Retrospection on an Introduction
Number Twelve Leafydale Place
Greensward-by-Efraim
Delgado
In which Kamele and Jen Sar took a step forward in their relationship.
The second of the full-chapter flashbacks, and it perhaps says something that I let the first one go by without remarking on how it fits into the idea of re-reading the series in chronological order. Which is, clearly, that a flashback chapter belongs where it’s been put by the author, because even if it’s describing chronologically-distant events, the remembering of those events is happening at this point in the story, and it matters to this story that it’s happening here. To have moved these chapters to before the beginning of the novel because that’s when the events-being-remembered happened would have been to do an injury to the story.
(If you were around for the planning stages of this re-read, you may recall that I lost sight of that at one point, when I was deep in the analytical “timeline-all-the-things” headspace that made a full-series chronological re-read possible. I want to take this opportunity to apologise for the mess that conversation was, and to express my gratitude for being talked down from doing anything then that I would have regretted when I found my way back to that other, wiser headspace which knows why a full-series re-read is worth doing.)
About Tra’sia, cha’leken!, the “expression of joy” that Jen Sar declined to translate: We have seen “tra’sia” before only as part of the phrase “tra’sia volecta”, a Liaden greeting for which we have not, to my recollection, ever been given a word-for-word translation. What we do know is that it’s Low Liaden, used for family and close friends; in High Liaden, one might instead say “Entranzia volecta”. We have not seen “cha’leken” before at all, though we have seen “cha’leket”, which is used to refer to a person for whom one feels a sibling’s affection; it might mean a person for whom one feels affection equally strong but of a different nature.
So, the full phrase might perhaps mean something approximately like, “Greetings, beloved!”, or perhaps, “This is a good thing, beloved” (if “tra’sia volecta” is something like “good morning” and “tra’sia” is more like “good” than “morning”). Another possibility is that it’s the Liaden equivalent of the “I see you, sister” that Priscilla gives Lina in Conflict of Honors.
And whatever it means, I have a strong suspicion that the reason Jen Sar was chagrined about it is that it was Aelliana who said it and not him.
Hi! I discovered your site while searching for an explanation of the Chapelia, and now I’m enjoying reading your thoughts as I progress through Fledgling. It’s my second time through but I don’t recall a lot of the specifics from the first time through. Anyhow, even though your posting is about a year old I hope you don’t mind me sharing some of my own thoughts as I read.
With this chapter, I think it’s very clearly Aelliana and not Jen Sar who says tra’sia cha’leken. The description matches well with other times she takes active control of Daav and speaks – a pause, a softening of facial features, and a difference to the voice.
I wonder how much Jen Sar/Daav and Aelliana might have talked about this situation in advance, the idea of him having a romantic relationship despite being lifemated to her. With his chagrin I assume the conversation didn’t leave the issue resolved, assuming it was even had, and he found himself in the strange situation of his dead lifemate actively pushing him in to a new relationship.
Any evidence that someone’s reading the site is always welcome! Seriously, though, it was my hope all along that people would not only read my thoughts but share their own, and I’m always glad when it happens.
I don’t know if you’ve read Mouse and Dragon, the prequel to Fledgling, but there’s a chapter in there that’s Jen Sar’s version of Fledgling‘s Chapter 7, the first meeting betwen Jen Sar and Kamele, and Daav and Aelliana do discuss the situation – after Aelliana has had Jen Sar arrange to meet Kamele a second time. (Between the two versions of the scene, it’s pretty clear that Daav was still cloaked in mourning and if he’d had his way he would have politely disengaged and possibly never spoken to Kamele again.) That conversation only goes as far as gaining Kamele’s friendship, and not (at least in so many words) the possibility that the relationship might turn romantic, and it’s possible they never did really discuss it before Kamele popped the question.
So it is kind of a case of Daav’s dead lifemate actively pushing him into a new relationship, although it’s also kind of not, because to the extent that there’s a meaningful distinction it’s not Daav but Jen Sar who’s getting the new relationship; in Mouse and Dragon, when Daav asks her why she had Jen Sar arrange to meet Kamele again, she talks about Jen Sar as a separate person from Daav, one who ought to be allowed to meet people and make friends of his own. And also because, to the extent that there’s not a meaningful distinction, then it’s also true that it’s Aelliana as well as Daav who’s getting the new relationship. If one pays attention to the things Kamele loves about Jen Sar and the fond memories she has of times with him, rather a lot of them have visible traces of Aelliana’s influence.
About the phrase “Tra’sia cha’leken”: I don’t have much to add to your analysis of the first word, beyond that my personal belief is that it means something close to “I see you”, meant in the way of a greeting, and not in the way of someone being Seen by the Delm. Cha’leken though, I think I have a pretty good guess based on actual evidence. The prefix, “cha” is use quite often in the series: cha’trez (Val Con translates his endearment for Miri to roughly “heart-song”), cha’dramliz (I believe this to mean “heart-wizard”, which would make sense given a Healer’s primary power-set), as part of Korval’s motto “I dare” which is “flaran cha’menthi” though for this one I don’t have much of a guess as to the direct translation of the words, and most importantly for this scene, cha’leket which I believe translates to “heart-kin”; though I can’t recall exactly where I got that translation from, I’m fairly confident that it’s actually a translation provided by one of the characters… maybe Jethri in Trade Secret when he’s summarizing what he has read about Liaden intimate relationships?
In any case, cha’leket refers specifically to a formal relationship in which two people who aren’t actually genetically siblings take on the melant’i of siblings. My guess is that the slight change to the word, to cha’leken, is because Aelliana is speaking directly to her cha’leket (Kamele) instead of speaking of her, which I believe is how we’ve always seen the word used in the past. So Aelliana is declaring that she sees Kamele as a sister (which is actually mentioned again by Aelliana later, though for the life of me I can’t recall the scene or book this time, but it’s definitely after Daav has departed Delgado), and at the same time pushing Jen Sar into the relationship.