Chapter 7: Speaking

It’s been several months now, and I think I have a good handle on this language. It was kind of frustrating to learn by what rules, if any, it was operating on, but then I figured out each syllable has its own meaning. For example, the word for greeting that I learned so long ago, Laeso. La means to greet or to introduce, not a direct translation, but that’s the closest meaning. Es translates to time, and O means light, any form of light. So this means Laeso translates to greeting at day, and the word for day, which one can now easily guess is Eso or “time of light.”

Drawing out a syllable gives the opposite meaning, which will be indicated with a dash symbol, so Eso- means “time of dark.” Easy enough to understand. Saying a syllable in a higher or lower pitch indicates amount or severity. For example, the Es in a higher pitch roughly means “late,” or “long time.” Exactly how long, and you’ll need to combine it with numbers. A higher pitch will be represented with a line above the word, and a lower pitch will be, you guessed it, a line below the word.

Momara is the word for parent. There isn’t any word for father or mother, probably because the distinction between male and female is pretty much height and what kind of package you have between your legs. This means Momara means child, again no distinction between genders.

In short, this language mostly depends on learning the meanings of its alphabet, which is quite extensive. Now you may be wondering “there are too many meanings for things and not enough syllables,” and you’re mostly right, but a lot of concepts can be broken down into baser meanings. Like evolution. Evolution isn’t a known concept to these people, but the word can still easily exist, which is: Moduma. Mo, roughly, means “being” or “entity”; more accurately, it means life but not in a life-and-death sense but more in a sentience sense. Du means “change,” and Ma roughly translates to “succession.” So, Moduma translates to “generational change” or “change between generations,” which is pretty much what evolution is.

There’s still a lot to learn of this language, and I still have to figure a lot out—I’m just glad it’s not as hard as English, and it’s pretty adaptable as long as base meanings exist.

On to other news, I’ve had to extensively train my [Sense Mana] as a way to see.

General Skill 1: Sense Mana (12) [30]General Skill 2: Pain Tolerance (15) [30]General Skill 3: Soul Damage Reduction (1) [10]General Skill 4: Mana Toxicity Tolerance (3) [20]General Skill 5:General Skill 6:General Skill 7:General Skill 8:General Skill 9:General Skill 10:

I’ve expanded the skill again after trying to distinguish shapes, so now I can sense rough shapes around me, yay! No more bumping into things when I crawl around, mostly. I still don’t have depth perception, but as the skill levels up more, I can better distinguish shapes and see more clearly.

I don’t know if there’s a hard cap on skills, but there’s definitely a soft cap. You gain ten max levels every time you expand on the skill, but eventually, you’ll run out of things to expand on.

Since I’ve leveled up my [Pain Tolerance], I’ve noticed things feel significantly less painful, like ramming my head on the corner of the table leg. My guess is that each level in the skill makes you about one percent better at it, but that’s just my guess—could be slightly more or slightly less.

Also, ever since being in the presence of that super scary thing, I’ve gained a new breakthrough in [Mana Toxicity Tolerance].

Mana Toxicity Tolerance: Being exposed to high amounts of mana density can lead to a build-up of mana, poisoning you. This skill will help you tolerate mana poisoning.

1ˢᵗ Breakthrough: Some beings are so strong, they exude so much mana as to kill lesser beings. Being in the presence of one, even when it is limiting its mana leakage, has allowed you to adapt and tolerate its unique mana, letting you be able to push out mana against them the more used to them you are.

So what this is telling me is that all beings generate mana and leak them out, and since it’s unique to that specific being, I can slowly become more tolerant to it than normal background mana. From what I can gather from this is that mana poisoning might be excess mana building up within you.

My mana regeneration is higher than my maximum mana, so the question is—just how much mana can I hold? Is my current limit the absolute max, or is it just a point at which my body has filled up and will start leaking mana? Obviously, how much you leak is tied to your mana generation, but is there a point at which you generate more than you can leak? Scary.

Currently, I’m crawling around the house. We recently moved out of the hut and into a proper house. I finally have the freedom to explore and not just lay in my crib.

“Alysara! Fa! Faun!” Mom calls out to me as I crawl toward the weird slope in the house. Mom quickly rushes over and picks me up. “Fa” means to stop or cease—don’t know what “Un” means yet. But I can guess, given the context, it might mean “danger” or possibly “immediately.” Now that I think about it, “stop danger” doesn’t make too much sense, and “stop now” is a lot more likely.

Mom picks me up to rescue me from endangering myself. “Edich tl mosla km?” Mom sighs as I struggle to try to get free from her.

Freedom, my precious freedom!

Mom walks me into a room I recognize as the bedroom; my crib is at the foot of my parents’ bed.

Nooo! Don’t put me back in that prison!

Fortunately, I’m not put in my crib. She sets me on the floor and walks over to the crib. She picks it up and walks over to the curtain. Although we’ve upgraded to walls, we still don’t use doors—perhaps door handles are too unsanitary for these clean freaks?

Wait, Mom is going to block the door, so I can’t get out! I must stop her!

There’s only one thing I can use—the secret art passed down through the ages, the art of baby dependence!

“Momara,” I say and try to hug Mom. I intentionally pronounced it wrong because that’s cuter. I’ve already been saying a few words for a couple of months now, so that isn’t a surprise to Mom.

Ting! You have gained the Charm skill!

Charm: You have used words or actions to significantly change someone’s course of action. This skill will help you charm people easier.

Mom sighs and sits down on the bed, and strokes my head, and scratches behind my ears, making me purr involuntarily.

We sit there for a few minutes, then Mom puts me down. She walks over to the door curtain and crib to lock me in the room. I crawl as fast as my little arms and legs could, but the giant beats me to it.

“Momara tl diedun.”

More new words and syllables I don’t yet know—all I understood was “Mom something.” What was she doing before? She was at a desk, making some noise, not writing—that’s for sure. She sits at that spot doing whatever she does for long periods of time; we don’t have technology, whatever that is. The only things I can think of are work and some sort of craftsmanship hobby, seeing as it’s before the after-work bath through the power of process of elimination—I think Mom said something along the lines of “Mommy has to go work.” I mean, it could still be “Mommy has to go play,” but that doesn’t fit the context as well.

Speaking of knowledge that I know but don’t know at the same time, about a month ago, I suddenly understood what volcanoes and their calderas are. I just woke up one day, and the knowledge was just there like a dark room had been lit up. The knowledge was there all along but unseen.

This kind of means that since it was something I was worried about, it was the first thing I remembered. Good news is that a volcano with a caldera this size can’t possibly exist without magical aid, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of geological activity. The sea of hot spring water is evident of that, even if it’s a shallow sea. Still, heating up an entire sea—that’s… I dunno, thirty meters deep? How deep do shallow seas get? Anyway, heating up that much water is very impressive.

Whelp, I’m too small to break free, so I have to explore in this room. The next couple of hours are filled with hitting my rattle on objects. Using the loose sheets to climb on my parents’ bed and make a mess of it, and attempting to walk on my unstable legs. I found out quickly how well my long tail is at making me fall on my bottom. It's hard enough finding a good balance when the sheer length of my tail makes it very easy to overcorrect. And yes, my tail is differently much longer than it should be. With [Sense Mana], I can sense myself and my body-to-tail proportion is different from that of other people.

Suddenly, a squeal of delight sounds from the direction of the door. My [Sense Mana] doesn’t fully reach across the room, but I can guess Mom saw me trying to walk.

“Momara?” I call out. Is it time for an after-work bath already? I think. Mom rushes in, and instead of picking me up, she holds my hand.

Ah, I see. She wants to help me learn how to walk.

We spend the next several minutes walking. I’m glad I no longer have to fall, with Mom supporting me.

My other “Momara,” my dad. Comes home, calling out to Mom.

“Ij” Mom replies. “Aly tl em!”

I may not know what “tl” and “Em” means, but Mom definitely said I was walking or learning to walk—so many syllables to learn. It’s like trying to read Chinese with their two thousand or whatever pictographs. Doesn’t help when they use three-sound and even four-sound combinations like “kno” or “bla.”

Mom and Dad continue to help me learn the surprisingly difficult act of walking. After several more minutes of walking, Mom takes me to the after-work bath. Since we’re late, most people are done by now, but there are a few other late people too. Mom still holds me when in the baths. After the baths, we go home.

Mom and Dad talk about their day while I try learning new words and syllable meanings. Like all languages, you get good at speaking, and even though they take time when speaking, it’s still pretty fast and hard for me to fully take everything in.

The next day after work and an hour after walking, that goes a lot smoother than yesterday, Mom is trying to teach me new words. About twice a week, Mom does this, and while she means well, simply saying words to me without context doesn’t help much.

After a few minutes of me not talking, Mom just sighs and mutters something.

“Sho- Aly tl ta ich-?”

That “tl” appears a lot, like in most sentences. Yet I can’t really figure out what it means.

“Aly tl ta?”

Mom brightens at my question and smiles. Mom nods at me and says another sentence, and looks expectantly at me.

Mom, please don’t change the subject.

“Aly tl ta?” I ask again and tilt my head for cuteness power.

“Dawww!” Mom embraces me in a crushing hug. Once I’m freed, I gasp for air. I could have died there—cuteness is scary. Actually, scratch that, I technically can survive without air thanks to [Mana Sustenance] that my race has.

“Aly tl ta?” I ask again after I calm down again.

Mom thinks for a few moments.

“Aly,” she says, after touching me with a finger.

I got that pretty easy, Mom. I don’t know what the other words are.

“Ta,” Mom says, still touching me. Then she takes my hand to touch her “Ta-”

Hmm, something I am that Mom is not... Is she calling me short?! Well, it’s not wrong.

“Tl?” I ask.

Mom thinks for a little more before answering.

“Aly tl ta.” She touches my hair.

“Te tl shy.”

Wait, I know “Teshy” refers to my hair, and my hair is blue; the common word structure is subject matter first, which would be hair, so it means “hair blue.” Splitting the word, Te is “hair,” and “shy” is blue. “tl” probably connects two words, in other words, “Te tl shy” means “hair is blue.” Aly is my nickname, and “Ta” probably refers to me being short, so “Aly tl ta” means “Little Aly.”

Makes a lot of sense in hindsight

After our speech lesson, Mom plays with me for a little bit before needing to make dinner. After that, we attend the Lojyo, the party the village attends every night.

After the dancing, some people come up to show off some of their works—one person even plays a very beautiful song. Then Mom hands me off to Dad, and she shows off what she’s been working on.

An extravagant gem necklace made with twisting metal. It’s hard to tell with my [Sense Mana]  as I can’t differentiate materials by color. The metal is made to look like vines with tiny leaves sprouting from it in a way to not make it uncomfortable for the wearer. The gem itself shimmers with magical energies that are clear as day to my [Sense Mana]. It seems almost like the mana is different from the mana in the metal.

I wonder, are there different types of mana? My mana tolerance mentioned mana leaked by a being is unique to them. Maybe if I train my [Sense Mana] to differentiate the mana, I’d be able to see specific people? ‘Cause right now, they look like silhouettes to me.

I focus on the magical energies on the gem and the metal around it. Trying to make sense of their difference.

If people can have different mana, why not objects too?

Eventually, Mom walks away to let the next person have their spotlight, and in turn, remove the object of my study. I sigh and look down. For once, I’m not being carried horizontally, facing up. Dad is holding me vertically. Then I notice a peculiarity—the earth beneath us has the same mana as that’s the gem, a differing amount with some others, but it’s majorly the same type.

Earth mana?

I focus specifically on the earth mana, and suddenly the world gains color.

Ting! Sense Mana sense has reached level 13.

Ting! Sense Mana has met the requirements for a breakthrough and will continue leveling past level 30.

Sense Mana: You have opened your mind to one of the energies that fuels this world. You can now sense mana in its raw form.1ˢᵗ Breakthrough: You have sensed an overwhelming pressure of mana, and now you will be able to better sense mana in such quantity and better see slight difference in mana levels.2ⁿᵈ Breakthrough: You have learned to perceive different containers of mana, letting you see the general shapes of mana containing objects around you.3ʳᵈ Breakthrough: You have learned to see different types of mana, letting you see elemental mana.