fandomhigh | Library, Wednesday [ 09/19 ]

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Library, Wednesday [ 09/19 ]

There are seven ways for a foot to touch the ground, each with its own particular power. As she came into the library today, to open it up, to stay, to be expected to do nothing more than curl up and point others in the right direction when she herself was pointed so awkwardly, Adah was thinking about spreading ashes and how she used to watch things like that, if the dancer was interesting enough, but it hadn't done her much good in the long run. Still, she was thinking maybe she should start watching again.

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Adah nodded slightly. "South of here, yes, and a little to the left. And Bethlehem had nothing for me but judgmental fools, so, no, I was not too terribly fond of the place. Africa was much better; difficult, but better."

"Exotic and romantic and dangerous and much more interesting than a small town in your home country, I should think." Evie took up the pen again, finding it easier to write than to say: "London was as big and as interesting as Cairo, but much more difficult for me. All these things that needed to be explained to the natives, that I'd taken for granted in Egypt." She added aloud, "And I like Fandom very much, but I'm not at all tempted to stay." She frowned. "Judgemental fools? Because of...?" She waved to Adah's shoulder and arm, not knowing how to refer to Adah's disabilities politely. Or what Adah would call politely.

Adah grinned a little at the E Ive!'s gestures and very significantly pointed to her head, tapping her forehead with her fingers before resuming the pen to write. "And that. Mostly that. If it weren't for a chance, rogue grocery receipt, I'd have been doomed to special education."

"Special education, wait, that's... They thought you were mentally handicapped?" Evie gave Adah a bewildered look and said, "That's ridiculous. And where does a grocery receipt come into it? What year *are* you from?" She tended to assume everyone was from 2007 unless they seemed utterly alien, or very definitely from a different time period; now she had to revise that assumption. Silly of her.

"1962," Adah wrote back, simply enough, and then explained the case of the receipt. "And my parents began to have second thoughts about my mental capabilities the day I had the entire week's grocery bill totaled before the cashier had even finished ringing them up..."

Evie had been rather good at math-- not exemplary, but better than many of her classmates-- but nowhere near Adah's level, it sounded like. And forty-five years; yes, a great many things had changed in the interim. But still. "Just because of your physical difficulties? Didn't the doctors set them straight? Or did they never see a specialist, after you were born?"

Adah's smirk was wry and cynical.

"Couldn't be bothered with something like that. My father is a preacher; he didn't exactly have enough money to support three daughters under two and a wife, much less spend money to send one of them through all of that. When I was born, they said I'd never be able to walk, but I did, anyway, so they must have figured I was okay. It's hemiphelgia. Only half of my brain works. And I don't talk. So everyone just assumed I was slow, until I showed them otherwise."

Evie felt a bit like being irate on Adah's behalf, but it was so long ago, and she'd adjusted so well, that it would have been a bit trite to comment on her father now. But some people really did need to be kicked, as occasion demanded.

Then she read the last sentence, and blinked. Re-read it. Then looked up from the note to tilt her head at Adah. "You don't talk? But I thought---" Oh, but wait. Wait! "You-- I thought you were being quiet because we were in a library!"

Adah's stoicism broke for a wry, wide grin.

"And here I hadn't even thought of that; at least that's one thing about the job I won't have to worry about, then."

Evie could have been as embarrassed as she'd been earlier, but really, when you'd missed something that obvious? You had to just give up. She started giggling, and grinned back at Adah widely, then giggled some more. "Oh, lord, I wonder how long I would have gone without noticing, if you hadn't mentioned it?"

If Adah was any good? The E Ive! would have never known. "I almost regret mentioning it now."

"You're terrible!" Evie exclaimed, then looked abashed, and whispered, "Just terrible!" She shook her head, and giggled once more before shaking her head, and writing down, "I leave you to the books that speak in their language, and the silence that speaks in its language, and to people more observant than I, who do not trip over their own feet or tongue or fail to wonder why their conversational partner is not conversing. And shall probably see you sometime later this week. And possibly even speak with you then, again."

Yes, Adah was terrible. And it only encouraged her when people came around to recognizing it.

"'Speak'," she wrote, smirking slightly, "in a figurative sense of the word, at any rate."

Evie stuck her tongue out at her, then wrote: Speak. Communicate. Elocution: from the Latin, locu; speak, say, word. Greek: Mythos. Logos. Arabic: Khitab (speech, formal; or correspondence). Kalima: speech (informal, to a smaller audience; or word). Evie pointed to them, writing the Latin, Greek, and Arabic words in their alphabets underneath them. It's all in how you say it. She wrinkled her nose at Adah, smiled brightly, then waved good-bye, walking backwards toward the door, and *almost* tripping.

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