I couldn’t believe it. How could I overlook something so obvious? The Immortal of Madness didn’t speak English! His ‘clue’ had been translated by my translation magic. Annihilation was such a specific word, with a meaning that did not translate well into many, many languages. And yet, the translation magic chose it. It chose that word instead of other, similar but more common words like destruction, and other less common words like decimation or obliteration.
I was still holding onto Kelser’s shoulders. I could see my frenzied eyes reflected in Kelser’s. The poor kid had clammed up. I let him go but kept pressing him to speak. In fact, I was so enthusiastic, he couldn’t get a word in for several minutes. Eventually, I calmed down, and let Kelser speak. He waited a moment, to make sure I was really going to stay still and quiet, before moving away. Just enough to be out of arm’s reach.
“Like I was saying,” he said, “there is another meaning for annihilation, isn’t there?”
“No,” I said. “There isn’t. Not in English, at least. I know other languages too, all from my old world. French, Chinese, Russian, Arabic, even Klingon and Esperanto, among many others, but this translation magic seems to stick to English for everything but names.”
“How is your knowledge of other languages relevant to this conversation?” he asked.
“It isn’t,” I said, quickly. “My brain is just running on overdrive. Of course!” I yelled, once again. “Of course I should have done this before, I should have pursued this line of analysis, of exploration and discovery. You know, there’s a religion back on my world, called Judaism. Many of their holiest texts are written in Hebrew and Aramaic. But, there was a movement, a movement of mystics, scholars, and thinkers and poets of all sorts, who wondered what would happen if they translated their works into other languages.
“Other languages, can you believe it? Their sacred texts, full of stories and poetry and histories of many kinds. Rather than insisting their texts stay in one, sacred, original language, they wondered if they could learn more about their own history, culture, divinity and reality by looking at their sacred texts through the lenses of other cultures, other traditions, other languages!
“And now my brain is running away with it. Running away with this problem I couldn’t unravel, this word: annihilation, and my mind is telling me, no, cursing me for not asking the Immortal of Madness to repeat it. To repeat it in many different languages. No, to say it in his own language, to write it down somewhere, or to imprint it into my mind. Anything that would let me translate the actual word that he said into other languages. Because now, I can only translate annihilation as I know it in English, when maybe it could have been more accurate to its original meaning in German or Latin or Greek, I don’t know. I don’t know. Wait, I should calm down.
“I’m sorry. Yeah, I’m sorry. I was just so frustrated. So frustrated for so long. I didn’t think too much about it, because I was focusing on helping Noel find her family, but now that she’s left me behind, the thought of going back home came back and took over my head.” I put my hands over my ears, let out an exasperated sound, and slumped back down, breathing heavily. “Please,” I said, thoroughly exhausted. “Go on.”
Kelser looked at me like I had gone insane, and honestly, I couldn’t blame him. My little tirade had a tinge of insanity on it, for sure. He repeated, once again, the sentence he’d said twice by now, before continuing.
“There are two, similar but different, meanings for annihilation in my language,” he said. “It can mean what you just said it meant. Complete destruction. To the point where there is nothing left. Yes, it can mean that. Like a tree burnt to ash where the ash is blown away by the wind and disappears. In the end, there is nothing left. But it can also mean complete destruction of one thing that becomes a part of something else.”
I frowned. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. It becomes a part of something else? How can something be completely destroyed, but still be a part of something else?”
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“I don’t know how to explain it,” he said, his eyes darting about like he was trying to think of something. “It’s hard to explain, but it’s clear as day in my head. Annihilation can be complete destruction, or it can be complete destruction when something becomes a part of something else.”
I brought my palms together and pressed them against my lips. Okay. If this second meaning that Kelser was talking about was closer to the meaning of the word that the Immortal of Madness had said, it explained why the translation magic had chosen an obscure and specific word like annihilation.
“Okay, I see what the problem is. You might be describing it differently, but in my language, it sounds like you’re saying annihilation means complete destruction and also complete destruction, but with something else at the end. Something about becoming a part of something else?” I said.
“No, not complete destruction,” he said. “It can mean complete destruction, or complete destruction when something becomes a part of something else.”
“Wow,” I said. “That was super unhelpful.” I rapped by knuckles on my forehead. “I’m guessing you’re saying different words, but they’re translated into essentially the same words in my language, but with a tiny difference in the end. I think I’ve come across situations like this one between languages from my previous world, too, but I have no idea how to clarify this.” I frowned. “You used the analogy of a tree burning down for the first meaning. Could you change that up a little to explain the second meaning?”
Kelser waved his hands a little and tried to find the words. “It’s like. What if the tree is burning, but instead of thinking about what happens after, when the fire runs out and it becomes ash which can be blown away, we focus just on the first bit. The moment when the tree is on fire. At that moment, the tree may be gone, but it’s become a part of the fire. It was completely destroyed when it became a part of something else.”
I blinked. Whatever that concept was, I could not think of a good word for it in English. An idea popped to mind from Arabic, but it wasn’t perfect either. No, this was too complicated to resolve right now. Despite my restlessness and frustration, I knew I had to spend some time on this. Preferably, when I was back at the encampment with all the other humans. Maybe they could describe it in different ways, or maybe I’d come up with better ways of picking at the confusion description that Kelser had given me.
For now, I asked Kelser some more questions, and decided to wrap it up for the night. My mind was racing as I cuddled against a now very annoyed and very sleepy Paris, and I could not fall asleep for the longest time. Finally, I felt like I was making progress. I was one step closer to returning to my own world, my home, my Earth. I don’t remember when or how I fell asleep that night. But Kelser’s convoluted explanation kept playing through my ears on repeat.
A burning tree that is completely destroyed when it becomes a part of the fire. What a strange, clunky, and obtuse image. Exactly the kind of thing that falls between the cracks of language, unable to bridge the common understanding that we assume we all share.
---
“Do I really need to stand here and stare at the sea?” asked Kelser.
“Yes,” I said, as I prepared a rudimentary salt trap.
“But there’s nothing to see here,” he said.
“Good,” I said. “Let’s hope it stays that way.”
“Not every coastline has a Limu Dogfish, you know,” he said.
“I won’t take my chances with the walking sharks, thank you,” I said, as I prepared some dry sand for my glass making experiments.
“Why are you so worried about them anyway? Didn’t you already kill one?” he said.
“You can never be too careful,” I said, as I heated up the sand in various ways, to produce small pieces of glass.
The glass wasn’t very good. It wasn’t very clear nor very strong. And it certainly wouldn’t help me with the experiments I wanted to run to improve my light magic. Still, it was an important start. Another party of tribesmen had already gathered a bunch of salt, so the salt we were gathering wasn’t as important as this glass. I kept fiddling around with the glass, trying to make it cleaner and purer. I figured out that earth elemental magic could be really useful in removing impurities or manipulating the sand around. Soon, I had some small pieces of glass that could help me play around with light. I called out for Kelser to pack up, and we began making our way back to Paris, the Fil Tusker.
I heard a wave crash against the shore. Then another. And another. I cursed under my breath, turned around, and fired off a burst of magic towards the shark monster sprinting towards us on its freakish legs.