Chapter 2.6: Hatchlings!

[yhlee]

[First, some housekeeping: I'm going to be at Worldcon in Dublin and therefore out of the country, with limited time for email, from August 14 to 19. Please bear with me if responses are slow during that time.]

The Cantata is continuing on its way to Autumn Pyre.

Anyone monitoring Jedao will find that he has been tensing and untensing his muscles, and making slow stretching motions, without making overt attempts to escape, so he doesn't stiffen up while he's bound. He says to the room, "A glass of water would be appreciated if anyone's listening."

In the middle of the night (ship's time), there are EXTREMELY loud distress calls from Fluffy's enclosure, and shortly thereafter, multiple very loud chirrups from within the nest. Gerae appears to be sound asleep and unresponsive.

[Anyone who wants a baby pseudo-dragon of their own should report in!]

Comments

Re: relationship-building - paging the Cantata

[yhlee]

The Cantata thrums in delight and replies that it would love to hear an example, and would it be permitted to learn her songs?

[Just a note--feel free to continue this but I am planning a new move post tonight.]

Re: relationship-building - paging the Cantata

[zuhrovet]

[Cool! Um, does the heptarchate have a stance on musical copyright? Sasha is a pirate through & through, but suddenly I'm wondering.]

Re: relationship-building - paging the Cantata

[yhlee]

[I'm scared that I have an answer to this, but actually the h*archate barely has the concept of intellectual property. Basically musicians/performers/artists trade on their name/reputation and the novelty of any new stuff they come up with. Whether this is actually an economically viable model, I have no idea. But hey, if Sasha wants to be a musical pirate, she's pretty safe. XD ]

Re: relationship-building - paging the Cantata

[zuhrovet]

Sasha replies, "Yes, certainly! I didn't make this song. I learned it from music stored on the grid."

She hasn't chosen a specific song yet. She's not sure if the Cantata will like the more experimental end of her collection, and they already know some Kirrish folk songs. If Sasha went out with coworkers, she would choose drinking songs or sad love songs. It seems unfair to pick a drinking song, when she's still not sure if the Cantata can drink anything besides generic energy, so that leaves love songs. She picks one in a fairly simple style, popular when she first came to the heptarchate, where voice and harmonica trade the melody back and forth, and the zither is mostly there for rhythm:

Narrow shutters still lie open
I'll stop waiting, any day now
Red-blue suns cast red-blue shadows
Shadows of a different answer...

Re: relationship-building - paging the Cantata

[yhlee]

The Cantata repeats the song--it's pitch-perfect and good at rhythm, but like the baby mothlings, it can't really manage consonants. It asks Sasha if the suns are red and blue where she comes from.

Re: relationship-building - paging the Cantata

[zuhrovet]

[Does the Cantata also sing the harmonica parts?]

Sasha explains, "There was one yellow sun. But I learned this song in the heptarchate. The first round I taught you, that was from my own planet." At this point, the implications of the Cantata's question catch up with her, and she asks, "How much spoken and sung human language can you understand? Or are you reading the lyrics from the grid? Do your songs have meanings? Also, how do you understand 'red' and 'blue'? Can you sense colors of many objects, or are you analyzing the wavelengths of stars directly?"

Re: relationship-building - paging the Cantata

[yhlee]

[The Cantata does indeed also sing the harmonica parts, not least because your GM plays harmonica. Although all my harmonicas, including a spendy chromatic, died in the flood. I should get another one...]

"Your languages have so many consonants!" the Cantata replies. "They are very difficult to tell apart. I was reading the lyrics from the grid. Our songs are teaching-songs, and how we talk to each other."

As for colors--"We can hear the colors of very large electromagnetic sources like stars, but sensing the colors of small things is very difficult. I find it hard to do reliably."