Ay’teantam ru! (Welcome!)
Moving right along. This is the last long one for a bit, pretty sure. Hugs and puppies to K.L. Schwengel for hosting. Rules are below.
Math = 2 + 9 = 11 paragraphs for the 29th.
Character descriptions:
Arvid 5’6″, dark copper skin, long brown hair, brown eyes, athletic build.
Taiamuk 6’3″, long red hair, gray eyes, a multitude of freckles, numerous scars, muscles a la Jackie Chan. Notable scars include three stab wounds on his right side and a long, horizontal gash across his chest. Owns one piece of clothing: trousers.
Necessary Context:
- Happens a couple hours after the last excerpt.
- Arvid’s attempts to sleep without cuddling the night before almost killed them for reals.
- Arvid despises Tai.
- Tai is speaking slowly enough for Arvid to discern words. I figure most people skip over the “foreign” languages in high fantasy books, hence the yellow font, but I got tired of saying things like, “he said something,” or, “she ignored his gibberish,” so I developed a language. Besides, I needed to know what he was saying in order to write him well.
He stood to accept [the cup of tea she offered] and took one sip without taking his eyes from hers. He started to circle her, his gaze sweeping her. He seemed to be considering her rather than exploring with his imagination, but she looked at the floor while he scrutinized nonetheless.
“Ay’teh’p gisheh’p ud nay’p uv tehv. Ay’teh gisheh’p ud peavgay’p uv muk. Tash gateneam ish’the gikhugev mushik a laminehikisheh chav. Ay’azaif ru loof zehtvuh, tash ru’mehsh’p ay chav.” He stopped in front of her.
She kept her eyes down. The time for sleep approached and with each heartbeat Arvid felt the awkwardness of the situation growing and her cheeks warming. She considered trying to sleep alone again, but she knew doing so increased the chances of spending another terrible night and sleeping late, wrapped in his arms despite her efforts to stay out of them, to make up for it.
“Ayrvid, ru’nut ush ay.” the man said, his tone that of one accustomed to being obeyed.
She wanted to smack him for speaking to her like that and let it show in her sneer when she looked at him. Wherever he came from and whatever position he held there, here they stood as equals, as two people who needed each other to survive and nothing else.
He spread his lips in a brilliant smile, pointed a foot in front of him, held both arms out, and bowed with an effeminate flourish. “Nirpeh may Ayrvid, ay’tith idshoopuv ayvean.”
Arvid’s sneer turned into an expression of complete bewilderment. She understood he meant to salute her, but what a salute! He reminded her of a male Jewelbottomed Dipper bending over to display its bright purple and green tail feathers for a bevy of females.
When he rose, smiling, he held his hand out in front of him, palm sideways. “Ay’zeh Gadev Taiamuk ud ay’zeh hugeh yeafeh vikiv tasheayik loof ru ay’tud.”
She stared at him, wondering what he wanted. His eyes flicked to her hand, but she held nothing to give him.
He blew out a breath, transferred the hand to his head to scratch and put his other hand on his hip. “Doo siv’tiktayd.”
Assuming him finished with his salute, and unwilling to return any salute to him, she sipped some of the tea out of the pot and washed up the things. That accomplished, she added enough logs to the fire to last the night and sat on the bedroll to stare at it, both dreading the moment when they settled down together and looking forward to falling asleep and shutting out the man’s presence for a few hours.

Not that you wanted to know, but it turns out “tail feathers” is not an innocent search term. Just FYI.
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Love this excerpt and the fact that you developed your own language. Wow. Just wow. I love Taiamuk’s attempts at communicating. I can appreciate the awkwardness of the situation!
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Thanks. 🙂 I cheated on the language development, so it took less time than I feared. I’d been putting it off but when I finally sat down to do it, it only took about 8 hours to get the basics figured out and now I feel like I can have Tai acting like Tai instead of relying on Arvid to interpret him.
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*snickersnickersnicker* Poor Arvid. And Poor Tai! So much strong female, so little… Well. ISN’T CULTURE CLASH FUN? 😀 I’m also impressed with the language thing. I love how his personality shows through, too. Yes, yes I know, I’m fangirling. But since Arvid isn’t yet, I figure Tai could use the ego stroke.
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Tai will take all the ego strokes you offer. He needs it about now. This is definitely not the way he envisioned this working out all those days he spent dreaming and wishing…
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I actually like the languages in high fantasy, even though I’m not much of a reader of it. That’s cool that you developed your own, and I completely understand why.
The one thing that confused me was the “effeminate flourish.” I don’t actually know what that means. When I think of a flourishing bow or salute, it seems actually very masculine—especially since you then referenced a male bird preening for females. I just can’t quite grasp what he’s doing, I suppose.
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Aaaah… Noted on the effeminate flourish. I will either cut “effeminate” or describe it. Maybe frilly would be a better word. It doesn’t fit, but that’s how it looks in my mind. A frilly flourish, with the circling wrist and fingers carefully positioned to look casual and graceful.
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Maybe an obeisant flourish?
It looks like Tai has such great hopes for this ‘relationship’. But Arvid’s got things to do, and she’s stubborn too… just a bit.
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Hmm… Obeisant is a good word. I’ll have to think on the way I phrase it.
Arvid? Stubborn? Naaaah. 😛 😉
She has reason to feel justified in any and all stubbornness she may display toward this particular man. He really blew the first impression thing to itty bitty little pieces.
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Understandable, but we all make mistakes, don’t we? At least he’s trying (very trying)
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He is, indeed.
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Elegant or graceful or…are you going for something sort of exaggerated? I think “flourish” itself implies that he’s doing some grand gesture, so maybe a variant of exaggerated would work too.
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Tai IS very graceful, whether he’s trying to be or not. And he can certainly be elegant if the fancy takes him. Hummina, hummina… lots of good options.
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Your hard work paid off! The language looks and works great in this bit. It definitely adds more depth and you handle using it beautifully. As always, great writing! 🙂
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Thanks, Gloria! It’s been interesting. I’ve learned some things about English along the way.
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o no, your poor search engine!!
male Jewelbottomed Dipper – haha, I like this even more than the invented language!!
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LOL That one did take me a while to come up with.
Search engine, smearch engine. Feel sorry for my eyes. 😛
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