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There are days when Kanan wishes the detection capabilities of the Imperial fleet were a lot less good than they are. Those days usually coincide with missions that involve a lot of sitting around in a dead ship, with a deactivated Chopper and a lot of time to kill until contact is made.

Like today, for instance.

Probably all day, too. Hopefully not into tomorrow.

"So," Kanan says, voice pitched low and not quite sibilant enough to be a whisper. "How do you feel about another round of I Spy?"

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"Well," Kanan says, after another moment of silence. This one is accompanied by a small, awkward sort of shrug.

"I mean . . . "

If this were someone other than Kanan, Hera would feel more reluctant. There was no reason she couldn't teach spoken Twi'leki to others. But she'd be wondering why they were asking, how they would use it. She'd be self-conscious, about speaking with a voice she had but now rarely used, about the home and people she chose to leave, about what the asker thought of that home and people.

But she knows Kanan. She knows what, and why, he's asking.

Hera leans back in her chair. "I'm not sure how to start."

He makes a quiet assenting noise, because when he started thinking about how to work on his Jedi powers again, it felt that way, too.

"Just trying to figure it out, if you want to, should help us kill some time."

Hera doesn't speak at once, but nods. After a moment, she turns, leaning back in her chair and looking out to the empty space beyond them.

"Viulen usnajmen."

Her voice is quiet, and entirely different from how she speaks in Basic, almost as though a different person were speaking. She has entirely switched back when she explains, "Means 'The stars are beautiful.'"

Edited 2017-05-07 04:39 (UTC)

"Yeah? That's a good one."

Kanan leans forward a little, hands dangling between his knees, and looks up too.

"How'd you say that? Viulen usnajmen."

His accent is horrible, and he slurs several of the vowels together until they're indistinct. But he tries.

She laughs, softly.

But she says, "That's, um. That's a start."

He can feel a hint of color creep into his face, but he grins anyway.

Because Hera's laughing.

"That it is. Wanna tell me what I got wrong?"

Besides, you know. Everything but the first consonant?

"All right."

She turns her head, looking back to what she can see of him.

"'Viulen' is 'stars.' It's vee-eu," she says, emphasizing the 'u' sound and its difference from Basic.

"Vee-ew."

Kanan frowns, trying to twist his tongue different.

"Vee-eoo. No."

It takes him a few more tries, and him thinking to try shifting his soft palate around, to actually reproduce the sounds Hera makes.

"Vee-eu. Huh."

"Yeah, that's better."

She's quiet, still smiling, and it seems to take her a moment to remember that she should probably continue.

"Viul," she says it quicker again, so that the vi curves into the u, "is 'star.' Viulen -" Hera barely voices the last vowel, and l and n seem to run into one another, "is 'stars.'"

"Is that how you always make a plural?"

Kanan asks that first, instinctively, then starts trying to reproduce the -en sound.

He keeps leaving the back of his throat too open. Hmm.

"It's... how you make words like that plural. But not - others."

It's been a long time since Hera has had to think about how to explain something like this, and naming the intricacies of Twi'leki grammar was never a big part of her education. So she's also doing the best she can.

"Usnajm is 'beautiful.'" She again emphasizes the 'eu' beginning, and the open 'ah' in the middle. "And you have to make it plural too, so usnajmen."

"If I ask about 'words like that', are you gonna glare at me?"

Because he will totally not ask if that is the case.

"Usnajm," Kanan says first. "Usnajmen."

He's getting better at hitting the eu sound, but the en still isn't nasal enough. He'll get there! Probably.

"No, I won't..."

She's not trying to avoid an explanation, but...

Hera closes her eyes, and sighs, trying to think this through.

"There are three different... kinds of nouns? Viul is one kind, and that's how you make that kind plural. But the others are different."

"Huh. Are there good ways to tell the different kinds apart, or is it more . . . just needing to get the feel of them?"

Kanan can believe it.

"Well..."

It makes sense in her mind. Trying to sort it out through Basic, on the other hand...

"One kind is things that are real, and physical, like galomri is mountain. And one is for things that are abstract, and..."

She struggles to find a good word for it. "- disconnected from us, like otuac. That's 'time.' And then there's abstract, but - connected -"

Her lekku twitch, and Hera twists her hands in her lap. It's strange how explaining something second nature can somehow make it seem foreign.

"- like most emotions. But also viul."

"That . . . kind of makes sense."

Kanan is trying. The trick with languages is that at least some of it depends on cultural context. And Kanan's not all that great at asking about things that he thinks are personal.

Ah, well.

"I like the idea of stars as connected."

She smiles again, small but affectionate, but says, "Stars are real and physical the same way mountains are. But it's an old word, from what people used to think a really, really long time ago."

"I've got a feeling that your people weren't the only ones that thought that, a really, really long time ago."

One corner of his mouth tilts upward just a fraction.

It's good to be reminded that, even without the Force, people are still connected by the ways they think. Or can be.

Edited 2017-05-08 12:47 (UTC)

It makes her consider that she can't ask Kanan the same in any of this. The Jedi, maybe, but not the people he came from. She's not even calling him by his real name.

Her first feeling is a quiet remorse, but the next is that she's not the person to feel that.

Hera takes a deep breath, and looks back out to the stars.

"Kass rituo," she says. "Means… hello. Kind of."

Maybe that makes more sense, as a place to start.

Edited 2017-05-08 13:03 (UTC)

"Kind of?"

Kanan leans back a little, stretching his spine with tiny pops and cracks. Maybe he needs to add more stretching to his daily routines.

Anyway.

"Kass ritwo. No, that's not right. Ritwo. Rituo."

These vowels will be the death of him.

"Kass means 'day.' Or... circle. Or cycle."

They all sort of fall into one another.

"And rituo means safe. But it's something you can say for 'hello.'"

"Safe day, huh? Makes you think of what life must have been like, back before we had the stars. I mean, not that it's easy now, but it feels like it would have been different, somehow. Stuck on a planet. Stuck in one valley, even."

Caleb wasn't built for that kind of life. Kanan -- wouldn't have liked it much, either.

"Do formal and informal mean anything, language-wise? Or is that not a concept for Twi'leki?"

There is no moment, here, in which Kanan imagines meeting a Twi'lek that is important to Hera, and screwing it up with the wrong kind of greeting. Nope.

"Ryloth could be - hard to live on."

For many, many different reasons, throughout its history, that they don't need to get into right now.

But she takes a moment to think over his question, and answers, "There are different words for ... strangers and acquaintances, and for friends and family. I think they used to use the stranger one for anyone not in your clan, but now it's more for outsiders."

Edited 2017-05-08 13:49 (UTC)

"Deservedly, these days."

Ryloth keeps getting a shitty hand. They both know it.

"So what would I call myself? If I were introducing myself in Twi'leki?"

Edited 2017-05-08 13:50 (UTC)