why is there a word for that

[alicornucopia]

Finnah's just arrived at work to open the store for the morning shift; she has her apron on but hasn't put her hair up yet. She lets in the customer who always takes half an angle to determine that he wants four buttercreams, again, and then nips into the back to tend to her hair and check the overnight progress of the rock candy.

This isn't the back.

But that -

No, he's too tall to be Mial, if this is a Mial prank it's a stupidly elaborate one.

"Okay, I give up," she says, "what the hell?"

Comments

[abeance]

Jann looks highly uncomfortable. He puts Milo in a chair.

[thisvorlunatic]

Mial is still frozen, his initial sounds of distress trailing off into a quiet keening. His hands creep up to cover his face and he sinks to the floor and curls up in a little ball and cries.

[unmarred]

"For fuck's sake," says Mark. He gets up and goes over to Mial and sits on the floor next to him and hugs him.

[thisvorlunatic]

Mial shudders.

"I don't know what's going on but I'm very alarmed about it," says Miles.

[isthisart]

"I was not listening closely enough to the conversation to know what the offending word even supposedly means."

[middlingalong]

"Don't bloody say it again," says Aurin to Ivan. "It doesn't. Mean anything. He just wants it to."

[thisvorlunatic]

Mial shrieks very loudly with some combination of anger and despair.

[middlingalong]

"I don't understand how this never occurred to anyone before," says Ivan. "I'm sorry!"

Aurin drops his head into his hands and groans.

[unmarred]

Mark hugs Mial and pets his back soothingly.

"I know what it means and I know you know what it means, all right?" he murmurs. "And we could get it through to all your alts without much trouble. That's a decent start right there. H'sh."

[thisvorlunatic]

Mial whimpers despairingly and tries to burrow into Mark's lap.

[middlingalong]

Aurin considers this tableau.

And then he coughs, attempts to defer to Mark's expertise, and mumbles, "I know what it - means."

Ivan opens his mouth.

"You," says Aurin, "you shut up."

[unmarred]

"Thank you," sighs Mark, with visible relief. "That's given us years right there." He continues snuggling Mial.

[thisvorlunatic]

Mial does indeed seem to relax somewhat, although the measurement of his distress in years is not an immediately obvious one.

...Miles, though, thinks he might understand it. He looks at Mial and Mark with unhappy recognition.

[isthisart]

"Years?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"Please tell me that was some sort of crazy Mark utterance and not what I think it was," says Miles.

[unmarred]

"Sorry, no," says Mark. "He needs something he can't have, and it hurts intolerably."

[middlingalong]

[abeance]

"Are you saying that - ah, hell, Ivan, what did you do."

(Ivan, forbidden to speak, does not reply.)

[unmarred]

"That word is the exact antithesis of the things about Draconic that hurt him, and Draconic won't let him have it. It wasn't even possible to think before someone outside the trap came up with it," says Mark. "And now he's bloody Tantalus."

[thisvorlunatic]

"And," Miles extrapolates, "the more people understand and acknowledge the forbidden vocabulary, the less it feels like eternally starving under a tree full of fruit?"

[unmarred]

"Yes."

[middlingalong]

(Ivan is forbidden to speak but he can send Linya a pen message.)

[isthisart]

Linya reads her pen message.

"Does saying it help?" she inquires.

[unmarred]

"Prediction unclear. Too many factors."

[isthisart]

"Well, I've been filled in on what it means now, to whatever extent that helps."