Loophole, Dragons next Door 'verse, for the Giraffe Call

[aldersprig]

For rix_scaedu's prompt.

Dragons Next Door Verse. DND has a landing page - here (or on LJ)

This comes after Fears (LJ Link).

Commenters: 4

They didn’t think Juniper was listening, but, then again, the grown-ups rarely did. Even Cxaidin and Zizny, who were normally so much more rational than her own parents (or the teachers in school, who were either stupid or mean), talked right over her when it was something they thought she shouldn't understand. Of course, it was a lot easier for them to talk over her; they were huge.

Today it was all four of them, her Mom and Dad and Jimmy's parents, while she sat with Jimmy and Baby and Cthannie and the erbiss, oiling Jimmy's scales, burping Baby, and listening to every word.

"What are you going to do?" Dad was asking quietly. "That sort of threat..."

"If we were back in the old country, it would be easy," Zizny rumbled. "But here, the humans are - no offense - but they're very thin-skinned. If we dealt with this ... interloper... in the traditional way, the police would be beating down our door."

"Yes, they would be," Mom murmured. "I can see where making poacher flambé would be bad for PR." PR, Juniper had learned, was the art of looking better than you were, or at least of convincing people you were better than they thought you were. Jin said she needed better PR for school.

"Rather," Cxaidin sighed. "I'd love to be able to roast everyone who tries to hurt our children."

"I'm with you on that," Sage agreed. Juniper snuggled Tay-tay closer. Her Daddy loved her and wanted to protect her. It was a wonderful feeling. And Jimmy'sparents wanted to protect him. But what were they going to do about the bad guy?

Seemed like Mom had the same question. "So what will you do?"

"We have called the police," Zizny grumbled. "But they told us that it would take a while before they could investigate, because we chased him off."

"Mmm. That can happen," Dad agreed. "And in the meantime, he's out there chasing down whatever it is he or his employers want, all over the neighborhood. You know, Cxaidin, Zizny, the public will be very upset if they see that you have taken the law into your own claws." He said it funny, like there was a meaning in there he didn't want to say out loud.

"True..." Zizny puffed smoke, which usually meant deep thinking or irritation. "True." The dragon sounded, Juniper thought, rather pleased.

Comments

[clare_dragonfly]

Heh, parents always do think their kids can't understand, don't they? Nice political acuity. Hmm, the thing at the end is that they just have to do it so nobody sees, right? :D

Typo: "Jimmy'sparents"

[aldersprig]

Yep and yep :-D

[thnidu]

(plaintively) How do you pronounce "Cxaidin"? The only way I'm at all used to seeing "cx" is in Esperanto written in the "x-convention" for situations that don't support the accented letters. There, "cx" stands for "ĉ", which has the same sound as English "ch". So I hear "Cxaidin" in my head as though it were, say, written in Spanish spelling as "Chaidin" – [ˈt͜ʃaɪdɪn] – while knowing I don't know that that's at all right.

[aldersprig]

That is how I pronounce it, with sort of the feeling that the dragons have another sound in there that my mouth can't make.

[thnidu]

Hmm... Maybe I'll see if I can come up with one.*

* I enjoy sounds, as you probably already are well aware. Do you know C.J. (or Cj) Cherryh's Chanur series? One of the species of the Compact^Wikt, the kif, have a lot of "kk"s in their language, representing the chattering of their inner teeth. Not pronounceable by humans, who have only one set of teeth. But simulable. :-) I've learned to pronounce it as a velar trill, which takes too much muscular effort for use in any human language.

[aldersprig]

I have not read Cherryh's ... well, anything, yet.

Velar Trill?

And I have noticed you like sounds :-D

[thnidu]

1.In phonetics, a trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish rr as in perro, for example, is an alveolar trill. —Trill consonant^WP

2. a) Velars are consonants articulated with the back part of the tongue (the dorsum) against the soft palate, the back part of the roof of the mouth (known also as the velum)

b) A velar trill or tap is not possible [...] In the velar position, the tongue has an extremely restricted ability to carry out the type of motion associated with trills or taps, and the body of the tongue has no freedom to move quickly enough to produce a velar trill or flap. —Velar consonant^WP

3. Oh, yeah? Well, to that I say kkkkkkkk ([k̃ːː]).* —Dr. Whom: Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoëpist, and Philological Busybody

* The IPA has no symbol for this sound (2b),† and no diacritic for "trill". Since nasalized [k] is not possible, I have borrowed the tilde, whose shape suggests a vibrating motion, for this purpose.
† Dreamwidth doesn't support HTML <ol type=…>. Shame on them!

[aldersprig]

Okay, thank you. I got trill, but didn't understand velar. I have been staring at this post, trying to make kkkkkk sounds; my husband purred at me in response.

[thnidu]

Well, _that's_ nice!

[thnidu]

I found that I had to make my tongue muscles tense at the back, where the tongue comes up to touch the velum a bit in front of the usual point of contact for /k/ on the hard palate, and make it loose in front of that so it has enough flexibility to flutter in the breath stream and make a trill.

[aldersprig]

(safe to reply below now?)

[thnidu]

??? ...Oh, as in "Are you done editing it?" (blush) yes

[aldersprig]

:-D