high-energy physics

[warpfairy]

Federation political prisons are not particularly uncomfortable. She's not going anywhere, but she can read, she's considering taking up an instrument, the only really awkward thing is that she doesn't particularly want to be supervised while she's sweating her way through her next pon farr one way or another but that's years off. That and she wishes she'd taken longer to get caught. But she was running out of the really low-hanging fruit anyway.

This is what she signed up for. She makes up imaginary profiles of people on the planets she got to, people who can live longer fuller lives with the stars in reach, one per day. One per day and she'll have loads of estimated impact left unused when she dies. Perfectly reasonable tradeoff and she can still read books.

Someone wants to interview her about Vulcan; they don't want to lose anything that anybody remembers; she gives the interview and then picks up some poetry.

Comments

[warpfairy]

"I'll see if I can etherscape well enough yet to do without reams of paper."

And she shows him Vulcan script.

[lintamande]

"Oh," he says. "Oh, it's beautiful. Rúmil, come look."

[warpfairy]

T'Mir giggles.

[lintamande]

He stares at it, enchanted, for the next twenty minutes and then demands a lesson.

"You're not the crown prince of anything here, Fëanáro," Rúmil says warningly.

"Please," he says, still looking at it.

[warpfairy]

"It's a somewhat endangered language," she says, starting on a clear background and writing out some introductory swirls. "The planet was destroyed a little over a decade ago."

[lintamande]

"That's horrible. Is this planet - likely to get destroyed too?"

[warpfairy]

"It - seems to have been a one-time thing. The news about it was confusing but no other planets have been threatened."

[lintamande]

"We'll get it back."

[warpfairy]

"That would be really something."

[lintamande]

"If it takes rounding up ten of you and ten of me we'll do it."

[warpfairy]

"There's no way to be sure there are that many to be had."

[lintamande]

"Then it'll just take me ten times as long," he says. "I might actually be grown up by then."

[warpfairy]

Is he always like this?

[subtly_artistic]

Pretty much.

[lintamande]

He is studying Vulcan very intently.

[warpfairy]

T'Mir is a reasonably good teacher. When he's got the basics of the alphabet she shows him how to write out one of her favorite poems, translating as she goes.

[lintamande]

"It's such a pretty language. It's such a pretty poem. I like Vulcans."

[warpfairy]

"Vulcans have their good and bad points like anyone else, but yes, the language is lovely."

[lintamande]

"Would you like me to translate a poem of ours? Quenya's lovely too."

[warpfairy]

"Sure."

[lintamande]

He picks one about the Noldor and the arrival in Tirion, the Year spent naming all the things that now required words.

[warpfairy]

It's very pretty! Things requiring words is a situation that English and Vulcan handle very differently. Vulcan likes compounds, often metaphorical; English flat-out steals.

[lintamande]

What does it steal from, are there more languages he needs to learn?

[warpfairy]

It steals from everything. It stole from other Earth languages, and now it steals from other galactic languages. Here are some words it stole from Vulcan to talk about Vulcan-related things.

[lintamande]

This delights him. Quenya stole from Pax, a little, but they spent a lot of time refining the borrowed words to be beautiful by Quendi standards.