Noel pushed me away. Hard. My back hit a tree.
"What was that for?" I said through gritted teeth.
"That was inappropriate!"
Oh, and shoving me into a tree was appropriate? I cursed under my breath. Whatever, probably a misunderstanding.
"All I want you to do is move your lips and—" I began.
"No! And stop saying that," she interjected.
Okay. Clearly my words were being translated into something else in her language.
"Listen, Noel, look at this," I said as I pointed at my lips. I spoke slowly and with exaggerated lip movements: "Hello."
Noel looked confused. I did it again. I said a few more words too, just to make it painfully obvious that I wasn't actually speaking her language. It was a little hard to see in the moonlight, which explained why she hadn't noticed this before, but eventually she realized that the words she was hearing were not the same words that were coming out of my mouth.
"Is this… magic?" she asked.
"I don't know, maybe? Honestly, I have no idea how this works. Or even how I got into that pond where you found me. I was sitting by a river back home and got swept away by the water. Next thing I know, I'm in a pond in front of a beautiful elf girl," I said.
She seemed taken aback again. Another mistranslation? I quickly assured her that I was not spewing obscenities or anything. Translation is never perfect, so what might be a perfectly normal compliment in my language might end up as a profanity in hers.
"But that's not important right now. I need you to say a few words, slowly and while stressing your mouth movements. Anything is fine at first, I just want to confirm something," I said.
She was still dazed by the realization that I wasn't speaking what she was hearing, but eventually agreed to the experiment. She greeted me, introduced herself, asked some questions, commented on the moonlight, the weather, the forest. I carefully observed the way her lips moved and, whenever the moonlight was at the right angle, I observed her tongue too. I asked her some questions about words she had pronounced. I could tell she hadn't really thought about how she made some of the sounds she was making. In fact, most people wouldn't think too hard about when their tongues were hitting the top of their mouths, or when they were curling their tongues, or pushing air in strange ways.
"Alright, I was right," I said.
"Right about what?" she asked.
"Remember when I said there were a lot of different tribes where I come from? And how most of them have their own language? Well, most languages used by tribes that live near each other are related. Many generations ago, one tribe might have a single language. But when that tribe splits into two, they take that single language and slowly change it into two different languages," I explained.
Noel agreed that this made sense. "But what does that have to do with the words on the cave? My language doesn't have symbols to represent sounds like this one does."
"Right," I said, "and there are definitely a lot of changes that come from writing down an oral language. Still, for these words to be on a cave so close to your tribe, this language must be similar to the language that you speak!"
"But how can you be sure? This cave has been here longer than any of the elves in any of the tribes of the plains. Our elders have lived for many years, and have stories passed down by our ancestors. None of those stories mention another people who had a language like ours," said Noel.
"For one, I confirmed your language could be represented as a logosyllabary. A lot of your words seem to be monosyllabic too, which should be similar to this cave-language. But the biggest clue," I said, "is actually the way one of the words you have been using was translated into my language."
"Which one?"
I wrote the words in the dirt. "The Terrible," I said, reading the English out loud.
"The Terrible? But it's just a name, what could you learn from that?" she asked.
"To explain that, I have to tell you a little about the language of my people. Well, one of our languages: English. It's written in what's called an alphabet, where each symbol stands for a sound, although not necessarily a whole syllable like in this cave-language. Each sound doesn't always mean something. You combine sounds to produce different combinations of symbols called words, which can then mean something," I said.
"I," said Noel, "I think I understand. Maybe. But how does that explain anything about The Terrible?"
"Simple." I drew a circle around each word. "These are two words. Not one. A name would be one word, one combination of symbols. But instead of saying just the one word: Terrible, every time you name that great being in the cave, I hear two words." I circled the words on the ground again, to stress my point. "The Terrible. As a name, it makes no sense. As a title? Maybe. But even then, it would be something like: The Terrible One. Or a name, followed by the words: the terrible. In English, it makes no sense for the two words The and Terrible to exist together alone."
"The?" said Noel.
"Oh right, you don't have that in your language. I just tested it. And from the way you said it, it looks like whatever magic is being used to translate my words also gave up on translating the. It gave you the sound instead. Articles like the are an annoying quirk of a few languages like English. Lots of people who're learning English complain about articles. But that's not important. The point is, the way this name is being translated is really, really strange."
"I don't think I understood half of what you said, but whatever. What's so strange about the way The Terrible is being translated?"
"Noel," I said, slowly, "that's the strangest thing about it: Noel."
"What? That's my name?" she said.
"Right. And you see my lips right," I said as I pointed to my lips, "what I'm saying is not what you're hearing. When I say your name: Noel, I'm saying a name from my world, not yours. But I'm sure they're being translated into each other because they have similar meanings. Does your name have something to do with a season of birth that is also somehow winter?"
Noel nodded. "Yes, it does. It means the season of the birth of the winter cress."
"I knew it! The word I'm hearing and saying has a similar meaning, although with more religious overtones. And another thing, Noel isn't a word in English. It's a name from another language, and it's a name that's not common among people who speak English. This means my translation magic chose a name from another language to represent your name to me. It didn't give me a descriptive name like: Winter Cress Season in English. It gave me a name. A singular, proper, name!"
Noel's eyes widened. "But it didn't do that for The Terrible!"
"Exactly!"
"I understand now! Wait, that's so cool. You got all of that from a name?"
"Well," I said, scratching my chin, "you don't speak my language so you don't understand how strange it is for someone to have a name like The Terrible. If someone from back home heard it in a story, they'd wonder why the storyteller was so terrible at naming things!" I chuckled. They might even stop reading the book, I mused to myself. I didn't say that part out loud though, since I didn't want to have to explain what a book was.
"But wait…" Noel furrowed her brows. "That still doesn't help us understand the words on the cave."
"Well, that's why we need to continue the experiment." I raised my left hand with only one finger unfurled. "Terrible." I raised my right hand with only one finger unfurled. "The Terrible." I brought my fingers away from each other and stared at Noel's mouth. "Now start moving those lips."