To hear nothing but silence IP: 65.29.75.36 Posted on August 6, 2018 at 11:22:04 AM by Ikuseghan
It was enheartening, really, that the multihued femme seemed to understand the need to speak slowly. Her lips rolled in waves of shaped patterns that Ikuseghan watched closely in order to understand what it was she was saying, what it was that she meant. The first part was easy enough – it was a pattern that her parents had showed her over and over again, and she understood that it was an introduction to the end of the sentence, a prologue to a name. And what a lesson that in and off itself had been – for what is a name. It was hard to explain, especially when the student could not hear any of the words spoken to describe it. Finally, in the simplest of ways, Vladimir, her father, had stopped trying to describe it. And instead had pointed to himself and her mother and each of her siblings one by one. He said only their name, nothing more. Round and round in a circle did it go, until Ikuseghan had caught on. After that, the word name had been tied to each actual name, and finally the phrasing before it was shown in order to prepare Ikuseghan to catch onto a new name. And with this particular femme, Iku molded her own lips in the same fashion, her lips and tongue rolling smoothly, until at last she put breath behind it and tried to sound it out.
“LOO-suh. LOO-suh.” The faeling shook her head and flattened her twin towers in annoyance. Something about the way she had shaped the consonants had been wrong. Her bright emeralds floated down toward the earth and she replayed the other’s motions in her mind and gently repeated it over and over until it changed her lips just so. Instead of puckered tight lips, they were instead molded into a softer ‘O’, as if she was sighing. “LO-sa. LO-sa. LO-sa? You Losa?” Ikuseghan shifted her gaze upward, the corners of her lids curling hopefully – had she successfully said the name correctly? If so, she was to be the happiest she had ever been – this would be the first wolf she had met and introduced herself to who wasn’t her family! Iku leapt up in the air in a little circle, popping up and down, but froze when she saw the changes in Losa’s face. Her brows furrowed as little images popped into mind – of a sunrise, bright as any that she had ever seen, and then feelings pushed themselves upon her – Iku as a singularity, and she smiled and nodded her head. But of safety? It was not a thing that she understood… but family she surely did and she smiled and nodded her head again. She glanced back the way that she had come and gestured toward Dierne Hrof – They were there, all of them.
But she froze again, and this time looked about as Losa jumped and her lips moved in a fashion that Iku had often seen her siblings make – a scream or a yelp of some sort when they were injured or hungry or tired… or startled. Iku focused upon Losa and then followed her gaze – until she saw the stranger laying in the water behind her. The princess pup looked back toward Losa, and back toward the stranger, and then realized that Losa was speaking to this other wolf. But she was talking too quickly, her lips moving too swiftly for Ikuseghan to understand any of it, and it did not help at all that Losa moved around her and moved between Iku and this other wolf, blocking her lips entirely from Iku’s sight. Once again, Iku’s ears flattened – ever since she had started reading lips, she had wanted to be involved in every conversation so that she could learn more words, more patterns… so that she would never again feel like an outsider. And so the little pup danced around Losa’s limbs and peered up at her as she spoke again. Iku could not understand most of it, but was able to pick out certain words – ‘Dierne Hrof’, ‘mountain’, ‘land’. But the rest of it was lost on her. Curiosity filled her and she pushed against the larger varg’s limb. “Who she? Whh-UT O-seen? O-see-uhn? What O-see-uhn?”
