~
Quail Before Me
“Quail before me! O mighty warriors, quail before me! Quail before –”
“There is no need to shout,” said a gravelly voice from just above the bench. I turned around to find myself being looked up and down by a portly brown bird with a beetling yellow mono-brow. “Your mighty warriors appear to have deserted you, but you do have my attention. Proceed.”
“I – The – Sorry, who are you?”
“The quail before you.”
“No, I – that’s not what I – what it means. I’m writing a play, you see, and the villain is trying to intimidate the heroes by telling them to – er – well – quail before him.” I finished rather lamely.
The quail considered this. “I am afraid I do not perceive,” it said at last. “Insofar as I am aware, quail is a noun in your tongue. The name you give to my kind.”
“It is, it is, but it is also a verb. It means to be dreadfully frightened of someone or something. Oh, I’m sure whoever came up with it meant no harm,” I added hastily. “It’s just an expression. One of those things every language – oh my stars!”
A large dog bounding at one out of nowhere, even if it is of the friendly, tail-wagging type, will often give one something of a shock, and I had leapt aside in a sudden quivering panic before I could flounder all the way through my explanation. The quail, however, had remained upon its boîte-à-lire perch, and was surveying me with an amusement that made me grit my teeth.
“Human before me.”
“Yes?”
“Just testing it out. O mighty pigeons, human before me! Hmm, yes, I think I can see the appeal.”
“Human before me.” A sparrow settled on an overhanging branch, chirping mockingly at the quail. “Are you so desperate for company you’ve taken to talking to the creature?”
“Of course not. I have simply been observing it, and I have invented a new word in consequence. To human. It means to shrink and tremble with dread.”
“Isn’t that a little bit specieist? Besides, it’s very clunky. To human. Hmm. I’m not sure…”
“Oh I think it will catch on,” cawed the crow, who had been eavesdropping. “Human, world! Human before me! Muhahahaha!”
I recoiled. “Hey! Stop! You can’t do that!”
“There!” said the quail. “You see that? It humans before us.”
“Hmm.” said the sparrow. “Upon reflection, I quite like it…”
~
Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, a teacher of French as a foreign language and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Wellington Street Review, Black Bough, Nine Muses, Borrowed Solace, Ligeia, Cordite Poetry, and a number of other literary magazines. Studying life, languages and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her.