xp_logs | Sooraya and Yvette

What happens when you get two of the mansion's newest arrivals together in one room? Lots of broken English and cuteness, it turns out.

"Joe went to the store and bought some milk. Joe is going to the store to buy some milk. Joe will go to the store to buy some milk." Sooraya had been listening to these tapes for almost an hour now, and while she thought she understood the different verb tenses in theory, she knew that in practice she was likely to forget them all the moment she needed them. She hit the 'rewind' button on the tape player, pulling the headphones down to rest around her neck while the tape whirred.

Just after she did so, the door from one of the other bedrooms creaked open. Always alert, Sooraya turned to see someone new peek out of the room that up until now had only housed Laurie. This new girl was very short, and her skin was reddish and different-looking. Not wanting to be rude, Sooraya smiled, wondering who exactly this was and whether or not she would be staying there for long. "Hello..."

"Hello." Yvette hadn't met the girl in the common area before. It seemed there was someone even more quiet and shy than she was. "I am Yvette. I am being new here. Please, what is your name?" she asked in her careful English.

"I am Sooraya," she replied in differently accented but no less precisely enunciated words. "I live here... no," she said, shaking her head. "I live there." With that she pointed towards her and Angel's room, not wanting the new girl to think she lived in the common room. That would be strange.

With a nod, Yvette acknowledged the correction. "With Angel, yes?" she asked, eyes glowing a little brighter. "I am to be sharing with Laurie. She is being very kind to me." Pausing, she considered the other girl, and decided that it would do no harm to ask. "Please, can you be helping me? Just a small thing?"

"Yes, I am happy to help." Sooraya carefully took off the headphones and laid them next to the tape player on the table before standing, making her way across the room. "How do you need helped?"

Yvette held up the necklace. "My friend, Tommy, he is making this for me and I want to be wearing it. Only..." She wiggled the talons of her other hand - covered by the gloves Clarice had made for her and therefore safe, but still long and unweildy - with an air of embarrassment. "I cannot be working the catch."

Sooraya felt a faint twinge of recognition at the name Tommy, and she concentrated hard on it as she looked at the beautiful necklace Yvette was holding. Oh! Yes, of course, the boy who had saved her. "It is very nice," she said, smiling and holding her hands out for the necklace. "He made it?"

Yvette handed it over, careful to avoid poking Sooraya even though the gloves would prevent a cut. It was hard to adjust after so long. "Yes," she said happily. "I made fright to him, in the hospital place, when I wake up. And he made fright to me. So he made me this, to be saying sorry. He is saying he can make things I cannot be cutting. That is his power, I am thinking?" She considered Sooraya's hands, and reached up to feel the spikes of her hair, the gloves tearing and repairing themselves at the contact. "Is to be working from the front, perhaps? I am not wanting you to be hurting yourself." Although it was entirely possible this girl was like some of the others she had met, immune to harm.

It only took a glance at the girl's spiky-looking hair for Sooraya to understand what she was getting at. "Yes, the front, I think," she said with a nod, adjusting the necklace before taking a step closer and lifting it to very carefully place it around Yvette's neck. Her expression was studious as she slid it around the girl's shoulders. "I know Tommy too," she informed Yvette as she worked. "He saved me. At the kitchen."

Good, Sooraya understood the need for care. And she liked Tommy too. The attitude of some of the other students had been bewildering. "He is a very nice person," she agreed. "And he is saving you? How, please?"

"I made a bad smell in the bucket... it was poison? He stopped it and turned it hard," Sooraya replied.

"It is being very lucky he was there. Tommy is being a good person, not like that other boy says." Sooraya finished with the clasp and turned the necklace around so it was facing the right way. "Oh! It is so pretty!" Yvette clapped her hands with delight, every inch the happy young girl. "I am missing pretty things. When I change, I was cutting my favourite dress. I was very sad. Thank you, Miss Sooraya." She tilted her head curiously. "Please, where are you to be coming from? Your name, she is different to the people here. It is a pretty name, I am thinking."

All right, so Sooraya had officially found something more difficult to understand than English. Broken English that was different from hers. "Where are I to be coming from?" she repeated, confused. Where... come... from... "Oh! I am from a place named Afghanistan. It is far away... not in America." She knew all about locations now, thanks to Mr. Marko and his maps. "You are from far away too?"

"Afghanistan? This is very far away! How is it you are here?" Yvette concentrated, trying to remember her English lessons - she knew she tended to mangle things when she was excited, and the other girl was new to the language too. "I am from Kosovo. It is also very far away. In Europe."

"Nathan has brought me here. He rescued me, in Afghanistan. I was... a slave?" Sooraya bit her lip, hoping this news wouldn't make the other girl look down on her. "But I am not a slave now. Now I am a student here. I am learning many things from all everybody here."

Money changing hands, a metal crate, whimpers of children in the deep of the night... Yvette sucked in a breath and the half-images were gone, fragmented. A memory or just her own imagination? She blinked and realised Sooraya was looking anxious. "I am sorry, for you to be in such a bad place," the younger girl said softly, and her eyes flared blue. "But we are being in a better place now, together, yes? And we are both learning." She couldn't smile, but she gave the impression she would have been. "We are helping each other in the new place, yes?"

"Yes," Sooraya said solemnly, nodding as she clasped her hands in front of her. She found she liked this new girl; she was quiet and kind, and best of all she understood and appreciated just what a wonderful place they had found themselves in. "It is true. We have many luck to be here. I do not know a lot... but I am happy to help," she said with a shy smile. "When there is things you need."

"Thank you." Yvette unconsciously mimicked Sooraya's gesture, awkwardly with the long fingers. "Are you knowing the way to the kitchen?" she asked. "There are being apples there, and I would like to be sharing one with my new friend."

"Yes, I know the kitchen," Sooraya replied, her smile widening. "Come, I will show you."