Archive of Our Own ^beta

Vhonte hadn’t exactly planned on learning Donontan, but it has snuck up on her. A few words here, a pause and careful attempt at explaining the untranslatable there; songs in the nurseries and classrooms, chants on the march, historical epics, sing-song recitations of bones and organs or spices and poisons. There’s so much that doesn’t translate at all into Mando’a -or even into Basic- yet also a surprising amount that does.

The song currently echoing through the passenger hold of this little hyperspace shuttle, loaded with almost two-hundred of her ade -fifty-four commandos, the rest regular troopers- is one that just-about half-translates, so in her mind it’s a mix of the familiar and the alien, all carried by an eerie tune sung by one-hundred-and-ninety-seven voices with clapping hands, stamping feet and a lone plaintive bes’bev giving it weight.

Even the pilot’s singing along.

“So it’s into the void now ye ate and ye toi, from Mora’s hands we go; we’ll be sailing past the sun till our time is done, then we’ll be sleeping below frozen stone. Kona! Below, below; we’re going where the winds don’t blow. Yes, we’re all bound down to the deep and we’ll all be sleeping below frozen stone, below; sleeping below frozen stone.”

These particular words for ‘frozen stone’ compound to make the Donotan word for carbon-freeze, seeing as it is not ice, and this particular ‘below’ is the same one used in ‘under water’. Notably, within it rather than it being above you. ‘Ate’ is the Donontan word used by siblings with a shared parent to refer to each-other, while ‘toi’ is the word a parent uses for their own child. ‘Mora’ is the specific word used to refer to someone who has physically birthed a child, but it’s only used by immediate kin. It’s also archaic; most Donontans use the more generic word ‘mite’ when speaking of their own parents, singular or plural.

Donontan doesn’t seem to bother with plurals half the time, and the other half the time the plural for is their word for ‘group’ tacked on as a suffix.

“Our cargo ship’s for the hard and the quick, we haul our load and go; there’s a living to be gained or there’s death to pay when you’re sleeping below frozen stone. Kona! Below, below; we’re going where the winds don’t blow. Yes we’re all bound down to the deep and we’ll all be sleeping below frozen stone, below; sleeping below frozen stone.”

The word for ‘deep’ is more metaphorical than referring actual physical depths; the depths of sleep or unconsciousness, or that terrible depth that comes with serious injury when your soul thinks it’s time to march away and takes a few steps past your flesh before second-guessing itself and fleeing back. Being bound to the deep rather than in it implies waking isn’t possible unaided, which adds a fun new level to the carbon-freeze implications; Vhonte’s never heard of anybody dreaming while in carbon-freeze, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.

“There’s a Lord on high with the Dark in their eye and a sparking hand, I’m told; it can hurt you it can hold you,they can kick you or console you when you’re sleeping below frozen stone. Kona! Below, below: we’re going where the winds don’t blow. Yes we’re all bound down to the deep and we’ll all be sleeping below frozen stone, below; sleeping below frozen stone.”

Vhonte isn’t sure what she thinks of the Donontan Lord of Dreams, but they don’t sound a very pleasant deity. Then again, on a planet covered in poisons it makes sense to have a god of hallucinations, fever-dreams, delirium and mistaken assumptions, even if they don’t exactly worship them. The general sense she gets is that they pointedly ignore the Lord of Dreams, all the better to deny said being power over them. Morbidly, ‘sleeping below frozen stone’ without compounding the ‘frozen’ with the ‘stone’ -which is barely a half-breath of pause difference- is a Donontan idiom for being dead.

Do the dead dream while they’re marching far away? ‘Growing mantis-lilies’ is another such idiom; Donontans have a lot of them and a favourite among her ade is ‘feeding the garden-eels’. Not so surprising, given their early experiences on Kamino.

It’s Dec singing the solo parts this time around: “Kona you so wise and true, when it’s my time to go; won’t you lay me down under Teion Crowns and I’ll be sleeping below frozen stone, below; sleeping below frozen stone. Kona! Below, below: we’re going where the winds don’t blow. Yes we’re all bound down to the deep and we’ll all be sleeping below frozen stone, below; sleeping below frozen stone.”

‘Teion Crowns’ are a mountain on Dononter Minor -one that coincidentally overlooks the planet’s earliest mausoleums- but it’s also an idiom used for all manner of other things; something about the shape, apparently. She’s never seen the mountain, but she suspects she’d know it when she saw it based on when and how she’s heard the phrase used.

“Today we sail through the solar veil, for there’s much we still don’t know. So farewell with a kiss, then it’s fast for the mist, ‘till we’re all sleeping below frozen stone.”

‘Solar veil’ is an archaic term for a nebula -she had to ask about that one- and Vhonte’s pretty sure the ‘mist’ in the last verse is a reference to the billowing dry ice that is released when putting someone into carbonite. The implications of this song -that a very long time ago a bunch of Kona carbon-froze either themselves or a lot of other Donontans in order to haul them right across the galaxy before the invention of the hyperdrive- is not her favourite thing to be singing in hyperspace, so of course the ade all love it.

They’re going to keep going around and around until they tire of it and switch songs, but if they get even the faintest inkling that she’s less fond of this one they’ll not stop until the ship lands on Xorrn, purely because they can and they know she can’t stop them.

Well, that she won’t try to stop them with violence, actual or threatened. If she had a migraine they’d stop for her, but they’d also fuss.