My birth must have been considered a national holiday considering the sheer number of people who came bearing gifts were innumerable. It started out with the nobles bringing incense and jewelry, but after the second day the nobles were replaced by commoners bringing whatever food they could spare.
My father and mother had started to greet and thank anyone who came bearing tributes, but after the 4th full day of nothing but family after family bringing items they stopped directly receiving guests.
For 9 straight days and nights I was paraded around like some kind of God, it reminded me of The Lion King in the sense that there were so many people who came. There were parades and festivals during that time, it was as if this was the greatest day of their lives. And none of them looked like they were forced into coming or were afraid of my parents either, they seemed to celebrate out of their own will.
After the festivities calmed down I got to stay in the castle a little bit and try to learn the language. Not going very well to be honest, the little bits I have deciphered make no sense to me, I had pegged it for a combination of Germanic and Spanish, but now it seems more Norwegian and Danish.
My mother takes me everywhere she goes on her shoulders; any attempt I make in getting off or moving just gets me right back to where I started. I'm beginning to think of myself as a parrot more than a dragon at the moment.
But a plus side of being a parrot is that I get to hear everything she says directly next to her, from my understanding of languages if you listen in on a fluent speaker for long enough it will eventually bear fruits. She often talks directly to me, pointing at random objects and saying a word or two.
It appears like she is trying to get me to learn quickly, which is better for me. I am hoping that my knowledge of German will help me to decipher these strange pronunciations, but I think it is too far from old German to have any connections or cognates.
Not very surprising considering this is a different world, but oh well, I can't do much to change it.
Right now I am on mother’s shoulder as she is talking to father about something in the bedroom, she allows me to hop off of her back and onto the silky sheets of the large bed. They stare at me while talking the entire time, and their speech slows down like they are making an inquiry.
Shooting back and forth, I can start to decipher the vowels and sounds of the words that they speak, they seemingly only have to say a couple words per sentence, more so taking after English in that respect.
My mother says something with the tinge of a question at the end as I stare at her
"Rok los kinzon, vahzah?" See what I mean? It just sounds so difficult to decipher...*sigh*
"Geh, rok lost aan kun ko ok miin"
'Rok' was used twice there, it could be a synonym to him or he in this context if they are really talking about me, also I noticed the word lost, could that have a similar meaning to English?
My mother nods and smiles and laughs like she has thought of something funny saying
"Rok gahrot nii nol ok Monah!" After that last part my father scowls as my mother laughs aloud
"Geh, nuz rok gahrot ok qah nol ok Bormah” I am noticing 'rok', 'geh' and 'ok' are used so far. 'ok' is pronounced like ahk and not like O.K.
After that last comment by father, my mother nods and turns her stare away from my eyes and more to my body.
"Rok los rinik haas, fin qah lost aan vul viin wah niin..."
To that my dad sits down on the bed and starts petting me, surprisingly it feels extremely good and I start to make a purring sound.
Wait. Hold on. I am purring? Seriously? My tail is flicking about too just like a cat, this is a problem! I am supposed to represent absolute power, I’m a dragon for crying out loud! Why am I purring all of a sudden?! I try to protest, but all that escapes my throat is something more like a giddy yip, than a cry of desperation...this is terrible.
After hearing and seeing my reaction, he doubles his efforts and I find myself weak at the knees, no longer able to hold myself up I fall down onto my stomach completely open to his attacks.
I can hear both of them laughing wildly and my mother speaks as she is giggling like mad.
"Dar los ful brit, bwahahaha"
Overcome by embarrassment, I put all of my strength into running away, but I only make it about 5 feet away before my mother joins in on the 'fun'
"Rok los unt wah krif nee ful hevno" Says my father while he is still heartily chuckling, those are the last words they speak for the next 20 minutes as they humiliate me with their hands, I continued desperately crying out in the hopes that someone would save me but no one answered my pleas for help.
My suffering finally ends when my dad gets to leave with a few parting words, seeing me scowling at him he smiles once more and rubs the top off my head, shaking me a little bit.
After he leaves my mother picks be back up and onto her shoulders, I’m a little bit traumatized over what they did to me but I will get over it eventually.
The rest of the day goes by pretty uneventfully, just talking to a few noble looking fellows and eating dinner. I thought I noticed during the festival and when I heard my parents talking to others, but now I’m pretty sure that my mom uses a different form of speaking when she talks to everyone besides my father and I.
If I listen closely enough, I can definitely make out some distinct differences, for example the words my parents speak are typically very short and don’t sound like they go over 5 characters very often, but these ones seem to be elongated, an average of 7-8 characters per word.
It could just be a formal way of speaking, but why talk formally to common-folk? This might be a bigger headache than I thought...
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My suspicions were confirmed over the course of next 3 weeks; they are 100% different languages. I finally cracked the code on my parent's way of speaking and I can now decipher parts of a conversation well enough to get a vague understanding of what they are saying.
From the constant use of 'rok' when the speaker is looking directly at me I concluded that it must be the word for 'he' in English, when 'rok' is used there is often the word 'ok' followed shortly afterwards, thus I can say that it means 'his'.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
As for the other words, they are most likely nouns or adjectives that I will not know until I get a direct explanation from mom or dad. For example, when my mother left the room and left me with the devil he flexed his arms looking at me and said:
"Zu'u los mul" Which I assume means "I am strong" or something similar. I hope to be able to interpret as much as I can from their interactions with each-other, but when I am alone with the two of them usually it ends up in my constant abuse in the form of petting and tickling me.
I finally figured out my parents’ names as well, it took me a while though. My mom’s name is Vedbrii and my dad’s name is Sahqoviing, I realized that in the way they greet each other they say a word in front of their names. For Vedbrii, she says "Ahmul Sahqoviing" and for Sahqoviing he says "Kiim Vedbrii". Though they usually burst out laughing after speaking the greeting, they still say it nonetheless.
When it comes to the other tongue, I have not made any significant progress, the multiple syllables make it hard to decipher spellings and the like, so I am having a hard time. It is only my first month in this world, so I can't really complain. It took me a full 7 months before I was able to speak fluent German, so I expect it will not take more than 5 with the help of constantly being near speakers of the dialect.
Another thing that I managed to get to happen is the reading of books to me by my mother. I was on her shoulder last week and she sat down to read a book, upon seeing this I yipped in a playful manner and wagged my tail around playfully. Clearly understanding that I was interested in the book, she began to read aloud to me the various writings.
I am close to making another breakthrough in terms of grammar and possessive nouns because of this. With the help of mommy pointing to items and saying a word or two, I will expand my vocabulary in this world greatly.
Back to the texts, the writings in this world are even more complicated than how it sounds, just one sentence in the book looked something like a mix of runes and markings, I cannot make out any type of letters at all. I assume that I will have to have a better knowledge of how it is spoken before I can translate text.
Another thing that has troubled me since I was born is the food.
Since I do not have any teeth, I must either drink a broth mix or mushed meat, it doesn't taste terrible at all but the texture of the meat reminds me of canned cat food and it nearly causes me to gag whenever I eat it.
The broth is usually composed of vegetable looking things in a brown seasoned water, the meat is pink and tastes more like crab than steak, but I can't really describe it further than that.
My initial estimate of the time period being medieval was correct, and I get to investigate further on the state of the world every day when Vedbrii takes me out on a balcony stemming from our house.
Our city is quite large and densely packed, it has an urban fashion to it. The buildings are almost all a combination of stone at the bases and wood at the top for roofing, there are hundreds of streets all leading up to our palace that is situated on a large hill.
Our home is a black castle which might be one of the biggest I have seen, even in movies. With walls 50m high and 100m wide, it is a wonder how it was built in this world with seemingly low technology. Judging by the size of the thing, I have not even visited a quarter of the space inside this monster of a house.
Connecting the castle to the rest of the city is a series of large stair cases that all come together at a gate which is manned by tens of soldiers at any given point. It does not look like it would be an easy point to enter through if one would try to force himself in.
Speaking of these soldiers, they look absolutely amazing. They are all appareled in black chain mail or steel plate armor, I assume that it is preferential. They have arm and shin guards as well, and their heads are protected by a pitch black helmet with red bristles sprouting out from the top. Most of them are armed with short swords, but occasionally there is a pike man or spearmen among the men.
Across their chest pieces is a type of cloth or tunic with a black dragon imprinted on the red fabric. If I were to guess, I would say it is the same black dragon painted onto the ceiling of the throne room, I do not know who this dragon is but surely it can’t be my father. I would imagine that my father's dragon form would be red and not black, every myth I read about dragons on my world signified that the color of their scales dictates their features in a human form.
So this black dragon must be someone else, maybe the founder of the kingdom? I will have to investigate this further later on in my life.
Back to the structure of the city, we are surrounded on 3 sides by tall mountains. The remaining open side is directly at the front and it is a wide open flatland that stretches for over 5 miles in the least, I cannot accurately measure the distance covered but the prairie is a key strategic component in the strategical masterpiece that is this city.
Unless invaded by flying enemies I can't imagine anyone stupid enough to even attempt a raid on this place, it would be a literal massacre.
Other than the nice looking soldiers and amazing defensive potential, the city reminds me a little bit of English cities during the pre-renaissance time periods. Minus the whole black death thing, and the fact that this area seems to be prospering greatly, I would say it is a photo copy.
So, let's review my 30-ish days so far on this world:
Pros: I’m a dragon, I am a royal dragon, my parents definitely care for me, the citizens seem to absolutely support the monarchy, God is watching over me and might? help me if I'm in trouble, the kingdom is in a state of prosperity and I think we are in a peacetime state.
Cons: I get tickled and rubbed sometimes and I have to learn two languages...
I think it's a pretty good life so far.
(That's it for this chapter, I know it was a little bit on the shorter end but I just wanted to establish a couple things and inform you a little bit on the state of the world. I will be releasing another chapter today to make up for it though! I want to give you guys the choice for the name of the MC, I am not confident in my naming skills at all so I hope you will help me in that aspect lol. Also, if any of you know what language I am using feel free to let others know in the comments ;P Thanks for reading!)
(Proofread = Scientia Pyre)