I watched through the bars as the human standing in front of me went through a range of facial expressions. It was impressive just how much emotion I could read from them in such a short time. Perhaps that's normal for these people, I thought, or perhaps this human has some kind of mental defect. The expressions settled down and the human walked closer to my cell, looking past me towards the chain in the wall. Ah, I thought, it saw the work I've been doing. Come on little human, come in and let me grab you.
Instead of doing as I predicted, the human's eyes moved off of the chain and back towards me, then down to the dirt below me. For an instant I looked down to see what it was looking at and saw that much of the dirt was still bloodied. The human frowned and looked concerned. “Gow shaym gayzahvs,” it said in a quiet voice, “Shuw jhoyjh gow jhow hhaam?” I didn't respond because I didn't recognize any of the words it was using. The human pulled out a key from its pocket and unlocked the cell door, then set the food and water down and slid them into my grabbing range carefully.
I sat still and kept waiting, hoping that the human would move into my range itself, but instead it sat down across from me just outside the cell door and began mirroring my posture. It's a juvenile, I deduced by looking at its general body structure, must be male too. A pseudofemale would be bulkier. Appears about three years old, just below fighting age. I stopped and interrupted my line of thought. If it was a warbreed it would look three, but for these people it might be several times that. They don't look genetically modified from what I remember pictures of creators looking like. Well, aside from the healing ability and the eyes.
“Kae lawm aom?” the human asked. His voice cracked a bit on the last word, lending further credence to my idea that he was a late-stage juvenile or early adolescent. He gestured to the food, then to his mouth. Ah, he's asking me to eat, I thought. I got up and walked to the edge of my chain's allowance and sat down closer to the boy, then grabbed the water and drank it as quickly as I could. My heads-up display showed my reserves replenishing and I could feel my body beginning to absorb the liquid. That's odd, I noticed, the red bar has lost a percent or two, and so has the blue.
I munched on the cooked tubers while I observed my heads-up display and fiddled with the bars. The red is probably blood in that case, I thought, but the blue I have no idea. It's increasing as I eat but not at the same rate as the green ones. What if I- I willed the blue bar to show me its subsections like the green, and four new blue bars appeared, with the top bar showing some depletion. Each of the bars had a different length as well, with the bottom three bars being thicker and the second from the bottom being the longest. Well that's not helpful, I thought as I dismissed the display back into a single bar, but at least I know it's related to the healing ability somehow.
“Sowjh wiyjh?” the boy chirped. I looked up and met his eyes, noticing that they were more of an orange than the red that the other men had. Interesting, maybe the eye color indicates age? I wondered. “Gow znaot,” the boy added, “wawpjh mervjh yao.” I finished up the food that was in my mouth and wiped my hands on my pants.
“I don't understand anything you're saying,” I said, prompting another excited reaction from the boy. “I've heard sowjh before, what does that mean?” The boy almost started vibrating with glee when I said one of the words in his language. From just his expressions I could tell that he understood the gist of what I had asked.
“Sowjh yaolb... sowjh!” he said, gesturing frantically towards the bowl in front of me. “Gow ler kayjh?” I looked into the bowl and picked up the last remaining tuber bulb, holding it up in front of him.
“Sowjh is the name of this plant?” I asked. The boy pointed to the tuber and then into his mouth. I put the tuber into my mouth, and he clapped his hands together once.
“Sowjh!” he said simply, mimicking a chewing motion. He mimed a swallow, then rubbed his belly.
“Oh, sowjh means 'eat',” I said, “I guess that makes sense.” I slid the empty bowls back over to him with a flick of my wrist, and the boy caught them and stacked them beside himself. So what now? I wondered as the boy didn't make any effort to leave at all. I was oddly uncomfortable under his gaze, and began mentally measuring the distance to see if there was a way I could stretch my body to allow me to grab him. Since I can stretch my leg to the point of damage, I might be able to squeeze another twenty centimeters out of my maximum reach distance-
“Gow sehpeyzm yaal,” the boy said, “shuw gow ler shuw mow znaot? Keym oyb eyhhay vaadhwkeyzh gow gowboydh?” I struggled to keep up with his words because they came out so quickly. There's that sehpeyzm yaal thing again too, I thought, but the context is totally different. Maybe it's not an insult and I just misjudged the situation last time?
“What is sehpeyzm yaal?” I asked. The boy looked at me, clearly trying and failing to determine what I was asking of him. Feeling a bit silly, I tried to look confused and repeated myself. The boy was now just as confused as I was pretending to be, and I had gotten nowhere. “Sehpeyzm yaal,” I said again but more firmly, pointing to the boy. The worst he can do is get offended, I thought.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Instead of growing angry, the boy burst out into laughter. “Ae aay lawm sehpeyzm yaal,” he chortled, “gow awp sehpeyzm yaal.” During the second half of his statement he pointed to me, making it clear that whatever the phrase meant it was something that applied to me. 'Outsider' perhaps? I wondered, the first part of his statement sounded like a refutation of what I had just said. Maybe I can try constructing a sentence. Usually the subject comes first, so...
“Ae sehpeyzm yaal,” I said slowly and deliberately. “You aay lawm sehpeyzm yaal.” I made sure to point towards him when I said 'you', to tell him what the word meant. The boy just stared at me for a moment, not angry but astonished, then burst into chattering in his language that was so fast that I couldn't pick out individual words. Finally, he began laughing again and rolled back on the ground so he was facing the ceiling. Great, I thought, I have no idea if I just said my first real sentence or babbled like an idiot.
“Ae aay mihvay sehpeyzm yaal,” he finally said as he got back into his seated position and worked out the last of his laughter from his system. “Keym oyb gehp lihy?” I'm not sure what he's asking, I frowned, He said something like 'I am something outsider'? Is he saying he isn't going to harm me? As I worked on figuring out the meaning of the boy's sentence, footsteps sounded from the stairs and the stouter man who had given me my meal on my first day in the cell came around the corner with a short sword in his hand.
“Mihvay! Keym awp gow jhowoydh!” he shouted. The boy scrambled to his feet and started to try to talk to the man, but was silenced by a slap to his face. “Hhaam ngaozm tiyjh toyv gow!” the man yelled. “Kae jhehp erneyl? Kae zer yeyth luhb? Kae gow lawm teyy ngaat gahm?” The boy's posture shrunk and his shoulders slouched in deference to the older male who was clearly giving him a lecture for misbehaving. The boy walked to the two bowls, picked them up, and walked back towards the man. “Vawt hhey jhehp!” the man shouted, snatching the two bowls out of the boy's hands. The boy hurriedly walked back and shut the door, locking it with his key. Our eyes met, and I caught a glimpse of remorse in his gaze before he scampered off back up the stairs.
The man walked up to the bars and sneered in at me, hiding his nervousness poorly when he met my gaze. I stood up and leaned in towards the bars, getting my face as close to his as I could. If I can get him to come in here and attack me, I can use that sword to escape, I thought mischievously, this one was very quick to anger last time. “Npoyt,” I spat, my glob of saliva coming just short of the man's feet.
“Zaareyzh spaot,” he spat back onto the ground in front of me, “keym gow mpaeoydh jhow koyhh mihvay?” Gow must mean 'you', I realized from context, and spaot is another insult. “Gow mpae shaym shoyy eyljh ae toyv gow.” the man growled, making a cutting motion with his hand across his throat on the word toyv. So nice of him to add another word to my vocabulary, I smiled, making sure to stare the man in the eyes as my face radiated pure deranged glee. Underneath the facade, I was pleased with how well my madman impression was working.
“Ae toyv gow, npoyt,” I said in a low tone, licking my lips afterwards. I pointed to the man, then repeated the gesture across my throat so make sure he understood in case I had made a grammatical error. “So come on in, we'll have plenty of fun with that sword of yours.” I taunted in English. The man took a step back from the cage and I continued my taunt. “Pathetic coward, you can't even fight a bound and unarmed man. What a disgrace to your tribe. Your line should be purged as an example against your weakness.”
“Ae jhow lawm ler keym gow mpaeoydh, ngeym oym lawm kayt,” the man growled. “Gow veytao gow wahm sowjh.” Threatening to not bring me food, probably, I figured. The man sheathed his sword and gave me one last angry look before departing up the stairs. Maybe I should hold off on trying to escape for now, I thought, if that man makes good on his threat I'll need to conserve my energy. I moved back into the center of the cell, moving the chain out of the way and sitting back down in as comfortable of a position as I could manage.
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Boredom came to me rapidly and evaded my best efforts to fend it off. Without the ability to willingly set myself in a low power mode or some equivalent my mind all but required that I use my mental energy on something productive. Failing to do so was creating a strange effect wherein time felt as though it was slowing down. A dictionary, I thought, I can write out a dictionary on the ground and try to work out words. That should pass the time.
Some time later I had written out, in English characters using a sharp rock, each of the words that I could remember hearing and the contexts in which I had heard them. For some I now already knew the definition, but others were more mysterious. I also wrote out a few of the sentences the boy had used since a few of them were now filled with words I knew. The grammar is simple, I thought, there are less particle words than English. The problem is that the pronunciation is quite odd and I'm not sure about the etymology at all.
The thing that was confounding me the most was sehpeyzm yaal. If it weren't for the fact that it was clearly two words I could simply have written it off as 'outsider', but it clearly wasn't totally equivalent. The stout man had taken it as an insult that one time, but the boy had used it in an almost whimsical way. Assuming the first word is an adjective, I reasoned, that would suggest that yaal is a noun. It could mean 'person' or something similar to that. Maybe the phrase is 'foreign person'? It might have a sharper connotation than that though, so perhaps a better translation would be 'dirty foreigner'. But then why would the kid have used it so lightly and in a friendly tone? At his age he would know well the implications of a phrase like that, so it doesn't make sense...
True to my goals, my new hobby occupied my mind well until the point when exhaustion came, and unlike before I was ready for it and made sure to lay myself down in a comfortable position before drifting off.