Chapter 5 #3
Eun moved between tables, and each time he passed mine, I’d point to a word or image in the book he’d left for me.
He’d lean down, murmuring the name aloud in his language, and I’d try to echo it back.
We fell into a rhythm. The sound of his voice, the soft noises of eating and chatter from the other patrons in the room kept me anchored in what I was doing.
I was in an alien restaurant on an alien planet, working through used children's language books.
I didn't know how I got here or how to get back home.
I didn't know why those multi-eyed hyena aliens had me in that warehouse, and even though I saw the bodies, I didn't know for certain what they would have done to me, but more than anything, I didn't know why Eun hadn't taken me to some sort of authority, like the police, to help me figure it all out.
Surely there was some sort of authority to deal with lost aliens?
Then again, if I didn't know the language, or any of the languages he had me listen to, did I really want to be dropped off with strangers?
Eun, at least, I knew would take care of me, feed me, and didn't seem interested in controlling what I did or where I went.
He gave me a key and a code so I could get back in and left me to decide what I would do with myself.
When I followed him, he accepted that easily and made a space for me.
He was helping me without trapping me.
An authority agency might lock me in a room under the guise of it being for my own good, or for the safety of the public, until they figured out what I was.
For now, I wrote down the details of the warehouse and what I saw on a blank page in the book, so I would have it for later.
I could go back to it when I knew how to speak and had someone to speak to.
Until then, I needed to observe, learn, and listen. I needed to figure out what I knew and didn't know.
What I did know was that the word for bowl was pronounced with a guttural roll in the back of the throat, and it was six syllables.
I also knew that the language used an alphabet rather than cuneiform or logographic writing.
It was something familiar, even if the letters and sounds were not, and I focused on feeling grateful for that rather than letting my fear take over.
At some point, the lizard returned and set a steaming bowl in front of me.
The scent was familiar: broth, herbs, something nutty, and I ate without thinking, my body remembering hunger even as my mind focused on learning names.
Later, a cup of pale green tea appeared at my elbow, its scent grassy and warm.
I drank it slowly, along with the cool water from the pitcher on the table.
When I needed the bathroom, I found it in the back.
For the first time since arriving in this strange world, things felt almost normal.
I could almost believe I was just a teenager again, planning to travel to a different country to study fashion, so I needed to learn the language before I got there.
Tucked in the corner of a café, hunched over a stack of workbooks, mouthing foreign words into a warm cup of tea, I was somewhere I had been before in my life.
The questions still circled, always there: Where am I?
Who are you? What is this place? They had to wait.
I couldn’t ask them yet. Not until I learned how to hear the answers.
Everything else was beyond my reach, except this: I could choose how hard I worked.
So I worked, focusing past the tension of exhaustion that built behind my eyes.
The light outside dimmed, slipping from gold to gray.
Eun had stepped out for a delivery from what I could guess when a rush of patrons spilled in, laughter and footsteps echoing off the walls as every table filled.
Too many eyes. Too much noise again, dragging me out of the safe space of scholastic focus I had found.
I gathered the books and slipped through the beaded curtain, letting it fall closed behind me with a soft rattle as I tried to find some place to hide in the back.
The kitchen was busy. The lizard, faster than he looked, darted between the stove and counter, muttering the orders to himself. The sink was piled with dishes sitting in hot, soapy water. Two wooden benches sat near a row of hooks on the wall, one of them holding a white jacket.
I set the books down on one of the benches, slipped off Eun's black jacket, and hung it up on one of the hooks.
Then I lifted the other bench and carried it to the sink.
I climbed up, rolled up my sleeves, and began to wash the dishes.
I'd washed dishes when I first moved to Paris, too, as it was the first job I could find that would accept my poor French.
I got better at speaking there and eventually moved on to jobs that matched my skill set, but it was the dishwashing job that had saved me.
It was something familiar to grab onto, and I needed to do the work just as much as the lizard needed someone to help with the rush.
The lizard said something to me.
“Food,” I replied in the language of the workbooks, which sat rough in the back of my throat. “Thank you, food.”
As much as I appreciated being taken care of, it felt good to do something to balance things out.
I firmly believed that every being deserved food and safety without ever having to give back, especially in a world of food abundance brought about by technological advancement.
But even so, I didn't know how this place operated, so it was important to make sure that I earned my keep where I could.
Being useful made me feel safer in this madhouse of a situation.
The lizard said something else I didn't understand and continued cooking.
I worked my way through the dishes, drying them with a towel and stacking them on one side of the sink.
I couldn't speak, but I could work. The lizard grabbed several from the clean pile before I had finished the rest, loading them up with soup or other food before taking them out to the patrons.
When Eun returned, pushing open the beaded curtain as his eyes darted around the space, he smiled when he spotted me, the tension in his shoulders easing as his glowing tail swayed, reaching out towards me.
"Thank you, Leija," he said, his voice rumbling softly as he came over to the sink and took the dish I'd just finished washing, using the towel to dry it.
We worked side by side until they were all gone, and Eun went back to working the front of the house, gathering orders, taking food out, and bussing.
I returned to my books, sitting on the floor near the coats, staying out of the way of both Eun and the lizard's work without having to be out in the noise of the evening rush.
I focused on the work.
The sink didn't pile up again while Eun was there working as both a server and a dishwasher.
When he went to wash them, I joined him, drying as he scrubbed.
Finally, there were no more dishes and no more patrons, and my mind was swirling with vocabulary I couldn't hold onto, and Eun was saying something to me.
I dried off my hands and climbed down off the bench.
He took it from me before I could lift it, putting it back over by the hooks and my pile of books.
He took off his uniform and hung it up on the hooks, and the lizard came out of a back room.
He handed Eun an envelope, and then handed one to me as well.
I opened it to see several pieces of colorful paper with symbols on it.
Was it money?
Good.
I wasn't so self-effacing that I considered meals an even trade for the labor I'd done.
There was no such thing as unskilled labor, not in the way that the predatory robber class liked to put it.
Each and every job in the world required time and effort, and with that time and effort came skill in the specific task.
If the business required the labor to function, that labor was worthy of equal recompense.
Billionaires became billionaires by slapping labels of unskilled or unworthy on those whose labor they preyed upon.
They made even more by changing the laws or getting into politics, where they could gobble down the money that the masses had accumulated for the sole purpose of paying for social structures designed to aid everyone.
Even though I couldn't ask for it or negotiate, the fact that the lizard paid me in more than just food without me asking was a good sign.
It was also a good sign that the first few pages of the book included polite words, woven into various scenes between characters.
There was a picture of a smaller, fluffy-looking creature moving to the side to let one of the large mud elephant aliens walk by on a sidewalk, with the larger elephant saying words of appreciation.
I hadn't noticed them doing that outside, but it was an indicator that the educational books here attempted to teach some form of kindness and socially polite appreciation in their material.
“Thank you,” I said in their language.
The lizard picked up the stack of books and put them in a bag before handing the entire thing to Eun.
I grabbed my borrowed coat and followed Eun out the door onto the street, and we began to walk.
My body ached. We went a different way than before, down a street with a bunch of food vendors.
Eun stopped at one, using some of the money from his envelope to buy two succulent-looking sticks of something.
He handed it to me, and it smelled amazing.