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

[middlingalong]

"The tunnel is a childhood incident that collapsed on my head and the Dendarii are his plausibly deniable covert mercenary corps."

[thisvorlunatic]

"'Escape tunnel' for 'exploits of bored child pushing the boundaries of available entertainment'," Miles explains. "'Dendarii' for, hmm... something about scope, in this case, I think. Doing something extravagant and then sticking with it."

Mial nods along to this.

[middlingalong]

"Sometimes extravagantly accidental," adds Ivan. "And extravagantly illegal, so Gregor has to take the whole shebang as an early Winterfair gift..."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I don't think I've ever done anything extravagantly illegal," says Mial.

"I recommend you keep it that way unless it's really worth it," says Miles. "Of course, it's not always possible to know that in advance."

[middlingalong]

"Do you have a Gregor, I wonder? The little-uses had one, but they had basically everything, with Linyabel more Eurasian and more adopted and more named Nika instead."

"The name doesn't ring a bell," says Aurin.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yeah, no," says Mial.

"So you might have one if his name is as far from 'Gregor' as 'Aeducan' is from 'Aral', and we'd have no way to tell," concludes Miles. "I suppose I could describe his personality. ...How the hell do I describe Gregor's personality?"

[middlingalong]

"He likes to say 'let's see what happens'."

[isthisart]

"Shortly after I appeared on Barrayar having married Miles, he came over for lunch, waited until Miles was busy chewing, and inquired of me point-blank if I was some sort of spy or saboteur. But he seems to have effectively accepted my statement that I am not from the earliest, though Miles's boss took longer."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I feel like, if I knew one of these, I would be thinking of him right now," says Mial.

"Probably you don't, then. Or haven't met him. Now that would be weird."

[isthisart]

"Do you give off spy/saboteur vibes that I'm not picking up on?" wonders Finnah.

"No, but before any of us were born my empire briefly occupied his, and I'm also the only haut to ever marry anyone other than a ghem-lord."

"Haut," muses Finnah. "Were you avoiding the word before? You kind of have to reverse your instincts about when to bust out the jargon with dragonishes."

"Ah."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Yeah," says Miles, "I caught how you all just sort of say 'Alts!' at each other and then nod knowingly."

[alicornucopia]

"Well," says Aurin, "you know - alts." He waves at Ivan.

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles laughs. "Yes. Alts. So you just, what - hear a word and know what it means?"

"To the extent that we have the concepts to understand it, yeah."

"Handy."

"Draconic is not totally without positive features."

[alicornucopia]

"Makes us very portable," says Finnah. "And I'm obvious from a distance so people go up to me in the street and start speaking Alteisec or whatever, wanting directions, whatever, these guys get less of that."

[thisvorlunatic]

"I help out when I hear somebody having language trouble, though," says Mial. "Seems the polite thing to do."

[middlingalong]

"I have met two - no, uh, three, and a half - girls who I later hooked up with that way," says Aurin.

"...I'm now kind of curious about your total," says Ivan.

"Eh, I haven't really been counting? Depending on what you count exactly maybe fiiiive hundred...? I mean it's been more than half a century, it adds up."

"Damnation," breathes Ivan.

"I'll probably get married soonish," Aurin adds, "past two hundred now so there's no longer a question of falling behind aging-wise, and I'm sort of tired of breakups."

Ivan shakes his head in wonder.

[thisvorlunatic]

"Ivan has been out-Ivaned," snorts Miles.

[middlingalong]

"Sure, by someone who didn't lose his virginity till he was a hundred and fifty or so, sounds like -"

"Hundred forty-something," Aurin volunteers, and then he looks awkwardly at his aunt and uncle, suddenly remembering that they're there. "Anyway, that's hardly fair."

"Fine, fine."

[thisvorlunatic]

Miles finds this exchange deeply hilarious.

[on_my_word]

Avar and Koridaar are carrying on a murmured conversation over there and might plausibly not even have heard.

[middlingalong]

Well, that's a relief.

"Wait, when you get married, do you just... I assume this doesn't do anything about the aging rate or the sudden stop at the end," Ivan says.

"Well," says Aurin, "no. The sort of standard life trajectory is you marry various non-dragons in series between the ages of two hundred and a thousand, and then you settle down with a dragon about your age, and if you have trouble finding one of those there's reasonably competent matchmakers."

"That's..." Ivan shakes his head.

"I mean, people do different things," shrugs Aurin, "maybe that fellow's blood has just made Aunt Koridaar immortal? But that's the trend."

[thisvorlunatic]

"Dad's on his second wife, but he's barely said two words about the first one," says Mial.

"Ditto mine, actually, now that I think of it," says Miles. "I wonder if they corresponded...? I don't think we can find out easily from here."

[isthisart]

"If you'd be comfortable asking, we probably have enough grace period for you to lean out the door and see if he's looking at his pen messages right now - do you not even know her name?"

[thisvorlunatic]

"I would feel very weird sending my father a random pen message about his dead first wife," says Miles. "I think I'll pass. And no, I don't."

[middlingalong]

"I could've sworn I knew it at one point," says Ivan. "Can't call it to mind."