Heard and Unheard

Aqa'krghrift's gaze deepened when she heard the boy speak. She wasn't more upset about him threatening her given that she was now quite thoroughly bound to him via their contract. She could of course understand him, just not the woman that had said what to her, equated to a very smooth and flowery sounding foreign tongue. Still, given the question that the boy, Jien had asked she could tell roughly what had been answered to lead to his question directed at her.Fortunately for Jien the crimson haired woman seemed to value her decency, not wanting to be undressed just to let him read what would likely take the boy ages to begin to decipher. She sighed heavily before answering in a sarcastic almost haughty tone. "What do you think happened? I tried to kill and would have succeeded if not for…" When she tried to say the next words, they seemed to become stuck in her throat like a fish bone. She nearly felt like coughing and gagging on them as if they were truly physical in nature.The predicament was odd to say the least. The adults were not able to understand a word the woman spoke. To their ears the language she spoke was broken, jagged and grated on their ears as if nails on a chalkboard. Each syllable sounded as if someone were closing a rusty door hinge. And then as she was speaking, she suddenly started to act as if she had choked on something, coughing violently and gagging slightly. This caught them off guard, but they made no move to help her given that they did not understand what she said or if this was a ploy to get them to do something that may put them all in danger.Jien throughout this first exchange seemed to remain calm despite the reveal of what the woman had tried to do. After hearing what Runa had said he was pretty positive that this was her intention in the first place, so it was not a shock in the slightest when it came from the woman's rosy lips. That, however, did not mean that he didn't feel upset. He had nearly died and for no other reason than stretching for another helpful tool. He just wanted to return to his books, if he hadn't stuck his neck out under the presumption that the other noble children understood the process fully, he would be going through a leisurely yet annoying afternoon rather than dealing with the aftermath of an assassination attempt.To Jien the woman had a stately and beautiful voice, close to that of what he assumed the sirens of sailor fairy tales described. Her tone was highly arrogant, though he felt that she definitely had the power to back it up given everything. Her words sounded like his own language, so he didn't hear the grating language the adults in the room did. Still, the most interesting part was where her sentence had cut off. She was about to tell him why she didn't succeed in killing him, but she apparently couldn't for some reason he wasn't sure of.His first priority was to figure out where him and this woman stood so he ignored this mystery for the moment and focused on other topics after she had stopped coughing, instead taking deep heaving breaths to steady herself once again. "It seems that you can't discuss that for some reason so let's put it aside for the moment. Do we have a signed contract and if so, what are the terms so we can figure out how we are going to work together for now on." He asked these questions in a firm tone, hoping to at least make the woman understand that he was trying to have a serious conversation.After a few long minutes of deep breaths Aqa'krghrift finally regained her calm and sat up again to face her contractor. "The terms are simple but have a lot of detail clauses that I am not allowed to tell you and you would not be likely to see even if you read the full contract." She stated this matter-of-factly because though she was contracted to this boy named Jien, the one who signed the contract was not actually the boy but the being watching over him. This meant that Jien could see what pertained to him and nothing more."The gist of it is that I am to serve and protect you until the day you perish and that the means of you doing so would be neither by my hand nor my negligence." This she stated as her golden eyes seemed to dim. This was a disgrace for her, how did she end up serving a human that she could flatten with her pinky finger because she wanted to be thorough and destroy his soul rather than just his body. It was a stupid mistake on her part, and she regretted not just outright crushing his body and hoping that his soul wouldn't somehow find a way to call upon her again.Jien saw her eyes dulling in what he assumed was some form of depression, but he ignored it for now. Now he understood the basis of the contract, even if he didn't understand how it had been signed. "Given that you are to serve and protect me I will need to know what to call you." he stated evenly. "I will introduce myself once again. I am Jien Losler, and you are?"The woman lowered her head and stated in a voice that Jien could barely make out "Aqa'krghrift". When saying this she seemed to have lost what little energy she had since this in a way was her submitting to her fate as this child's nanny. Jien's response however seemed to bring back that energy in the form of anger, her eyes almost seeming to spit fire. "I couldn't pronounce that even if I wanted to. Do you mind if I call you Alice?"