Andrea Höst - In Arcadia [Touchstone - Extras]

"Unna Laura!" the girl repeated. Unna was a word she used only for Laura, even though it didn’t mean grandmother in any of her languages. "We’re making pancakes."

"Lira is, anyway," Cass said, heading indoors in response to a thin wail. "You’re setting the table, Sen."

"Then I can help with that," Laura said.

"It’s my job!" Sen said seriously, and tugged her toward a seat at the head of the table. "Unna Laura can be Guest of Honour."

That was another reflection of the strangeness of Cass' life: a great many people wanted to meet her, and she could not always wriggle out of the flood of official engagements. Sen, only six, had not been obliged to attend many of these, but they’d obviously still left an impression.

Sitting obediently, Laura absently twined her collection of leaves and flowers into a wreath as she watched Sen set the table with more enthusiasm than neatness. Once the last utensil was more-or-less in place, she dropped the wreath on the girl’s head.

"There. A reward for being so diligent."

Sen crowed, and spun in a little circle of delight. She was a pretty child, with masses of thick black hair, very dark eyes, and a warm gold-brown skin that was set off nicely by the green, bronze and white tones of the impromptu crown. But it was this joy, a radiant happiness that rarely faltered, that made her so engaging.

"What is diligent?"

"Diligent means hard-working," Laura explained. "You had a job and you made sure it was done."

"You should do today’s words, Mum," Cass said, returning with an armful of crotchety baby. She was dressed in the figure-hugging black nanosuit of the Setari, and frowning down at her youngest worriedly. "I think I might skip work and take Tyrian for a check-up. He won’t settle at all."

"His mouth hurts," Sen informed her helpfully, and Cass brightened.

"Must be another tooth. I’ve got some gel for that somewhere."

She headed back inside, and Laura wryly reflected on the usefulness of psychics when baby-wrangling. Sen—like Cass' husband and their son—was a Tenlan Kigh talent, which meant she had an ability to know . Psychic psychics , as Cass put it. Tenlan Kigh—which translated confusingly as Sight Sight—was the rarest of the sight-related psychic talents, and tremendously convenient.

The oldest of the children, Ys, demonstrated a different ability as she drifted slowly down from the upper patio. Telekinesis, one of the movement category of talents, allowed users to fly, although Ys' talent was only strong enough to let her take short hops.

"Good morning, Unna Laura," she said formally, before briskly tidying Sen’s table-setting efforts. She was a tall girl for nearly-fourteen, thin and bony, with short, somewhat wayward hair.

"So diligent," Sen said.

"What’s that?" Ys asked, pausing.

"A new word. Ys is diligent. Rye is diligent. Lira is sometimes diligent. And I…" Sen skipped around the table and grinned cheekily. "I am a sweetheart!"

"Tokki," Lira commented, arriving with a plate of thick, American-style pancakes.

Brat , the dictionary in Laura’s head whispered.

"How long did it take you to do the work for the translation app?" Laura asked Cass, who returned as Lira began unceremoniously portioning out pancakes.

"It felt like centuries," Cass said, grimacing. "I started trying to get through it in a big lump, which was stupid. I should have just done a few words a day, like I do now, but I was worried it wouldn’t be ready before you got here. I’m glad it makes a difference, though."

"Oh, absolutely—the auto-translate makes picking the language up quicker than I thought possible. Pronunciation is difficult, but I can make myself understood well enough, and don’t have any problem listening to people. It’s only when I hear a word where you haven’t entered a translation, and this vague multiplicity of possible meanings washes over me, that I have trouble. In some ways the conceptual translator is more confusing than simply not knowing what the word means."

"I keep finding words I didn’t get quite right the first time around," Cass sighed, rearranging her nanosuit to incorporate a harness for the still-restless Tyrian. "There’s a lot that I don’t completely understand, even after three years. And Muinan itself is changing: three planets' worth of language mixing together, with a bit of Earth’s as well."

"Not to mention neologisms like Unna ," Laura said, and then had to explain what a neologism was to the three girls. "So when Sen decided to call her new grandmother Unna she created a neologism. You copied her, and if other people hear it and use it, it might even end up in a dictionary itself one day."

"There’s two words for today’s lesson," Cass said, for learning three new English words was part of the family’s daily routine. "Once you’ve got a better handle on Muinan, you and Aunt Sue and everybody can start adding words to the app as well."

"The pancakes will get cold," Lira said, grumpily. She spoke in Muinan, for she was the least enthused about the breakfast English lessons, though she seemed to follow the conversations well enough.

"They’re nearly at the dock," Cass said, and explained to Laura: "Kaoren and Rye went out in the canoes. Kaoren says not to wait."

"I’m not sure I could, it smells so delicious. What kind of berry have you put in them, Lira?"

"It is one from Kolar: hithal, it is called," Lira replied, this time in English, adding: "Something to try," with an affectation of indifference even as she closely watched for reactions to first bites.

Laura was suitably complimentary, for Lira was showing considerable promise in the kitchen—anything that involved building or creating interested her. "I’m so looking forward to some of the spice plants I brought with me becoming available, just to see what you’ll make of them," she told the girl. "Vanilla and cinnamon particularly, though it takes at least two years for cinnamon to grow into a useable tree. You’ll have fun experimenting when the biotechs send back samples."

"For all we know, a version of them might be growing somewhere on Muina anyway," Cass said. "But, yes, the techs can hurry up and produce vanilla, cinnamon, and especially chocolate."

"Have there been any new theories about why Earth and Muina are so similar?"

"There’s always theories," Cass said. "The official one is still that there was clearly a lot of back and forth travel and trade between Earth and Muina a really long time ago. After you six arrived they had some more Earth humans to do genetic comparisons with, and they still say we’re all genetically from the same stock. I try not to get drawn into talking about whether people started on Earth and came here or vice versa: it’s a bit of a touchy subject."

A step from below heralded the arrival of the last of Cass' new family: her husband Kaoren and older son Rye.

One did not perv on one’s son-in-law, of course, so Laura merely made her regular intellectual footnote that Cass had married a very tall, very handsome and very fit young man. Rye, only recently turned thirteen, idolised him, and when they were both dressed in knee-length swimming costumes and loose tank tops, with their hair cropped in the same short style, they displayed a bond that did not require a strict blood tie.

Kaoren, Laura reflected, straightforwardly enjoyed being a father.

"I am sorry we were slow," he said to Lira. "We’ll be ready as soon as we can."

Lira shrugged with exaggerated unconcern as the pair went to clean up, but then took the remaining pancakes inside to reheat.

"Diligent!" Sen proclaimed when the older girl returned, and stood on her seat so she could crown Lira with the wreath.