Astriþ Mawpseí
14302 m. Þaramakiş q. 86K
MRXA KIŠČWRWM 15865
I have no idea how long this is going to take to get to you - my aunt who's a postwoman said it would need to go on four trains and a boat and then a fair bit beyond that to get from my post office to yours. So by the time you get it, everything will be out of date, and I'm half tempted to not use words like "yesterday", but that would be silly! So, yesterday, we got home (if anything it felt longer than the trip out, I think the perturber may have been sick) and I unpacked all my things (well, I dumped my luggage out on the floor, that counts, right?) and then I went straight to bed even though I said I'd write you right away. But this is rather close to right away.
My little brother is so jealous that I was allowed to go to the tournament and he keeps pestering me with questions. He doesn't even like sports! He barely knows the rules to prel-stik, let alone daroatan or anything remotely like basketball, and he's not even going to read Mom's article, he just wants to bother me.
Well, that is the only thing that has happened since I saw you, and now I have to go to church and my aunt's house is on the way, so I'm going to leave this letter with her and she'll see it gets to you. Write back! I'll send you a clipping of Mom's article when it's gone to press.
Sincerely,
Jida K. Darmio
[Interaction] Pen Pals
[Interaction] Pen Pals
Last edited by Alicorn on Thu Jun 16, 2011 5:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: [Interaction] Pen Pals
22 Hamaraiþi 1580
Rose Quarter, 14-8
Rinthio, Bright Shore
MEVWAN
Dear Jida:
I apologise if this letter arrives any letter than the date listed herein. I had exhorted the Safirian Post to send this letter by airmail, but, sadly, it may be impossible to fly into Mevwan, in which case this letter will arrive by container ship, with a large time delay.
I am glad to hear that you enjoyed yourself, though I have yet to receive your mother’s article. What, though, are prel-stik and darotan? And a perturber is a man who operates a teleportation device as a business, correct?
My mother, being the owner of the Anhira Mavericks, one of the teams you saw play, would, after hearing how you enjoyed the game, like to invite you and your family to attend another Anhira Mavericks game with us in the owner's box.
Please reply back as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Astriþ Mawpseí
Re: [Interaction] Pen Pals
Astriþ Mawpseí
14302 m. Þaramakiş q. 86K
MRXA KIŠČWRWM 15865
Why did you start your letter with "dear Jida"? Only my grandma ever calls me "dear". I think she just can't remember my name, but obviously you remembered mine!
I don't know at all if your letter arrived later than it should have. What does the date mean? Today is Wavemonth 4 and I think you shall get this Wavemonth 10 or so, if my aunt is right, but I'm not sure. (My birthday is Sunmonth 19. I have asked for a long list of magazine subscriptions, but most of them are just renewals of ones I have now. I've tucked in the clipping I mentioned of Mom's article - it was on page 4, which is very good, it even got put earlier than the eng-mi upset.
Perturbers are a kind of psion. They move stuff around, without touching it (or while touching it but I mean they don't have to use their muscles to do it.) They move around most of our trains and boats.
Prel-stik is nothing like basketball at all. There are two teams of five, and three sticks, and one ball. You have to get the ball out of the room in which it's played (it's indoor), through the door (there are three) that corresponds to the stick you're holding. The sticks and doors are color coded, but a lot of the time the game goes so fast that players take the ball out the wrong door. (Oh, and you have to be holding it.) And sometimes people forget to even get a stick, when they're first learning, and just charge out the nearest door with the ball under their arm and don't score because they didn't have the stick. It's fun.
Daroatan is a lot more like basketball. Except, the players (at least two teams but you can do as many as six or seven of them if you like and have enough different color shirts) wear scoopy-things over their hands, to scoop up the ball, and which basket which team is trying to get the ball into changes from time to time. So you could have been trying to get the ball into the first basket all along, but then you have to check the noticeboard sometimes, because otherwise you might make a basket just when you were supposed to be going for one the other side of the field! The baskets are put a lot lower than basketball ones. You do have to jump a little bit, but anyone can get a ball into a daroatan basket if they're not distracted; it's all about the goal changing.
Tell your mother that is so nice and we are so grateful and my super-religious dad says I should also say light be upon her but I dont know if Light even goes that far, so I'll just have to share some when I come see a game next I guess! My mom is thrilled to pieces too much to tell me to be a good little Haphengko about it, she's just planning trips and trying to get her cousin to give her a better fare on the boats. I'll see you (completely seasick) in a month and a half I guess!
My dad said that I'm probably right about Light not going that far so he says I should get you a present, and so I asked Mom if I could get you a subscription to the Mevwani Athlete so you could read about daroatan and prel-stik and stuff, but she said they don't ship overseas, so I bought you a box of back issues instead (volumes 20-40) and I'll send them a few at a time so they don't go over the weight limit for this class of postage. (The perturbers don't even have to move the cargo bits, they only move the locomotive, so I don't see why they charge by weight. My little brother thinks it's because they have to burn fuel sometimes but who even does that anymore?)
Sincerely,
Jida K. Darmio
Re: [Interaction] Pen Pals
30 Hamaraiþi 1580
Rose Quarter, 14-8
Rinthio, Bright Shore
MEVWAN
Dear Jida:
To start a letter with "Dear X" is a custom in Safiria. And it would be horrible if you could not remember your friend's name.
The calendar in Pelagian Safiria is adapted from the one used in metropolitan Safiria. It has twelve months, each of 35 or 36 days. Your letter arrived on the 29th of Hamaraiþi, the sixth month of the year. Your mother's article was quite interesting, although I would like to know why it ran in a magazine and not, say, a newspaper.
Prel-stik sounds nothing like any game I have ever played or heard of. Daroatan, though, sounds similar to out game of lacrosse, except adapted for indoor play and with constantly changing goals.
My mother thanks you for your gratefulness and wishes she could send a private jet to pick you up. It would seem that your concept of Light is not dissimilar to our goddess Astriþ, the goddess of light, after whom I was named.
I have received the first case of back issues and will begin reading them in short order. I have arranged for back issues of “Sportsmanlike Conduct” and DVDs of various sporting events from Safiria, both metropolitan and Pelagian, to be shipped to you. The first should arrive with this letter around the 4th of next month.
Sincerely,
Astriþ Mawpseí
Re: [Interaction] Pen Pals
Astriþ Mawpseí
14302 m. Þaramakiş q. 86K
MRXA KIŠČWRWM 15865
I don't think I told you this before - in Mevwan we don't just remember friends' names, sometimes we steal them! (Like not stealing stealing because they keep them, too, it's more like copying.) My middle name is Katha because my sister's name was Katha, but when I say sister I don't mean we had the same parents. I adopted her, and she put my name in the middle of hers and I put her name in the middle of mine. (She's what I meant when I said my sister died. I don't know if that was clear. My brother's the only one I share parents with.)
Newspapers are usually about current events and there are a lot of current events to compete for space in them. They sometimes don't even have pages about sports, because they want to have lots of room for crimes and politics and disasters. (And ads.) Everybody gets lots of magazines as well as a couple of newspapers, about whatever interests them. So someone who doesn't care about sports for some reason won't get the Mevwani Athlete, and I don't get those dumb magazines about fashion that my cousin likes. Current Events Mevwan is the biggest newspaper and they only have one page about sports and so they only cover huge events like world championships and stuff.
That's cool that you were named after a goddess of light. Did someone you know make her up? What do you do with her?
The magazine issues are awesome. I need to pester my uncle who has a brother who does carpentry about making me a new set of shelves to put stuff on. What's a DVD? Are they these shiny circles with holes in them? I thought they might be a computer thing, but I showed my mom's brother (he's not my uncle, she adopted him like I adopted Katha but that doesn't make him anything especially to me) who's been to Island and seen real computers, but he didn't recognize it either.
Sincerely, Jida K. Darmio
Astriþ Mawpseí
14302 m. Þaramakiş q. 86K
MRXA KIŠČWRWM 15865
I am so sorry about the goddess thing, I was talking to an Elehaithi neighbor and she says as far as she knows her lot are the only ones who make goddesses up and everybody else gets theirs someplace else. (I explained about you to her, and she decided to make a goddess of light and name it after you. I hope that's not rude or anything. I can tell her to kill it if you don't want an Elehaithi goddess named after you.) So I'm sorry if I was rude! How do gods and goddesses in Safiria work? I don't really have any and neither do Followers; we have other stuff in our religions. (The Light and the Law and the Revelation aren't actually people, just regularities.)
Sincerely, Jida K. Darmio
Re: [Interaction] Pen Pals
14 Mumoroþy 1580
Rose Quarter, 14-8
Rinthio, Bright Shore
MEVWAN
Dear Jida:
That is certainly unique how you adopt each other. In Safiria, adoption entails legally bringing another person into your family, not sharing one another's names.
Why don't the papers start running sports sections? Surely they are making enough money to cover the costs of printing another section, and if they are not, they can always run more adverts.
A DVD is a shiney plastic and aluminium disc that contains data that can be played by a computer, games console, or DVD player to recreate a film, sporting event, or other occurrence that one wishes to preserve. If you have a television, I can send you a DVD player and the appropriate power adapter.
The gist of Safirian religion is that there are six goddesses: Astriþ, the goddess of light; Erina, the goddess of darkness; Kaena, the goddess of the mind; Yukari, the goddess of instinct; Maria, the goddess of fertility; and Sila, the goddess of death. They have always existed and will continue to exist forever. Trillions of years ago, Astriþ, Kaena, and Maria got into a fight, creating the queen-goddess Amane, and inadvertenly creating our universe, along with 117,648 others. I do not mind having a foreign goddess being named after me, but I shudder to think of what Astriþ would do to the Elehaithi people were She to take offence. Thankfully, such occurrences are incomprehensibly rare.
Sincerely,
Astriþ Mawpseí
Re: [Interaction] Pen Pals
Astriþ Mawpseí
14302 m. Þaramakiş q. 86K
MRXA KIŠČWRWM 15865
Well, Katha was in my family when she was alive, she just wasn't in my family's family. I guess it's sort of legal but I'm not sure what a legal sister could do that a not-legal sister couldn't. What's the difference there? When it's just siblings I mean, and not parents and kids?
What's a television? We don't have a lot of techy things here. I might have seen some of this stuff if I lived on Island where Zaee keep their things but I still wouldn't have any of it because generally it's not for sale. We do have electricity though. We're not completely backward. I went to a power plant once - I mean it wasn't an entire fuel burning power plant, it was just a fellow who lives up the road and he has some exposed wires running into his house and now and then he picks them up and pushes electricity into them. It didn't look like anything and that was kind of disappointing because I thought he might shoot lightning out of his hands, but he didn't.
That's very different from how Elehaithi gods work. My neighbor I mentioned said she forgot to feed the goddess she named after you last week anyway because her cat knocked over the offering bowl and she didn't notice until she was pretty sure she'd starved to death, so I guess the one you're named after won't be offended about it. I wonder if I should write a letter to the Elehaithi magazine and warn them not to use any of those names? Except my neighbor thinks they might use them anyway, and then they'd know which names they were. What do you think?
Sincerely, Jida K. Darmio
Addendum: What do you think about maybe adopting each other (our way not the legal way because I think that sounds like there might be paperwork?)
Last edited by Alicorn on Sun Jan 08, 2012 7:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Re: [Interaction] Pen Pals
26 Mumoroþy 1580
Rose Quarter, 14-8
Rinthio, Bright Shore
MEVWAN
Dear Jida:
When one adopts a person in Safiria, they, instead of the adoptee's biological parents, become responsible for the adoptee's care.
A television is a large box — or, more recently, a panel — to which is transmitted various programming, including drama, comedy, sport, and public affairs.
I have spoken to the local priestess and she has said that Astriþ-eiľai was offended by the god named after Her, but was placated by its death. If the publication of the names of our goddesses would lead the Elehaithi to create more gods in Their names, then please refrain from writing them.
I am intrigued at your forme of adoption and will consider it.
Sincerely,
Astriþ Mawpseí
Re: [Interaction] Pen Pals
Astriþ Mawpseí
14302 m. Þaramakiş q. 86K
MRXA KIŠČWRWM 15865
Can't people just adopt each other as siblings without having to be responsible for each other? It seems like making it a responsibility thing would discourage adoption and I think it's nice to have lots of extra family. (Even though I've only adopted one person before and now she's died. I don't think I ever said what happened to her. It was last year, and she was on a boat with her dad fishing, and they capsized and she hurt herself and even though she could swim she couldn't keep afloat with her hurt leg and her dad couldn't get her because he was trying to save her older brother who couldn't swim and he thought Katha was okay.)
Television sounds a bit like radio, with pictures - is it that? My family doesn't have a radio but the one next door does (not the Elehaithi neighbor, these ones are Haphengko like me but they're stricter and they won't eat unlawful things and they have to dress perfectly modest even when it's warm and stuff like that.) Sometimes I go over to their house and listen to things on their radio, especially when the only one home is the old grandmother. She doesn't hear so good but she's a telepath so I go over and listen to the radio and then she can hear what it says from my head. I think it's pretty neat.
I'm sorry I wound up getting my neighbor to offend your goddess. I told the neighbor about all this and she said she never even announced that she made the goddess in the first place to the magazine Elehaithi use to do that, so nobody else has to know there ever was one and that should be okay.
Let me know what you decide. Is it hard to change your name in Safiria? All I have to do is go to the church and tell them and they'll add a little note under my name in the books. (The church keeps so many books. I think I might help with church books if my handwriting ever gets any better.)
Sincerely, Jida K. Darmio
Re: [Interaction] Pen Pals
32 Mumoroþy 1580
Rose Quarter, 14-8
Rinthio, Bright Shore
MEVWAN
Dear Jida:
Sadly, no, one cannot adopt another person and then refuse to take responsibility for them. Whenever this happens, the adoptee always ends up in the care of the state.
I am very sorry about Kaþa's death and have lain a dozen white roses in her honour in front of a nearby statue of Sila, the goddess of death and rebirth.
Yes, a television is like a radio with a video component. It is quite the enhancement, especially when watching a fast-moving game like football.
As I said, Astriþ-eiľai was placated by the death of the god named after Her, so you have no reason to worry.
In Safiria, one can change their performance name by filling a form out at the Post Office. To change one's legal name, however, requires a court order and a new birth certificate, which can take weeks to obtain.
Also, what is your house like?
Sincerely,
Astriþ Mawpseí
Re: [Interaction] Pen Pals
Astriþ Mawpseí
14302 m. Þaramakiş q. 86K
MRXA KIŠČWRWM 15865
The state cares for people? I'm not sure how a state could do that. If somebody winds up without parents here people take care of them, sometimes church people. There's a couple up the street who have six adopted children they got through the church who lost their biological parents one way or another and needed somebody to live with, so their neighbors gave them to the church and the church gave them to their new parents.
What does laying the roses do? I'm pretty sure that Katha had enough Light to reincarnate. (But my dad says I shouldn't try to look for her reincarnation because there's no way to be sure who she is now and anyway she'd be a baby at this point. Except I'm so curious about where she could have gone. I don't know if she's even still in Mevwan! The revelator said people can reincarnate anywhere.)
Televisions sound amazing. I hope inventors here figure them out soon. We know the tellurics will let us have technology here because the Zaee have it but we don't know how to build a lot of things yet. I'm not sure how to watch the DVDs you sent me without one. Should I send them back?
Why would you need a new birth certificate? You aren't changing the name you were born with. You would have to be a time traveler to do that.
My house has got a kitchen that's sort of the same room as the common space, and then there's my room and my brother's room and my parents' room and a porch with the printing press (we just got one last month, Mom did some math and decided it was cheaper in the long run than buying time on the town ones) and some random stuff stored in it. And we've got a cellar where we keep most of the food that we don't expect to use right away, because it's cold in the cellar and that makes food keep longer. Some kinds of food anyway. And it's made of wood. And it's got little rectangle windows high up on the walls to let in light, but we don't want them any bigger because windows lose heat easily. And we've got a little garden with mostly cauliflower in it and my dad trades that to other people for what they grow.
Sincerely, Jida K. Darmio
Re: [Interaction] Pen Pals
8 Emaraiþi 1580
Rose Quarter, 14-8
Rinthio, Bright Shore
MEVWAN
Dear Jida:
Each of the nine states in Safiria operate their own foster homes, although priestesses do end up caring for about 35% of abandoned children.
Laying white roses in front of a monument to Sila-eiľai requests that She reincarnate someone in your memories — in my case, your sister Kaþa. However, it is possible that Kaþa may have used all 108 of her lives, in which case her soul has already dissipated into astral energy, which is used to power the Safir's psionic abilities.
Please send the DVDs back at your earliest convenience and expect none further.
I was incorrect in stating that one needs a new birth certificate to change their legal name. It is actually done by deed poll, which can only be obtained by order of the High Court for your state of birth.
Our apartment has four bedrooms — one for me, one for my parents, one for my sisters/lovers Eneþi and Maria, and one converted into an office — three bathrooms, a basketball court, picture windows, and a wraparound balcony. We don't really have or need a cellar since most of the food we eat is canned or otherwise processed for long shelf life.
I believe that this shall be my last letter before we meet, in which case I look forward to meeting you in the coming weeks.
Regards,
Astriþ Mawpseí
Re: [Interaction] Pen Pals
Astriþ Mawpseí
14302 m. Þaramakiş q. 86K
MRXA KIŠČWRWM 15865
I don't think reincarnation works like that here. (Even though the revelator says she could have wound up anywhere, I think she still reincarnates like a Haphengko instead of like a Safirian this time.) How do your psions work? Are they like ours? I don't think ours run on dissipated souls. The revelator says dissipated souls all merge with each other and turn into new souls because they don't have enough Light to be reincarnated whole.
I put the DVDs in this package.
What's a sister-lover? Three bathrooms is a lot to have for five people. I don't know what a "picture" window is. Is it a picture of a window, like for decoration? That's what my brother thinks but I don't think it's probably that.
I have to go pack - I'll see you soon!
Sincerely, Jida K. Darmio
Re: [Interaction] Pen Pals
"Safiria will be in sight within the hour," reported the navigator, kindly enough considering Jida had pestered him six times over the trip. Jida looked at the perturber, who sat in the crow's nest making unnecessary gestures to accompany the motive force that pushed the ship, and wished he could force the boat faster. He was at least an improvement over sails and steam.
The ship made port, and Jida was the first ashore, her mother hurrying after her and shouting her full name indignantly.
The ship made port, and Jida was the first ashore, her mother hurrying after her and shouting her full name indignantly.
Re: [Interaction] Pen Pals
Astriþ J. Mawpseí
14302 m. Þaramakiş q. 86K
MRXA KIŠČWRWM 15865
(I hope it's okay that I put your initial in the address even though you probably haven't formally added it this early on. It should get to you anyway, right?) I just got home - well, just if you don't count the nap that I desperately needed but that was only about an hour long. As soon as I drop off this letter I'm going to go to the church and tell them to add my extra name. (I'm going to have to let them spell it "Astrith". They're not going to get the Safirian letter.)
I bought you another box of back issues (41-60) and the first few are enclosed. And also, my dad's new brother coaches a daroatan team, and he said he would be happy to invite you and any one guest of your choice to come and watch it play at any Mainland game in the front row. (We don't have boxes, just rows, but the front row is best.) I clipped a schedule to this letter.
I hope you can come soon!
Sincerely, Jida K. A. Darmio
Re: [Interaction] Pen Pals
35 Emaraiþi 1580
Rose Quarter, 14-8
Rinthio, Bright Shore
MEVWAN
Dear Jida:
That is fine. You may find that your name has been added to mine as Šita to comply with the phonological restraints of the Xylphika language. I have received the first few back issues from the second case and will begin reading them in due time. I would be happy to attend one of your father's brother's games. I hope to see you in three months' time.
Regards,
Astriþ Šita Mawpseí