Fic: Friends and Acquaintances

[meridian_rose]

Title: Friends and Acquaintances
Fandom: Original
'Verse/Series: Kat
Pairing/Characters: Honor, Cal, implied/unrequited Honor/Kat
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 107
Prompt: For the writerverse drabble prompt "just friends"
Summary: The Old Tongue has several words for 'friend' as Honor discovers
Warnings: None


"Katerina mo cara es," Honor said carefully.

"No."

Honor frowned. "Should it be es mo Cara?"

"Either works, really," Cal said. "Not many people are speaking the Old Tongue fluently and written records have it both ways."

"I know. So what was wrong with that?"

"Not cara. That means friend."

"Yes." Honor said expectantly.

"Just friend. Like Briana is your friend. It's not wrong. Just inaccurate."

"So what do you suggest?" Honor demanded.

"Innooin."

"Meaning?"

"Beloved."

At Honor's expression, Cal added hastily, "I'd be innooin too. It's for anyone closer than an acquaintance. I'm not saying mo chroí, literally, 'my heart'."

However accurate that might actually be.

Comments

[eternal-moonie.livejournal.com]

Absolutely AWESOME!!!!

[meridian_rose]

Thank you :D HUGS. That was the last of the 'drabble a day' prompts so I can relax a bit now!

[hrhrionastar.livejournal.com]

Aww :) This is so sweet, and I love the translation/different languages stuff :D

[meridian_rose]

Thank you. I'm still finding my way with the languages and cultures but this I thought was fun, the subtle differences between friend, close friend, and lover; it's why we have words like acquaintance, after all :D I wanted to write more but there was a specific upper word count for these drabbles!

[brinchen86.livejournal.com]

Aww, that was great! I really love how you used the difference of languages here for the prompt. And that there can be so many words for friends. Really great idea! I also love the exchange between the characters. It's written very well and flows really nicely. Great interpretion of the prompt. Also the open beginning and open end fit to this story very well. Great work, I really enjoyed reading this!

[meridian_rose]

Thank you very much :D I write this 'verse often, so all the fics are naturally open-ended - I do my best to make each ficlet stand alone however, so I'm glad it worked here! Language and labels are interesting to me, and I'm glad someone else found it enjoyable :D

[dorothydeath.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I'm so curious about all this! :D When and where is this taking place? Why would they need to speak the Old Tongue? (How did you come up with it, btw?) Do they need it for the Tour? Is there some place people still speak it? Or the guys are just having fun?

Anyway it's a lovely piece, thank you so much for posting it! :D
*FLAILS*

[meridian_rose]

Thank you :D

I guess it's pre Tour and Honor is brushing up on his languages. I see the Old Tongue being a bit like Latin in our world; there are elements that still exist, especially in learned areas such as law/medicine and a lot of documents would originally have been written in it. And for tradition's sake, new documents might be written in it, especially if that's a common tongue between two kingdoms. So it can be important for some of Honor's duties.

The Old Tongue I'm cobbling together is horribly bastardised Irish in keeping with the Celtic overtones of Kat's heritage. I play about with the spellings and sometimes anglicise by spelling the words as they are pronounced.

[brontefanatic.livejournal.com]

Lovely - the slight distinctions between forms of address can mean everything.

And the last line was perfect.

[meridian_rose]

Thank you :D Absolutely, that one word can make such a difference! Languages are fun to play around with.

[ami-ven.livejournal.com]

Very nice!

[meridian_rose]

Thank you :D