72. Commonly Uncommon

Date Written: July 10, 2019

Date Posted: November 19, 2020

Characters: Veneziano

Summary: A young person has a brief, but strange encounter with an Italian stranger. They ponder languages, government conspiracies, and what have you.

Notes: I have a headcanon that the Nations have this secret language that sounds a lot like a person's native tongue, but not. A regular person can only grasp a hint of the meaning before it abruptly changes and suddenly, it feels like they never understood it at all.


I liked listening to people speak.

Call it a bad habit, but ever since I was a little kid, I enjoyed hiding somewhere and watching people interact and have conversations without me. Sometimes, they talked about me (boring, but whatever), while others spoke about other matters that I found more immensely entertaining and educational. Over the course of my life, I had been told many times that it was simply rude to eavesdrop, but that only encouraged me to find better hiding spots. I wouldn't call myself a contrary person, but this was a habit that I wasn't willing to break any time soon.

It's just… the wealth of information that could be gleaned in how people interacted with each other and what they said and how they said it… It's interesting.

So, one day, I found myself standing at one of my local bus stops in my city. After a few moments of thumbing through a novel that I had brought with me, I saw a man emerge from a fancy building nearby. Assuming him to be some sort of politician or businessman, I avoided him big time. However, my senses got the better of me because I began to hear the snippets of some sort of conversation occur practically right next to me. At first, I thought he was speaking Spanish, but then it morphed into Italian… But then I began hearing snippets of English? It was a strange mishmash of accents and dialects, the meaning of one thing changed and became fluid, as if he were mixing different types of chemicals, but the chemicals themselves were actually languages.

For a person whose hobby consisted of listening to people and storing away information for myself, you can just imagine how frustrating it was to be on the precipice of understanding, but not.

A little curious, I waited.

Once the man with auburn hair and that strange curl finally ended his phone call, I finally took my chance. It had been approaching ten minutes when the man in front of me had been speaking quite fluently and animatedly in a foreign language. I don't know why, but the language he spoke seemed familiar, but… it was foreign, that much I knew.

Certain words and inflections made a mark in my memory. It was like listening to a mother's lullaby after so many years; instantly recognizable, but a shock to the ears.

I wasn't too knowledgeable about languages, but I did have a passing interest in some European dialects. I was a native to English, I had a healthy dosing of Italian, a tiny bit of French, and I was almost fluent in Spanish. It was strange hearing this language that was reminiscent of my native tongue, but there was just a hint of something that twisted and distorted the sounds to make it a whole new language.

So distracted by my thoughts, I didn't notice that I had been staring at him for quite some time. Fortunately for me, I didn't stay silent and contemplative for too long. When I stranger called my attention, I immediately smiled back and greeted him.

"Hello," his voice was soft and unhurried amidst the din of passing traffic—I had to edge closer to hear him properly. "May I help you?"

I emphatically shook my head. "Oh! I just happened to hear your conversation—that is to say, I wasn't eavesdropping on purpose, oh no—and you were speaking in a different language." A few nervous chuckles escaped my throat while I tried to escape the man's earnest gaze. Could he tell that I was being weird? I desperately hoped that he wouldn't label me as crazy.

For a second, his lips thinned as he contemplated an answer, I wasn't too sure if that was a good thing or not, but—

"International." He said that word so suddenly, I felt like I was suffering from whiplash. No sooner had I made a shocked face that he amended his answer with a definitive, "International, Common Tongue, First Word." He leaned back against his seat within the bus stop with a half amused half judging smirk. "Any of the above will do."

"You're lying." Those words that have been spoken… they seemed so familiar! I wouldn't have been surprised if the language was just another Italian dialect. That would explain it was so uncomfortable and yet so comfortable to listen to. "It's probably Venetian or something."

The stranger laughed. "Oddly enough, no. The language that I used has been known and passed down from the era before other languages were spoken." He turned to me with that smug look I was learning to dislike. "Are you Catholic?"

I sniffed. "I'm an American."

"With some Italian and Spanish roots if I'm looking at you correctly." He must have seen the confused look on my face because he waved my concerns away with an almost condescending, yet paternal wave to his hand. He was definitely Italian because of his outlandish gesturing, that was for sure. "Anyway, you shouldn't have to worry so much about it. You can think of it like the Tower of Babel come to life. However, I like to think that languages are like the seeds of flowers that have been sown for generations in a garden with a plethora of different plants."

"That sounds a lot like bullshit, sir, but whatever."

He blanched a little at my crude wording, but I shrugged it off. If he wanted to sound like a suave, pretentious writer, then he could invest in a notebook and a pen. There was no way that kind of tongue (silver or not) could have achieved results in other people, right? I mean, who was that easy to fool?

I said as much and he looked affronted.

"I've had women falling at my feet—"

"Is it because your nose is so big? Maybe that's why."

This time, he looked a little more shocked as he grasped his nose.

"My nose isn't that big!"

I mean, I guess it wasn't too big. It was long and straight, Romanesque. Kind of like those classic statutes that you would see in museums that housed things like that. I wouldn't know too much about things like that. They weren't my thing. No, what was my thing right now was getting to the bottom of this. What the hell was International? Or Common Tongue? Was this some sort of conspiracy? Oooh, was he supposed to be some sort of secret agent spy? Was I going to become a target just by talking to this guy?

How interesting.

And exciting.

"Seriously, was it like, I don't know…" I thought for a moment before gesturing towards him again. "Pig Latin? You're Italian I'm assuming, so I guess you can speak that—"

The stranger rolled his eyes. "That was an invention by the English and a tragic one at that." He muttered things under his breath. This time, I knew that he was cussing in Italian because it was definitely in Italian. Whatever he was speaking before was definitely something that sounded Italian, but not at the same time. What could it be? Some sort of dialect? "And before you ask, I'm telling you the truth. My colleagues and I speak it because we're super secret beings that live among the human populace over the course of the millennia. Sometimes we disappear after a few days, other times we disappear for centuries only to return."

He looked at me, his eyes looking so much darker than I remembered them being. My breath caught in my throat as I looked up at him, only to catch the ghost of a smile on his lips as he leaned in close, the warmth of his body almost magically pulling me towards him.

"And the only reason I'm telling you this is because—" He tapped my cheek with one of his fingers. For a moment, I thought I saw something else, almost as if he were wielding a dagger or perhaps his fingers had morphed into talons. This man, he wasn't—

"You're not—" I tried to say.

A finger on my lips stopped me short of what I was about to say.

"Now, now… Not too loud now or people might think you insane." He smiled once more at me, his eyes lightening in what appeared to be childish mischief, but now I knew better. Fearing for my life or my sanity, I backed away.

He spoke again in that strange language of his.

I think he said, "No one will believe you, little on. No one."

I don't think I want to eavesdrop on people anymore.