Strange Tides (unfinished)

[X]: Musical Illusionist

The next time Esme sees Menias, she finds him in the hall, where she first heard him play his flute. He's not playing, but he has one hand on his flute and he stands by one of the large windows, watching the sea. He's still wearing the loose Diellan wear, even though he's opted for something a little more on the formal side. The fact makes her happy—it's nice to see a foreigner accepting their culture so easily. She looks for any sign of injury or scars, but finds nothing. Maybe he didn't have any embarrassing encounters.

"Haven't seen you in a while, prince," she says. Menias jumps and turns around, then sighs in relief when he sees her. "Are you avoiding me?"

"I've been indisposed," he tells her. His eyes flit down to her leg, which is wrapped in bandages around the calf. "It appears you have been as well."

Esme shrugs and stands next to him. "I had a drinking accident." When she looks back at him, his eyes are wide.

"That's hardly something to joke about, Esme." He crosses his arms over his chest with a slight wince and flattens his lips. Just great. A lecture from a prince. She has Uma for that. "What if you'd been seriously injured?"

"It's just a little scrape, honestly." Esme waves it away; she doesn't even think of the cut as an injury. More of a reminder that she needs to go see Vivek and make sure she didn't do anything to scare him. He's still so young.

Menias looks away with a 'hmph' and watches the waves on the cliff. Esme leans on the edge of the window and stares down at the ocean. She can barely see the cove from here, but she manages to make out the rocks where she goes to see Vivek. Maybe she should stop bringing him fish so often. He needs to learn to hunt for himself. She sighs. Looking after him is so difficult. How is a girl like her with no experience supposed to figure out the proper balance between nurture and letting him figure things out for himself? If she was a serpent herself, she would know how much to guide and when to stop holding his hand.

"Did you ever find that book on Xellan dragons?"

Esme looks at the prince to find him staring at her with an indiscernible expression on his face. "Did I ever find what?"

"When you first took me to your library you told me you hadn't found the book on Xellan dragons."

It takes her a moment to recall, but then it hits her. He remembered that? "It's not so much the problem of finding the book as it is finding it in a language I can read."

He cocks his head. "You don't understand Xellan?"

"Trust me, I wanted to learn," she says, leaning her head on the wall with a soft smile on her face. Languages like Xellan had always interested her, and their technology is so fundamentally different from theirs that she's wanted to visit for a long time. Maybe she'll be able to figure out a way to merge their technology in a way that'll improve it with minimal downsides. "But you need to memorize all their characters—they have hundreds—and their grammar system is completely different than Nirvish or Lethyrian."

Menias nods. "And here I was under the impression that you were a linguist prodigy." She chuckles.

"Maybe I'll learn it one day." She toys with a band of cowry shells on her wrist. "Was it hard for you? Learning Nirvish, I mean. Is it different from Liesig?"

"In Liesk, all children learn Liesig and Nirvish at the same time. I don't really remember what it was like learning Nirvish. It's practically a mother tongue at this point."

"But Liesig is easier for you?"

"Of course. It's what we speak at home." The prince studies her for a moment. "You said Lethyrian."