He repeats every word she teaches him! He tries to get her to teach him words he'll need for talking about plumbing later. And people, he's pretty sure "person" is their word for humans and he needs a word for people.

It's disturbing that she hasn't tried to explain Rainfold's laws yet but he doesn't have a good way to ask about them. Yet. Which is probably why she hasn't tried explaining.

She can give him plumbing words with enough creative prompting, but the other concept he's looking for escapes her. If he asks her about giants then she'll cheerfully tell him that giants are also people, but since they're really very human this is probably not very helpful for resolving ambiguities.

She'd like to explain the laws and will definitely try if he asks, but that sounds hard, so if he doesn't then she's mostly going to hope that he can't get into too much trouble while being fairly constantly supervised by monks or nuns or Spite. And that he can figure out stuff like 'don't murder anyone' on his own.

He doesn't murder anyone today.

"Is Spite a person?"

She has to think about this, but not for very long. "Yes, Spite is a person."

There they go, then!

"Person is Spite and giants and...?" He gestures at the two of them.

"...humans? Giants and Mahan and Imrainai are all human. Spite is not human."

"Giant and Imrainai... uh," Mahan gestures at his crotch, "later child?"

She makes a face, though she doesn't think she actually endorses being offended under the circumstances. "Imrainai might die, but yes."

"How many people? Humans, Spite, other people?"

She bites her lip and seems to be talking to herself. "Hmm. Humans, dragons... zombies don't count, if you made them people somehow again they'd just be humans - much earlier, people say there were other people. But now, no. And people may be wrong."

A lot of that goes over his head but he sort of gets the part about humans maybe committing genocide against every other species. If these people ever come in contact with Har he's gonna want them to know how useful thwilit are to keep around, at least, but he doesn't know a Kaltish word for honey. Kaltish probably doesn't have a word for honey. Since they don't have thwilit, maybe because they killed them all.

"In Har, not human people, uh... sell food. Good food. Good, good, good food. Eat flowers and later..." Mahan mimes vomiting. "Good food."

Belatedly he realizes that maybe if you don't grow up with it eating another species' nectar vomit might sound gross. Oh well.

She looks amused. "Good food, but vomit later?"

"No, uh, not human people vomit, is good human food. Is... not disease vomit, is not-human people, hm, eat now and later." Hm, maybe they have livestock. Hard to be sure what she'll recognize. "You have not-people, uh, say moo or baaa," he tries to mimic the sounds precisely instead of using words, even onomatopoetic words, "eat, vomit, eat later? Is not moo, is not baa, is people. Is not..." He wrinkles his nose and grimaces. "Is good. Not human people sell."

This must sound absolutely insane but he's not backing down. This definitely happens!

Well now she's concerned that he's from somewhere where cows and sheep routinely eat their own vomit. (...do cows and sheep routinely eat their own vomit?) She frowns and then laughs. "Need more words!"

Maybe they can count on the Hari death mages to keep them safe. Since these people's idea of fighting is to try to cut each other with giant carving knives.

"Need more words," he agrees.

Oh no, now he looks worried. It must be a very important concept? Maybe if he has more words.

"Alive not-people are animals and plants. Moo and baa, animals." She points to a plant growing in a pot on someone's windowsill. "Plants."

"Thank you. ...Need more more words."

She nods. "Uhh... magic? Mahan kills diseases with magic?"

"Thank you! Magic. People are magic! Human people are magic! Not human people are magic! Animals are not magic, plants are not magic." Unless they're enchanted, but he has no idea how to say that yet.

She looks confused at this. She supposes it's true, since, after all, you can cast from just yourself. But you can cast from anything. "People are a little magic." She holds her fingers up to indicate 'a little'. "Animals, plants, less magic." She brings her fingers closer together. "Food, less magic than that. Streets, water, less magic. People use magic, but all things are used for magic."

"Used for magic? Used for magic is what?"

"Used for magic is... hmm. Peth had a tablet for saying things to Mahan, yes?" She holds her hands up and traces out approximately the size and shape of a tablet in the air.

"Oh! Yes! Used for magic is magic things? Talking tablet and not disease fountains, magic things?"

"No. ...yes. Maybe? But not - not the thing I'm saying. The tablet has a spell. It lets people do magic without understanding magic. But Peth - Peth vomited after using the tablet, yes?"

"Yes."