ii. audio. after dark. both courts.

[vrykolakas]

[If anything, the Brucolac's voice sounds worse than ever, painfully scratchy and distinctly weary. The reception isn't perfect; he's sitting in the garden of the fortress at Redgate, where the lockets work, but the blood granite is still causing some interference.]

What languages do you speak? And what language would you say I'm speaking right now?

Comments

[baseborne]

It sounds to me like the Common Tongue of Westeros, but I've heard men here name it "English" most often.

I speak that, and High Valyrian. I have a few words of the Old Tongue too, I suppose, though not near enough to claim it.

[vrykolakas]

No one has yet told me what the hell English is. Where it's spoken, who and what use it. Do you know?

[baseborne]

It seems to me "English" might be the name of their kingdom - or one of them - at least, that is how the most of languages are named where I'm from.

I had not thought to ask, in truth. But I could, if you'd wait?

[vrykolakas]

No, no. I'll drag it out of someone. It's no pressing issue.

[A low exhale, and he mutters:] Fuck, I'm pissing into the wind here.

[Metaphorically, promise.]

[baseborne]

[Thank goodness for metaphor, because pissing into the wind is dangerous business, friend: that's how you get splashback.] What did you hope to know, my lord?

[vrykolakas]

[That would be the cherry atop the cake. The pissy cherry atop the dragon cake. Fortunately the Brucolac's vocabulary outspans his bodily functions, so that's another reason it's good to be ab-dead.]

The Brucolac.

Little. Much. I'm curious about how this automatic translation works; it's a loose thread and I'm still, somehow, enough of an optimist to hope that if I pull hard enough, everything will unravel. Except, regrettably, I can get no traction, see wind and pissing. As I said. No pressing issue. An irritation.

[baseborne]

[A thoughtful pause. Jon hadn't actually considered any of it, because he's not exactly the most cerebral guy, but now that he's here...]

It's not just the men what come here, either, t's the native folk and the fairies too. Everyone understands me when I speak, and I've not come across any talking in tongues I cannot grasp, though their names seem too strange to me to be of any place I know.

It must be some magic, but I know little and less of that. [But more than before coming here, and probably more than he should.]