“I know!” the woman burst out again, and it took Alija everything to stop herself from rolling her eyes at how excited this woman was over teaching. “Djed, we’ll start from djed, that is one of the most important words you’ll come across.”
Alija nodded, very familiar with it. It was magic, in essence, the energy that made up everything in the universe. It didn’t surprise her that djed was a word from Nader-canoch, and in fact, she had been expecting it. Was it a memory, or just her logic? Did it matter? “It means magic, right? Or energy, something like that?”
“No, not quite,” the woman said, and Alija frowned, wondering what it did mean. “Djed, in the more modern texts especially, is used to describe, well, djed. But from an ancient tongue perspective, it means backbone or spine. Or, that which stands upright. There’s another one too, wait a moment for me to remember it.”
As she thought, Alija wrote down the real meanings of djed, understanding how it fit. Djed was the backbone of the universe, so of course it made sense to mean that.
“Straight line!” came a call, and Alija looked up confused, not having drawn any lines at all. “No, that’s not it.” Then, realising Alija’s confusion, Jocelyn decided to explain, “The other meaning for djed. Vertical line. That’s the one. A bit of an odd one, but it’s there.”
Alija nodded, writing the last word down before flicking back a page and reading quickly, “So djedet means stand upright? And djedetlas means will stand?”
“Not quite! Replace the last letter with the -t, or -tlas. So it would be djet, or djetlas. Otherwise, good going. From what I’ve read, there are no exceptions to that. That is, unless you’re reading old books where the language was developed differently, but I’m sure you can figure them out at some point!”
That was helpful. There weren’t exceptions – except for when things were naturally hard. Why did Jocelyn have to make everything sound so difficult?
“What about the adjective, whatever that would be? Spiney, maybe? What would you expect to see for that?” she asked Alija, waiting for an answer as she tried to get Alija to think about it. The blacksmith already had, the words flickering through her mind as she thought about it.
“I want to say djeds? Although maybe it’s djes, now that you say the other thing?” she asked, a little uncertain now.
“Djeds is right. I haven’t seen that word floating around much either... I’ll think of a real adjective, wait one tick.” Three and a half ticks later, she spoke again, “Abase, the nader-canoch word for life, becomes abases, or living. And roza is the word for death, so rozas would be dead. Abases, rozas.” As she spoke, she gestured between Alija and herself, then pointed towards everyone else. The nearest Nuit looked up, a little annoyed, before returning to his work.
“Abases, rozas,” she repeated, knowing those words described everything perfectly. Pulser, Nuit. What more did she need to know? |
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