6. Lessons
"Meritan?" Atemu asked with a frown. He remembered seeing reference to that when he was a boy. No one knew what it actually meant though. Was it a person or a language? It was a secret lost to time.
Yami nodded with a smile, pointing at the computer. "Can you put it on there like you did the hieroglyphs?" Yami asked in his own language.
Atemu shook his head. "It's not on there. No one knows what it is," Atemu responded, seeing the boy's face fall at the news. He may not understand what was said, but it was easy to work out from Atemu's reaction.
"Damn," Yami muttered in ancient Egyptian, seeing Atemu raise an eyebrow. He only really cursed or said 'unPrincely' things in a foreign language that his Priests didn't understand.
Atemu frowned and watched as Yami turned back to the paper in his lap, starting to write in another form known as Hieratic. He had been taught this language too but wasn't as fluent in it as he was with hieroglyphics. Certainly not fluent enough to communicate using that method.
-Where are we?- Yami wrote, flipping the book to show the tanned man before him as he spoke the words out loud in Ancient Egyptian since he seemed a little familiar with it. He just couldn't speak it very well. Perhaps Yami can teach him though once they find a way to talk to each other.
Atemu bit his lip slightly and turned to the computer. He knew his father had created a program to help them write in Hieratic for a game he was developing. Taking the book, Atemu scanned the book with the camera, the programming translating the words neatly written on the page so Atemu could read what was written.
-Across the water. This place is called America- Atemu typed, handing the book back once the computer had translated for him. The English side was on the left of the screen while the Hieratic was on the right. He tilted his head as Yami spoke the words out loud once again. A frown formed on Yami's face at the word 'America'. He clearly didn't know that one.
-How did we get here?- Yami asked, still reading the words out as he showed his new friend. It's not the first time he had woken up in a strange place with people he couldn't understand around and technology far more advanced than his own kingdom possessed. Few people believed his experiences though.
Atemu took the paper again, scanning it with the computer once more. -I got into a car accident and was brought here. I don't know what happened to you- Atemu typed with a shrug. The program seemed to be working for now. Though, Atemu wanted to learn to speak verbally. A computer wasn't the same.
-What's a car?- Yami asked after reading Atemu's message out loud. The terms only worked because the program seemed to know which symbols to use to create the words he wanted.
"I'll show you," Atemu muttered, typing into the search browser photos of a car.
Yami tilted his head as he looked at the computer, raising an eyebrow at the vehicles displayed on the computer. -What the hell is this place? I don't remember any of this being around. Not even in Atlantis- Yami wrote, the scribbling catching Atemu's attention.
Atemu raised an eyebrow at the computer screen once the program translated for him. "Atlantis is a myth," Atemu said with a frown as he typed the same words into the computer. His head snapped back to the pale man when he heard the boy repeat his own sentence. "You're a copycat?"
"Copycat?" Yami asked with a tilt of his head after seeing Atemu write it into the program while speaking.
"You copy something. You are copying what I said. That's an example of being a copycat," Atemu explained, typing his words at the same time.
"I can't copy all that," Yami muttered with a frown, writing a message for his new friend. -I can copy some things. But if the sentence gets too long, I lose track and can't replicate it. It takes time to understand what I'm copying though- Yami explained, allowing Atemu to take the pad so that he could scan the response.
"Fair enough," Atemu muttered. "I suppose we can start simple so you can communicate with the nurses." Yami raised an eyebrow at the boy. "Toilet," Atemu said/typed.
"Toilet?" Yami asked with a raised eyebrow, blushing when Atemu pulled up an image of a toilet and a man sitting on it with his pants around his ankles.
"You ask for this when you need to relieve yourself," Atemu explained, seeing the pale man's cheeks turn even redder. "Did you have this back in your time?"
-Sort of. It doesn't look the same, but we do have a similar item. It was squarer and had a bucket of sorts underneath to collect the waste. What happens to the waste in this thing?- Yami wrote in response.
"There's a pipe out the back or bottom that connects to more pipes. These pipes form what is known as town sewage or a sceptic tank. Basically, it takes the waste away from the house to either a tank in the back yard or to a treatment plant somewhere in the city," Atemu explained, unsure if Yami would understand everything he had explained.
"I change my mind. I don't want to know," Yami muttered.
"Fair enough," Atemu muttered, smiling when Yami copied his wording. "Drink," Atemu said next, holding up the bottle of water that was resting beside his cup.
"Drink," Yami repeated, accepting the bottle when Atemu handed it to him with the lid off.
"Drink," Atemu said again, gesturing for Yami to take a sip.
"Drink," Yami muttered, taking a sip of the water.
"Thank you," Atemu said as he took the bottle back from Yami.
"Thank you?" Yami repeated with a raised eyebrow.
"It is what you say to thank someone for something," Atemu explained, typing the answer in the translation program too.
"Thank you," Yami said with a genuine appreciative smile.
"You're welcome," Atemu responded with a smile of his own, seeing Yami raise an eyebrow. "It's what you say after someone thanks you for something."
Yami nodded slightly. "Toilet," Yami said with a dark blush.
Atemu blushed faintly as well and grabbed the bell from beside Yami, pressing the button to call the nurse. "Press to get the nurse," Atemu explained, quickly typing the explanation into the program. "She'll take you to the bathroom."
"Bathroom?" Yami asked.
"Another version of toilet. Bathroom can include shower too though," Atemu explained, seeing that Yami was about to ask something else. "Shower is a form of bathing. Except, you don't become submerged in water. Water flows over you like you're in rain."
"Thank you," Yami said with a bright smile, looking towards the door when the nurse entered the room.
"You buzzed, Hun?" the nurse asked with a smile, cancelling the buzzer off.
"Yami wants to go to the bathroom," Atemu explained, getting off the bed and hobbling away with his computer. He didn't want to be in the way of the nurses. Especially this one. She can be quite rude when she wants to be. Which is most of the time. The whole 'Hun' thing is just for an hour or so or until she deems someone annoying.
"Yami?" the nurse asked with a raised eyebrow.
Yami gave the nurse a shy wave. He always hated healers and this girl just gave off a vibe that she was not to be trusted and certainly shouldn't be in this industry. He couldn't put his finger on why though.
"His name is Yami?" the nurse asked, looking at Atemu instead of the pale boy with no history.
"That's what he tells me," Atemu answered.
"Has he told you anything else?" the nurse questioned with a frown.
"Not yet. There is still a bit of a language barrier," Atemu answered.
"How have you been communicating with him?" the nurse asked with a slightly cold tone.
"It's a classified program," Atemu responded.
"Then you shouldn't have it," the nurse snapped back.
Yami looked between the two of them, frowning more and more with each second. "Shut the hell up!" Yami snapped at the nurse, drawing attention onto him. "He's been through enough. Leave him alone and help me to the goddamn toilet already!"
"What did he say?" the nurse asked, turning to Atemu again.
"I don't know. I can't speak his language. It's all written so far," Atemu answered, showing the pad with Hieratic on it. "I think he wants the bathroom though. You better hurry before he wets the bed."
The nurse growled and left the room.
"Bitch," Yami said quite clearly after her.
"I know that one," Atemu chuckled, turning to look at Yami. Apparently, that was a word where the pronunciation wasn't lost.
"Where did she go?" Yami asked, gesturing after the nurse.
Atemu shrugged. "No clue."
"No clue," Yami repeated with a frown. He may not understand the terms, but he knew it was a response when one didn't know an answer based off of Atemu's reaction.
Atemu watched the boy huff and crossed his arms over his chest.
'It's Atlantis all over again. When will so called superior communities learn to respect the people they kidnap? I know my capture last time was an error. But this time? I still don't know how I got here. How did I get here? Last thing I remember, I was about to engage in a battle with Atemu. Now he's across from me and says he got injured in a car accident. Is that a lie he was told to tell me or were we both captured and placed in that car thing. Maybe there was an actual accident, and we were both in it, but I was more injured so took longer to wake up? I wish we could just ask already,' Yami thought with a dark frown. 'But that theory doesn't make sense either! If that was the case, then Atemu should be able to understand me when I spoke his own tongue. He shouldn't be stuffing up the pronunciation of his own people. None of this makes sense!'
'I wonder what he's thinking. He seems to be getting angrier as each second passes,' Atemu mused with a raised eyebrow. 'And how does this boy with no past know me? And why can he only speak in a dead language from thousands of years ago? Did he somehow travel through time? Or, like Malik, was he stuck in a tomb, only exposed to the ancient languages? If that was the case, how did he end up here then instead of an Egyptian hospital? What happened to him?'
Both boys were drawn from their thoughts as the nurse returned with a bottle. "You'll have to use this until the physio assesses you," the nurse said, drawing the curtain around Yami after passing him the urinal bottle.
"What the fuck do I do with this?" Yami asked through the curtain with a frown, staring at the bottle in his hand.
"What did he say?" the nurse asked with a raised eyebrow.
"I don't know for sure. But if I could guess, I'd say he's confused about what you handed him," Atemu replied with a smirk, chuckling when the nurse glared at him and snapped through the curtain for him to pee in the bottle.
"Get your ass in here and show me what to do with this stinky thing!" Yami snapped back, tilting the bottle around.
"I don't think he knows what you want him to do. You'll have to go in there yourself and actually help him instead of expecting him to know what you want. It doesn't help that he can't understand you," Atemu said.
The nurse growled and angrily snapped the curtain open, not bothering to shut them again before she ripped Yami's blanket down and pulled his skirt up, snatching the bottle and placing the boy's penis inside it so he could pee.
"WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!" Yami shouted as he turned bright red, yanking his gown back down to cover himself. The last thing he wanted was to flash his enemy.
Atemu's eyes widened in shock too. Not that she had done all that, but his eyes couldn't help but catch a bright red mark on the boy's right hip. He couldn't make out what it was, but it was certainly eye-catching.