The sign said "Old Terran style poetry for sale! Custom sonnets, written for you about what you love, in GalStand! Please fill out form and provide one Hour; finished poem will be sent to you within the next ten days. 50% discount for JOATs." The human seated at the table the sign hung from had a large stack of blank forms, a couple of completed forms, several one Hour notes, a notebook, and what looked like several kinds of dictionary. They were busily scribbling in the notebook and muttering to themself, occasionally crossing things out, and frequently checking the dictionaries.
On closer inspection, one of the "dictionaries" was actually a thesaurus. -- Anon Guest
[AN: I can't write sonnets to save my life so I'm faking out of doing that]
It was a pop-up sales booth, much favoured by the nomadic sorts who sold their artistic skills wherever they could wander. They were selling Terran style poems, but they were not a Terran. They were one of the multitude of Saurian life forms abundant in the Alliance. This was not a form of cultural appropriation, since the Humans were wont to share aspects of their culture wherever they went.
This wasn't even an important part of their culture, it was merely a form of art that the Humans shared like they shared everything else. He didn't need to alert the Terran Embassy, and he especially didn't need to let Shayde know this existed. Better that she never found out.
She may be "Ace", but she had a great love of romance. The absolute last thing he needed was Shayde purchasing poetry for him. Therefore, he thought it prudent to find out how much this cogniscent needed to take their pop-up booth and their business to an entirely different station. Strictly out of a combination of the decency of his spirit and a strong self-preservation instinct, of course.
There were samples, some of which were liberated from the complete works of William Shakespeare, with a few modernized touch-ups for those who couldn't read the antiquated form of pre-Shattering English. The translation to GalStand was better than most could have been. Rael checked the original material samples.
Oh boy. Maybe he wasn't in very much danger at all.
The Saurian businessperson had a stack of reference books - actual hardcopy - to show their resources in their art exercise. One was a GalStand dictionary. One was a rhyming dictionary. One was, of course, the complete works of Shakespeare.
The one that was most used, according to the stress marks of its spine, was a thesaurus.
A Terran English thesaurus.
Rael, who knew on a personal level what a nightmare Terran English could be[1], also knew that a thesaurus was a terrible thing to do to someone attempting to understand a language. Especially in English.
"Poems for love, half off for JOATs," they said. "You have seen the samples, yes? Is good poetry."
"Potentially, yes," said Rael. He tried to explain, as many had and many would, that just because something was a simile, didn't mean it was the same thing.
The Saurian nodded. "Yes. Yes. This is why JOATs get half price. Every time, I acquire more knowledge. You are very useful and helpful cogniscents." Indeed, they were transcribing some notes into their datareader. "There was even a very helpful Ambassador who found the information exchange to be very amusing."
Uh oh. "Tall, dark skin, bio-luminescent eyes, hair like a dandelion met with a streak effect in real life?"
"Ah! You know her!"
Oh crap. "Did you chance to sell her any poetry?"
"She gave me a dollar's worth of free advice, but I do not know the exchange rate... so she got half off too."
Well, if he was doomed anyway... "What sort of love poem did you give her?" Best to be warned so he could brace himself.
"She talked of home and love of family, so I used some of my knowledge and some of her words to make a sonnet for her."
Ah. Well. Things were turning out for the better. He gave the Saurian an Hour he had to spare. "Please tell her that it's a one-per-customer deal if she comes by again?"
[1] Never trust a language that beats up other languages for their lexicons.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / tana]
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