Elara had always loved languages, seeing them more than a tool for communication, more like a living map of the mind. But no books could have prepared her for the moment she stumbled upon a profound poem in an ancient, forgotten dialect. Reading it aloud in the library’s basement archive caused the air around her to fracture like glass and whirl like a tornado.
Upon clearing, she tumbled onto moss that felt like velvet and smelled of magic, landing in a place known as the Langlandia. Towering trees swayed with every breath of wind and the sky cycled through dawn, noon and twilight continuously. The first creature she encountered was a magnificent, glass-winged beast covered in crystalline scales, which Elara quickly imagined to be a Phoenix of Dreams. It watched her with heavy, unblinking eyes and its howl was more a vibration than a sound — a low, deep roar that rattled her bones.
This was her first linguistic challenge. The Dream Phoenix communicated not through air waves, but through what Elara came to call Lang-Rumble. The vibrations indicated purpose: a shudder from the ground meant “danger,” while a slow, deep thrum meant “path.” Alone and exposed, Elara spent anxious days copying and learning the creature’s calming, rhythmic Rumble, using her own version of Rumble to communicate with the creature. Over time she learnt the parlance for “Safe Passage” and the Phoenix slowly lowered its head, allowing her to shelter beneath its belly as it navigated the mystical landscape.
Her second encounter, near a glowing river, was a bright fluttering pixie, which she thought of as a Fire Fairy. The fairy’s language was unlike that of the Rhino’s: Lang-Glimmer. It was composed of intricate, rapid shifts in light and coloir, communicating complex ideas through blue, gold, and green flashes. The pixie was initially wary, but Elara used the rhythm she learned from Lang-Rumble to express her own gestures, slowly comprehending the Fire Fairy’s lexicon.
She showed Elara the only way home: through the Institution and down Fluency Road, for which she would need strong and loyal beasts. Elara realized that she wasn’t the onlyone who needed to learn Langlandia’s languages; she needed to teach her beast how to speak to each other.
At the Institution with the shimmering Fire Fairy floating on one side and the massive Dream Phoenix hovering like a sentinel on the other, Elara acted as the conductor. She taught the beast to translate the feeling of “The “End of The World’ into it’s natural form, and to translate the feeling of “The “Cliffs of Insanity” into a clear message for the teachers.
The heavens flashed open, revealing the familiar musty air of the library basement. Elara stepped through, turning just in time to see the Phoenix bow its great head and the Fire Fairy give one final, hopeful burst of golden light before the gate winked shut. She was home, not just with her books and notes, but with the profound knowledge that communication wasn’t about having the right words, but having the right friends to speak the shared language of success.
