So, here's my first attempt at translating something from French into English. This fanfiction was originally written and published by me under the title of Jeu Courtois (literally: "courtly game", but I think "Courtly Love" sounds better… so, "Courtly Love" will be the title of the English version) in July, 2013. English isn't my mother language, so please, if you see something odd, tell me and explain me why: it only will help me to improve my English "skills", and I'd be extremely grateful to you.
I hope you'll enjoy this narrative and wish you lots of pleasure while reading.
San Francisco, July 2228.
Sarek, Ambassador of Vulcan on Earth, left the buildings of the Federation and breathed for the first time the air of an earthly metropolis. Around him, a beautiful park, covered of greenery; a longer way away, the San Francisco Bay, overhung by the Golden Gate Bridge. Birds were singing on the trees. A huge blue sky, without any cloud. "Fascinating", said the Ambassador, losing himself in the contemplation of the landscape. He already saw everything of it on a screen, but the real-life sight was worth it. The Earth was full of life, all painted in cold colors, with water covering two thirds of its surface… For short, it was all Vulcan wasn't. And this was enough to make the stay interesting.
Sarek went further to the most surprising part of the landscape: the ocean. He only looked briefly at the Golden Gate Bridge (after all, there were lots of similar bridges over the huge cracks on Vulcan, and building them was a child's game), then he went to the shore of the bay. Not too close: as a Vulcan, he wasn't really fond of the aqueous element, especially when it had to be measured in miles-cube, and even less when he was aware of the flow's high speed and the stones' slipperiness… All in all, logic was telling him veeery loudly that the people who wanted to swim there were really rash. And he didn't consider himself reckless.
After spending a long time watching the ocean (and the sunset), Sarek took the road for his quarters, hesitated quite a bit when he reached the door and went back: he wasn't tired at all. More accurately, the strong need he felt to discover the world he was going to live in for the next few months reduced all his tiredness to a ridiculously low fact. He went through the park again – cadets from Starfleet were slowly invading it – and saw, on a bench, a really young woman reading: her book was almost finished, only two or three pages left. She stood up, put her book back into her purse and left.
Since, Sarek met his destiny – even if he didn't believe in it. He felt like seeing that woman at least once a day, in many different places. The first time, it was in Chinatown: she was crossing the road, a bag in her hand. Then, he saw her sitting at a terrace with three other girls of her age. And so on, and so forth, in many places of the town. Obviously, this wasn't logical. In fact, it was really unlikely. Fortunately, Sarek found a satisfying explanation: he scarcely saw the Reader. She was average-tall, skinny, with long brown hair. Lots of human beings were fitting that description, without being her. Maybe he was just mistaking… He only needed a few more time to be able to distinguish all those women, then he would recognize having been confused by his new situation, and all of this would be over.
It didn't seem very difficult.
By the way, why did he see her, not any other woman? She had nothing special, she was only a human girl amongst others… Something must have struck him, but what? Her attitude on the bench, when she was reading, maybe? Or the elegance of her gait? Well! All of this was completely irrational.
Admittedly. Absurd. But it carried on.
Sarek ended up persuading himself that, being on an illogical planet, with illogical people, it was kind of logical to always bump into the same woman, every time he wanted to do some field ethnological survey. After all… why not?
He raised an eyebrow. Indeed: why not?
So, that's it, folks! Hope you enjoyed it… and especially, hope that I haven't hurt your linguistic feelings too much. ;) The French version of that story already comprises 5 chapters (and isn't over at all), but it takes me a long time to translate from my mother language to English, so I really don't know when I'll be able to post the next one. So, see you soon (or not-that-soon, but as soon as I can)!
