Fic: The Odyssey, xvii. nkishi

[anon_j_anon]

--

“A life for a life, you say?
Then I will speak first.
In tlhIngan Hol
because I can
I learned to speak from my mother’s parrot
who taught me words beyond human
My first words were not Earth-Standard
they were the cries of an infant
They were not words as linguists consider
They were mere sounds expressing intent
Nkishi didn’t care for classified words
she took my language seriously
She spoke to me as I spoke to her
if I laughed, she laughed with me;
if I cried, she soothed me with water;
if I spoke, she replied to me
She taught me how to whistle, click
She sang me songs of crickets, crows
She hummed the words of honeybees
She gave me everything I know
My joy in speech, my talent of tongue
my amazing range in mimicry
are nothing compared to hers
she could speak Standard, tlhIngan, Street
When we watched holovids together
we’d listen close and imitate
every nuance in every sound,
practice until we had its shape
Nkishi always learned it first
and repeated it for me to say
We invented our own languages
a mix of Deltan, Pidgin, Fay
the only thing we could not speak
was Nkishi’s wild and native tongue
She never learned from infancy
their words, their sounds, their rowdy song
My mother taught her Earthan words
my father taught her limericks
our house taught her machinery
our street taught her cat, dog, leaf, brick
In holovid she learned to sing
old, ancient Earthan languages
all this and more, she gave to me
the roles reversed from her early days
when they spoke for her to them reply
She spoke to me, I spoke her way
scientists will say we didn’t know
meaning in our whistles, neighs
but I will say-- I know we did.
I say now, I know we did.

Nkishi loved to fly. We played
Pirate Planet where she led
me and our motley bird crew
across space to rescue the parakeet
or find the seed stash of the emu
We negotiated with the cats
for knowledge of their alleyways
We entered treaties with the dogs
for entrance through their yarded gates
We decoded the secret speech of frogs
whose summer nights were full of heat
We cursed the horns of hovercars
We played small tricks when builders ate
their lunch, imitating clinking nails
as though some ghost were working late.
As I grew older, I lost much of
my aural range, my vocal tone
The toddler flexibility
slowly eroded, stiff to stone
When Nkishi died at eighty-five
I lost her and my first language
I lost my companion in spoken sound
I lost my friend, my teacher, bridge
between what is accepted as a word
and what is actually said and meant,
between language as a rigid form
and language as experiment
You hear me speak without mistake
in grammar, pronunciation, grind
Nkishi would have spoken better
she would have looked you in the eye
and spoken in pure tlhIngan tones
aware of every word she said
inventing words as she went on
to name your wordless, speechless dread
She would have called it Haj’al’bom
Avip’yIn, or best-- notqa’Saq
the vulture’s perch
She might accept if your offered hand
held courtesy and respect to her.

You ask a story
I gave you one
this is the person that I am
if you risk speech
I will risk sound
to meet you halfway
to the end.
More than this, Nkishi showed
that every sound contains a word
some words are soundless, body bound
some bodies speechless, eyes alert.
You fear-- I see it in your shoulders
There is no shame in saying that
I fear-- your griefs and deaths are older
calcified to smoothest plaque
Do not despise us for our lives
and we will not judge your deathly state
let taboos broken here resound
let things said here have proper weight
In the name of she who lived and loved
every sound from any place
let our exchange of spoken death
be honest, open, may Qun give face.”

--