Work Text:
“So… I have a question.”
Across the room, Nori spins around on his friend’s pottery stool, completing three full circles before coming to a stop facing them. “Sure! What’s up, Ji?”
Naaji tucks a charcoal pencil behind their ear and picks up a notebook from their desk, leafing through the pages as they walk over. “I’ve been practicing my Windarian recently, an— hey!”
Nori snatches the notebook from their hands before they can finish. “Whoa! You wrote all this?”
He holds it up and studies the careful columns of symbols drawn on the page, humming appreciatively. His native Windarian was a difficult language, but Naaji had been picking it up pretty well. Their calligraphy was beautiful; being an artist was probably useful for that.
“Very impressive! Your strokes are very clean… some of your tenses are a little off, though.”
His friend scowls and snatches the book back, freckled cheeks tinged with red. “That’s— thank you, but that’s not what I was trying to show you.”
“Oh?”
Naaji lowers himself to sit cross-legged on the floor, flipping back to a specific page as he does. Nori joins him, and Naaji slides the book over to be between them before pointing at a section of one of the columns — “Here. That says nori, doesn't it?”
Nori squints at the writing curiously. It did say ‘nori,’ but his language was full of double meanings… so it largely depended on where they were going with this.
“Well… technically.”
“And in this passage it means ‘seaweed,’ correct?”
Nori pauses and scans the rest of the text. The sentences weren’t quite coherent, at least not to him — something about the ocean? and shiny fish? — but all the symbols were drawn properly (and, dare he say, exceptionally well) so he’d give them a pass.
“Correct.”
“So, by that logic…” Naaji laces their fingers together, looking at him pointedly, “your name means seaweed.”
Nori wrinkles his nose, face twisting with disgust. “No, it does not mean seaweed.”
Naaji frowns and looks back at the page, confusion painting their features. “What—? But you said that says nori, and you’re Nori… isn’t that your name?”
Nori snorts a small laugh and shakes his head. Watching someone try to learn his mother tongue was certainly making him appreciate that he’d grown up with it — learning it all at this age sounded like a nightmare. Or maybe he was just projecting, since his own required studies of Naaji’s native Mesahran was going… rather poorly, to say the least.
“Ah, I fear it’s a little more complicated than that, my dear friend… may I?”
Naaji takes the charcoal pencil from behind their ear and passes it to him. It was thinner than he was expecting, but after years of dedicated practice writing his own name, he was able to scrawl the symbols legibly enough — Noriaki.
“There, see? That’s how you write my name.”
“Huh…” Naaji takes the pencil back, effortlessly copying the symbols much cleaner than he had. “And that doesn’t mean seaweed, I’m assuming?”
Nori rolls his eyes. “No, it does not. My parents love me a bit more than that, thankfully.” He traces a line beside the symbols with his finger. “This first part is nori. It means ‘ceremony,’ because I’m such a ceremonious child, obviously,” he says, sweeping his arms into a small bow.
“Right, of course,” Naaji says, barely hiding a snicker. “Most serious prince I know.”
“Precisely!” He points at the page again: “Then this second part, aki, means ‘bright’ and ‘clear’… which I personally find more pleasant than the old ending.”
Not that his parents were completely wrong naming him ‘child of the ceremony,’ but he kinda grew out of the traditional feminine vibes as he got older. And being named after light was just so much more fun.
Naaji hums and leans back, contemplating. “I see… that makes sense, yeah. Multiple symbols having the exact same pronunciation, but ultimately meaning completely different things? That’s not confusing at all,” they say flatly.
Nori smiles and lightly pats them on the head. “Worry not, sweet Naacchi, you’ll get used to it! Besides,” he teases, “it’s not nearly as hard as having letters you don’t even pronounce half the time.”
They scowl and bat his hand away, antennae twitching in annoyance. “Hey! Mesahran isn’t that bad—” Naaji raises a stern finger at him, “—and it wouldn’t be so hard if you actually practiced every once in a while, min elskede plante dreng fra havet.”
He blinks at them, trying to piece together the foreign sounds into familiar words. Nothing comes to him. “What was that?”
“It means seaweed boy,” Naaji says, a mischievous grin tugging at their lips. “It’s your new nickname.”
“Hmm… I think that you are lying.” Nori quirks an eyebrow. “I don’t trust that smile of yours. What did you really say?”
Naaji only shrugs, still smiling. “Dunno, guess you’ll have to keep studying and find out.” He glances back at the writing again and his smile shifts into a slight frown. “Guess I’ll have to keep studying too, if my tenses really are all wrong…”
“If it’s any consolation,” Nori says, “your handwriting is beautiful, it’s so much better than mine— like, significantly better, and I grew up with it. I have no idea what you were going on about on that page, but I could identify all of the individual words, which is really impressive for a beginner.”
“I was trying to translate a poem I found…” They sigh and close the book. “I’ll work on it, I suppose. I need to work on my pronunciation too, I don’t think I could speak a single word of this... except your name, of course. And seaweed.”
“Well, you got the important words down!” Nori grins, offering them his pinky. “I’ll help you practice your Windarian speaking if you help me practice my Mesahran speaking... and reading, and writing, and all of it.”
Naaji giggles and accepts the offer, entwining their fingers together snugly. “Sure, sounds like a fair trade to me. Thanks, seaweed boy.”
“Anytime, bugga boo.”