#undercommon

Additionally there was kyon, or “care.”  This was less difficult to explain to outsiders, as both words contained similar multitudes: a sense of companionship and affection and comfort, but also of watchfulness and vigilance.  It was the root of kyona and kyone, or “carefulness” and “wariness,” and also shared a root with kyorl, or “to watch, wait, or guard.”  This was often a more familial term: a term of protectiveness, of nurturing, and defending.  Yet also of suspicion.

Ssinssrigg was straightforward in its connotations of romance and sex, lust and desire, sometimes bordering on greed or possessiveness.  But it was rooted in the words ssin, meaning “beauty,” and ssrigg which had no direct translation.  Its root word was clearly the Elven ssri, meaning “silk” or “silent” and expressing utmost grace, fluidity.  It had been the original name for their people in the Elven tongue — Ssri’Tel’Quessir, the Silk Elves — before they became only the Dhaeraow, the “traitors,” the “dark hearts.”  But time in the Underdark had twisted this word, as it twisted all things, and it became ssrigg: a thing with no precise translation beyond a passionate… hunger?  A vicious longing, perhaps?  No, a desire gone past the point of need, to where all else is devoured by it.

A fearsome and terrible hunger for beauty.  And it was translated as love.

But back to “beauty,” the value once viewed as the domain of their people above all others.  “Beauty” in particular held all sorts of meaning to it.  Aesthetic, emotional, delightful, dangerous.

Ssin’urn was “beautiful.”  Ssinjin was “sweet.”  Ssinss was the quality of having charm or allure, ssinss’rhul was nudity in any context, ssin’urninness was “one who uses beauty to seduce,” and ssin d’aerth was “one who practices love at the professional level.”  Oddly, ssinsuurul was “music,” ssinssrickla was that sort of light laughter Essek never remembered the common term for, ssintchal was “pastry,” of all things.

And yet ssinaeth was “addiction,” a tragedy.

Ssindossa was “whore,” an insult.

Viriggh’ssinss, a sort of madness brought on by beauty that drives one to sickness, or even violence.  Essek knew of no term for it in the trade tongue, nor even if this phenomenon occurred in other cultures.  But by the nine woven hells, Essek felt of late he must be suffering something akin to that.  The Spider Queen must have sent her agents to whisper silk into his hear, to tie his mind in an unbreakable web that kept him from all rational thought when it came to the matter of Caleb Widogast.