Oralie
Some things I have to say ain’t getting said
in this snowy, blond, blue-eyed, gum-chewing English
dawn’s early light sifting through persianas closed
the night before by dark-skinned girls whose words
evoke cama, aposento, suenos in nombres
from that first world I can’t translate from Spanish.
Gladys, Rosario, Altagracia—the sounds of Spanish
wash over me like warm island waters as I say
your soothing names: a child again learning the nombres
of things you point to in the world before English
turned sol, tierra, cielo, luna to vocabulary words—
sun, earth, sky, moon. Language closed
like the touch-sensitive morivivi whose leaves closed
when we kids poked them, astonished. Even Spanish
failed us back then when we saw how frail a word is
when faced with the thing it names. How saying
its name won’t always summon up in Spanish or English
the full blown genie from the bottled nombre.
“Bilingual Sestina” by Julia Alvarez
in this snowy, blond, blue-eyed, gum-chewing English
dawn’s early light sifting through persianas closed
the night before by dark-skinned girls whose words
evoke cama, aposento, suenos in nombres
from that first world I can’t translate from Spanish.
Gladys, Rosario, Altagracia—the sounds of Spanish
wash over me like warm island waters as I say
your soothing names: a child again learning the nombres
of things you point to in the world before English
turned sol, tierra, cielo, luna to vocabulary words—
sun, earth, sky, moon. Language closed
like the touch-sensitive morivivi whose leaves closed
when we kids poked them, astonished. Even Spanish
failed us back then when we saw how frail a word is
when faced with the thing it names. How saying
its name won’t always summon up in Spanish or English
the full blown genie from the bottled nombre.
“Bilingual Sestina” by Julia Alvarez
Appearance
Tall and lean, well-muscled throughout her entire body. Bronze tattoos on her tongue, cheek, neck. Has sharp, pointy teeth, not in a jarring manner but in a way that once you notice it, you can’t unsee it.
Skills and Abilities
Trilingual: speaks both common tongue and Narra fluently, as well as her birth language. Isn’t able to write but can read common tongue at a slow pace. Can sign a few things in her birth language, this sign-language is more limited than the one taught in other places as there is only ever three mutes in her tribe at a time.
Martial training: trained in her tribes unique sense of fighting of Silat and the Anirian guard fighting style. Proficient with bow and arrow and short-sword. Used to prefer less violent methods such as batons, but that has changed.
Very good swimmer, climber and runner. Her stamina has been noted to seem otherworldly, but maybe that’s just because of her sharp teeth,
Cursed Speech: Oralie was raised to carry a curse and gift of the gods, and there’s a story Oralie can tell if one is interested why the ninth child must carry such a thing all alone. She cannot speak her birth language— or rather she must be careful when she does as what she speaks in that language can happen in the real world. Things like “crush, twist, turn, melt, explode, sleep, run, crumble, move, stop, blast, or even away or purple or blue can affect things.” This technique was used to keep her tribe safe from the Nazrani tribes people as their numbers greatly outnumbered her own tribe and their island was surrounded by the Nazrani islands. Has to be said in Oralie’s mothertongue.
Martial training: trained in her tribes unique sense of fighting of Silat and the Anirian guard fighting style. Proficient with bow and arrow and short-sword. Used to prefer less violent methods such as batons, but that has changed.
Very good swimmer, climber and runner. Her stamina has been noted to seem otherworldly, but maybe that’s just because of her sharp teeth,
Cursed Speech: Oralie was raised to carry a curse and gift of the gods, and there’s a story Oralie can tell if one is interested why the ninth child must carry such a thing all alone. She cannot speak her birth language— or rather she must be careful when she does as what she speaks in that language can happen in the real world. Things like “crush, twist, turn, melt, explode, sleep, run, crumble, move, stop, blast, or even away or purple or blue can affect things.” This technique was used to keep her tribe safe from the Nazrani tribes people as their numbers greatly outnumbered her own tribe and their island was surrounded by the Nazrani islands. Has to be said in Oralie’s mothertongue.
Personality
Suffers from Damocles Syndrome although it’s hard to tell by how quiet she is.
Biography & Lore
When a Naval port was being built on the beaches of her home, Oralie, once lovingly called Orasa’i Olioli, didn’t feel anxiety like the adults in her village. All she knew was that they brought toys and sweets as rewards when she learned their language. Sure, they struggled in pronouncing her name and shortened it down to Oralie, but it didn’t matter to her. As the Chief’s daughter, Oralie became the conduit for conversation, not only with her own tribe but also with the Nazrani peoples on the neighboring islands.
This common tongue that she learned was something she appreciated immensely, mostly because as the ninth child born she would have to take on the magic known as cursed speech within her tribe. This duty fell on her and while Oralie was prepared to be mute unless it was time to protect her tribe, it was hard to grow up learning a sign language that only three others knew. Common tongue gave her a chance to speak to others and it seemed there was no magic in those words.
At sixteen, given her first set of tribal tattoos that sanctioned her to be an adult, she was also presented with a opportunity: the Anirian guardsmen that she had grown up with offered her a chance to join them. She was promised to be trained in the guard for a year or two, but would then aid their efforts. And in return: her earnings would go to her village which was beginning to look more “civilized” as the Anirians put it. So she went, spent a year and half of training and exceeding expectations of her. She fought bravely for Vel Anir.
When she was given some respite at the age of 20, she went back home to visit her island. She was aware that at the time other Anirians had moved there and began their own establishment, but an issue had occur. A sickness that seemed to have wiped them out, something about the wrath of Nazrani gods or other superstitions. Oralie hoped her village was fine, but upon entering her home, she realized no one on these clusters of islands were fine.
Two initiates and a dreadlord had decimated multiple villages, Nazrani, Anirian, her own tribe by allowing poison to fester in the waters. Fish and sealift were dead, plant life was nonexistent, and the crops that Vel Anir once greedily sought were unable to grow in the deadly soil.
Perhaps the worst part was seeing how no one had bothered to bury her dead friends and family, and their corpses were sickly sweet and rotting out in the open because they weren’t Anirian. Oralie used her cursed speech for the first time, saying “clean” and “purify” but to no avail. After all, her magic is only a destructive one. Useless in actually doing some good.
Oralie didn’t return to the guard but went to Vel Anir, wanting to find the idiots that could be so careless. The dreadlords she had met in the guard were no better: such great power they had and they threw it around carelessly, even if it meant their own soldiers got killed in the process! The justification of “if the end justifies the means” meant nothing but recklessness to her, but oh, she would have her revenge.
At least, she thought she would. Living in the slums, nearly attacked when one caught sight of her tribal tattoos on her throat and cheeks and tongue, Oralie wouldn’t have survived and been able to escape the harsh clutches of Anirians jails, but that was when the Hanged Man offered her something she couldn’t refuse. Something to hopefully stab the hypocrisy of Vel Anir right where it could hurt them.
This common tongue that she learned was something she appreciated immensely, mostly because as the ninth child born she would have to take on the magic known as cursed speech within her tribe. This duty fell on her and while Oralie was prepared to be mute unless it was time to protect her tribe, it was hard to grow up learning a sign language that only three others knew. Common tongue gave her a chance to speak to others and it seemed there was no magic in those words.
At sixteen, given her first set of tribal tattoos that sanctioned her to be an adult, she was also presented with a opportunity: the Anirian guardsmen that she had grown up with offered her a chance to join them. She was promised to be trained in the guard for a year or two, but would then aid their efforts. And in return: her earnings would go to her village which was beginning to look more “civilized” as the Anirians put it. So she went, spent a year and half of training and exceeding expectations of her. She fought bravely for Vel Anir.
When she was given some respite at the age of 20, she went back home to visit her island. She was aware that at the time other Anirians had moved there and began their own establishment, but an issue had occur. A sickness that seemed to have wiped them out, something about the wrath of Nazrani gods or other superstitions. Oralie hoped her village was fine, but upon entering her home, she realized no one on these clusters of islands were fine.
Two initiates and a dreadlord had decimated multiple villages, Nazrani, Anirian, her own tribe by allowing poison to fester in the waters. Fish and sealift were dead, plant life was nonexistent, and the crops that Vel Anir once greedily sought were unable to grow in the deadly soil.
Perhaps the worst part was seeing how no one had bothered to bury her dead friends and family, and their corpses were sickly sweet and rotting out in the open because they weren’t Anirian. Oralie used her cursed speech for the first time, saying “clean” and “purify” but to no avail. After all, her magic is only a destructive one. Useless in actually doing some good.
Oralie didn’t return to the guard but went to Vel Anir, wanting to find the idiots that could be so careless. The dreadlords she had met in the guard were no better: such great power they had and they threw it around carelessly, even if it meant their own soldiers got killed in the process! The justification of “if the end justifies the means” meant nothing but recklessness to her, but oh, she would have her revenge.
At least, she thought she would. Living in the slums, nearly attacked when one caught sight of her tribal tattoos on her throat and cheeks and tongue, Oralie wouldn’t have survived and been able to escape the harsh clutches of Anirians jails, but that was when the Hanged Man offered her something she couldn’t refuse. Something to hopefully stab the hypocrisy of Vel Anir right where it could hurt them.
