Captivity

Chapter 13: The Tempest

Sam let out a huff, tapping her pen against the paper in front of her. She'd been trying all morning at setting up a lesson plan for her aquatic friend. From what they had learned from the medical exam, Danny's attempts to communicate verbally had put strain upon his body. Not wanting him to continue hurting himself, but knowing that he would continue to try to bridge the language barrier meant finding another method; the use of signs via one's hands. But considering that he hardly knew any English, and she barely knew any signs. It was going to be a learning curve for both of them. Thus it was best to start form the basics. With the oncoming semester, she picked up one of the sign language classes and had taken to compiling her notes for a secondary session with the jet black mer.

The initial first step had been difficult, seeing as the concept wasn't quite grasped by the mer. The idea of communication with ones hands instead of one's voice was an alien concept, one that at first gained many verbal protests in response. It was only after a number of attempts at demonstration that she was able to get her point across. The possibilities that this newfound form of communication sparked a curiosity in the mer's eyes.

He took to it with a voracious appetite; once the key concepts were understood he grasped the others with an efficiency that left Sam stumbling to catch up. For most things, Sam wouldn't have bothered with such complicated feats as trying to teach a mer to speak, but there was a sense of intelligence within those bold green eyes that held her attention. A spark of intrigue or wonder, she did not know, but it held with a desire to know just how much those eyes truly understood. It felt more and more like she was dealing with a person, rather than an animal.

"Working hard? I see that you've been busy with those new classes," Valery chuckled from across the room, folding up laundry and putting it into its respective drawer. She'd been observing her friends debacle for the past few hours, watching her struggle with it to no real success.

"I found it easier to teach Danny the basics if I started there myself. Though he's learning the material faster than I can put it out," Sam frowned, picking up her notes and running over them, assessing for any errors.

With each passing day Danny had come to understand more commands and simple words and phrases. It had definitely been easier to start off with what he already knew rather than trying to tackle the system as a whole. But once he'd mastered the basics, it was a struggle to provide enough adequate material, as the class moved too slowly for him, and Sam found herself struggling to keep up with her own understanding of it. One would think that considering that most methods for teaching sign language were for people who already knew a good portion of their native language, whether or not they could speak it, and yet a creature that knew little of their language or world at all, picked up on it with such ease. She was stuck providing him with a number of books and other things in attempts to broaden his 'spoken' vocabulary, to which he took to just as enthusiastically.

"Fast learner indeed," Val hummed, finishing up with the laundry and setting about preparing a cup of tea. Placing the mug in the microwave and letting it click to life with a mechanical buzz, "You think I can come along?"

"Huh?"

"You heard me..."

Sam blinked, turning in her chair to look up at her roommate with a bewildered expression, "I thought you weren't interested in all this stuff? You've been surprisingly quiet about everything since you met Danny."

Valery shrugged, tapping her fingers upon the top of the microwave, waiting for the machine to be finished heating up her drink, "You tend to do that when you've been threatened at knife point."