Sara - What flower lovers the Entoans must be. Wherever we have gone there is such an exquisite display of blooms that constantly I am wishing that I might carry some of them home with me, and really it seems odd that I cannot.
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St. Louis October 1883
You were only five or six during this period, so you probably don’t remember your visits with us as vividly as I. You were as curious as I had been at your age, with the same dreamy imagination as my mother–but lacking her fatal melancholy. Very early you showed an interest in all the arts—music, cooking, drawing—but since I play no instrument and am an indifferent cook, we focused on the latter. You and I spent many hours sketching together at my writing desk or (if Adolphe wasn’t there to chastise us) on the floor of the Axminster carpet in the parlor.
One afternoon you threw down your tools and complained that your work looked nothing like the vivid images in your mind. I tried to reassure you that all great artists suffer so, but you were too frustrated to continue. I picked up the sketchbook from the floor and examined it.
“Ah, I see the problem—you are drawing the exotic beasts of the planet Ento! They have never been seen on this world and are difficult to depict accurately. This, what you have here—” You were probably trying to draw a horse, or maybe a giraffe, but the figure had an uncertain number of legs and its eyes were not all on the front of its head. “This is called a lûma̤. It feeds on shrubbery and very tall trees. How perfectly you have captured the usual position of its eyes, which allow it to see in all directions at once!”
You studied my expression to see if I were making fun of you, and, reassured, looked back down at your drawing. “I drew a lûma̤!” you concluded.
“That’s right.” I brought you over to my desk, where I was assembling a bouquet for our foyer. “This may look like an Earthly arrangement, but they are actually rare Micana̤ drufi. Micana̤ means lily, and drufi means orange-colored.”
“Micana̤ drufi,” you repeated.
“Your pronunciation is very good, Claire, you sound like a native Entoan.” I proceeded to lead you around the room, naming things as we went. Some of the words I pulled out of my memories of the same game with my mother, others I made up on the spot.
At one point you gestured towards my earrings, a simple pair of rust-colored topazes. “Drufi?” you asked.
I laughed. “They are indeed orange! We shall say they are Yanû drufi, meaning ‘orange gem.’”
At that moment we heard the sound of the front door opening, and Adolphe meticulously scraping off his boots. You squealed in delight and ran to him, yelling, “Grandpapa!” It was a silly little game, but bringing those words back into my life brought me such joy.