heavensreader: (we'll get along)

[personal profile] heavensreader 2016-03-22 03:11 am (UTC)(link)
[She gets that sense. But what else is there? Well - there is always anger. Anger helps.]

It's terrible being the only one who knows how to do anything right, isn't it? And it's worst when you're the only one who knows what to do with you!

[She has a smidgen of experience in these matters, young as she is, so her anger is genuine. But his diagnosis, if that is what it is, makes her deflate slightly again.] It isn't different if it just doesn't work. That's what defective means exactly. But numbers are fine. [And then she brightens, as though sharing the best secret in the world.] And Chinese is fine, maybe. I can read and write forty whole words in Chinese!
heavensreader: (we'll get along)

[personal profile] heavensreader 2016-03-25 02:24 am (UTC)(link)
[Some of it is faking, certainly, repeating what others have said - Dame Ariel most of all, who is forever the only one who knows how to do anything right. But Kesara is also used to adults less astute and educated than herself, and the trouble of talking to those. And anyway Dr. House is a fine fellow and she thinks, in her limited perspective, that he might have been a lot like her when he was younger.]

I mean to write! The letters are the same, you know. [He certainly knows, but he should know that she knows.]

Dr. Stein has taught me Mandarin, but Lao Dian speaks every dialect you care to name and he'll teach me those. But if you know how to write it - [her voice shivers with excitement] I'll do anything. I have to keep learning. I've given up on English, I just use my memory tricks, and if I talk about some future kind or program they'll just say I'm acting the child. But Chinese is my chance and I have to keep learning!
heavensreader: (we'll get along)

[personal profile] heavensreader 2016-03-25 11:43 am (UTC)(link)
It's a deal! [She's speaking Mandarin back already, fast, excited - a little archaic and florid, which stands to reason. In fact what she says is more like "what a satisfying realisation of matching interests!"]

I have the video logs I've taken of my exploring on the other side of the ice tunnels. But I'll also look for - you're trying to build a - xian... wei... [she stutters and slows, putting the meaning together of the word she has never heard in this language before, and then brightens again all at once.] Oh! You mean a microscope!