I can try to pick it up. I can also ask him and he can nod or shake his head, if he doesn't want to answer me with osanwe.

He's still working on the private/public distinction and I have twin privileges on indiscriminate mindreading that do not extend past me, so please don't listen to him until he's gotten farther with that. But yes, nodding works.

Great. Want to come in, we can set up a tent and get you some food?

Kiri relays this to Aleko, who is fervently in favor of food. Thank you.

Any time. This way. And he explains to everyone that they're coming back and he thinks they're legitimate. When they reach the rest of his people Huan brushes by him to sniff them.

Kiri steps back abruptly when Huan comes close, wobbles, has to be caught by her twin. "THAT DOG IS A PERSON," she says loudly, forgetting that Aleko is the only listener handy who can understand her.

"...what, literally?"

"Yes literally a weird person with way too much attention in one place!"

He doesn't understand the conversation but he notices the distress. Huan's friendly.

My problem is not that I suspect he's unfriendly my problem is that in my world dogs are not people.

Oh. I can talk to all animals. Most aren't as smart as Huan, though.

I usually can't read anything off anyone except humans and I suppose whatever you are.

The Eldar. The species is Quendi. Most animals don't have very complicated thoughts but I can talk to all of them. Anyway, Huan's a Maia, one of this world's gods.

My world doesn't have any of those.

We've got a bunch. One of them's evil, he's the one we're marching off to fight.

...Seems like fighting a god might be difficult to impossible.

The alternative was sitting at home and letting him slowly torture to death everyone on the continent.

Why aren't the non-evil gods self-policing...?

They are. They just move very slowly. They'd get around to it in a few thousand years, maybe even a few hundred.

Wow.

So we're not waiting.

Makes sense.

There are a lot of us, even more than you can see here. We can put up a fight.

You'd know better than I would how you match up against a kind of god I only heard of moments ago.

We don't know very well but we're going to try.