Vol.2 Ch.21 - Breaking language barriers

Making it to Bilgam took a surprisingly short time, probably because weannoyed the wagon driver with question after question about the Hianiclanguage. Learning the words was straight forward, but the grammar was adifferent story. We could kind of grasp what a person was talking aboutbased off of key words, but everything else about the sentence was unknown.Of course, learning a language took time, but I’d like to get a hang of it as fastas humanly possible. We of all people knew how easy it was to get scammedout of our belongings, and while we were pretty confident in our ability tododge such people in our native language, we have no idea how to do so inthis one.The worst possible outcome would be if we somehow accidentally offendedsomeone because we didn’t translate something well enough. There havebeen many stories of such individuals who have endured a variety ofpunishments because of poor wording, ranging from a slap to the cheek tofull-blown banishment from the country. If Ed or I get banished from acountry, we won’t be able to document it properly, and we definitely don’twant that to happen.Making our way through the main street of Bilgam was enchanting. Thestreets were lit up in these lamp posts that looked mystical in nature, andwhile the streets were paved, it felt weirdly dated. I can see why this countrywas a famous honeymoon spot, taking your loved one here would definitelymake her happy.Our first destination was in fact not an inn, but rather a tourist shop. Therewe got ourselves a pocket-sized dictionary each and spent our remainingdaily pocket money on a Bilgam badge for Ed’s collection. Sadly, the onlyone left in stock was a heart shaped one, which made sense due to Bilgam’smain tourist demographic, but it still felt weird buying it when we’re bothsingle.***Making our way to the ITA hub we decided to put our dictionaries to gooduse and greeted the booth lady in their language. She welcomed us with asmile on her face while eyeing the small handbooks in our hands. Sheguessed we’re not from here almost immediately and started speaking inEntropic for the time being.“Good evening, boys.” She began her spiel, “Is there anything I can help youwith?”“We would like to check in per protocol, we’re Edward Saint and LuneGrimheart.” Explained Ed.She seemed surprised at our formal reply, but after verifying our names wereactually written in the member’s list we were finally allowed to check in. Nostrikes for us! Even still, this only gave us another month, but it shouldn’t bea problem due to our current whereabouts. It really was a good idea to gohere. While we were here we decided to ask the booth lady about good waysto secure travel funds, but she was basically said That depends on you andyou only so we were back to square one.After finding an inn that seemed like it had a good util/cost ratio we decidedto call it a day and went to bed as we discussed our plans from hereon.“If we had more money,” said Ed, “we could build a branch of Arthur’shere.”“I don’t like the idea. First off: as you said we lack funds, and secondly: thatis now Anna’s and Arthur’s job, not ours’. We have no rights to the brandname.”He nodded off at my points, looking as if he was writing my words down inhis head. I’m not sure if he really agrees to what I’m saying, but I don’t wantAnna and Arthur to run into trouble later on when they make it here. It’d bethe same as if they were to pose as us and check in for us in a differentcountry. Whilst it is done in good will, the ITA would definitely getsuspicious of us being on two different places at the same time, leading tocomplications. You see where I’m getting here?Since we didn’t really get anywhere with our ideas, we went to bed andhoped for the best tomorrow.