"David Eddings - The Dreamers 01 - The Elder gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eddings David)

Ordinary conversations between them had been in the language of the
dolphins.
‘Come here, child,’ Zelana said. ‘I think it’s time for us to get to know
each other a bit better.’
Eleria seemed apprehensive. ‘Have I done something wrong,
Beloved?’ she asked. ‘Are you angry with me because I told your poems
to the finned ones? You didn’t want me to do that, did you? Your poems
were love, and they were for me alone. Now I have spoiled them.’
Eleria’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Please don’t send me away, Beloved!’ she
wailed. ‘I promise that I won’t do it again!’
A wave of emotion swept over Zelana, and she felt her own eyes
clouding over. She held out her arms to the child. ‘Come to me,’ she said.
Eleria rushed to her, and they clung to each other. Both of them were
weeping now, yet they were filled with a kind of joy.
Zelana and Eleria spent all of their time together in the grotto after that.
The dolphins brought fish for Eleria to eat, and the trickling spring
provided water, so there was no real need for the child to go out into
Mother Sea. Her playmates were a bit sulky at first, but that soon passed.
Zelana spent many happy hours teaching Eleria how to create poetry
and how to sing. Zelana’s poetry was stately and formal, and her songs
were complex. Eleria’s poetry was still antique but much more
passionate, and her songs were simple and pure. Zelana was painfully
aware that the child’s voice was more beautiful than her own, clear and
reaching upward without effort.
Eleria eventually came to realize that the language she had come to
know as the language of poetry had a more colloquial form which they
could use for everyday communication. She still insisted on calling
Zelana ‘Beloved,’ however.


It was in the spring of Eleria’s seventh year when the child went out to
play with her pink friends again. Zelana had suggested that Eleria had
been neglecting them of late, and it was not polite to do that.
Late that day Eleria returned to the grotto with a strange glowing
object.
‘What is that pretty thing, child?’ Zelana asked.
‘It’s called a “pearl”, Beloved,’ Eleria replied, ‘and a very old friend of
the dolphins gave it to me - well, she didn’t exactly give it to me. She
showed me where it was, though.’
‘I didn’t know that pearls could grow so large,’ Zelana marveled. ‘It
must have been an enormous oyster.’
‘It was huge, Beloved.’
‘Who is this friend of the dolphins?’
‘A whale,’ Eleria replied. ‘She’s very old, and she lives near that islet
off the south coast. She joined us this morning and told me that she
wanted to show me something. Then she led me to the islet and took me
down to where this enormous oyster was attached to a reef. The oyster’s
shell was almost as wide across as I am tall.’
‘How did you pry it open if it was that big?’
‘I didn’t have to, Beloved. The old whale touched the shell with her