#tried to convey that his spoken infernal is stilted

[circusglass]

DRABBLE. ‘please’ in infernal.

Timeline. With the Fletching & Moondrop Carnival of Curiosities.

Notes. Everything in italics is Infernal. Wanted to write about Molly and this language of his (convoluted answer: as someone who is ESL, I’m fascinated by our relationship with language and how it can shape our identities, whether by presence or absence of it). Ended up with the origin to his moon horn charm. Two birds, one stone! Not the most gracefully written thing, but I really like the energy of it.

Also, I have it in my head that structurally, Infernal does not contain contractions, so it sounds...formal? 

Word count. ~1700

Warnings. None.

The first time Molly sees another tiefling, it’s plural, a pair—a grandfather and grandson, both the grainy color of red agate, with horns that sweep up and away from their brows to lay back against the crowns of their heads in a flourish like one of Gustav’s calligraphied letters. The grandfather’s beard is patchy against his cheeks, eyes like pale beer. The boy’s hands are too big for his body, end in surprisingly threatening claws capped with some kind of dull, water-warped metal, blunted at the ends. To keep from catching, Molly suspects, though the thought is sudden, unbidden. They’re selling odds and ends in the market—or would be, if the afternoon crowd would stop long enough to look.

It’s the first time Molly’s ever heard Infernal, too, passed between old man and boy, a lesson, perhaps, if the boy’s expression is anything to go by. The language scratches at Molly’s brain like a file rasping over his nail, like it’s scratching to be let in, so he relents, and the knowledge rearranges itself there in the street as he realizes: I know that. I know those words.

When the old man notices him staring, his face remains guarded, but he offers a reluctant nod in greeting. Molly glances over his shoulder and seeing no one else, smiles and draws near. He knows well enough how to slip into conversation now without butting in, how to speak like a buyer, and not just a salesman; he can turn them on and off. He gestures absently at their spread of wares.

“What’s a good recommendation for a traveler?” he asks, as if he has any intention of buying.

The young boy doesn’t smile, but his tail swishes and curves high, and Molly thinks, my tail does that too sometimes, with a dense, syrupy wonder. The boy looks to his grandfather, who nods.

“I like this one,” he says in Infernal, finger pressing into the face of a small stone like a cut ruby. It doesn’t escape him that the stud is near enough color to the boy and his grandfather’s hue. He doesn’t think it’s real, must be glass, but it’s pretty, fractures water-wine light across the white linen tablecloth and he knows at once he’s going to buy it. Molly doesn’t touch it, but his claws fall near enough to claim.

He turns over the soft susurrus of the boy’s words.

“I like this one,” he mimics, slowly, then after a beat adds, “too.”

Infernal coalesces in his brain in plumes of gray-blue smoke, rallying together on his tongue. Excitement eddies against the edges of his brain, the shape of the words clawing over one another. Molly swallows. The grandfather looks at him searchingly. His face is square, cheekbones taut and high, though his cheeks sink, his jaw edging on jowls.

“Do you travel, then?” The old man says, quietly, as to not attract attention, gaze scanning the market, but no one looks their way any more than usual. His voice is a low, grating purr. Molly frowns. Gustav told him this would be likely one day, and yet—

“Yes,” he begins. “With my troupe.”

This garners a small smile, but perhaps it’s a trick of the light, “A bard?”

Molly shakes his head, fangs gleaming, “A circus.”

The boy bounces on the balls of his feet. Or—Molly glances over the table—no, the boy has hooves, little cloven things that are due for a clipping.  

“Fletching and Moondrop,” the child says in perfect Common, and Molly snaps his fingers and points at him with a flash of fangs. The boy’s gaze swings towards his grandfather and it’s a loaded look, a can we go look. His grandfather doesn’t answer, simply brushes a large, tender hand over the sweep of the boy’s blunt horns.

“Moondrop, moondrop,” the old man muses, scrubbing at his sparse beard. He turns away from them without another word to sort through the stack of wooden boxes that make a wall at the back of their stall. The little boy grins up at Molly.

“What do you do at the circus?” He has two rows of pointed teeth. Molly only notices because one of his incisors is missing, revealing the second row.

Molly cocks his head from side-to-side. Bouncing and barking would be boring for the boy ( he’s still learning the cards, learning to read and trust them ), so he says, “I am on the rope,” and walks his fingers across the tablecloth. “High above the crowd. But my ankle. I am recovering. Very clumsy.”

Those pale eyes glitter, tail slithering through the air. “Tightrope! I want to be on the trapeze. Watch what I can do!” And then the boy is flipping the table skirt up and scrambling underneath, tumbling out on Molly’s side. He shifts from one cloven hoof to the next, then does a back handspring as well as any of the carnival’s girls, spinning around to beam a grin. 

A human couple jerks away from the tiefling pair, gaze darting from red to purple to red again. They tear their eyes from them and hurry along. Molly claps enthusiastically.

“Let us see, let us see,” Molly muses, finger tapping against his lips in a mockery of thought. “You are much better than I, I am afraid.” 

Then with little warning himself he folds in half to plant his hands flat against the earth, kicks his legs straight into the air, proceeds to walk a circle around the boy, who crows with delight. Molly’s legs split one way, then the next, before he gently drops back right side up. He holds his arms out, twirls his wrists as he makes a show of bowing.

“Get out of the street, Bealabor,” the old tiefling grunts, waving them back. Bealabor ducks his head and scurries underneath the table once more, practically taking the linen on his horns. Molly’s laugh is a raucous bark. 

Many of the baubles have been pushed aside to make room for a long, flat box, though the red stud, he notices, has been set in the open, presumably so he won’t forget it. Grandfather has undone the latch and retrieved a charm from it.

“A charm for a Moondrop traveler,” he says, holding it up to frame one of Molly’s horns. It’s the size of a coin, a silver crescent moon, a drop of blue stone dangling from the bottom—and it’s a stone, definitely, carries a depth of color that does not yield so easily to the sunlight, but reflects it with a brilliant sparkle. It’s mesmerizing, and there’s something about it that makes Molly think of magic. Of Gustav’s Moonweaver. It makes him feel similarly, a pleasant pulse just under his skin.

“Is this enchanted?” he asks, tripping back into Common.

The old man shakes his head, answers in kind, “Simply ornamental. But—” he pauses to look at it. “—if you are superstitious—”

“Very,” Molly chuckles, though he isn’t at all.

“—Ah, then, it has always given me good luck in my travels. Protection from bigotry, strength to push on. The moons know all my secrets and keeps every one. Good to wear close to the temple,” he taps his head. “I think it will give you good luck, too.”

“If it’s good luck on travels, you should keep it,” Molly says. The old man chuffs a laugh, shakes his head.

“Child, I do not travel anymore,” he says. “I am too old now. The moons know exactly where I am.”

Molly has to give it to him, he’s one hell of a salesman. Bealabor rests his head on his folded arms, stares between them with a look of utter boredom.

The moon is warm to the touch and Molly finds that he likes the weight of the trinket in his hand, drapes it on the curve of his horn and tilts his head this way and that. It feels good, feels right.

“Alright. I will take it,” he says, then leans over to tap the stud. It rolls beneath his finger, looks all the world like a pomegranate seed. “This one, too.”

Bealabor perks up at that. Molly winks at him.

Grandfather wraps the charm and earring in bits of soft cloth, passes them across the table even before Molly’s fished his coin purse from his coat pocket. Perhaps it’s the horns, the language, that garners trust. It makes Molly feel a part of something, which is a strange conclusion to come to when he thought he’d been a part of a great many things already.

“Four silver,” he says, and Molly bobs his head.

What little coin he has still manages a merry jingle in his purse. He pulls out four silver, then hesitates, digs into the bag once more. He drops the silver, as well as his only gold piece, into Bealabor’s hands.

“That is too much—” the older tiefling begins, brows wrinkling. It makes Bealabor keep his hand wide, uncertainty flashing in his pale eyes. Molly lays a hand over his, light, and he’s warm, warmer than Molly is himself. He smiles gently at Bealabor’s grandfather, searches for the words he needs and places them end-to-end, like tiles across a board.

“It is the exact amount,” he says, unflinchingly. His tail sways. “You have given me more than I came to find. Please.”

It’s the ‘please’ that does it, Molly observes. Is there more to the word in Infernal? A depth and weight to it, maybe, that he’s not aware of? He’ll ask Gustav—maybe Ornna. The roots of her language are closer to Infernal if the sound of it is anything to go by. Grandfather makes a fist around the coin. Though the older tiefling doesn’t smile, his tail curves, sways calmly through the air, and that’s enough to make Molly grin.

“One condition,” Molly says, holding up a finger. Grandfather tilts a brow, and he’s sure this time his lips are curving.

“What is that?”

Molly tucks his charm and pouch away in an inner coat pocket. “The extra is so you come to the carnival. So I better see you both there.”

Bealabor’s smile is the flint spark that takes, bright and crackling and joyful.