“Ewuned, dance!” Agwyn spoke in toothy, broken Uorian. She held her hands up towards Eluned with her puppy dog eyes.

“Eluned is busy, my love. Why don’t you play with my cute Elrhain for now? He looks like he could use your company.” The older woman grinned as she ruffled Agwyn’s blue hair. They had shifted into a shade purplish in recent seasons.

“Ellie sits there, think it fun. He is weak! No pway!” Agwyn pouted. She had a difficult time communicating with the adults in this convoluted language. It differed altogether from Earth Common so much she was unsure if it was even a language and not some other fantasy equivalent designed to kick transmigrators in the behind.

She hoped Elrhain’s mother, whose name she had learned a few seasons ago along with all their close families, would continue to teach her the dance. Much more interesting than deciphering words and symbols.

But her hopes waned when she saw Eluned’s eyes twitch.

“S-Sorry, dear. I have, um, these shells to carve! It’s important for the clan. I’ll dance later, okay?” To be fair, Agwyn had bothered the poor woman at virtually every chance she had recently. Asking unending questions was Elrhain’s job, and hers were to stick to their parents like an overly attached husky.

“… okay!” She reluctantly let Eluned’s sleeves go, much to the latter’s relief. Agwyn had tried to contain these urges once upon a time. ‘But I can’t help it! I have so much energy and nothing to do.’

Now she mostly gave up and just went with the flow.

She reflected back to what Elrhain had concluded on this matter, ‘Our hormones make us childish and dumb.’

‘Che, what does he know!’ Agwyn rubbed her nose as she watched Eluned carve shell after shell into elegant shapes. There was already a heap of them on a twig basket on the side. Another bowl gathered all the shell powder and fragments.

“Why do you talk funny?” Elrhain asked her in almost fluent Uorian. The cheeky young boy now looked like a three-year-old. And his silly baby-face made his derisive look at Agwyn’s lisp even more unpleasant.

“… That should be my question! How am I supposed to say ‘Like’ when I have to pronounce ‘L’ from the back of my throat? It shouldn’t exist, this awful sound.” She shot back in Earth common.

Elrhain shrugged, and her mood worsened even more.

It must have shown on her face, as Elrhain made the ‘can’t help it’ expression. “… It just better fits the biology of these ‘Dhionne’ than a traditional language from Earth. Want to practice with me?”

“… fine.” She hated how easy she was. But it was better than lying around mopping.

Elrhain thought for a bit before saying, “I’ve noticed this, but you don’t always get the sounds incorrect. Only occasionally. Like, you say ‘thuns’ and ‘suns’ in the same sentence.”

Agwyn made confused baby cries.

“… okay, so we gotta start from the identification step first. Let’s see if your lisp learned or natural.”

***

Agwyn wasn’t a poor learner. In fact, she was considered highly perceptive. In her former life, she had graduated from top academic establishments with flying colours even without the help of her influential family.

She knew nine variants of common, including the dialects from East Asia, Oceania, Central Europe, India, and Beta-00 Asteroid belt colony districts. It was a prerequisite for her line of work.

Yet now,

“I gib up.” She tumbled onto their new bed. It felt considerably fluffier on her skin than the crib. It was about seven times larger too. She wished to shout her favourable impressions about the bed out loud, to tell Cyra and Eluned how much she adored this new furniture. Even the legs of the bed were pretty, with carved runes and painted glyphs.

… but all that came out of her squished mouth were “Phwaffiness” and “Yeg.”

“Ey, don’t let it bother you too much. Most kids with speech impediments get over it by their early teens.” Elrhain scratched his head. They had conducted a series of tests on her funny-talk problem and decided it was nothing to worry about. That it would just get better with time.

She wanted it to get better right now.

Agwyn knew she had it in her.

For example, she could say words like ‘Daddy!’ fine. But sometimes, when she tried to say Dog, it turned into ‘Gog.’ Emulation became a whistled ‘Memulation’, and Ellie turned into an adorable ‘Ewwie!’

Agwyn punched the cushion with all the rage of an angry hamster just thinking about it. At this point, she didn’t even know if she was just mad about the situation or simply membarrassed.

“Ahhh!” Agwyn muffled a shriek.

She felt her dignity as a 75-year-old senior break down to pieces. ‘No… it’s a hundred and five. It took us thirty Earth years to go from a baby to a toddler! Thirty years, and I can’t even speak this effing language.’

“By the way,” She suddenly thought of an important question she just had to ask despite all her huffing and puffing, “Have you finished learning the Uorian letters?”

It was now Elrhain’s turn to feel gloomy.

“… no. These Dhionne make Traditional Chinese look like a piece of cake. I can’t figure out if they are like Inuit languages such as Inuktitut syllabics, Cuneiform, or Hieroglyphics. Are they poly-synthetic? Or simply like the old English and pretending to be Arabic? And why the hell do I have to know magic to learn letters?!”

“You get my pain now, don’t you, Ellie?” Agwyn asked with a knowing grin.

“… would you say our pain is the same when I suffer from a language that uses both an abugida and an alphabet while you cry after pronouncing ‘Language’ as ‘Langoonu’?” Elrhain looked positively offended at the very notion.

Agwyn pouted, not understanding what an abugida was.

“What if the other kids bully me?”

“You can break stone bowls to pieces like it is a biscuit!” Elrhain threw his palms up in the air. Then he frantically shook his hands in front of his face, “But don’t do that to the bullies! What if they beat me up in revenge when they can’t fight you!”

“… I won’t, okay? I was just worried I won’t be able to make any friends.”

“That’s what’s bothering you?” Elrhain asked, dumbfounded.

“Yup. In our previous life, we really flopped up on our social skills, right? This time I want to make some real friends without all the backstabbing and boot-licking.” Agwyn scrunched up her nose as she recalled all the time her trust was broken by so-called companions. And not just friends, she had a horrible eye for lovers too. It’s like she went out of her way to find the sleaziest scum-bags to fall in love.

“Well, good luck, I suppose. Your dad looks like he is someone important, like your mother from our previous life. That’s bound to attract some opportunistic folks. Even I don’t want to meet someone like Naomi again because everyone is lusting after your family influence.” The boy shuddered at the very notion.

Agwyn couldn’t fault him. Her girlfriend of six years had been the worst kind of asshole imaginable, the kind that forced you to choose between love, friends, and family. And she had been blind to it all until reality stabbed her in her sides. What’s worse is, Naomi almost ruined her relationship with Elrhain and her own mother.

Actually, things were pretty awkward between her and her best friend for a few good years after that event. Agwyn shivered in disgust and hurriedly pushed her mind away from that nightmarish past.

“Speaking of my dad,” She said. “Wasn’t he supposed to visit us today? Eluned even dolled us up.”

Agwyn moved over closer to Elrhain and patted his shiny cheeks. Eluned had put some sort of magical makeup on them both after a good round of washing and bathing. The powder caused her white skin to look less jarring and made Elrhain’s honey-coloured skin sparkle like real honey.

Agwyn had to stop herself hard from licking him.

They also both wore matching clothes made of beautiful leaves and animal fur. They had little tiaras on their head made out of some kind of bone, and shiny sapphire bracelets that clinked on their arms.

Their attires were white, blue, and olive. Agwyn’s robe looked like a frock tutu and had nicely scribbled runes along the hem. Elrhain, on the other hand, wore a simple tunic and trousers with similar magical rune-things. He said that robes were too baggy, and he felt unsafe in them without good ol’fashioned pants.

Agwyn couldn’t guess why.

She had no trouble running around and doing cartwheels in hers.

“Yeah, even mother is all pretty today,” Elrhain said. “Her dress looks like a Greek Chiton, right?”

Agwyn scrutinized the woman from afar. Eluned had stopped engraving the shells since a while ago. Now she just squatted there, knees together with both hands resting on her cheeks, looking on and off at the door. “If they made Chiton from pelt, that is.”

Agwyn suddenly saw Eluned jerk up as she discussed how this primitive tribe could turn leather into silky smooth clothes.

The older woman rose up in a rush and almost tripped, catching the wall to support herself.

The door to the room opened, and Agwyn’s father came in, followed by a tag of servants.

“Fantastic! They’re prepared for the rite. Eluned, you have surpassed yourself tailoring such clothes with such short notice.” Bromwyn clapped his hand loud; the boom was strong enough to cause a mini shock wave.

Eluned blushed. “N-No, the chieftainess also helped.”

The larger man chuckled as he strode to the bed and picked up a confused Agwyn, “Don’t undermine yourself. I know what my wife is capable of more than anyone else. The attire for today’s ritual is best left to the mother who can actually weave, rather than my clumsy queen.”

“Hi, daddee!” Agwyn spoke, her eyes turning into crescents at Bromwyn’s silly grin. She was still clutching the cushion to her chest as she greeted, “Good Evewing.”

“Good Evening to you too, my valiant princess. Today is a big day. Are you excited?” Bromwyn booped her nose with his giant index.

Agwyn saw Eluned fixing some edges of Elrhain’s clothes through the corner of her eyes. He was listening attentively in on their exchange. They made eye contact, and she gave the boy an understanding nod.

“What happening, daddee?” She asked, trying to grip hold of Bromwyn’s offending finger.

“Aha, I forget you are yet babes sometimes. How clumsy of me.” Bromwyn slapped his forehead. Agwyn wondered if a slap so strong could leave marks in metal.

“Your mothers asked us all to keep this a secret since they wanted it to be a big surprise. I am taking you both out of this courtyard today for your inaugural rite. It’s time for the entire clan to see how heroic my two little warriors are.”

“Eh, weally?!” Agwyn’s heartbeat sped up. She almost threw away the cushion in delight, about to ask for details.

Elrhain beat her to the punch, “Really? We can finally leave this stifling room, big guy?” He left his protesting mother behind and grabbed onto Bromwyn’s Viking kilt.

Her father just grinned at that, “Excited too, are you? Where ever did you learn to speak such complicated words as stifling? And yes,” He ruffled Elrhain’s bushy hair, much to Eluned’s dismay.

“Father has ordered a glorious feast of the final hunt on spring, to celebrate the coming of summer and three strong cycles lived for the dearest prince and princess of our great clan! You will be engaged at the banquet in the presence of all the gallant heroes of Earthloch Siorrakty; the entire county will relish in honour of your happiness! The ancestors shall grant you the future of our clan, and the spirits will bless your love for hundreds of cycles to come!”

“Ah!”“Eh?”

Agwyn felt like time had stopped. The pillow almost slipped out of her hands. Still, she clutched onto it even tighter by sheer impulse, as if it was the only thing that could keep her exploding thoughts grounded.

She felt parched and drowned at the same time. Her breathing grew turbulent, and her mind cluttered like a broken tractor. As if a jester was prancing a waltz wearing spiky circus shoes on her tiny brain as the spongy organ over-clocked to decipher the meaning of Bromwyn’s words.

‘En-gagemento? What a peculiar word. It has Enga and Gement in one phrase. What do they mean? Rolls of the tongue weird… Egnagementing…’

“Agwyn, my daughter. Is something the matter? Oh! How silly of me once again. You don’t know what engagement means, do you?” Bromwyn’s faded voice came from here and faded there as if he was speaking from three rooms away.

Agwyn only saw sparks twinkle in her shaky vision, but her dizzy noggin inevitably started grinding again at her father’s following words.

‘No, hang on a minute! Calm down, Agwyn. This is it! The answer to all the questions. So that’s why we were raised together!’

“Waists together? No, my virtuous daughter. That happens much in the future when you are of mature age.” Bromwyns voice abruptly turned tense. There was some other emotion in there, too, that Agwyn just couldn’t spot.

“Engagement means becoming like your mother and me, or Eluned and Dofnald. It is the starting rite before the holy Matrimony is consummated. You will devote the rest of your lives together. You will one day even have sons or daughters of your own!

… waists together, what an immoral way to put it. Who taught you that anyhow? I will reduce his bones into soup and drink of his misery! Was it a servant?”

‘Ah, did I misspeak raised together out loud? Wait, I’m going to m-marry him? S-Sons and Daughters!’

“Elrhain!” She could feel the steam rising from her blushing face as she heard Eluned’s worried cry. She looked down to find the boy sitting on the ground with a pale face. He looked up at her in marvel with hands that shook like a tuning fork.

“Huh!?” “Ew!?” They simultaneously let out ear-splitting confused yelps, much to the adults’ horror.

Before Agwyn could throw the pillow at Elrhain, though, he had already run out of the room into the hallway. Agwyn, finally coming to her senses, squiggled out of her father’s embrace and sprinted right after the escaping groom-to-be in maniacal glee.