A Place To Bloom

Intentions

"'uzi zubæ ʃaxeŋi θemovevisa!" The old woman spoke effusively, reaching up to grasp my face in her withered hand and smiled wide with the teeth she had left.

"O.. K..." I said, "so... those were words."

She hunched over and cackled, then rested her hand on my shoulder, slapping gently a few times. Then she lifted her yellow eyes to me and spoke in clean Herali, almost as a whisper, "come and sit down. Listen. 'uzi is like a past tense, but only when we need to express the origin of something. How things came to be."

"'uzi," I nodded. "OK?"

She nodded. "zubæ is the action. Make sure to hear the vowel, /æ/. It's the same vowel you hear in the fat cat shat on the mat."

That made me laugh. Hard.

The old woman poked her finger into my chest and grinned wide, "I have jokes too, young man! You'd better watch it!"

That made me smile. "I will."

"So," she turned towards a small iron stove in the corner beside the open window where three baby green spiders had made their home. She was dressed as everyone else, her shriveled body nearly naked and sagging breasts exposed to the world. "zubæ means to make something. To carve, to sculpt, like a work of art."

"zubæ," I repeated. "To make. OK?"

Her hovel wasn't large. Inside I could see wooden frames surrounded by mud with roots creeping down from the roof like fur. Inside, it was comfortable. Not trying to find some way to beat this horrid humidity and this is the least intolerable comfortable, but it was nice. The air was crisp and had a delightful earthy scent that made you feel connected to the world, and it was cool as the shade beneath an oak tree in the mountains of Osenia on a summer day.

"ʃaxeŋi," she continued. She took up a pot from the stove and set it on a tray with two cups and plates of other things.

"Let me carry that for you," I moved over to her.

"Oh, no!" her voice quivered. "Every day my body asks me 'do you still need this?' And if I say no, I'll lose it forever. Please, sit down."

Beside the earthen wall were two bag chairs like the one I'd seen that braided woman sitting on the other day. They were set apart with a small, round wooden table between them.

She wobbled a bit as she walked ever so slowly towards me. "That's the subject. You know, the one doing the action. ʃaxeŋi is the one doing the carving."

"Shaheni," I nodded. "What does it mean?"

"The Devil!"

"Oh, wow. OK?"

She leaned over and set the tray down, then carefully lowered herself into the chair opposite me. "The next one is the object—the thing that was carved. θemovevisa."

I nodded and made a mental note of what she'd said so far, wishing I'd had a notebook to write these down. "What does that one mean?"

"Well," she picked up the pot and poured out a steaming cup of tea into each of the cups, then set it down. I couldn't place what kind of tea it was, but it had a sharp head to it. "Pay attention to this."

"I'm listening?"

"No, look," she pointed. "Do you see how neither of these two cups is closer to you, or to me? They're side by side between us. Whenever you pour, always arrange the cups this way."

"Hmm," I raised an eyebrow. "What if there are three people?"

She smiled wide and nodded. "Very good! Very good! I love the way you question! Then you must place them all in the center."