Lost in translation (open)

[Bara]

Bara flew above the tree tops, gliding on the thermals of warm air. Her small light body rode the currents easily, her red tailed hawk wings shifting and constantly adjusting to make the most of the breezes. She circled a small clearing and her keen powder blue eyes caught movement below. She hesitated a moment and then tucked her wings in for a dive. The wind whipped through her dark auburn coat as she plummeted toward the ground. It stung her eyes and they started to tear up. Much too early she opened her wings and flapped, slowing her decent. The squirrel below was alerted to her presence and skittered away, chattering at her from a tree as she landed in the clearing. She sighed. She had seen real birds do this sort of thing, and even other winged wolves. But she couldn’t seem to figure it out, and every time she lost her nerve. She still had so much to learn.

The squirrel was still chittering away up in the tree. Bara growled softly at it in annoyance. She turned away from it and sniffed around the little clearing. This land had so many new smells. She only wished she could put names to some of them. Her stomach grumbled audibly and she frowned. Some great hunter she was. She couldn’t catch anything that wasn’t old, weak, or already injured. Clumsy on land and ineffective from the skies, it was a wonder she hadn’t starved to death. She would have to find something to scavenge soon.

The packs that had taken her in had made fun of her for that. Only pups and the sickly relied on others to make their kills for them. But Bara had never really been taught how to hunt. This was how she had survived as long as she had, so to her it was natural. But she could detect the disproval in others. She had stopped scavenging while she was with them because they had provided for her. When food began to run low she had left them, afraid of being a burden and unwilling to let others go without.

Perhaps she needed to find a pack again. But the very thought of it made her stomach turn nervously. The language barrier was a strong one, and even though she had learned quite a bit of these wolves language it was still a difficult transition for her. Since she understood more than she could comfortable say herself she knew that most thought her to be unintelligent. That hurt her pride and often intimidated her into silence. If she didn’t speak she couldn’t make mistakes.

She sat down and looked up at the sky, her back leg scratching at her ear. She didn’t remember much about “home” but she remembered the same sky. It was nice to know that some things never changed.

[myra]

Myra kept her nose close to the ground and her thin fuzzy tail in the air. The little pink feelers on her snout touched the soft earth, her brown, blind eyes blinked every so often, although she couldn't tell the difference between the dark and the light of closed eyelids.

Careful now, said her second soul, a star-nosed mole by the name of Andrie, as she almost slipped on a wet patch of moss, remember to use your claws, dig them into the ground so you don't fall.

Myra did as he instructed, lodging her stubby claws into the ground with each step. Her claws, unlike other wolves', were stubby and thick, good for digging. She, like other myous, had a lot of the basic features of her second soul.

A sudden sound and smell alerted Myra to the presence of another wolf. She halted, ears swiveling to catch the faintest sound of pawstep of breath, nose twitching to latch onto the smallest scent. She felt her way forward, knocking her head on the low branches that wound through the woods every so often.

"Hello?" her soft voice echoed through the hollow trees, "Anyone there?"

[Bara]

Bara’s ears perked up at the voice in the trees. She tensed for a moment as though about to spring into the air and take flight. But the voice hadn’t sounded angry or accusative. It was a neutral greeting. There was no reason to run away yet. “Hello,” she called out tentatively. She looked in the direction the voice had seemed to come from waiting for the other to appear. When she did Bara was quite surprised.

For all her travels Bara had never met a Myou before. Her home pack, along with her adoptive ones had been mostly Keiyou and Lupus. She had seen the occasional Yagi, and found their large size and spikey things quite intimidating. She had heard rumors of fish wolves, but as she much preferred sky to water she had never seen one herself. But what she saw before her was a mystery. She wasn’t even completely certain that this other creature was a wolf. The other was small and looked unlike anything Bara had ever seen.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeehh,” she gasped in surprise jumping up from where she sat. She cocked her head from side to side as though trying to find the proper way to look at her. Quite suddenly she realized that she was probably being rather rude. Her tail drooped slightly as her mind raced to think of what to say. “Hello,” she said again. “Eto…I…I surprise.” No, wait that was wrong… “I am surprise,” she corrected quickly, unsure if even that was right. Her accent was strange and the words seemed to stumbles out of her mouth as though they didn’t belong there. Even though she didn’t wish to offend she found that she couldn’t stop staring at the other.

[myra]

Myra blushed as the other wolf gave a cry of surprise. She turned her blind eyes towards the sound, but dipped her head low to hide her nose and lowered her tail.

"I-I'm sorry," she muttered, "I must look kinda strange... I wouldn't know, but people tell me..." she trailed off, embarrassed, "Er... you're Surprise? That's an interesting name... I'm Myra, Myra Burbanks. Nice to meet you."

Do you hear her accent? asked Andrie, I don't think she's from around here... Myra had, in fact, noticed her accent, and asked about it.

"Umn.... where's your accent from? It's pretty." she shuffled her paws, considering digging herself a little hole and burrowing away. How many times had this happened? Scaring some wolf with her strange paws and nose, staring at them with eyes that couldn't see? She had met people who didn't mind, but Surprise didn't seem to be one of them.

[Bara]

Bara felt terrible. She hadn’t meant to be so rude. She hadn’t caught all the words, but what she saw in the other’s body language was what she often felt herself. A desire to be anywhere else, a deep feeling of embarrassment for something that couldn’t be controlled. Now she really wanted to spring into the air and get away from here, but she knew she couldn’t leave without trying to make things better. That was the rub though, as she really wasn’t sure that she could say the right things to not make it better.

She realized that she had confused the other into thinking her name was Surprise. Inwardly she growled in frustration at herself. Calm down, she thought, you’re only going to make it worse if you get mad at yourself. You can do that latter. Right now you need to focus and find the right words.

She took a deep breath and began to speak. Her voice was markedly quieter, not a whisper, but lower due to her own embarrassment and shyness at speaking. “Myra,” she repeated the other’s name slowly, trying to work out the sounds in her mouth. It was a good name, she thought, and thankfully rather simple. “No, no, not Surprise…. My name is Bara. Nice to meet you, too.” Self introduction and greeting, check. Those parts were well practiced, but what came next was going to be difficult.

Bara had no idea what the word accent meant. She repeated the rest of the question to herself, trying to work out its meaning. “Where you from…FROM!” Oh! She knew that one! Or at least she hoped she did… But how to answer well? “I’m from,” she began slowly, looking off at the distant sky, “from very very far.” She wasn’t even sure where home was anymore. “I’m sorry. My…words…are bad.”

If there was a single phrase that Bara said more than any other, it was probably “I’m sorry.” She had learned very early that this phrase was important and that, when things got uncomfortable or awkward it was a very safe phrase to use. But she also knew that even this phrase had its limits. “I’m sorry,” she apologized trying to think of what to say. “I’m sorry…” she repeated again after drawing a blank, knowing that she sounded rather stupid. Her ears fell back and her posture lowered as she avoided looking at the other wolf (whom she had not yet realized was blind). Again she resisted the urge to spring into the air and escape this horrible mess she had caused. But she fought it off, knowing full well that she had to try to get herself out of this mess.

Bara didn’t know the word for mole. She knew that moles dug, and by the looks of Myra’s claws, she was similar. “Eto…You are…digger wolf? I do not know digger wolf before. I…” she fumbled again and whimpered slightly. She didn’t know what to say anymore and felt like she was about to cry.

[myra]

Myra tilted her head slightly in confusion. Her name was Bara, not Surprise? She supposed that Bara must still be getting used to the local dialect, seeing as, like she had said, she was from far away. Myra grinned.

"That makes two of us!" she said, "I come from pretty far away too! And you're words aren't bad, you're still learning, right?" Myra was trying to be as polite as possible, hoping the foreign wolf would stay. One of the things she enjoyed most was listening to descriptions of other people's homes, widening her "view" of the world.

Myra tilted her head again as Bara repeated that she was sorry several times.

"What's there to be sorry about?" she asked, and then, in answer to Bara's next question, added, "I'm partly a mole, if that's what you mean," she put a paw on her nose, the little feelers tickling the pads, "I'm a Myou, so I have a mole for a second spirit..." she put her paw back down and scratched, embarrassed, at the earth, "Er... what are you, Miss Bara? I... can't see you..." she asked quietly.

[Bara]

Bara sighed inwardly with relief. The other wolf didn’t seem mad, and the awkward moment seemed to have passed for now. There was still a general confusion about, but this was nothing new to Bara. Now she just had to keep going without sounding stupid.

Mole. Bara assumed that that word meant the animal the strange wolf seemed to resemble’, since she had touched her nose after saying it. “Myou?” she repeated questioningly. “What is Myou?” She thought hard trying to piece it all together in her mind. “Myou means digger wolf? Mole wolf?” she asked thinking hard. Perhaps that was the proper name for it.

At Myra’s question Bara took a closer look at her. She had said that she could not see. And that was when Bara finally noticed the unfocused eyes. All of Myra’s seemingly strange movements made sense now, at least slightly. There was still the question of she had asked to consider. She knew the word for her species in her own language, but wasn’t sure what it was here. It wasn’t a question she had been asked before; most people could see her and could tell what she was from there. Myra could not see…that complicated things a bit. She couldn’t rely on non verbal clues to help her in this conversation. She had to use her words to paint a picture for the other. “I’m bird wolf,” she said slowly, trying to think if there was a better name to explain it. “I have wings,” she began slowly trying to think of what made her different from others. “And small…no, thin tail. I fly. Up,” she said looking heavenward, “in sky.”

[myra]

"Myou means digger wolf? Mole wolf?"

Myra shook her head, trying to explain.

"Ermn.... a myou... isn't just moles, it can be anything. I had a brother who everyone always said looked sorta like a pig because that's what his second soul was, and I've met wolves who say their souls are rabbits or fish or the like." Explaining what a Myou was was always tough, and usually those who'd never met one thought it was strange, some even shunned her afterwards. Hopefully Bara would be different.

Next Bara tried to explain what she was. Bird wolf? Another Myou?

"Small... no, thin tail."

Myra's hopes dropped, but at the very least she knew what Bara was at that point.

"You mean a Keiyou, right?" she asked, "I've met Keiyou before. They get around a lot, I like talking to them..." she turned her head in the direction of Bara's voice, wondering how far she'd traveled and what she'd seen.

"You said you were from far away.... what was it like there?"

[Bara]

Bara listened carefully to Myra’s explanation. She tried not to dwell on words she didn’t understand, but it was difficult. This wasn’t an easy concept to understand, even if she had known all of the words, but as it was she simply did her best to muddle through. “So…you are mole Myou, and brother is pig Myou. Myou can be much, chigau…many animal.” She had seen some different looking wolves, so that part wasn’t too hard for her to accept. It was this business with “souls” she wasn’t understanding. “You say ‘second soul’…I don’t understand ‘second soul.’” She understood that second meant two, but she didn’t really know what the word soul meant.

Keiyou, yes that was what they called her kind in these lands. She remembered hearing others use that word, but she had seldom used it herself. She made a point to commit it to memory now, it was a simple question that she should be able to answer if it ever came up again. “Keiyou,” she repeated. “Yes, I am Keiyou.”

And then she asked about her home. Bara thought hard about how to answer. It wasn’t even the words that were the problem. It was her lack of memory. She had been so young when she had left. “I don’t know,” she said quietly, a hint of sadness in her voice. “No, no. Don’t remember. When very small, no food. I made to go away. I fly over many mountain. Come here. Wolves use different word.” She frowned. It was all so complicated. And she had no idea if she was saying it right. She really hoped so, because she didn’t want Myra to think she was a spy or something as past wolves had. It was hard to gain trust when you lacked common ground it seemed. She mirrored Myra’s question, hoping to keep the conversation going. “What Myra home like?”

[myra]

"Uh... second soul... as in... your soul makes you live... or something like that, and a second soul... is like the thing that makes something else live... in you...." Myra tried to explain. It didn't work very well, but she gave it her best go.

Shaking her head, the young myou couldn't help but wish she was old enough to know more on the subject of her own species.

"I'm sorry, I'm not good at explainations..." Myra drooped as Bara explained that she didn't really remember where she was from. Apparently she had flown away, over a mountain somewhere. When asked what her home was like, Myra smiled.

"I don't really know very much about my home, but my family was friendly enough," she remembered, "Most of my family left off on their own adventures. I'm the youngest, so they wouldn't have let me go if they'd had a choice. I sorta... snuck away from the pack..."

One of your best ideas yet... Andrie said sarcastically.

"I only survived 'cause of my second soul... he told me how to survive like a mole!" Myra puffed her chest proudly, "But I'm still wolf like in some ways..."

"So, umn... Miss Bara... what's it like to fly..?" Myra couldn't help but wonder, "I mean... it seems like fun... but.... well... moles for the ground, birds for the sky is what my grandpa used to say!"