What strange creature have I brought out of the Sea of Trees? My mind is reeling. I had never expected to have met a creature such as this one. Her disguise as a weak young girl is deceiving.
I can't say I'm angered by the deceit. Rather, I'm both astounded and embarrassed. It's more than I can take in, and it continues on and on without a way for me to interrupt and stop her. I'm feeling rather powerless, actually. It's almost frightening that the entire strength of the Sky Demon isn't enough to combat the angry Awakening.
How does one stop the flow of words, the emphatic pointing, the teaching? I've already given up and Noriko doesn't see it, can't tell, she's so lost in her need to teach, to show me in great detail just why she should be allowed to bring the strange thing I don't understand. I still don't know how it's related to the teaching, but just that much is more than enough.
It was a simple thing to understand her pictures for simple concepts: [sun], one rising and setting of the sun is a [day], a set of [days] to make [a set time period]. [Blood] surprised me, but it was the lead in for what was next.
I've now learned things I never in my lifetime thought to learn. How a woman's body works, that it bleeds, that it bleeds because that's normal for a woman who isn't pregnant. That much was astounding, that she would openly teach me something like that as our first real long conversation.
What happened after was embarrassing and I couldn't get Noriko to stop. Somehow in her teaching, something made her decide she also needed to then tell me what happens when a man and a woman lie together to make that pregnancy happen. I still don't know why she needed to add that, nor do I understand how she knows exactly how it happens.
I understood what she taught me, it's the how. If she isn't a seer, are there seers in her world that learned these things? No one knows what goes on inside the body, other than what can be felt from the outside. How can she know these small things, draw these pictures of what happens inside, as if she's been inside to see?
Finally, the words pouring from her mouth stop and she frowns at the pictures in front of her. I try to recover as she's silent, desperate to have the quiet for even a moment. Because I'm trying to learn what she is, I notice that she's suddenly uncomfortable, as if the power of the teacher has left her and she's suddenly the weak girl again, dismayed at what's happened. I understand that, too, but perhaps I'm reading too much into it from my own experiences.
She erases the many pictures she's drawn, particularly the embarrassing ones, leaving up only the picture of day and the set time period of days. Then she points to the thing she wants to take with us and firmly says words and draws a circle around a half-portion of one of the days. The word for blood is in that set of words, as is the word for day as she makes the circle.
The sun comes out for me, now that she's made her final point to tie them all together. If a woman bleeds, something must absorb the blood. This thing I don't recognize nor understand does that.
Noriko glares at me one more time, the Teacher still in there and I retreat from it. I already had given up, but for that reason I won't prevent it at all. We'll have to find another woman for that to be replaced. I have no idea how to help her with that. She knew that, obviously.
She puts it back on the pile of things to go with us and firmly says two words. I keep my mouth closed. That's always the answer in the face of an upset woman who's been scolding. I've learned that watching wise men who have wives.
I'm relieved when Noriko relaxes to rest on her hand and remembers she's hungry, asking for food again. I hand over the small bag of what I have. I'm glad to learn quietly this time, by observation again.
She pours some of the mixture into her hand, looking at each thing separately. She tries things one by one, with time between each thing, as if testing to see if they will poison her, and which one might. It goes along with her intelligence. I frown inside.
How different is her world? Is she also worried mine is too different? That although she may be human in form, inside she could be harmed by what's here? It shows caution, worry, care for her own life, and an understanding that she has to stay here and not starve regardless. It's a small courage, that she would eat without complaint, even if carefully. She waits to eat more, to see what her body will do with the new foods. Again, she is grateful. "[Thank you.]"
"Thank you," I say in my own tongue.
Immediately she says it back. I nod. She understood that I was giving her the word to use and wants to learn it. She'll very quickly know how to talk to others. That will likely cause me more difficulties, but it will be a while. She points to the bag in her hand. "Thank you?"
I shake my head and give her the name for the mix of foods. She nods in understanding and says," Thank you," again, both for the new word and to confirm she understood rightly. I nod again. She understands.
She's also hungry enough to not wait long enough before eating the rest of the mixed berries and seeds in her hand. I wish I could offer her more if she's that hungry, but I can't, so it will have to be enough. And if she dies from eating a poison to her, what could I do? I shush that part of me, still not liking it, still wishing that part of me wasn't bitter that I can't kill her and escape my destiny.
Noriko asks without words if I want some food as well, I shake my head. I'm not hungry, nor is there really enough there for both of us to eat freely if it takes us too long to get to the closest village. I won't die of hunger any more than I'd die of anything else.
I feel recovered enough to ask my question that I really want answered. Trying carefully to remember the words she used, I ask her how she knows about the things that are so small that create human life. How did she learn what she taught me?
At first she assumes I've asked what size they really are. She hunts through the dirt before us and picks up something between her forefinger and thumb and asks for my hand. I hold out my hand. She drops a tiny grain of sand into it. "[Egg.]" That was what comes from the woman, I remember. She pantomimes even smaller for the other. I find it difficult to believe. How can one see something smaller than a grain of sand, or even of dust, since she hasn't gone to pick that up yet.
The Teacher returns, but this time not so angry. It's a lesson that I can understand. I've seen examples myself as I've sat watching raindrops falling slowly down the window outside my room as a boy. She explains how I could see things at a distance as if they were close, small things made to look larger. It's as logical a reasoning as her other lesson. There's no magic, no special power, only an understanding of nature. When she returns and the Teacher fades into the background, she asks me if I understand.
I rise to my feet and make a small hole in the dirt in front of her, but away from where she's been drawing and writing. I walk to the pool and scoop up some water in my hand and return to pour just a little bit on top, carefully. It makes the hole I made look larger, and the dirt underneath it. Noriko nods and looks up at me to smile. She's happy I've understood and I can't help but smile shyly back. It's another shared understanding, and I'm changed slightly. Noriko understands how the world works. Is that something I can put hope into?
She doesn't know what I am. I'm not like many things in my own world, and perhaps not like things in hers. Can she help me understand myself? If in understanding myself better, can I overcome my dark destiny? If she doesn't know I'm supposed to be evil, can she help me avoid becoming it?
I'm afraid of the question, it's something so far from what I know. Yet at the same time, I desperately cling to it. If she can do that, then I'm willing to keep her alive, have a reason to not kill her. I wish for that also.
I've been unknowingly staring at Noriko and as I come out of my confused musings, she's also now staring at me, calmly. I'm embarrassed to have been lost in my thoughts and try to recover. She's unimpressed either way and I can only sigh at myself. I will lose often to the Teacher, I think.
"Izark," she says slowly, as if to warn me there's more. But she likely also has questions, like I do. I shift and watch her and her finger again. It reaches out and draws yet another new picture. This time it's a sun, a full one rather than the half sun she drew to teach [day]. Then she draws a small circle next to it.
She asks me for my word for sun again, so I give it to her. She repeats it, trying to memorize it. She points to the small circle and the line between the suns in [day], then pats the ground we sit on and gives me a new word. I absorb, but don't decide I know it yet.
Noriko draws a circle around the small circle, with an arrow for motion and draws one of the marks from the set of days that means one day. She wants me to understand that one turn of the small circle, planet, is one day. It takes me a moment to understand that if I stand in one place and see the sun rise and then the sun set, and then the sun rise again, then the place I've stood has perhaps turned in a full circle while the sun stood still.
Again this is an understanding of nature, but this time of a large scale rather than a tiny one. I try to catch my breath before she continues on. She does wait this time for me to be ready. I hope she'll continue to be slow this time, but if she is slow, then this part's important to her, and perhaps a question rather than a teaching.
She draws a new circle, this time from the small circle, back to it, motion around the sun. She gives me another new word, then points to the period of time from before. Ah, that's why she left it without erasing it. She draws twelve, then a thirteenth line under the new larger motion circle. A full turn of the planet around the sun. One year. It's thirteen of those lengths of time - for her home planet. That's enough for me to know that for sure she isn't from mine.
Now it's more pictures. A swaddled infant with a symbol near it and a word from the embarrassing lesson. Then a crawling child, one finger of motion around the sun and one tick mark. Then a walking child, two fingers of motion around the sun, two tick marks. By the third I can nod that I understand. Each turn around the sun is one year of age.
Her finger then draws only tick marks. My eyebrows can't help but go up as the number of lines becomes so many as to end at one hundred. Even she looks tired and she rubs her finger, which must surely be getting sore now from all the drawing she's been doing. But, I think she's going to answer one of my other questions, or several of them.
She marks the ages that a child will stay with their parents, then the ages they leave their parents, the ages they begin to have a family of their own, how long they stay a family (indeterminate since she leaves it unbounded on the far end). And then she moves to the far end and puts the age range a man dies and that a woman dies. It's older than on my planet. Most men die in war and battle at young ages. That would be hard to explain on this diagram at this time, though, so I won't. The rest of the ages are similar, if perhaps slightly older.
Her finger counts the lines until she reaches seventeen. She circles that one and points to herself. "Noriko." She names the age and makes sure I understand with the planet around the sun, but I've already understood and am already counting.
I reach out and she watches closely as I circle the nineteenth mark. Just as I'm surprised she's as old as she is, she's surprised at my age. But I'm not done. I reach for her thirteen marks below the motion line around the sun and erase a line. For that number of days, we have only twelve time periods. I look at her carefully to see if she'll be depressed again at the confirmation she isn't on her own world.
Instead she's lit up like the Teacher again. But she doesn't lecture, instead she reaches for her smaller book and one of the writing tools in the little box. She comes to my side and kneels next to me. Quickly things are written on the page. I try to keep up. She's writing characters, not just marks this time. The marks were simple for our conversations. She has real numbers from her world.
She hands me the book and pen when she's done. I look at them, the pen in particular, trying to understand how it works. There's no ink pot, but it leaves ink behind. It seems there may be ink inside of it. I put the pen to the paper and write my world's character for '1' next to hers. I confirm before I write the ones that were skips, but the base is the same as here. Perhaps figuring is figuring wherever you go.
When I'm done, she takes them back and has me say them again, writing characters next to them that seems to be a way for her to remember how to say them. I shiver inside just a little. She'll know how to speak, read, and write in my language far before I'm ready.
She draws in the book the picture that's on the floor, then says a number only pointing to the day, not the set of days. She writes that number, and then makes marks next to the first symbols she wrote. Then she asks me how many days are in one year of my planet. I'm not sure why she wants to know to that detail when the months were enough.
She hands me the book and pen again, so I write them, making the same marks she did. I wonder if she knows how to negotiate in the market. People who understand numbers often also understand the value of money. That would be relieving.
I wait patiently for her, watching her write neatly as she calculates using her number and the number I gave her. When she's done, she blinks in surprise. The Teacher has been on her this whole time, but learning now, using her knowledge. I wonder what result that has. Seers can say things that will change what happens in the future. Does her skill do that?
Her finger comes out and erases the marks we've circled and redraws them. She circles the nineteenth mark, the one I'd circled. She confirms that's my age and I nod. She points to it again. "Noriko." Her expression is a mixture of triumph and uncertainty that peeks through. To be a different age only because she's come here might be difficult. It's hard for me to believe, though, that she would be my same age. I point to the month diagram. How far can you go? Just how much older did coming here make you?
She writes again briefly, then she tries to write in my numbers. Nineteen years, five months, fourteen days. I can't keep the surprise off my face. "Noriko?" I have to confirm. She nods.
I write on the floor my true age, then reach for the period of days. I circle the fourteenth day. "Noriko." She nods. I circle the mark nine days before that day. "Izark."
She exclaims in disbelief and I can only smile at her. It's good I'm older than her, even if only by that much. She hasn't the experience to survive here. I'll likely think of her as seventeen, or younger, for a long time - except when she's teaching fiercely. Then she's similar to me in age and experience.
