A/N: Well. This is a oneshot. I decided it's better to write oneshots, since I'll never have to add on to them, as I'm terribly lazy. I wrote this all in like, an hour or so, so it might not be the best quality. But I hope you enjoy!
It's not a self-insert. I intentionally did not mention the protagonist's name or his physical features. It is true that the main character shares my love of languages, but that's not all of it.
I suppose the main reason I wrote this is because I thought it'd be interesting to look at a character being brought to Haven City from a linguistic point of view. Obviously they'd speak a different language, and likely one that is vastly different, which is why I made Ilvan a Verb-Subject-Object rather than a Subject-Verb-Object language like English. The person from Earth would have to learn a vastly different language in order to survive. Not to mention that there likely be several languages on that planet.
I made up the multiple languages in Haven City thing just for fun. Ah well. I'm a language nerd. XD
"You speak Ilvan like a native," he said in English with a smooth accent, drawing out the s's and v's. Samos' white eyebrows were furrowed. Obviously, he wasn't complimenting me for the sake of our strange friendship. There lay heavy implications behind his comment, and a lengthy conversation was sure to follow. I was pleased. I never tired of language related conversations.
"It's been almost five years of constant immersion, Samos, and I am young. I'm not sure why my fluency surprises you," I replied in the same language. The words came easily, but I could tell that I spoke English differently than I had when I first came to Haven City.
"Bah!" he blasted as he waved his staff in disapproval of my answer. The movement rocked his small body, but I suppose it didn't matter since he was levitating. Around now, I realized Samos was jealous. The bastard had the gall to be jealous that I could pass for a native speaker of Ilvan, the most common language spoken in Haven City, when he could float at will and could talk to plants!
His outburst was not yet complete, although he switched to Ilvan. "You speak it far better than I do, and I've lived in this mess of a city for seven years. Seven years, by the Precursors!"
I merely grinned. He was lying, of course. His native language was so closely related to Ilvan that he had absorbed it rapidly and now lacked any accent. I decided that I wanted to rub my knack for languages in his face a little bit more, so I switched to a language he couldn't speak at all: Kirsh, the language of Lurkers, a language I unfortunately spoke with a heavy accent. Not that Samos would know. "Count your blessings, old one, and stop being so indignant. At least you can hover and converse with the plants…like a druid. You can't be a Sage of everything!"
Before he could condemn the smug arrogance of addressing him in a language he couldn't understand and found distasteful with one of his famed tirades, Keira stepped into the room and tapped her father's shoulder. He merely grunted to acknowledge her presence, but she gestured to me. Samos turned around and they began to chat rapidly in their ancient dialect. I caught a few words; their language was a very old form of Ilvan after all, perhaps akin to listening to spoken Middle English for me. But it was just too damn quick for me to pick out anything meaningful.
Growing tired of their incomprehensible banter, I returned to the letter I had been writing for five years and had never finished. It was in English, of course, since my dear parents spoke only English, and I wrote in the Latin alphabet, so blocky and harsh when compared to the flowing curves of Ilvan, so much like the Arabic script I had never mastered.
I missed Arabic.
I know you'll never believe where I am, but if you're willing to have a little faith in your crazy son, go to my shelf, if you haven't thrown it away, and pick up a game called Jak 2. Don't pick up Jak 3, you'd actually have to play that to see where I am…it's all so crazy.
I sighed. I knew I'd reject this draft of the letter. I often wondered why I ever bothered writing one painful draft after another…there was, after all, no way to reach Earth from Haven City. But I missed my parents.
Life was grand here. At twenty three, I was a favored friend of many of Haven's most powerful and famous citizens. Jak Mar, the most famous man on the planet, counted me as an advisor, good ally, and friend. The wisest Sage on the planet was a companion whom I learned much from. I lived well. I was doing good things by helping rebuild Haven and conquer the city's language barrier. I was helping people. In many ways, I felt like I belonged here.
But I missed them still.
I piped up and voiced my annoyance in English so that Keira would get annoyed and Samos would understand my irritation. "If you are going to continue chatting in a language I cannot understand, I'd ask that you do it elsewhere so that I may focus on my letter. Thank you."
Keira rolled her eyes. Although we were good friends, she found my love of languages to be dull, and I was hard pressed to see what could ever be interesting about mechanics. So I suppose all was good. She hadn't greeted me yet today, so she walked over and gave me a hug before she kissed her father on the cheek.
"Ashasar," she said, the Ilvan way of bidding a good friend or family member farewell. Then she left.
Samos dropped to the floor, his hard wooden shoes clicking against the stone of my study. He paused and rudely looked over my letter. I stopped writing and examined him for a moment. He was still struggling with reading, though thankfully three years of study had given him competency with speaking English, although I couldn't imagine when that skill would ever be useful in this world. I had taught him the entire alphabet, but the inconsistency of English spelling frustrated him immensely, and I flatly refused his requests for me to render the language into phonetic spelling so that he could learn more easily. In my opinion, English looks silly when it's written as it sounds.
"I will never understand this language. Subjects come first, then verbs, then objects. How strange," he mused.
At times, I tried to place the blame for Samos' (relatively) recent love of languages on Torn. It was Torn who realized that the unfathomably intelligent and wise old doppelganger of the Underground's leader would be perfect to solve a key problem facing the Underground: language. Haven City had four major languages: Ilvan, Kraes, Shor and Slum Speak. A strong majority of Ilvan speakers were monolingual, for much the same reason that monolinguality was common among English speakers: they didn't see the use of learning other languages. Ilvan dominated under the rule of Baron Praxis, and all media was done in Ilvan. Since the Underground was originally formed from ex-KG Ilvan speakers, they were only slowly able to recruit the dispossessed, largely non-Ilvan speaking lower classes into their ranks. So Torn convinced Samos, Jak's Samos, to study the other languages and break the barrier.
"Do you remember how ridiculous I sounded when I first met you? I was so shocked to find you glorify the adverb by placing it in the beginning of your sentence…and of how after that is taken care of, the verb comes, then the subject, then the object. I must have sounded like a complete fool when I first began to learn Ilvan." I replied.
"No," he disagreed, "you simply sounded like an alien. Not that anyone would be able tell now…well, except for your ears."
I waved away his praise. I may be arrogant, but praise made me uncomfortable when I fell into those moods where I felt that I should suppress my ego. I folded up my letter. I'd toss it out later. I sighed and rested my head in my hands for a minute. I knew what was coming next.
Samos brought a green data pad over to the table and dropped it down, causing a weak slam that caused the table no harm, but still I yelped. He gave me that look again, which signified that play time was over. It was time to do some work.
"Fortunately, we finished translating the new codex into Kraes a few weeks ago, but we haven't been making enough progress with the translation into Slum Speak. The Council, though content with its own sloth, is not happy at our lack of progress. We need to speed up."
As Samos had helped unify the Underground, so were we now unifying the city. The Council had requested that we begin an effort to translate all government literature into all of Haven's four official languages. We would have a whole department to work on translating all media eventually, but for now it was just Samos and I tirelessly translating the entire codex of Haven's new laws into Kraes, Shor...and Slum Speak.
I hated Slum Speak more than any of the languages that Havenites spoke. Although its name might lead one to believe it was a bastardized vernacular of Ilvan, it wasn't; it was a completely different language. It was harsh, guttural, and filled with random pauses and stops and slurred words that drove me insane. I can deal with harsh languages. After all, German was the first foreign language I ever studied, and I miss it…but Slum Speak was simply too much.
It was also the only language that Samos could speak better than I could. And he rubbed it in. Constantly. Maybe that had more to do with my distaste for Slum Speak than any of the language's features. Maybe.
But this was my job now. It was my contribution. It was either work to break the language barrier, or let Haven City become the Belgium of this world. Besides...I had always wanted to be a translator back home.
So I got to work.
After an hour of translations that made my soul weep, I chuckled from an amusing recollection that I decided to share with Samos.
"Did I ever tell you how I was mistaken for a street whore when I was still kinda new?" I inquired.
Samos was in many ways unshockable, but I succeeded in surprising him for once. "No, I don't believe you ever have," he said to me with a horrified look.
"Of course, Ilvan slang is ridiculous and silly, so I didn't understand when someone asked me if I was a 'lost boy.' I thought they actually were asking if I was lost, so I replied yes. My foreign clothes, the tank-top and shorts I brought from home and wore on summer days, must have made him think I was some exotic treasure from far away. I don't see how, considering I'm certainly not a looker. Maybe it's the ears too. But anyways, he must have told his friends and family, because I had people giving me odd looks for weeks after. I suppose it confuses them these days how a common prostitute, as they thought I was, is now an advisor to their ruler."
Samos did not take his eyes off his work as he replied. "I'm not sure their beliefs were too far off from the truth, young man."
I laughed, and called him a very unsavory name that would cause Keira to blush and Jak to turn purple with rage. But Samos just pretended like he hadn't heard me. It was his way of showing that I amused him. If I hadn't, he would have caned me with his staff, the one that Daxter called the "Painbringer."
I felt an urge to accomplish something, so I excused myself and abandoned my translation work for a few minutes. I navigated back to my suite, which often was more of a study than a bedroom. I tossed my latest draft of the letter into the incinerator, and got a new sheet of paper.
Carefully I penned out the heading. I wrote my parents' address in as clear and neat handwriting as I could. I had lost count of how many days I had been in Haven City, so I had no clue what the date was by the old calendar. But I did know that I had been brought here around five years ago, so the year on Earth would be 2014. I lovingly wrote the "Dear Mom and Dad" that was supposed to herald some grand message, some epic tale of my life in the last five, bitter, joyous years.
I wondered if they were still alive. I wondered if they missed me. I wondered if America was still a country, or if the strain of the economic crisis had destroyed it in only five short years. I wondered if World War Three had broken out. I wondered how my brothers were doing. I wondered what colleges my friends had gone off to and how they were faring. I wondered if they missed me. I wondered if there had been a search and rescue, an amber alert, or maybe an announcement at my school.
I allowed myself to continue pondering these details which I had no hope of ever knowing. They were lost to me forever. I shook myself out of my thoughts and penned what I knew to be the last draft of my letter.
Dear Mom and Dad,
I miss you, and I love you. Farewell
There's so much else I could say. But it all comes down to that.
And I wish it hadn't ended like this. But it's fate.
Think fondly of me, but move on, I beg you.
Live your lives, and live them well.
You've earned it. I'll never forget either of you.
Tell everyone I said hello…and that I miss and love them.
Your Son
There. It wasn't the desperate, bitter letter I tried to pen down that first year in Haven City. It wasn't the epic tale of my exploits that I wanted to send them in the second or third years. It wasn't the botched attempt at eloquence I had almost written in the fourth.
No. This was simple. It said all I needed to say. And it said goodbye. A goodbye they would never see.
I walked out onto my balcony. I looked over Haven City, bathed in calm sunlight. It really was a beautiful city now, with all the rebuilding and the renovations. It would be the envy of the world before my life was spent. As I stared out, the wind kissed my face, fresh from the lush forest I visited often.
It reminded me of home.
I looked at my letter. All in English. Not a single soul on this whole planet could read it except Samos, and he would never find it. It would probably end up in the hands of some poor soul, uneducated, who would imagine it to be some silly code. He'd never know it was a letter of farewell and love from a son to the parents he missed terribly. That knowledge would rest with me alone.
That bleak outcome didn't satisfy, however. So I took my pen and wrote, carefully and in the best handwriting I could manage, down a beautiful, painful word that hopefully would clue someone in to what this letter meant to me.
Ashasar. Farewell.
I offered a prayer to a God I had all but forgotten on this foreign world, read over the symbols that would confound every denizen of this strange planet. I knew this was goodbye. With this letter went my old life.
I kissed my letter and offered it to the wind. I knew that when I let go, that when I gave my letter to the wind, my old life would finally be gone. Forever. I'd be letting go of my childhood, my memories, and my heritage. I would be forsaking the past forever and finally casting my lot in with the Havenites. With my future. It was a hard decision. I closed my eyes.
And I let go.