21. Jasmine

21

JASMINE

J asmine sat by the prince's bedside, acting out scripts she'd memorized over the years. Some of them were musicals, so she sang the parts, the female and the male ones, just modified for her range.

She knew he couldn't understand her and that the words were just a jumble of meaningless sounds to his ears, but he might enjoy her singing, and since her acting imbued the words with emotion, he might understand that as well.

After all, people were the same whether they were humans, immortals, or Kra-ell.

She tried to keep it down, and she didn't want to distract or disturb Bridget and Julian while they were working on the princess in the next room.

Later, when Bridget walked in to check on the prince, Jasmine asked, "Am I bothering you and Julian?"

Bridget smiled. "Not at all. You are very talented and entertaining. It's like listening to a Broadway show from the dressing room."

Jasmine dipped her head. "Thank you. I wish the casting directors at all my auditions shared your opinion."

Bridget canted her head. "Looks and talent are two legs of the stool. The third is luck, and the Fates had different plans for you, so they didn't make you lucky."

Jasmine chuckled. "I'd like to think that. It's so much better than thinking I wasn't good enough."

Bridget turned to look at the prince. "Everyone is smart in retrospect, and the Fates don't like to show their hand. Perhaps your future is something you haven't even imagined yet." She stepped out of the room, leaving the door slightly ajar and Jasmine to ponder what she'd said.

What if the prince was just one more steppingstone toward a different future?

Jasmine closed her eyes and tried to think outside the box. What else could her future be? She was talented in many things but not exceptional in any of them. Her voice was strong, and she had perfect pitch, but it wasn't unique. She also wasn't a songwriter, and it seemed like these days, every successful singer had to come up with original pieces of their own.

A knock on the door pulled her out of her reveries, and as Jasmine turned and saw who it was, she tensed.

"Good morning," Kian said as he walked in with William.

"Good morning. My earpieces are in." Jasmine moved her hair aside to show William that she was wearing them.

William smiled. "Good. I'm glad that you are being cautious." He pulled out a small box from the bag he was carrying. "I have a new toy for you." He handed her the box.

"What is it?" She opened the top and looked inside.

William hadn't been joking. The thing looked like a toy. A small microphone and loudspeaker were housed in a teardrop-shaped pendant, which hung from a delicate chain.

"It works on the same principle as the earpieces, just without the compulsion filtering component. It will translate your words into the Kra-ell language so the prince can understand what you're saying. You can hang the chain around your neck."

She pulled the pendant out of the box. "How do I activate it?"

"It responds to voice commands." William smiled sheepishly. "The command to activate is 'Kra-on.'"

Jasmine chuckled. "That's easy to remember." She put the teardrop-shaped device in the palm of her hand. "It's so much more convenient than putting earpieces in the prince's recovering ears. Thank you for coming up with such a clever idea."

"It wasn't mine," William admitted. "My team has been working on improving the earpieces, and they've developed more great features. The device allows you to program it with your own voice, so it will sound like you when it translates your words into Kra-ell."

Jasmine frowned. "Will there be a delay, or will it translate simultaneously as I talk?"

"Simultaneously," William said. "And before you ask, the prince will only hear the Kra-ell translation, or mostly that. The device will cancel your voice waves by producing counter waves. It's not perfect yet, so he might hear some of it, but it won't be enough to confuse him."

"That's marvelous." Jasmine found three tiny buttons on the device, probably the manual controls. "Your technology is amazing." She turned the teardrop over. "What about singing, though? Will it also sing for him in Kra-ell?"

Kian regarded her with a puzzled look. "I don't think so. Is that an issue?"

She shrugged. "I sing to the prince. I don't know if he can hear me, but maybe he likes it. I would like to keep singing to him."

"Jasmine is very good," Bridget said from the waiting room. "Beautiful voice."

William and Kian exchanged glances, and William shook his head. "If you want to sing to him, deactivate the device."

"That's what I thought." She sighed. "It's a shame, though. I mostly sing songs from musicals, so the words are important. Still, this is a miraculous little device. You could make a fortune with it."

William ducked his head, looking embarrassed by her praise. "The next generation of earpieces will automatically learn the speech patterns and voices of the people around them, so they'll sound completely natural to the listener."

Kian chuckled. "The first generation was awful. The voice was male, and hearing my wife talking to me in a male voice was disturbing."

"I can imagine." She smiled up at him. "How complicated is it to teach it to use my voice?"

"I'll show you." William took the device from her.

"While you do that, I'll check on the princess." Kian turned around and left the room.

William spent the next few minutes showing her how to program the device and then left to give the new devices to the medical staff.

As Jasmine continued training the teardrop the way William had shown her, she thought about communicating with the prince the same way she would be talking to a human man in his situation.

The nuances of speech and the emotions behind them might be completely lost on him, and the same was true for her, even if William's team updated the earpieces before the prince woke up.

The prince was an alien from a completely different world with different values and beliefs. Would she understand him even if she could hear his voice?

Could she read him like she could read the people of her world?

Probably not. She would have a hard time communicating with someone from Tibet or Japan in a meaningful way, even if there was no language barrier. Their cultural expectations were too different.

Things would be so much easier with Edgar. He was an immortal, also alien in some ways, but he had been born on Earth, and he had grown up immersed in the same Western culture and values that had shaped her.

With him, there would be no language barriers, no cultural misunderstandings. Still, as the thoughts flitted through her mind, she pushed them aside because there was no escaping the fact that Edgar was not the one meant for her, and she should stop thinking about him as an option.