By ChaosEternus
Thanks to LONA of the BSGWS for Beta'ing this fic for me.
Chapter 7"Debase… the… beef… canoe" Donally finished the translation with a bemused grin. Unable to help himself he added in his worst Spike impersonation, mangling the quote badly, "Now why do I think that's not right?"
Dafydd shot me a tolerant look to which I replied, "Well we can't kill him, he's the only one with brains amongst them."
I grinned as Dafydd groaned, "Can't you stop the Buffy quotes, please?"
"You know, I could slay a nice beef stake right now" Donally commented, an expression of angelic innocence across his face.
Dafydd groaned, burying his face in his hands as Donally and I traded devilish, or should I say, demonish grins.
Which disappeared pretty snappishly when Priestly, sorry, Elosha 's hand slapped down on the table, an exasperated expression plastered across her normally placid and calm face.
It appeared we might have been trying her patience a bit.
Again.
Well we had a right to be a little high-spirited, we had finally figured out how to speak to those bloody Colonials!
I grimaced inwardly, I would never ever be able to use that phrase in reference to the Yanks again. I think these 'Colonials' had the Americans beaten for sheer distance colonised, even if they did appear to have a few odd ideas about the origin of the species.
Earth a colony world indeed! Even I had watched enough Discovery Channel to know that was total bull.
But as yet, we couldn't communicate enough detail to tell them that in no-uncertain terms, and as yet only Elosha and Donally could understand each other. Meanwhile, me and Dafydd plus our two friends the guards had been roped into Ancient Sumerian lessons.
Luckily, variations between Donnally's and Elosha's versions of Sumerian appeared to be few and far between though they had caused a few funny in retrospect misunderstandings along the way, especially when we found out we used opposite sounds for male and female.
And that is a story I am never putting in the report, in my memoirs or writing down anywhere else.
And anyone who asks is going to disappear.
Seriously.
Don't ask what I'll do if they ask about the drawings, because you don't want to know…
Anyway, it turns out Elosha had had to learn the language only because some of the very oldest religious texts of the Colonials were written in that language, and they do a comparison every ten years to make sure the words in the books, that is the new reprints, are identical to the original.
She had gotten 'lucky' and drawn the task last time. It had taken her eight of the ten years to complete the job.
Lucky her, really, but at least the Colonial Priest onboard this rather odd warship was the best. They would need it with the kind of convoy they appeared to be escorting I assumed back to Colonial space.
After ten years of reading the damn books, her knowledge ought to be encyclopaedic after all.
But it still didn't answer one question, where in the hell had Donally picked up Ancient Sumerian?
The muttered response of 'national security' was very helpful in that regard, not.
Well, me and Dafydd, we decided to make a vow, that we would find out where Donally learnt Samarian before we finished learning the basics of the language.
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