milliways_bar | (no subject)

Soujirou is walking by, and looks curiously at the young girl translating an English text into a language he's never seen before. It looks ancient.

Intrigued, he quietly slides into the seat next to her, attempting not to disturb her work.

"Hello. I'm sorry to interrupt, but may I ask what language that is?"

"Hello, it's no bother, and yes, you may. It's Sindarin, an elf language. Would you like a biscuit?"

She indicates the cheerful-looking open picnic basket of cookies beside her notebook.

Soujirou's never heard of elves, and biscuits, he knows, are a rather famous Western food he's never tried, so both are of equal fascination for him.

"I'd love to try one, thank you." Cheerfully, he picks up a biscuit and takes a bite, eyebrows raising a bit at the rich, buttery taste.

"These are wonderful! Your...Sin-da-ri-an is lovely, too. What are you translating?"

"A book someone else wrote about me," she explains. "He left out a few things, but they weren't very important."

Matilda doesn't consider her brother very important in the grand scheme of things.

"About you?" Soujirou looks surprised. "What did you do that was so great it had to be recorded in tale?" She looks human enough, so surely she couldn't have fought in any great battles...even he was not yet renowned at her age, and certainly not famous enough to have a book written about him. Or perhaps she's royalty? One never knows with the patrons of Milliways.

"Frightened away a very annoying schoolteacher," she says with a shrug. "It's not a very grand tale - it's a story for children, really, which makes sense seeing as it's about me and I'm a child."

"Ah," says Soujirou. He's never read any children's tales, so the thought didn't occur to him. "I don't suppose it's translated into Japanese? It sounds interesting!"

He can read English, technically, it's just very slow going.

"As it happens, Japanese is the first language I translated it into," Tilda beams. "I figured I'd start with the interesting ones. Here you are." She digs a small notebook out of her nondescript grey bag and passes it to Soujirou. It contains an astonishingly faithful Japanese translation of Matilda - astonishingly because of the number of times Tilda was tempted to leave out the bits about how smart she is.

She translated it into Japanese? As Soujirou takes the notebook, he realises that it's no joke. Just a quick flip through the pages is more than enough to see that the Japanese is very eloquent. He had thought at first that the Sindarian language the girl was translating was something she was using for practice in order to learn the language. He hadn't considered, until this moment, that she was actually a skilled multi-linguist.

Matilda would have found it useless to leave out the bits about how smart she is - it's more than obvious.

"Ah, that's wonderful! Would you mind terribly if I borrowed it?" He realises this is a rather forward thing to ask of someone he just met, but the people here are friendly, and it's not as if he could take off with it, being Bound.