He's too distracted checking out the various objects on the shelves to notice Asrek putting his fingers in the flames at first, but when he notices he yelps and takes a step toward him to stop him before realizing that he's fine.

Oops.

Here's the sand table! She demonstrates drawing with her claw and then grabs a stylus for him. Here's a floppy squeegee thing for erasing, and a shading fork and a compass and a straightedge.

Rafiik is still pretty concerned about Asrek but sure, Mirana can distract him with the sand table. It's clever, for a very low tech datapad alternative. And convenient; he wants the words 'not' and 'more', and the first one is easy to ask for with his existing vocabulary - Mirana is a werewolf, Eilhs is a werewolf, Asrek is not a werewolf, what's the word for that - but he'll have a much easier time of getting the concept of 'more' across if he can draw a couple of differently sized collections of dots.

And then once he has those, he can comment that he is a Jedi but Mirana and Asrek are not and ask through mime how Asrek, not being a Jedi, wasn't hurt by the fire. Even Rafiik would be hurt if he stuck his finger in a fire, you need to be more Jedi than he is to do that.

Mirana draws a stick figure, and then a picture of a table with a stick figure drawn on it and a stick figure with claws standing next to the table doing the drawing. The latter is "Mirana", see her claws? 

And then here's a stick figure with pointy ears playing the harp - "Asrek" - and some wavy lines in the air; she points and them and hums along with the music. 

So, "Mirana created" the drawing and "Asrek created" more humming and...

Rafiik is himself a "Jedi"?! He's clearly not a typical male, though.

Did the males of that species, in the past, have Jedi magic, which they sacrificed to give the females [Ansaf-]human magic? That's bizarre but there are lots of bizarre creation myths.

Or maybe he's misunderstood the word "Jedi." Maybe Rafiik was asking if there are any metahumans around, expecting them to be around, and he's going to be upset that they're gone. (Also, if something bad happened to the metahumans, it could happen again... But that's not split-second urgent; that's a problem for the wise elph and cunning catfolk minds of his superiors.)

So, Mirana is about to say that the Jedi created catfolk. Is that okay? What's the worst that could happen? ...Rafiik was not part of the metahuman project; upon learning of it, he finds it abhorrent and slaughters them all, which he is somehow capable of doing.

They need to learn more about Rafiik. They need to delay.

"Say" a different word that Rafiik hasn't heard yet "breeders."

"Breeders created catfolk."

Breeders: stick figure with breasts.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa (he can fit a luxurious amount of mental screaming)

Okay actually that's brilliant, presumably metahuman females look like that too; it's arguably the defining species feature so they could even pass it off as an artistic mistake later, if they need to claim that Mirana's stick figure was intended to represent a male. It's possible Mirana might genuinely not even know what male humans look like.

Anyway. "I humbly suggest that the [Ansaf-]human train with a whisshopper to mimic Rafiik's abilities. Also, what happened to the metahumans? Prepare for a repeat."

...okay? That doesn't answer his question though.

...are Breeders Sith? Inquiring Rafiiks want to know. Since she recognized the word Jedi and all.

She furrows her brow...

Oh illthrift, a third word they don't know.

Jedi: Rafiik; the people Rafiik wants to meet. If you have 'enough' Jedi-ness, you become resistant to fire.

[The Basic word for 'human']: Also Rafiik.

Sith: Not Rafiik? Metahumans? Someone's got to be the metahumans.

The theory that he thinks is most likely to be true is that [Basic] humans are various powerful beings, divided into two major groups: Sith, who created breeders, and Jedi, who didn't. Jedi hoard magic over time, somehow. Sith give other people magic. If you had to call one of those 'good' and one 'evil', it's obvious which is which.

There's a chance that if Rafiik learns that Sith created breeders, everyone dies. Or at least all the breeders die, plus anyone who gets in the way.

So, should Mirana recognize the word? No. Someone else can recognize the word later, once they know more, but there's no going back. "Don't know."

Shrug.

"...hm."

He considers asking some clarifying questions, but it seems like Mirana hasn't personally met whoever that is, so she's unlikely to know, say, what color her lightsaber is. And as weird as it'd be for this to be a Jedi project, it does seem just as likely that someone went rogue at some point than that a Sith pulled it off in Republic space.

Anyway.

"Asrek?"

What about him? "Catfolk, catfolk, catfolk" - she draws a flame in the sand, touches it, and scoops up the sand and holds it. "Catfolk created" flame...she points at the real flame too since the drawing didn't survive getting scooped.

Yeah. It's not going to be possible to hide the entire phenomenon of species magic. 

He finds this mildly bewildering at first but then shrugs and nods - sure, if someone figured out how to give an effect like that to a species they'd made (how) they'd want to make it safe for them if they could.

He wants to ask how the people here relate to the Jedi aside from maybe being made by a particular one, but that seems tough to ask. He'll start working on getting more broadly-useful vocabulary instead.

The more he can communicate, the more they can learn about him and the safer they'll be. But also he can ask tougher questions.

..."Go ahead, just don't say anything about the origin of people other than that breeders made us; you've never met one and don't know anything else. Avoid mentioning species magic if you can. It might be better if most species don't have any magic."

She enthusiastically helps with vocabulary.

He's pretty quick with languages, luckily. After a while he asks for paper to take notes on, he wants more space for that than the sand table gives them and the ability to refer to them later.

Sure. She steps out for a moment to ask a passing underbutler.

He did not predict that request, so it will take a few minutes to fulfill. He did eight thoughtsprints in an hour and he's tired, okay? Actually it's better this way: they don't want Rafiik to know they're listening. And they don't want him to think that his requests can be filled instantly because there might be a future request that they need to delay. They should delay this one a little, too.

Several minutes later, a catfolk brings in a folio of rough paper, a pot of ink, and a dip pen made of stone with a wooden nib.

.... yeah he's never seen a dip pen before, he's going to need someone to show him how to use it.

You dip it into the ink and write with it like this? She's maybe not the best teacher since she usually writes by werewolfing stone plates. 

She doesn't want to waste paper demonstrating squiggles, so she writes the traditional alphabetic-order pangram in common Elvish at the very top edge.

Rafiik's handwriting is considerably worse - it's lucky he's used a stylus before at all - but he manages to produce the aurebesh under her alphabet and is satisfied enough with that that he can take notes on the rest of the page, albeit rather awkwardly.

He also, after a while, wants lunch. He explains while they're waiting for it that he's been checking to see if the food is safe for (foreign-)humans, since he expects that to vary by species and they don't seem familiar with his.

She thought he was going to sleep soon. It's convenient that they'll be on the same sleep cycle, but she was hoping to fit in some refresher training on deceiving diplomats while he slept. (She ended up as his primary contact because she speaks Ancient Felic and was the first butler on the scene who had anything useful to try, not because she's the best trained at deception.)

She bows apologetically in response to his comment.