If Elaine had finished high school back in Iowa, she would've had a ton of graduation presents from her various relatives. Of course they'd be practical ones: clothes and supplies for college, improving literature and the like. But she'd still be sitting at the kitchen table grinding out her thank-you notes, longhand, in ink, letter-perfect or you do it again until it is.
After having been rescued from the terrorist attack on the school bus and then whisked across the country for telepath training with the Sharp Resistance, she'd figured she'd be lucky to get any at all. Small things from the Alandales and the Blakes, and Aiden would give her something, but a verbal expression of gratitude would suffice for those. Some of her teachers might give her little surprises, but in the laid-back culture of California, an e-mail or text message was more than adequate.
Instead, here she was at the Alandales' kitchen table, writing her thank-you's for some surprising gifts that really required a formal letter of gratitude, stamped and posted via US mail. She'd knocked out all of them except Spartan's: a beautifully illustrated copy of Pushkin's poetry. The fact that it was in Russian, and had been published back in Soviet days, strongly suggested that yes, Spartan was indeed Leonid Gruzinsky.
Which made writing his thank-you note all the more difficult. Should she write it in English, or in Russian? And how should she address him in the salutation? Just by his call sign, given that was how he'd signed his inscription to her? Or as "Leonid Alekseevich," which she'd heard several of his team call him during the trip to Silicon Valley?
Given that he'd inscribed the book in Russian, she'd really like to impress him with her skill in his native tongue. On the other hand, the last time she'd used Russian regularly, she'd been eleven, an age when infelicities in language were still considered errors rather than affronts. Now she was an adult, and would be expected to show adult mastery of formal diction and register control.
Better to play it safe. English was a more relaxed and casual language, especially here in California. Much less likely that a seemingly innocuous turn of phrase would prove a land mine of unexpected offense.
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Date: 2022-08-21 10:48 pm (UTC)After having been rescued from the terrorist attack on the school bus and then whisked across the country for telepath training with the Sharp Resistance, she'd figured she'd be lucky to get any at all. Small things from the Alandales and the Blakes, and Aiden would give her something, but a verbal expression of gratitude would suffice for those. Some of her teachers might give her little surprises, but in the laid-back culture of California, an e-mail or text message was more than adequate.
Instead, here she was at the Alandales' kitchen table, writing her thank-you's for some surprising gifts that really required a formal letter of gratitude, stamped and posted via US mail. She'd knocked out all of them except Spartan's: a beautifully illustrated copy of Pushkin's poetry. The fact that it was in Russian, and had been published back in Soviet days, strongly suggested that yes, Spartan was indeed Leonid Gruzinsky.
Which made writing his thank-you note all the more difficult. Should she write it in English, or in Russian? And how should she address him in the salutation? Just by his call sign, given that was how he'd signed his inscription to her? Or as "Leonid Alekseevich," which she'd heard several of his team call him during the trip to Silicon Valley?
Given that he'd inscribed the book in Russian, she'd really like to impress him with her skill in his native tongue. On the other hand, the last time she'd used Russian regularly, she'd been eleven, an age when infelicities in language were still considered errors rather than affronts. Now she was an adult, and would be expected to show adult mastery of formal diction and register control.
Better to play it safe. English was a more relaxed and casual language, especially here in California. Much less likely that a seemingly innocuous turn of phrase would prove a land mine of unexpected offense.