"'Cause there isn't a central coordinator for languages? I'm not sure what kind of answer you're looking for here."

"Why would people start using a sound that already meant something to mean something else? Do you run out?"

"They don't really start using a sound out of the blue, words sound like one thing and then like another, similar thing, and then another, and so on organically over time until they eventually end up sounding the same. I think homophones often happen due to different origins of words, like this word comes from Latin and this other from Greek."

"Comes from?"

"Languages sometimes borrow words from other languages, and most languages that exist today are actually modified versions and combinations of languages that existed a long time ago. Latin and Greek in particular influenced a lot of languages in the continent where I'm from, and people from my continent colonised a lot of other places a few hundred years ago."

"If you're going to make up dozens of different codes anyway why don't you at least make up original ones?"

She giggles. "No one really makes them up, they just sort of appear and are adopted by people. If for example two peoples that speak different languages are neighbours, then the people living near the border will often mix and borrow to be able to communicate better. Whole new languages can be born that way. Or sometimes a language has a specific word and speakers of another start using it because there isn't a central authority deciding these things for everyone to agree on new things and then it's adopted and adapted."

"You poor things."

She giggles again. "It's not that bad, and the way it works and changes is fascinating, and reflects a lot about the culture of the place that uses a language, and all that. I kinda wish I'd had the time—and skill—to learn any other language. Ooh, another thing I wanna check is the difference between transient and permanent 'to be.'"

"Huh?"

"Well, the language I'm currently speaking in only has one version of the verb 'to be,' which we use for all states of 'being' whether they're permanent or not, but there are other languages that don't do that, and have different verbs for a permanent 'to be' and a transient 'to be.'"

Oh look there's the court.

"Huh," says Promise. Here indeed is the court.

"I wanna do experiments on sorcery, too, since it only works in fairyland, but I'm not sure what I wanna experiment with in particular."

"That will make it more difficult to perform the experiments."

"There's one I want to do that you probably won't like."

And presently they've arrived! Are fairies about?

"Why won't I like it?"

Fairies are about. They incline their heads politely to Promise and Mortal.

That feels weird. That feels really weird. Anyway.

"'Cause it involves opening lots of gates I'll never use."

"If the experiment requires it they're not inessential."

"Well the experiment in question is trying to figure out which aspects of... the world... affect settling time. And in general, trying to be more systematic about harmonics and whatnot and how they affect sorcery."

"Sounds interesting."

"Yeah. I don't currently have hypotheses beyond some intuitive sense from watching fairylights flicker so I wanna collect more data and start there. If I can figure anything out based on this it might significantly speed up learning new things or even inventing it."

"What do you want to invent?"

"Well the first thing I wanna do is gendershifting 'cause out of inventable stuff it's probably easiest. Figuring out how to make people completely unaging instead of just deaging them manually would be wonderful, too." 

"I've occasionally mused about inventing teleportation. I'm not sure it's conceptually doable; yours sound like they could be."

"...teleportation would be so useful."