Subject: [RahneList] how to speak rahne
Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2002 04:08:52 -0400
From: Keith Davis <mkd@mkdavis.net>

How To Speak Rahne

By M. Keith Davis

Restless.  That was the word for Doug Ramsey that day.  Restless.  
Bored.  Bursting with unfocused energy that taxes the mind and soul 
of every teenager that has ever been.  He didn't understand the cause 
of this festering emotion but it played havoc on him just the same.  
Rain continued to drum on the roof of the mansion, as it had for the
past two days, but for some reason Doug was unbearably hot.  Sweating and
stuck inside, the word rang through his head over and over in a hundred
different languages.  Restless.

He knew so many ways to say it.  All around the floor of the room he shared
with Warlock and Bobby, language books and dictionaries were strewn with
exhausted frustration.  His power seemed to have no limit on days like
this, and it seemed an impossible challenge to find a language or system or
set of characters that he couldn't decipher.  His desk was thick with
stacks of pages of anagrams, rhymes, cryptograms, and puzzles that included
up to seven different languages in a single sentence.  Sometimes words were
written backwards, sometimes upside down, sometimes both.  In a moment of
unbridled rage at his restlessness, he decided to type a page that made
sense from beginning to end, forward and backward, with the first letter of
each word being the same as the last letter of each word.  The task took
him only two minutes.  In French, it took five.  Japanese took him only
thirty seconds, and Portuguese forty-five.

Doug fought the urge to write speeches in English that sounded like dirty
poems in other languages, because no one else could appreciate them, and
the boys always made fun when he laughed himself silly at his own creations.

He looked at the swirling, random pattern of the wood grain on the bedroom
door.  Assigning each characteristic in the pattern a different letter of
the alphabet, he decided that the door had a secret message on it that
revealed that it could see him in bed at night when the lights were out.

Doug rubbed his eyes and groaned.  The bright images in his mind, like
glittering stars made visible by the blanket of his eyelids, made geometric
patterns that seemed to store phone numbers, addresses, and birthdays, all
ready for perusal at his slightest whim.

He rarely spoke of the down side of his power.  As it was not one of the
more physically expressive or combat-oriented powers, he subconsciously
feared that if he showed any such weakness, the others would not only be
unsympathetic, but even look down on him.

In the past twenty-four hours, he had created fifty phonic alphabets, a
time system based on a ten-hour clock, a ten-day week, a ten-week month,
and a ten-month year, and determined that if English were ever to become
the official world language, he would commit suicide.

Over his bed hung a drawing that the other boys had described as "pretty
cool."  They had no idea that every shade of the primary colors was a
consonant and every secondary color a vowel, and that the drawing that they
thought was a woman driving a red sports car was actually a poster that
read, "If you can read this you are too damn mutated."

Near the unconscious fear of rejection in his mind, but unattached to it,
was a chained and gagged urge to declare himself the god of all creation.

"I am a normal guy," he told himself.  "A normal guy like anybody...I am."

There was only a slightly greater desire to get a shower than to play
another solo round of darts (his dartboard was lettered, rather than
numbered), so with towel in hand he trudged toward the bathroom.

It was then that five big things happened at once, by his count.

First of all, he noticed Rahne walking by his open door.  The speed and
motion of her walk made it plain to him that she was only walking by, not
intending to see him.  The silhouette of her body made the letter R in a
way that he had always found cute.  R is for Rahne, he thought.  The X logo
on her buckle, like all the others, was tilted in such a way that it could
have been a T for transform.  Or it could even be a W for werewolf.  Doug
had always seen at least four letters in that X.  Four was the number of
times Rahne had told him how perfect his Scots accent was.

Second, he noticed that Rahne was without a doubt the most beautiful girl
he had ever seen.  She almost seemed to float past him.  She wore a long
dress, mildly wet from the rain, which would have seemed uncomfortable and
strange on anyone else.  It was cut as if God himself had sewed it onto
her, fitting her body well enough to complement her curvature without
revealing much detail.  Dressing her personality as well as her body, it
made bold statements while keeping sweet secrets at the same time.  The
neckline was a frame for a glowing, smooth face.  She had her short red
hair in a ponytail, which he'd never seen her do before and hadn't thought
that she could.  It brought out the natural redness of her lips.  He wanted
to kiss her, even though he had never kissed a girl and didn't know if she
had ever kissed a boy.  Her eyes defied description in any of the languages
he knew.  All of Rahne, he thought, is proportionately perfect to the rest
of Rahne.  Inside and out...Rahne looks like Rahne is.

Third, he realized instantly that probably none of the other boys would
agree with him about that second thing, and that they were blind, blind,
blind.  They were more likely to focus on women with chests full of
silicone and hearts full of air.  Teased blond hair and lots of exposed
skin...not that Doug disliked those things, but that Rahne's natural beauty
was deeper and far superior.  She was good, kind, and true.  The rest of
her was icing on the cake.  He had felt attracted to Illyana before, and
had trouble sometimes not thinking about Dani in her swimsuit, and all the
guys lusted after Amara, but Rahne suddenly outshined them all.

Fourth, he realized in this fleeting instant that Rahne had looked at his
bare chest with an uncharacteristic interest that made him feel desirable
and sexy for the first time in his young life.  He committed to doing fifty
pushups every morning for as long as he lived, if that's what it would take
to get and keep Rahne's interest.

Fifth, and most important, he realized that he now had a wonderful
challenge on which to focus his relentless mutant power.

"If I can learn Rahne," he thought, "and if I can...know her, and understand
her...I will be the luckiest guy in this world."

Quietly, carefully, he peeked his head out the door to sneak a peek at her
again.

To his surprise and delight, she was looking back over her shoulder to
sneak another peek of her own.

Embarrassed, they both flew their separate ways.  Doug leaned against the
wall and noticed that his thesaurus was open at the word "love."  He smiled
a wide hopeful smile of confidence.  No man in the history of the world had
ever mastered the language of love, or even understood women well enough to
have a perfect relationship with one of them.  But damn if he wasn't going
to try.  The power was his if it was anybody's, and the prize was beyond
price.

Had he been older and more experienced, he would have known a thousand ways
to say that he wanted his heart to communicate with hers.  But that's what
he wanted just the same.

"If it kills me," thought Doug, "I'll learn how to speak Rahne."

Yarg.
kd