upon what soil they fed | Glowfic Constellation

"Hyuumen place?" [horrible squawk] "travel hyumen place?"

first-out-the-gate

"We can't go to the human place right now, we're lost."

Lieutenant Petra Singh

Are any of the aliens willing to correct her translations? Or at least talking in their own language about what Lia is saying.

The aliens super do not care about whether Petra learns word one of their language except insofar as there is not presently an English rendering of [horrible squawk]. They do jabber at each other in the background a little bit but they're not being helpful in contextualizing their remarks at all.

"Hyuumens from big place past water place?"

Lieutenant Petra Singh

Petra can do her best to learn from the background jabbering but she won't actually be able to learn their language as fast as they can learn English from Lia.

first-out-the-gate

"No! Humans are from space," she says, gesturing upwards. "Are there other people in the big place past the ocean?"

"Before! Not now. Big, uh," there is a brief commotion as the speaker collects supplies with which to produce a sample fire. "And other other other thing. No more people past the ocean."

first-out-the-gate

"Oh no! Do you know when that was?"

They have only pretty rudimentary timekeeping. It was before any of them were born.

first-out-the-gate

So not a very recent disaster in need of addressing.

"Would you like to show me around where you live while we talk?"

They seem confused by the request. There isn't a whole lot of village. She can see most of it from here. "Look see!" says one of them invitingly.

first-out-the-gate

Are there young aliens around? Old ones?

No juveniles. These ones presumably vary in age but it's not obvious by looking.

first-out-the-gate

Neat! Lia can keep teaching them English until they have enough to understand:

"Would it be okay if some humans came and visited your planet for a week or so?"

"And then" [horrible squawk] "go to human place?"

first-out-the-gate

"We can't go back to Earth right now, we don't know how to get there."

"Where humans go after 'week'?"

first-out-the-gate

"Back to our ship, to keep searching for other non-humans. And also a way back to Earth."

"Ship ship ship?"

first-out-the-gate

"Yeah! Our space ship that we traveled on to get here."

[horrible squawk] "go ship see ship, ship ship?"

first-out-the-gate

"Oh, hm. I'd have to ask the captain of our ship?" Clearly the right answer is 'yes, of course' but possibly there are political considerations which Lia can let Lucien figure out.

[horrible squawk] "go see more things, more more more things!"

first-out-the-gate

Extremely relatable of them.

"Just on the ship, or also other places?"