Source: Prettysleepy
The Wishing Map is a full-length fantasy that is being posted episodically at this site. To read the previous episode, click here. To read the entire novel, begin here.
Newly arrived at the island kingdom of Sur Kellan, Zack and Gina were taken to an inn by their rescuers Maerith and Shelcor. Now that they’d filled their grumbling stomachs it was time to do some explaining.
“Why, then, came yer ter Kellansend?” asked Shelcor.
“An’ at so great danger ter yourselves?” Maerith added.
“We didn’t have a choice!” Zack blurted. “I mean, Aunt Aloysia told us if we didn’t find—”
“Her letter opener.” Gina flashed blinking emergency eyes at her brother.
“Right, her letter opener, and that—”
“That if she didn’t get it back she’d be super disappointed!”
“‘Ledder ohvener?’” said Maerith.
“It’s a little, um, sort of dagger–”
“That our aunt really loves,” Zack clarified.
“Because it’s made out of this gorgeous purple-gold metal.”
“Amarrildin?” asked Shelcor. “Only the Gerdan Tinkurs of old were ever said ter have—”
“Hah-hah!” Zack cut in. “Just kidding! I mean who actually has real amma—”
“It was made out of faux amarrildin,” Gina back-pedaled, “only, um, a really good fake. But it got—”
“Taken by a bird! Yep, a spiffwit just flew in and scooped it right up off her kitchen table and—”
“And then dropped it in the ocean!”
“So yer came ter fetch it back?” said Shelcor.
“Right!”
“At night?” asked Maerith.
“Um, well, that’s the funny part…” Gina began. “But, hey, who wants more meeth?”
Gina downed two mugfuls, and then quickly went and refilled from the big bowl simply because the condescending innkeeper had said to use the smaller one. The meeth from the big bowl made her feel airy as a feather. When she returned to the table, she talked non-stop about everything but the letter opener, refilling her mug three more times during her stream-of-consciousness monologue. Warm inside and out, she spoke about B’frona…the people of Rennou…the Frengan Light Forest…and her baby dragon Puff. Then she sang “Puff the Magic Dragon” for everyone at the inn. Twice.
Then she la-la’d the Oh-So-Soft toilet paper song and started to cry. “He’s just a lee dragon, nay bigger than a really big puppy, but he’s my baby. An’ I’m not even allergic ter him! Which is good because who wants ter be allergic ter their baby, for flying monkey’s sake?” Her SurKellish accent was growing thicker by the minute. “An’ then I just abandoned him! Hey, did yer know our last name is Dore, like ‘door?’ Only in France they say, ‘Do-ray.’ But, hey, this isn’t France, it’s America. No, wait, this isn’t America!” She began to giggle.
She was acting weird, Zack thought, even for Gina. So he got up and went over to the meeth bowls. Sure enough, Gina had been imbibing from the big one, the one marked…
“For uplings (adults) only!”
φ
Thoughts: Like Gina, I got accidentally drunk at age 11. Not pretty. Has that ever happened to you or to anyone you know?
*A brief Glossary of SurKellish words: yer = you; ter = to; amarrildin = a rare and magical metal; Gerdan Tinkurs = a secret order of alchemist magicians; spiffwit = a flightless seabird; meeth = a much-loved Sur Kellish brew; lee = little; nay = no
To read the next episode, click here.
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That sounds like a terrible accident. It’s never happened to me or anyone I know. Bet it’s no fun the next morning!
No, it wasn’t, Vera! https://mitchteemley.com/2022/05/17/partyin-hearty-at-age-eleven/
Interesting use of irish sounding words(is it ‘wee’ bit) and cognates of English. The reader can follow along without too much je ne sais quoi. One can really get their teeth into the punch bowl steeped in meeth to get to the meat of the matter. I guess it’s a social lubricant and it might be easier to meet with meeth available like a potent sangria. An oddly spiffy affair. It’s good to hear that the birds are wittier than a gooney bird (Albatross) who can take off but can’t land gracefully.
I had a conlang for my novel “The Blot That Would Destroy the World,” but I took the opposite approach: when I made a word, I checked google to make sure the word did not exist in another language or was sufficiently different to not be mistaken for an existing word. I didn’t create that many words and now I want to re-write it in a more organized way with a grammar or strategy. I want ‘concept’ words equivalent to pages of understanding like people who have seen the same movie can just refer to a scene number. It’s just a matter of standardization.
I’ll have to go back to see if there are any clues about the letter opener because I think I may have accidentally taken it. We have a portal to another universe in our local supermarket in the frozen section. I have to come early in the morning when there are few people in the store when they’re busy doing inventory or stocking shelves in the other aisles. It’s a little awkward climbing into the back of the freezing. Once the manager got a glimpse of me before I disappeared into another world. But he thought he didn’t see anything.
I enjoyed this episode.
Thanks for this bit of stream-of-consciousness yerself, Doug. ;>) Unlike Tolkein, I haven’t created any complete languages for the world of The Wishing Map; instead, I “translate” them for my the readers. But I do enjoy creating certain words to give the sense of each language and culture’s distinctive lilt.
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