The bench at Marginal

So, how are you doing?

watching Emil get up onto the frame Did you hear the assembly went at GERM again on Friday?

It went down again, the same as the other proposals this year. keeping an eye on Emil The extended one is MFD's, and it has tests at fixed ages for everybody, schools ranked on the results, families choosing a school off the ranking, and the teacher answerable for the number their class comes out with, on top of the bigger classes and the thinner subjects that were in the original. SD stood up to say the whole thing sits perfectly inside scientific socialism.

It does not. turning to face him I do not want Emil to be measured against his peers to keep a ranking moving. Fluid is not Romania and we can see very easily that this does not work anywhere it has been tried. They also want the emotional lessons on rejection taken out completely, so the older ones grow up being told that dropping a person with no reason given is fine.

They should also put a limit on how many times the same thing can be brought back in a year, so the thing stays rejected until the next year.

The lessons are already there from the first years, how to check where a thing comes from and who is saying it. sitting back against the wall What worries me is the part they cannot teach around, which is people wanting the simple answer more than the true one.

The black ambulance is on the banlist, and it belongs there. looking straight at him People believed a video and went at an ambulance crew with axes over it. By then no correction reaches anyone, so the answer has to be ready before the claim goes, and once a claim is ruled false it should be stopped from spreading at all.

Which youth?

Then I am with them on that. watching Emil hang off the bar by his knees Emil, both hands.

Every time we come to one of these. He is fine, he has never fallen.

There was a documentary about that, playgrounds built differently from the American ones. nodding at the frame Here they check what a fall would actually do, so a bar can sit at two metres if the ground under it is sand and bark. Their rule caps the height and pads everything underneath. The man in the film said children take the risk back through how they climb, and that the only playground with no accidents on it is an unused one.

Who was that?

Two days. straightening up on the bench Where are they sleeping when they land?

I meant here, once they are in Lindoma. Has the housing cooperative given them anything yet?

Can you call the housing cooperative?

Not now. putting a hand over the phone on the bench Tomorrow morning.

Tired. looking over at Emil I was up at five, and on Sunday it's a long day because the deliveries come in before we open.

The limit is twenty-four hours over four days, and which four days is on the rota. shifting on the bench We open every day, so the four of us take turns. This month my turn is from Thursday to Sunday, and Sunday starts at the delivery, so it is early and it still ends at four.

What are you going to do, then, when they arrive?

Bring them to the place one evening. I would like to meet her.

Why would you not be able to?

Then say when you know. calling over Emil, come and drink something.

handing him the bottle from her bag Me parla con un amic extern. (I am talking with a foreign friend.)

El es de Rumania. (He is from Romania.)

staying on the bench Vai. Ia vos veglia de aqui. (Go on. I will watch you from here.)

holding the bag open so he can see into it Ia no ave un altre botilia et vice. Nos beve te se hiza. (I do not have another bottle this time. We will drink at home.)

Do not go up four floors for a can of water. closing the bag We are going in ten minutes anyway, and he can drink at home.

With people he likes. watching Emil climb back onto the frame At home he asks for the same thing nine times.

The boat yard, mostly. He wants to go down and see it, and I keep telling him it is a working yard and not open to anyone who walks in.

They do that in the fourth year. leaning forward with her arms on her knees He has three years to wait, and he knows that, which is why he asks me.

I can ask the men at the counter when the yard shift comes in.

watching him get to the top bar I will ask on Thursday.

He is easy to be around and hard to get to bed. keeping her eyes on the frame I worry that he is on his own too much.

The four days I work, from the end of school to five, he is at my mother's. thinking about it He mostly reads or draws there and then we come home and it is the two of us.

Very little, and there is a plan to take it out completely in the first years. looking over at him He reads on his own anyway, and the school put him at A2 in English, which is well past where the others sit.

N-B1 going on N-B2, which is the native scale. moving the bag onto her lap He follows nearly everything said to him and he has picked up three or four dialects out of the books, and what he speaks is the standard.

The eastern seaboard, out of an adventure series set at Ravelluri. For a month he was saying facit and porte at the table. There is western wording in him too, from a book my mother gave him.

The preposition goes after the noun, so a south-westerner says "se dum suz" where we say "suz se dum", and the hour takes an ending, "quatrecor" for at four. Their house words are different as well, "kapu" for the gate, "astal" for the table, "soba" for the room. The teacher told me none of it counts as a mistake, and that the register prints alternate forms with a note saying that they are understood everywhere and not corrected.

Severni is the older word and it stayed in speech after the plaques changed. pointing up the road The new plates on the junction say nord, and people around here still says severni when they give directions.

The academy prints one part of it. More than half of Fluidian is the spoken language, what the researchers call vulgaris, and it was spoken for a long time before anybody wrote it down. turning toward him There are several dictionaries besides, each one pegged to another language, and the one most people have at home is the Romanian-pegged one.

Pegged means the entries are explained through Romanian and the letters are given the Romanian values, and the reading of written Fluidian came out of that in the first place. watching Emil draw on the sand The words came off the trade and craft families of the southern towns, and Lindoma is one of the two places they settled, so their dictionary is the one that spread.

They came in by sea and up through the southern frontier while it was still open, and they took work in the port towns and were shipwrights, tinsmiths, people who mended things. Lindoma and Sornorum were where they stayed. They spoke Fluidian outside but kept Romanian at home, and some families here still do. That is the version I got at school, so do not take it as exact.

The standard. The dictionaries sit close to each other anyway, only the sounds, rules and everyday words change a little, and the rest is the same language.

The south-eastern one, close to Aporia. They speak slowly and every word comes out whole, so I follow them without asking twice. shifting on the bench They keep one ending where we keep two, and they have a tense we do not, the futur proce, for a thing on the point of happening, se tren es per ariva, the train is about to come in.

The written language settled in the years the lines were being built, so the wording got shaped for use on transport. turning her head toward the road A train is a thing that moves and arrives and gets delayed, which covers most of what a tense has to do, and the examples in every book come out of that.

calling over to the frame Emil, cinc minutes e nos vai. (Emil, five minutes and we go.)

No. Cinc, e tunc nos vai te hiza. (No. Five, and then we go home.)

Perque ia es fatigat. Ia leva te hora cinc et matin. (Because I am tired. I got up at five this morning.)

Perque ia vole vidi el. putting the bag down beside her El no es venit te se cafe de tri anos, e persones como el es rar. (Because I wanted to see him. He has not come to the cafe in three years, and people like him are rare.)

Si. straightening his collar where it has turned in El ave cosas complex de explica que tu no comprende ancora, ma ia comprende els. (Yes. He has complicated things to explain that you do not understand yet, and I do understand them.)

taking a moment before she answers Tu pone sempre questiuns complex. Ubi tu es aprendet pone els? (You always ask complex questions. Where did you learn to ask them?)

Bin. Ia ave un afectiun per el como un amic ver bun, e no plus quam esto. (All right. I am fond of him as a very good friend, and no more than that.)

Ia ave cosas important de discute con el hodie. touching the top of his head E tu es inteligent, tu observa tot. (I had more important things to discuss with him today. And you are clever, you notice everything.)

Ia praca ses hores en un die, e tunc ia veni te se hiza per tu. pulling him up onto the bench and holding him against her Ia sapi, e ia va fa plus. (I work six hours in a day, and then I come home for you. I know, and I will do more.)

Ia es considerat esto ja. keeping her arm round him Ia demanda un saptimana en se rota de octobre. (I have been considering that. I will ask for a week in the October rota.)

Ia sapi. resting her chin on the top of his head Es se prim que ia pote. (I know. It is the first one I can take.)

Si, nos vai. standing up and taking the bag off the bench Dice adio te Vlad. (Yes, we are going. Say goodbye to Vlad.)

lifting the bag onto her shoulder I hope you come to the place again, and not in three years.

Bring them when they arrive. taking Emil's hand Adio, Vlad.