Word: Laudatory

 

laudatory

Sometimes laud·a·tive

[law-duh-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee]

adjective

1. containing or expressing praise.

   overwhelmed by the speaker's laudatory remarks.

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               Lord Callin, Protector of the Realm, Barer of the Divine Blade and a slew of other titles, slumped against the door of his bedchamber.  He should have been out there, doing his duty as host to the party. But he just could not handle it anymore.  The empty praise. The false adulation.

               All those people out there. His guests. His people. They heaped him with compliments and didn’t mean a single one of them. He was sick of it. He wished he could just tell those people to leave, but no. He had to at least appear civil. He had to at least look like he enjoyed the praise. Like he didn’t see through every bit of it.  Even this small reprieve would not last long. He would have to go back out there and pretend to bask in their false flattery.

               He took a deep breath to calm his mind. That was when he became aware that he was not alone. He slowly opened his eyes and saw one of his maids. A new one, most likely. The girl was young. Probably not even in her second decade yet. The girl stood, wide eyed and stock still.

               “M-my lord, I…I’m sorry. I didn’t…I thought you would still be at the party so I came in here an…” She stopped before she rambled any further.

               “It’s fine.” Lorn Callin said, letting his exhaustion through. “You were only doing what I hire you to do. This little visit of mine wasn’t planned.”

               Callin cast his gaze around the room. He began to notice, really notice the state of it. An it was quite obvious which areas the girl had gotten to, an which had yet to receive attention.

               “Seems like you’re doing a fine job of it, at any rate.” He said.     

               Her cheeks reddened and she wrung her hands nervously. “Me? O-oh no. I’m not…I mean…” He took a deep breath and did her best curtsy. It was not very good, but she was trying. “I am not worthy of such praise, my lord.”

               He smiled weakly. “You don’t get compliments often, do you?”

               The maid studiously avoided her lord’s eyes. “No, my lord. I’m just a simple girl. Not worthy of kind words from anyone, let alone someone as great as you.”

               “I’m curious. What would you do if lots of people suddenly started complimenting you, but didn’t mean them?”

               “My lord? I’m not sure what you mean?”

               “Let’s say everyone around you started calling you the best maid. The best at everything to do with your job. And then kept going. Giving you more and more praise. But you’re not. Not the best. Everything they say is a lie. What would you do?”

               “Begging your pardon, my lord, but it would depend on who was doing the talking. Someone like you? I’d just live with it. After all, who am I to say what a man such as yourself would be thinking. But if it was my fellow maids? I’d ask them to stop beating around the bush and tell me what they wanted.”

               “Oh?” Callin asked, rubbing his chin. “And why is that?”

               “Well, my lord, I don’t know how it is for the lords and nobles, but among us common folk, when you flatter someone to that degree, it’s because they either deserve it, or you want something from them.”

               Lord Callin’s lips curled up in a small smile. “I see. Thank you for that. It was insightful. And more helpful than you know.” He took a few deep breaths and turned to the door. “Oh, and do keep up the goo work. I wasn’t lying when I said that you’re doing well.”

               He left the room, heading back to the ballroom, leaving a very surprise girl behind. It was time to find out what all those empty compliments were really for.

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Hopefully all the compliments you get are genuine.

Word: Jujitsu

 

jujitsu

Also ju·jut·su,
Or jiu·jit·su

[joo-jit-soo]

noun

1. a method developed in Japan of defending oneself without the use of weapons by using the strength and weight of an adversary to disable him.

2. the use of an opponent's strengths or one's own weaknesses to accomplish one's goals.

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                If someone asked him what Craig liked most about the pits, he would say the crowds. The roar of the crowd egging him on. Inspiring him to do better. The reality was that he just liked hitting people. The cheers he got was just a bonus. So was the money he got for winning.

                But right now, he was not feeling any of that desire to hit his opponent. Who in the world would want to beat up a woman who was almost half his height and had to weigh 80 pounds less than him. Craig was a lot of things, but a man who beat women was not one of them.

                “Uh, miss, are you sure you want to be here?” He asked.

                “Oh yeah. I’m sure.” She said, doing small hops on the balls of her feet.

                “Okay, but it’s just that this isn’t like an MMA arena or anything. This place can be pretty brutal.”

                “I know. I’ve scoped this place out enough to know what’s up. That’s why I know I’m totally gonna beat you.”

                He sighed and shrugged. “Alright, suit yourself. Normally I don’t hit women, but if you step into the pit, I guess I don’t have a choice.”

                “That’s the spirit. Gender equality and all that. Gotta love our shared appreciation of beating the bloody pulp out of someone. Now let’s get this show on the road.”

                Craig got ready for the fight to start, as did his opponent. She adopted some kind of martial arts stance, although he did not know enough to know which. Not that it mattered. Skill was all well and good, but there was not much she would be able to do against 220 pounds of muscle. And with that mentality, he rushed her, aiming to tackle her using his full weight against her. He got close. She moved.

                And then Craig found himself flat on his back. It was not a pleasant landing either. His opponent seemed content to let him stand up. She smirked as he did. He approached with much more caution than before, striking and punching whenever he got within reach.

                And she was always exactly where his fists were not. She made dodging his best attacks look easy. He swore she could practically read his mind. He was getting frustrated by this tiny woman giving him the runaround. So, he sped up.

                His fists came like lighting, without any sense of caution of aiming. That was when she made her move. After he punched maybe a little too hard, she grabbed his wrist, spun around, and flipped him over her shoulder. Once again, a quite painful landing.

                “You know that’s just gonna happen every time, right?” she said with a smug look on her face.

                “Maybe, maybe not. All I gotta do is hit you once though.”

                “You keep telling yourself that. Now come on, let’s keep going. Unless you wanna quit.”

                “Not on your life.”

                After being put on the ground three more times, Craig did, in fact, want to quit. He lay there, groaning. He might have hit his head on the way down on that last one.

                “Finished yet?” She asked. “Just so you know, I’m going easy on you. I haven’t put you any holds, locks, or anything like that. Basically, no finishers so far. And at this point it’s getting kind of silly. So yeah, either give up or I’ll make you.”

                Craig considered her words. He did not just want to give up so easily. But on the other hand, he was in considerable pain from being repeatedly thrown against a concrete floor. And she did indeed look perfectly fine. She was barely even sweating. He lay there and made his decision.

                “Okay, yeah. I’m done.” He said weakly. It was enough.

                “Good choice.” She said and extended a hand to help him up.

                He took it and was surprised to find that she was able to help get him to his feet, as unsteady as he was.

                “I’m totally going to win the next time though.” He said.

                She laughed. “Only in your dreams, big guy.”

                Craig chuckled and hobbled off. He would watch her fight, learn her techniques a bit more. And then maybe he would get lucky the next time they faced off against each other.  

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I don't have much to say about this one right now. So yeah, enjoy the story and all that good stuff. 

Word: Pitapat

pitapat

[pit-uh-pat]

adverb

1. with a quick succession of beats or taps.

   Her heart beat pitapat with excitement.

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                “So, what do we have so far?” Dr. Levare asked. She had not yet seen the subject, since there was so much security around it that the president himself would not be able to enter freely.

                “Not much doctor.” The officer escorting her said.

She did not know his rank. He was not a general, which is what mattered. Probably of colonial or a lieutenant or something. She did remember his name was Burke though.

The man continued to speak as they went through the sterile halls. “It obviously doesn’t speak our language. We knew that going in. But the language it does speak is...odd. In fact, it doesn’t even speak at all. It uses a series of taps and beats on whatever it can get. The team working on communicating with it only realized those taps were a language after the same patterns kept repeating. They’re working on translating it, but progress is slow.”

“Has it shown any aggression?”

“Not as far as we can tell. But it could be tapping out a series of highly imaginative death threats and we wouldn’t know it.”

                Dr. Levare let out a sharp breath through her nose. It was likely as close to a laugh as she was going to get. The two made their way to the observation room, where the current team was working furiously. They barely even slowed down when she and Burke entered.

She looked at the large windows looking over the holding room. And there she saw it. The first ever confirmed extraterrestrial being to ever walk the Earth. It was amazing how wrong sci-fi stories could be. There was nothing even remotely humanoid about this thing. It was almost arachnoid in makeup, but even that did not do it justice. It had a four segmented body that sported a metallic-blue carapace, with eight limbs. Although only four of them seemed to be used for walking, with the other four acting more like hands. Each limb was long and thin, with two joints on the legs and three on the arms. The head sported several eye-like sections, each with a different color.  And it did not seem to have a mouth. Or at least, not one that she could recognize.

The alien was using one of its limbs, capped in four stubby “fingers,” to rapidly tap out something on a metal table. It was looking at a monitor on the table with it. There were no input devices, but that did not seem to deter the alien from responding to whatever it was seeing. The scientists in the room with her were furiously doing whatever they could to figure out what was being said.

“What’s going on?” Dr. Levare asked, loud enough that the men and women in the room paused.

“We’ve presented it was various mathematical constructs. We’ve started at basic arithmetic and are now up to advanced calculus. We’re using that as a basis to really begin translation.” One of the team members said.

“Let me see what you have so far.” She said without even bothering to introduce herself. There was no need to waste time on something so frivolous. They knew who she was and why she was there.

She sat down at the first open workstation she found and used her credentials to activate it. Then she pulled up as many files as she could read quickly while some of the other team members started going through the data verbally. It would take some time to get up to speed, but after that it would be time to really get to work. They had a alien to communicate with. 

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Okay, I doubt this is what the word is really meaning, but oh well. This is where my mind went, so this is what I wrote.