(scala)

Samantha went to a lab. It was a large room with bland tables, a wooden floor with scorch marks, and another domed ceiling, but only immediately above the entrance. There was a girl looking in a telescope, except it was small and pointed downwards.

“Hello,” said Samantha to the woman staring into the telescope.

“Hello,” said the woman without looking up.

“What are you doing,” said Samantha.

The woman pinched a tiny metal clamp between her pointer and thumb on each hand. She was compressing and decompressing them, and moving her hands back and forth under the telescope. Like a tiny crab crushing peppercorn. “Scala is extracting atomos,” she said.

“A what?”

“Are… you… Anisa?”

“No, I’m her half sister.”

“Oh. Scala thought it would be Anisa. Is not-Anisa related to Anisa matrilineally or patrilineally?”

“Paternal. Uh, patrilineal.” As far as she knew, at least. It was possible they weren’t related at all. Damnable Day Vanguard.

“How unfortunate for not-Anisa.”

Blink. “Please be more specific.”

She looked up. “Scala is pulling apart bark into the smallest pieces possible. Every material has a different unit size. Sophonts can better make small pieces than magic can.” Samantha appreciated even misdirected specificity.

“I will accept dodging the question as admission of submission.”

“Does not-Anisa have the authority to behead Scala?”

“Yes.” No.

The woman looked into Samantha’s eyes briefly before bending back to the telescope. “Does not-Anisa understand that, by dint of attending this school, sophont is intelligent enough to not intentionally say things that will get not-Anisa beheaded?”

“Yeah yeah calm down. Just understand that neither Anisa nor I are Reimond.”

She was silent. She clipped together her clamps.

“Ohhhh,” said Samantha, “‘atomos’. Why are you using an adjective in place of a noun?”

“Scala is not. Scala is using a noun in noun’s proper place,” she said.

“‘Atomos’ is an adjective,” said Samantha. “The small bits are atomos.”

“Yes, Scala can see that the small bits are atomos,” the woman repeated. She tweezed a grain into a paper bag. “Noun.”

“No, as in, that is an atomos bit.”

“Noun phrase,” said the woman. “Noun noun. Wagon driver, magic wand, atomos bit. Scala cautions against debating Saxle with Scala.”

“Oh, joy,” said Samantha, with less enthusiasm than intended. “Well, putting aside that ‘magic’ is an adjective there, Samantha questions why Scala is repeating Scala’s name and not-Anisa’s not-name rather than normal pronouns.”

“She… I… can speak normally, but it takes effort. Saxle is not… her… my… first language, and… I struggle to casually use pronouns. Scala… I… find eliding the place of the pronoun altogether to be more gauche than simply speaking the name.”

“I don’t get it, if you know the language well enough to speak it as you do, shouldn’t using ‘you’ and ‘she’ and ‘I’ be just as easy?”

“Scala doesn’t get it either, half-princess, Scala thinks Scala has malnourishment-induced brain damage. Scala would prefer Samantha(?) stop talking about it.”

Really, ‘atomos’ was probably one of those words that could be used as both a noun and an adjective, but it was too late to acknowledge that.

Scala placed down her tweezers and turned to her. “Why are… you here, half-princess, what can fetid little Scala offer the sagacious half-princess.”

The woman was not fetid and therefore did not smell, and though she appeared short, Samantha was tall. Samantha expected ‘fetid’ and ‘little’ were the first two words she found when she waved for ‘negative adjective’. Wasn’t that what school was for? Learning words? Good job on sagacious, though. Samantha — I — certainly was sagacious.

“Good job on sagacious.”

“…Yeah.” She looked back down into the telescope, hands untweezered, doing nothing.

The lack of respect was fascinating; on its face, annoying, but relieving that there existed someone detached enough to be lucid as to the actual kingdom dynamics, rather than the projected.

“I’m simply new, and seek to learn more about this place before my term begins.” ‘Simply’. ‘Just’. ‘Actual’. ‘Really’. They should both talk slower, the world wasn’t going anywhere.

“Yeah. Go find Vincent. Vincent is a teacher, or a student, or an administrator, or otherwise of the ilk. Vincent deals with people like Samantha.”

“Is he a linguist?”

“Probably. Some kind of magister. No, Scala thinks Vincent did math. But Vincent does everything.”

“Okay.”

Samantha stood.

“Sorry about your brain damage.”

“Thanks.”

“Okay.” And Samantha walked away.