[This is the first personal message Liem has received on his syntrofos, and already he's confused. He has to spend long moments puzzling over it, and even then he isn't certain he's figured out the purpose behind it.]
[This is a real brain teaser. Somehow, during their entire acquaintance, it had never before occurred to Liem that Konoha might not know how to write, beyond a small selection of words. He is rapidly coming to that conclusion.]
Oh yes, tree leaf. 木🌳 I remember.
[The first character of her name. This is easy enough to understand, but unfortunately, that's the best he can say about these little pictures.]
[The perils of communicating almost solely through emoji...]
Ah, you're at the Valentia? So am I. 👨🏻🏨
[Going out during the day has been getting more and more challenging for him to endure. Though he hates to give in entirely to a nocturnal lifestyle, he's taken to spending much of the day wandering the hotel in lieu of venturing out into the sun.]
[... She knows "Valentia"! Well, more than saying she can read it, it's more that she just recognizes the shapes that are on the facade of the building, but. It counts. Okay, she's got this. "Copy"... "Paste!...]
[After all, it will be a cold day in Hell before Liem feels comfortable going to meet someone without taking the chance to freshen up first. Especially given how ghastly he's started looking in the months since his augmenter was implanted. He needs to at least make sure he's properly groomed!
Fifteen minutes later, Liem is waiting in the hotel lobby, looking neat and presentable in a suit of local Karterian style. He does not look as though he has been eating well, any more than he usually does. In fact, if anything he looks paler than usual, with a faint sheen of sweat that gathers on his forehead as he waits for Konoha to join him. He pats his brow mechanically with a pocket handkerchief, apparently quite used by now to whatever is ailing him, and smiles when he sees Konoha approach.]
Ah, Miss Konoha. It's a pleasure to see you again.
[Fifteen is probably best. Konoha might be used to meeting people sweaty and a bit disheveled, but this wasn't the lumberyard. Also, she has to awkwardly get down the stairs. When she arrives... she's wearing the same robe she had been when they first met months ago. It's starting to look a bit worn (well, more worn), in places. It's clean, though! She washes it!!]
Mister Liem, hello...
[The greeting is a bow first, because bows make the most sense to her, but when she rises from it she does add in a little wave, the hand moving to nervously fidget with some stray hairs around her ear that were a bit too short to tuck properly into her bun.]
I hope my puzzle picture messages were okay... I thought I should practice a little- ? I probably should have asked if people wanted to be practice partners first, though, huh...
[She hadn't actually intended to meet, necessarily, so she's a little worried this might be a polite excuse to stop wracking his brain over the emoji... Or... was it an excuse to go get food? He looks...]
[Liem dips his head in amenable reply to Konoha’s bow, pleased to see her even if he’s been feeling under the weather of late. Had the “puzzle picture” messages been confusing? Yes, some, but he can’t blame her for that.]
I think I got most of your meaning. Perhaps you could explain them to me, so I’ll be able to better interpret them later on.
[He does note that her robe looks to be the same one she’d been wearing on the other occasions he’d seen her, and given how long they’ve both been here, he wonders if she’s been struggling to find clothes tailored appropriately for her, given the solely-human population of this land.]
Besides, I didn’t realize before, but… would I be correct to think that you cannot read and write this land’s script?
[He doesn’t want to make assumptions about her facility with her own language, but given that he seemed to know how to read Karteria’s language as soon as he arrived, he does suspect that this lack might have preceded her coming here. Perhaps a knowledge of written tongues is necessary to automatically grasp the Karterian script.]
[There's a brief pause, a hint of shock on her face... before Konoha smiles, bright.]
I could do that!
[Beaming with gratitude over the simple but extremely thoughtful offer of letting her explain her puzzle picture thought process to him so that they might communicate with them better, she doesn't show much hint at all of shame or embarrassment when answering his question, too buoyed to deflate so quickly. Just a bit of self-consciousness over the trouble it's causing others.]
No, I can't... It doesn't look anything like the way people write where I'm from... not that, you know, I knew how to read or write that either...
[Something she just would expect people to know based on either her race or her work, but she's at least learned that isn't the case, here, and she has to add a bit of context.]
The temple school in my village didn't take jinba... and I don't really need much beyond numbers at the lumber yard...
[She holds up a finger as if she's had an idea to soften the blow, helpfully supplying,]
I do know some useful words! And I can recognize those here! "Money", and "rice", and "tea" and "food" and "liquor"... and the four cardinal directions... oh, and "shrine"... "temple"... "village"...
[The sort of words you see every day on shop signs, directions on sign posts at crossroads, and common locations with stone markers. Those words. But beyond simple nouns, when it comes to adjectives, predicates, or verbs...........]
[As Konoha explains, Liem nods in understanding. He may be a city boy, but for decades of his life, his job consisted of travelling from small village to small village, tending to the needs of settlements too underpopulated to have their own temple to Abadar. He knows the way of life for people in smaller settlements is different from those in a big city like this one, or the one he grew up in.]
I understand. The signage in a big city like this one is different compared to what you had back home, yes? I’ve learned quite a few new worlds since being brought here, as well.
[Not to mention, he assumes that if her village was small enough, she would presumably have learned most of the businesses by sight without ever needing to read anything to identify them. She’s right that literacy isn’t a much-needed skill for a lumber yard worker, even a foreman. It makes sense that, if no one went out of their way to make that skill available to her, she would see little need to find some other way to learn.]
If there are words you feel like you’d benefit from knowing how to write here, I’ll gladly teach them to you. You only need ask.
[Committing to something like learning how to write and read in general might seem like a lot, especially if she still wants to go home as soon as possible. What need would she have for such knowledge if she’s back home in three months? But a few supplementary words could still be useful.]
[Her smile falters for a moment when the obvious follow of "everything is really different" comes to her mind... but she manages to stop it from becoming words on her tongue, swallowing it back down in favor of preventing her fingers from wringing by hooking her thumbs in the tool belt holding her pelt wrap closed about her "waist". Actually no, wait, she needs one of those hands to tap a knuckle against her lips, brow furrowing as she thinks.]
Useful words...
[It remains a truth that three months in... Konoha doesn't want to give up on the futile hope that this is all just a dream. That she will soon wake up on her own futon, in her own home, and everything will make sense again. Barring that, that... that Patho-Gen will realize they have made a mistake and send them all back. Or at least the ones who will be useless in a fight... She doesn't want to think about being here long enough to need to know how to communicate with others, with these people...
But. Liem is being kind. And it's a nice offer, even if she laments everything else about the situation. So she actually thinks about it... and then points at herself a bit haplessly.]
[Poor Konoha. The life she left behind was so clearly different from this one in every possible way. Even though Liem wants to return home more than anything, at least he’s used to being an unwelcome stranger in a big city. He doesn’t have a quiet little village and a loving family waiting for him.]
It certainly couldn’t hurt. Here, I’ll show you.
[Pulling out his syntrofos, he steps closer, turning so she can see his screen as he pulls up their conversation. The bewildering emojis remain right where he’d left them.]
This is the character for “I.” [He indicates it on the keyboard, pressing it and then composing a simple emoji message, which he then sends to her device:] I 🩷 🍚
If you wanted to write “I’m” instead, it would look like this: I’m 🌳🍃
[Oh... There they are... her puzzle pictures. Were they weird? She hopes not. She knows how to send the voice messages, where you "record" your voice and send snippets of it to other people... and she knows how to press the button to accept a "call", but... what if she was somewhere where it was too scary to speak, or being overheard would be bad... ?
Nibbling on her lip, she leans closer, committed to trying to memorize what Liem shows her. It's bound to be complicated.
Except it's just... one tap?]
Eh- ?
[She digs her own device out of her tool belt and stares at it, then puts it together with Liem's as if to compare them, trying to find some sort of difference in the keys. Four down, five left... the one with the little line on it???]
It's just one character? That's "I"?
[Someone is used to kanji that have... lots of strokes...]
[Even despite his fatigue, Liem finds a smile lifting the corner of his mouth at Konoha’s clear bewilderment. He’s not familiar enough with her language to know how complicated the characters can get, but clearly, even for a short word like this one, she was expecting something more involved.]
That’s right. Simple, yes? “We” is very short, too. Here, you might like to know that one…
[Again, he taps it out on the keyboard: two letters, this time. He could probably go through every pronoun that came to mind and not encounter anything she’d find especially complicated, but he assumes the more words he throws at her all at once, the more difficult it will be for her to memorize which spelling is which.]
I didn’t mean that you need to come up with all the words you’d like to know right know, anyway. I’m sure it’d be simpler to single out useful ones as they come up, and ask me then. I don’t mind.
[He supposes that he might not reply right away if he’s busy, but in this land, he’s rarely so busy that he can’t take 30 seconds to explain the meaning of a written word, or the spelling of a spoken one.]
["I" is eight different strokes in Japanese, Liem... and okay, Konoha doesn't know that, but. The point is, she was definitely expecting such an important word to be more complicated than what looked to her now like one press of a button. Wild. Still, even though she does look at "we", it's smart to think... too much at once was probably not a good idea. She smiles, grateful.]
Thanks, Mister Liem... I'll ask if I need up needing one.
[She didn't want to bother him too much, but if it was important...]
Besides, I didn't mean to make you play teacher today... we're going to cook together, right?
[It was "cook", right? (No, Konoha, it was probably "go eat".)]
[Based on the surprised lift of his eyebrows when Konoha asks if they’re going to cook together, this is not exactly what Liem had intended upon agreeing to meet here. True, they did exchange some cooking-related emojis, but he thinks some miscommunications may have happened along the way.]
Oh… That does sound nice, but I’m not sure where we could do something like that. I doubt the hotel staff would let us use their kitchen.
[Considering they’re kept busy all day preparing the free food available for the hotel residents, he’s betting the Valentia’s kitchen is a pretty busy place. Cooking there might be a bit hectic for their tastes even if they were allowed.]
I thought maybe you wanted to eat together. I suppose I didn’t catch your meaning quite as adroitly as I’d hoped.
[On the one hand, Liem would wonder about this, but on the other hand, he has to assume a lot of the people who end up here will end up figuring out Karteria's communication tech more easily than him. He's still proud that he figured out how to use emojis.]
If you want to refer to me by my title, Father would be the appropriate form of address.
[He doesn't feel like he has to accept "Hey, Priest" from some young pup with sticky fingers.]
That said, what makes you say that about this person in particular?
[That sounds a little like Hei already tried to get his address out of him and was unsuccessful. Liem is suddenly less sure of the nature of the relationship between these people.]
Well... I'm still happy for you to give him my contact information, then. He can reach out if he likes.
No, no. We can discuss the matter of payment afterwards, if that ends up being necessary. But I'm happy to just speak with him for a while, if that's all he wants.
[It's probably for the best if a conversation is all it ends up being, since Liem definitely isn't getting a single numi from Hei.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
FatherTalbott
PROFILE
un: treeleaf
🌳🍃！ 👧🏽🐎
へあｌｔｈ？
no subject
🌳🍃 is you, Konoha? ➡️ 👧🏽🐎
Is this me? ➡️ 👨🏻
➡️ 👨🏻🙏🏻🗝️⛪
I can't read the last line, I'm afraid.
no subject
👍‼️
👧🏽🐎 ➡️ 🌳🍃
tree leaf
👨🏻🙏🏻🪙⛪‼️
👨🧠⬆️
へあｌｔｈ？
🧍♂️good?
🥩🍚🫃？
no subject
Oh yes, tree leaf. 木🌳 I remember.
[The first character of her name. This is easy enough to understand, but unfortunately, that's the best he can say about these little pictures.]
Are you asking if I can cook? 👨🏻🗝️ ➡️ 🔥🍳🥩🍚 ?
Or is this an invitation? 🥩🍚 ➡️ 👨🏻🗝️🌳🍃 ?
no subject
🌳🍃
木葉
👍☺️👍
[Hmmm, though… This next part…]
🔥🍳🥩🍚
now?
🫃now?
no subject
I'm happy to, if you like. ☺️👍
Do you want me to come meet you? 👨🏻 🏃🏻♂️➡️ 👧🏽
no subject
now 👨🏻🗝️ + 🌳🍃 + 🔥🍳🥩🍚 ?
now 👨🏻 🏃🏻♂️➡️ 👧🏽 ?
🥹👍
🌳🍃 now 🏨
no subject
Ah, you're at the Valentia? So am I. 👨🏻🏨
[Going out during the day has been getting more and more challenging for him to endure. Though he hates to give in entirely to a nocturnal lifestyle, he's taken to spending much of the day wandering the hotel in lieu of venturing out into the sun.]
Shall we meet downstairs? ⬇️ In the lobby?
no subject
Valentia now
[Her first whole sentence! Sort of.]
⬇️ now? ⬇️ 15?
no subject
[After all, it will be a cold day in Hell before Liem feels comfortable going to meet someone without taking the chance to freshen up first. Especially given how ghastly he's started looking in the months since his augmenter was implanted. He needs to at least make sure he's properly groomed!
Fifteen minutes later, Liem is waiting in the hotel lobby, looking neat and presentable in a suit of local Karterian style. He does not look as though he has been eating well, any more than he usually does. In fact, if anything he looks paler than usual, with a faint sheen of sweat that gathers on his forehead as he waits for Konoha to join him. He pats his brow mechanically with a pocket handkerchief, apparently quite used by now to whatever is ailing him, and smiles when he sees Konoha approach.]
Ah, Miss Konoha. It's a pleasure to see you again.
no subject
Mister Liem, hello...
[The greeting is a bow first, because bows make the most sense to her, but when she rises from it she does add in a little wave, the hand moving to nervously fidget with some stray hairs around her ear that were a bit too short to tuck properly into her bun.]
I hope my puzzle picture messages were okay... I thought I should practice a little- ? I probably should have asked if people wanted to be practice partners first, though, huh...
[She hadn't actually intended to meet, necessarily, so she's a little worried this might be a polite excuse to stop wracking his brain over the emoji... Or... was it an excuse to go get food? He looks...]
no subject
I think I got most of your meaning. Perhaps you could explain them to me, so I’ll be able to better interpret them later on.
[He does note that her robe looks to be the same one she’d been wearing on the other occasions he’d seen her, and given how long they’ve both been here, he wonders if she’s been struggling to find clothes tailored appropriately for her, given the solely-human population of this land.]
Besides, I didn’t realize before, but… would I be correct to think that you cannot read and write this land’s script?
[He doesn’t want to make assumptions about her facility with her own language, but given that he seemed to know how to read Karteria’s language as soon as he arrived, he does suspect that this lack might have preceded her coming here. Perhaps a knowledge of written tongues is necessary to automatically grasp the Karterian script.]
no subject
I could do that!
[Beaming with gratitude over the simple but extremely thoughtful offer of letting her explain her puzzle picture thought process to him so that they might communicate with them better, she doesn't show much hint at all of shame or embarrassment when answering his question, too buoyed to deflate so quickly. Just a bit of self-consciousness over the trouble it's causing others.]
No, I can't... It doesn't look anything like the way people write where I'm from... not that, you know, I knew how to read or write that either...
[Something she just would expect people to know based on either her race or her work, but she's at least learned that isn't the case, here, and she has to add a bit of context.]
The temple school in my village didn't take jinba... and I don't really need much beyond numbers at the lumber yard...
[She holds up a finger as if she's had an idea to soften the blow, helpfully supplying,]
I do know some useful words! And I can recognize those here! "Money", and "rice", and "tea" and "food" and "liquor"... and the four cardinal directions... oh, and "shrine"... "temple"... "village"...
[The sort of words you see every day on shop signs, directions on sign posts at crossroads, and common locations with stone markers. Those words. But beyond simple nouns, when it comes to adjectives, predicates, or verbs...........]
no subject
I understand. The signage in a big city like this one is different compared to what you had back home, yes? I’ve learned quite a few new worlds since being brought here, as well.
[Not to mention, he assumes that if her village was small enough, she would presumably have learned most of the businesses by sight without ever needing to read anything to identify them. She’s right that literacy isn’t a much-needed skill for a lumber yard worker, even a foreman. It makes sense that, if no one went out of their way to make that skill available to her, she would see little need to find some other way to learn.]
If there are words you feel like you’d benefit from knowing how to write here, I’ll gladly teach them to you. You only need ask.
[Committing to something like learning how to write and read in general might seem like a lot, especially if she still wants to go home as soon as possible. What need would she have for such knowledge if she’s back home in three months? But a few supplementary words could still be useful.]
no subject
[Her smile falters for a moment when the obvious follow of "everything is really different" comes to her mind... but she manages to stop it from becoming words on her tongue, swallowing it back down in favor of preventing her fingers from wringing by hooking her thumbs in the tool belt holding her pelt wrap closed about her "waist". Actually no, wait, she needs one of those hands to tap a knuckle against her lips, brow furrowing as she thinks.]
Useful words...
[It remains a truth that three months in... Konoha doesn't want to give up on the futile hope that this is all just a dream. That she will soon wake up on her own futon, in her own home, and everything will make sense again. Barring that, that... that Patho-Gen will realize they have made a mistake and send them all back. Or at least the ones who will be useless in a fight... She doesn't want to think about being here long enough to need to know how to communicate with others, with these people...
But. Liem is being kind. And it's a nice offer, even if she laments everything else about the situation. So she actually thinks about it... and then points at herself a bit haplessly.]
Would "I" be good to know... ?
[If she could say "I 🌳🍃" or "I 👩🐎"...]
no subject
It certainly couldn’t hurt. Here, I’ll show you.
[Pulling out his syntrofos, he steps closer, turning so she can see his screen as he pulls up their conversation. The bewildering emojis remain right where he’d left them.]
This is the character for “I.” [He indicates it on the keyboard, pressing it and then composing a simple emoji message, which he then sends to her device:] I 🩷 🍚
If you wanted to write “I’m” instead, it would look like this: I’m 🌳🍃
no subject
Nibbling on her lip, she leans closer, committed to trying to memorize what Liem shows her. It's bound to be complicated.
Except it's just... one tap?]
Eh- ?
[She digs her own device out of her tool belt and stares at it, then puts it together with Liem's as if to compare them, trying to find some sort of difference in the keys. Four down, five left... the one with the little line on it???]
It's just one character? That's "I"?
[Someone is used to kanji that have... lots of strokes...]
no subject
That’s right. Simple, yes? “We” is very short, too. Here, you might like to know that one…
[Again, he taps it out on the keyboard: two letters, this time. He could probably go through every pronoun that came to mind and not encounter anything she’d find especially complicated, but he assumes the more words he throws at her all at once, the more difficult it will be for her to memorize which spelling is which.]
I didn’t mean that you need to come up with all the words you’d like to know right know, anyway. I’m sure it’d be simpler to single out useful ones as they come up, and ask me then. I don’t mind.
[He supposes that he might not reply right away if he’s busy, but in this land, he’s rarely so busy that he can’t take 30 seconds to explain the meaning of a written word, or the spelling of a spoken one.]
no subject
Thanks, Mister Liem... I'll ask if I need up needing one.
[She didn't want to bother him too much, but if it was important...]
Besides, I didn't mean to make you play teacher today... we're going to cook together, right?
[It was "cook", right? (No, Konoha, it was probably "go eat".)]
no subject
Oh… That does sound nice, but I’m not sure where we could do something like that. I doubt the hotel staff would let us use their kitchen.
[Considering they’re kept busy all day preparing the free food available for the hotel residents, he’s betting the Valentia’s kitchen is a pretty busy place. Cooking there might be a bit hectic for their tastes even if they were allowed.]
I thought maybe you wanted to eat together. I suppose I didn’t catch your meaning quite as adroitly as I’d hoped.
un: 201
Hey, Priest. I found a lost soul for you to preach Abadar's good word to.
no subject
If you want to refer to me by my title, Father would be the appropriate form of address.
[He doesn't feel like he has to accept "Hey, Priest" from some young pup with sticky fingers.]
That said, what makes you say that about this person in particular?
no subject
( Reminds himself to never call Liem "Father" out of egregiously misdirected spite )
He's terminally ill and wants to pray before he dies.
Can I put you in contact with him or not?
no subject
[He erroneously assumes this is someone Hei cares about.]
I don't mind at all. Does he need me to come visit him?
[He has completely misunderstood the situation.]
no subject
( Hei stands on the rooftop of a tall townhouse along the waterfront, watching, waiting.
I'll find you, you motherfucker............ )
A comforting message or call would probably lift his spirits.
If you can get his current address out of him, I can send him a card and care package.
no subject
[That sounds a little like Hei already tried to get his address out of him and was unsuccessful. Liem is suddenly less sure of the nature of the relationship between these people.]
Well... I'm still happy for you to give him my contact information, then. He can reach out if he likes.
[Liem wouldn't want to call him at a bad time.]
no subject
( weirdly all truths, but only because jake is drunk and thought hei was posturing........... )
So, what are you waiting for? Alms?
no subject
[It's probably for the best if a conversation is all it ends up being, since Liem definitely isn't getting a single numi from Hei.]
What is his name? Who would I be contacting?
1/2
His name is Alik, and his username is $$$. He's a construction worker from Florida.
2/2
Unable to send message -
Message Blocking is active.
no subject