw up my hands. "But I need something to post on Monday!"

"Very well," he says. "But you should fully consider beginning work on the paintings."

"After the Calligrapher," I say.

"After Farren," he agrees. And adds, "It is not a bad time to warn the audience that you'll be taking sponsorships for the illustration."

I eye him. "You pay way too much attention to the business side of this. Can you concentrate instead on something I can post Monday?"

"I'll get right on that, with thinking," he says.

I stare at him. "W-what? Did you just make a South Park reference?"

"I watch what you watch," he points out.

"You don't have to," I say. "You can just go do other stuff the way the rest of my split personalities do!"

"But then I would not have these insights into your culture," Shame says. He taps the desk. "You should paint, aunerai. We have work to do. Don't we?"

"I can't believe I have three perfectly good stories you won't let me post because they'd be out of order," I grouse.

"To everything there is a season," he says.

"Turn, turn—" I stop, suspicious. "Are you reading the Bible now, or listening to the Byrds?"

He just grins and goes back to reading.


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I am still limp on top of the dictionary when the Calligrapher murmurs, "He has not told you why it irritates him so."

I look up. This ought to be good.

"Shim is often a quality associated with a story's romantic object."

"Romantic object," I say slowly.

The Calligrapher nods. "Because the process of such growth is usually mysterious to the young and callow, it is particularly attractive to them."

I can feel the laugh coming on again. "You mean--"

He shows me a picture of Orlando Bloom. "I believe the word is... heart-throb."

From the other room: "FARREN!"

The Calligrapher calls back, "You are the one who left the tool of the Firefox open!"

I die.


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