Although the Vien Empire had always insisted on promoting the Markley Language Family in its colonies, Markley remained only one of this world's major common languages, not its sole language.
For instance, the official language of the region where Dark Moon Island lay was not Markley, but Siderson.
Even within the same language family, differences in regional culture produced striking local linguistic characteristics, let alone the enormous differences between distinct language families and the cultural backgrounds they represented.
Some locally distinctive forms of "greeting" were more than dialectal differences. They were more like jargon or cant used by different gangs and trades, such as "the pagoda subdues the river demon," or "the earth shakes the high ridge; rivers and mountains retain their eternal beauty."
Translated literally, such expressions often strayed very far from their original meanings, to the point of failing to convey them at all.
Take the expression "down to earth," which Kallen had once used. Only Alfred had truly grasped its meaning. To Puer, Kevin, and those they relayed it to, it sounded more like "receiving the breath and will of the earth," coming infinitely close to the doctrines of the Earth Mother God Church.
Of course, Puer certainly had not meant to set Kallen up. She had no reason to dig a pit for her own great-great-great-great-grandniece.
The actual reason was that, for the sake of Suancai Fish, Puer had racked her brains and told Kallen everything she could dredge up from her memories about Dark Moon Island.
That included how, beneath a sunset long ago, a handsome Young Clan Leader had gazed at her profile and said, "It was the dappled afterglow of the dark moon that let me see the real you."
His heartfelt declaration had met with nothing but indifference from the girl before