Cordimancy by Hardman Daniel

Author:Hardman, Daniel [Hardman, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sivanea Publishing
Published: 2015-12-13T18:30:00+00:00

24

thirteen years ~ Toril

When Toril asked about his friend’s age, the answer shocked him.

“Thirteen,” said Oji flatly. The little man smiled at Toril’s open jaw. “That seems young?”

“Of course,” answered Toril. “When I was thirteen I was barely past my naming day. Still a child.”

“I am born osipi, not a human who naming-became one. I had this when I was six,” puffed Oji, rubbing his mustache as he jogged beside Toril’s horse. He’d dismounted half an hour earlier, claiming a need to stretch his legs; he showed no signs of fatigue.

“But how can a thirteen-year-old have any sort of judgment or maturity?” Toril asked. “There’s just not enough time to live much in so few years.”

“Not enough time to live?” said Oji, raising a hand in a gesture of disbelief. “I day-live more than you week-live.”

“You eat lots of meals. You sleep several times. That’s not the sort of living that I mean.”

“It’s not the living I mean, either. We live faster, human. As you bounce once in the saddle, my heart beats half a dozen times, and my thoughts fly apace. It is tiresome to speak to you, when you dawdle to choose thoughts and word-put them.”

“Your speech isn’t much faster than mine,” Toril said. He remembered how he’d once been tempted by Dashnal’s fire. He remembered feeling so… different. But wasn’t Oji exaggerating a bit?

“I was trained,” said Oji gravely, trotting around a large thistle and angling back toward Toril’s horse. “It’d be much easier to chirp, but it’d also be rude.”

“I know you use your hands...”

“Have you never learned more about us than that stereotype?” Oji countered. “The signs are useful; I can communicate from a distance, color my words, speak behind my back. Perhaps I should teach you sometime. But we talk without the signs all the time—when it’s dark, when we call to someone who’s out of sight... Osipi speech mostly word- and form-matches your own, but we prefer a more natural pace. Have you never heard it?”

A stream of syllables poured from his mouth, full of vowels and sibilants and clicks. Some phrases brought twinges of recognition, but the tempo was impossibly fast. When he was finished, a long pause ensued as Toril digested this new strangeness.

“I felt the power of your fork on my naming day. But I still thought that osipi were getting the raw end of the deal, to only live a few years.”

“That’s how you measure life? In years? Judged so, the satarisu would be lucky and we’d be cursed.”

“Yes.” Toril was rather surprised that his friend did not see it that way.

“Life is experience, stonecaster. The sata renounce all magic so their lives may be prolonged. Is two hundred years worth the cost?” Oji exhaled loudly. “It isn’t just the magic they lose, you know. They hear well, but music escapes them. They see well, but only gray. They’re just as taste-immune as temperature-immune. They long-remember a few things, but as they age, much substance leaks away. That’s why they’re so record-fond.

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