"You can see in the dark," Isibel says. "Elves cannot see in the dark."

"Demons can see in the dark," says the demon.

"Endarkened," he echoes, nodding, and says a word in his own language.

Isibel shrugs; she doesn't know what the word means unless it's his own word for his species. She's covered the word 'want' now, right? "If there is something you want to learn to talk about, I will listen," she volunteers.

He shrugs, too, flicking the tip of his tail against the side of the bench.

All right then, she's stuck with whatever curriculum she can devise. Let's see. What would she need to tell him the story of her life? Well, "life", for one thing. She thinks, then goes back to the poisons. "If I eat a berry I cannot eat anyway, I will get sick. If I get sicker, I might die. If I don't eat anything, I will die. If I eat things I can eat I will live. I am alive right now. You are also alive."

"I am alive," he agrees. "You are alive. I want you are alive."

"You want me to be alive," she corrects with a small smile. "I want me to be alive, too!"

"I want you to be alive," he says, grinning. "I want you to eat things you can eat."

She laughs. "To be alive I need to eat food that is food elves can eat, and I need to drink water -" She mimes, both drinking from a cup and then from cupped hands in case he is not familiar with dishes - "and I need to sleep, and not fall, and I need other things not to eat me."

Isibel pauses, then slowly says, "If you won't eat me, then demons don't eat elves. There is only one demon."

"...Only one demon," he repeats, staring a little.

She nods. "The other demons died." She sketches a square of dots, ten to a side, one hundred in total. "Ten times ten is one hundred. Four hundred sunrises is one year. One hundred times one hundred is ten thousand. Magania said you have been on this island for ten thousand years. Two thousand years ago, the other demons died."

"Two thousand years," the demon murmurs. "Two thousand years ago the other demons died. Demons don't die easy."

Isibel nods. "There was -" How does she mime or draw war? Well, that's not the ultimate explanation anyway. "There was a Wildmage, who died so that the demons would die easier, and then they all did. Her name was Idalia."

"Idalia," the demon repeats, and nods firmly.

"Idalia Wildmage was a human but then she died and then she was an elf," Isibel adds. "A small -" she gestures - "elf had Idalia in her. Then she lived a thousand years."

"Elves live a thousand years."

Isibel nods. "I have lived twenty and one years," she says, "twenty-one years. I am twenty-one years old."

"I have lived... eleven thousand years," says the demon, shrugging and waving his hands a little to indicate that this is an inexact figure. "I am eleven thousand years old."

Isibel draws a new map - the old one was sketchy - and puts in rivers and so on, and she marks the location of Silverbranch. "I live there," she says, pointing it out. "I have lived there for twenty-one years. I was born there."

"I live here," laughs the demon, gesturing around them at the forest.

"I traveled here with other elves to see if elves can live here," Isibel says. "After some days or moonturns or years, more elves may live here."