The carriage does not exhibit signs of having been magicked in any of those ways, or for that matter signs of having been magicked in any other ways. The teenage elf watches the backpack.

The backpack is being worn by a human teenager, although it has occurred to her during the walk to put her hair over her ears. She has her hand between the pages of a binder.

—he blinks at her, then smiles. He has a heck of a smile.

(The three humans seem very unnerved by this proof of her invisibility, but also willing to stand back and let the friendly elf handle it.)

"I still don't speak your language," she comments.

He shrugs.

Then, with considerable use of gestures but also still speaking out loud the whole time, he contrives to inquire whether she would like to come with him in his carriage to the place he is going, and if so, whether she would prefer to ride outside or inside and where she would like the other humans to sit. He manages to throw in a claim that they have food at his destination, by referencing the food his humans have been carrying.

She gets in the carriage.

She skipped dinner last night and walked a lot and has not eaten yet today. She gets out her sack lunch; it was worth saving overnight but even PBJ doesn't last for a week, so she eats it now, in case some kind of sinister plot that might involve drugged food manifests itself and she will be glad of having delayed consumption of the bread and other offered comestibles.

No one comments on her choice of food. In the absence of a specific answer from her about where everyone else should sit, the woman with fruit gets in the carriage with her and the other two climb the ladder to sit up top.

As soon as everyone's settled, the carriage starts moving; it's a very gentle ride, surprisingly so for the technology level.

She could see if it was magic but depending on how it works it might not come back afterwards and it is not disturbing her, quite the opposite.

She finishes her sandwiches and licks her fingers and takes out a notebook. She turns to a blank page and presents it, accompanied by a pen, to the fruit girl and hopes they have an alphabet.

—the fruit girl blinks at the notebook and pen, and takes them, and... mimes writing, hesitantly? Is this what she's supposed to be doing with these?

May nods. ...Takes them back, writes out the Roman alphabet illustratively: see, there are yea many, and they are all represented here, what's yours? Please don't be Magic Chinese People. Japanese is fine, they at least have alphabets.

Ah! She nods comprehendingly and writes out a different alphabet, with a couple of false starts as she figures out the unfamiliar writing instrument. It's reasonably short and tidy - twenty-six letters, in fact.

Excellent. May points at each one and solicits its sound.

The fruit girl follows along, uttering appropriate phonemes.

All in all, the inventory comes to ten vowels and fifteen blessedly regular consonants - or at least, she's not stumbling over any of these the way an English-speaker might if called upon to explain the behaviour of the letter C on short notice. The described sounds, one to a letter, are n, m, l, r, s, sh, th, z, t, d, v, f, p, k, h, a, e, i, u, o, ya, ye, yi, yu, and yo.

May dutifully transliterates as she goes. When she has them all, she introduces herself: "May." And points at the others, each in turn, and guesses and writes spellings of their names.

The fruit girl introduces herself as Lilaima, and the two humans they can't see through the roof of the carriage as Vilau and Asem, and the elf they can't see through the front of the carriage as Imra. She is happy to provide local spellings for all of those if asked.

May wants to guess first! Are her phonetic guesses right?

They are! Lilaima congratulates her. At least, that was probably a congratulation. It sounded congratulatory.

May guesses how to spell that too.

It went by a little fast and so Lilaima has to correct a letter from n to m, but yes, the word is sumzakinai.

Good. Now confident in the regularity of spelling May can start a glossary. Numbers, directions, colors?

Numbers work in base ten and have associated numerals which Lilaima will provide on request. Directions and colours are all fairly straightforward. This is a pretty language whose words tend to sound nice.

Lovely. Body parts, food items, shapes.

Lilaima looks like she is maybe getting a little bored of this, but dutifully continues providing vocabulary. She has to correct a few spellings where it was not obvious to an English-speaking ear that there should have been a double letter there; apparently Nenastine does those. That's just about the only irregularity that emerges, though.

That is a tolerable amount of irregular spelling. Can she get pronouns? Species names? Are any conjunctions emerging from commentary between glossary entries?

Pronouns: not gendered, but apparently speciated in the second and optionally the third person; Lilaima points at the front of the carriage to indicate the sort of person who goes with the alternate sets, and seems to be struggling to convey another distinction which might be about formality levels. Species names are comparatively simple, and if she's on the hunt for conjunctions she can scare a few out of the underbrush.