Lois smiled her friendliest smile. “My name is Lois.” Again they stared at her ... like she was from another planet, Lois thought wryly.
That sure had me mouth-twitching! Enough to bare my teeth, even!
And I just loved this:
“Could I have some? Please?”
“What is that last word?”
“Please,” she repeated. “It is what you say when you ask for something. Then if you get it, you say "thank you'.”
“Tan koo?”
Tan koo. How lovely. I'd better watch out so that I don't accidentally say that in the future, instead of "thank you".
And then the loveliness of the "tan koo" was enhanced by this episode:
Very, very slowly, Eb's face lifted and looked at him with timid eyes. “I can be with my husband?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
Eb stared at him. <Tan koo> Kal thought. That's what she was saying ... not saying ... they didn't have a word for it ... but that's what she meant.
That was just utterly lovely.
(Okay, I'll digress... cant' help it... but I once read about a whale that had been caught in fishing nets and things and would die there, unless someone freed her. A number of divers had come to the whale's rescue. They were cutting and cutting the thick netting and lines, working for hours, and all the time they had to look out for the whale's tail. Apparently she would almost automatically make fast movements with her huge tail, and if the divers didn't look out, they could be hit by her tail and be hurt or even killed.
Finally, after hours of hard work, they managed to free her.
When the whale was free, she swam in circles around the men. She swam around them again and again. The she stopped in front of the man who had freed her mouth, and she looked into his eyes for at least a whole minute.
Tan koo.)
This was utterly lovely:
Kal reached out and gently grasped her right wrist. He lifted her "S'-branded hand a few inches off her knee. “You will be safe because of this,” he said. Then he replaced her hand on her knee as if it were exceedingly fragile.
And Lois's response was so appropriate:
For the second time in less than thirty minutes, Lois's heart was thumping out of control. Was that the first time he had touched her? Touched her when there was no need?
Or was it just the first time she'd noticed how every part of her body reacted to his touch?
She looked from her hand to his face and saw that Kal was still staring at her hand. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. Had he felt something too?
But what?
He didn't even have a word for love.
Well, you don't need a word for love to love. And you don't need a word for tan koo to tan koo.
Now I'm going to use some of HappyGirl's beautifully thought out and worded feedback to add some thoughts of my own. HappyGirl wrote:
The shapeless robe combinded with Kal's extreme modesty makes me think of the burka. How much would a man know about normal female anatomy if he'd only ever seen women covered in burkas?
That is a very astute observation. I'm struck, too, by the contrast between Kal's half-naked form and Lois's "burka"-clad body, when she walked into his room without knocking. Lois's extreme sartorial modesty, combined with Kal's "provocative" dress
and his natural extreme modesty, certainly had both of them gasping and blushing.
It's no wonder that Lois would fall in lust with Kal's body when she saw it accidentally displayed like that. But even though she fell in real lust with him only now, she had fallen in love with him before. And she had already learned to like him very much, which is not the same thing as loving someone:
“You're a good man,” Low-iss said.
And she not only said it, she meant it.
Oh, and this Low-iss business. To Kal, Lois's name seemed to signify her lowly status:
Low-iss. Kal, on the other hand, has a higher status than anyone else in his society. The attraction between Kal and Low-iss is an attraction between two who are at the opposite ends of the status scale in the Kryptonian society, except that Lois has gained status thanks to the fact that she has become Kal's concubine. But I think that this is part of the attraction between this Lois and this Kal in this fic, too: it has to do with the audacity of reaching across the borders set up by polite society and the established hierarchy: the noblest Noble reaches out to Low-iss, or more shockingly still, she reaches out to him. Because even though she
is so low in status, even though her name constantly reminds Kal of how humble her natural position is, she absolutely never acts like it. She barely acts like less than his equal at all, in fact. She is unashamed and full of ideas and suggestions, and she keeps doing that mouth-twitch which makes his insides go haywire in the most wonderful way.
HappyGirl said:
We also have spousal priviledge; your spouse cannot be forced to testify against you in court. That's because society has decided that encouraging openness in those relationships is more important than whatever might be gained by breaching those confidences.
I'm not sure I agree with HappyGirl about the reason for why spouses can't be forced to testify against each other in court. (And I don't think we have that rule here in Sweden.)
I know I have read relatively old British detective stories which pointed out that a man might not be found guilty in court, because the only one who knew what he had done was his wife, and she did not have to testify against him. Indeed, I usually got the impression that in those old British stories, a wife wasn't allowed to testify against her own husband. (I never, on the other hand, came across a story where the perpetrator was a married woman who could not be found guilty because her husband was not allowed to testify against her.)
This is my take on the "no spousal testifying" thing. I think that is a remnant of the time when a wife was basically her husband's property. Back then, a man might do something criminal, but to ask his wife to testify against him was like asking a slave to testify against his master. You don't do that sort of thing, because it would upset the hierarchy of the society.
I think that in a strongly hierarchical society, preserving the hierachy is more important than catching and sentencing an individual wrong-doer. Therefore, a Noble can only be sentenced if he is accused by another Noble. A man can only be sentenced if he is accused by another man, unless he himself belongs to the lower classes and his female accuser is a Noble's wife. If we see the "no spousal testimony" in that light, it means that a husband is superior to his wife, and he can't be sentenced on her testimony (but his character might be cast in doubt because of her testimony, which would be unpleasant for him, so she is not allowed to say anything). And a husband is responsible for his wife's behaviour, so if she has done something illegal, we mustn't ask the husband to confess in court that he has allowed her to do something bad that he was not able to stop. Therefore, again, there can be no spousal testimony.
I think the New Kryptonian society is strongly hiearchical and very patriarchical. It is also sexist, because why else would there be official concubines? A society that permits men to keep official concubines, and even to brand them, is a society that grants male nobles the right to keep female sex slaves.
But Kal, who lives in this hierachical, patriarchical, sexist society, seems untouched by it in many ways. He is innocent in more ways than one, and he has never shown the least bit contempt for Low-iss, either because of her low status or because of her gender. The two of them are equals, in spite of absolutely impossible obstacles between them.
This is one of the many contradictions that make this fic so irresistible.
Ann
