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This was a bad idea this was a bad idea this was a bad idea.
Holly runs as fast as she can but the demon's faster. She has no idea where Lightning's gotten to; maybe he found a tree to climb. She on the other hand has been diverted into a treeless hill and she's careening down a slope, trying very hard not to trip.
And the demon's gaining on her.
She's never seen anything like it and neither has Crystal; maybe Book knows what it is but Book's asleep. It's mostly mouth - it looks like a cross between a floorlength mirror of a mouth and a snake to propel the mouth along.
And Holly's not fast enough.
The mouth catches her.
But it doesn't hurt.
Where are we?
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inourhead
inourhead
She puzzles over this drawing. "Oh," she finally says, "mm - tlaa - Pyay muilsroo -" She is clearly frustrated by her lack of words; finally she picks up two pizza crusts, sets them down, and pokes them both with the smallest bit of fingertip she can. She flinches back after doing something to them - one of them starts to steam gently with the moisture she swapped in from the sponge, suddenly heated, and the other acquires subtle condensation. She points at them. "English, English?"
unblinkered
Max is befuddled by this- he notes that mweelsrow- probably 'muilsroo' by the transliteration of the alphabet lying on the table- does heat, in what appears to be defiance of one of the laws of thermodynamics. He's not sure what this has to do with his question, but he points at the crusts and labels them "hot" and "cold" respectively.
inourhead
"Hot, cold," she says, mangling the pronunciation. Write, write - her handwriting is different, though the alphabet is strange enough that it would be easy to overlook. "Yes. Uh -" She draws a stick-girl up a tree and a nasty monster, keeping her treed. She points at the picture. "And..." She draws a hand, with a leaf in it. Arrow goes from tree to leaf. "Hot!" She traces the arrow, repeating "hot", then draws a leaf on fire. "Hot tlaa. Cold -" She taps the tree. "Mouse mouse mouse cold -" She tilts her head, squints her eyes shut, lets her tongue loll out. "Pyay cold! Cold mouse, Pyay not cold. Mouse -" Miming of deadness. "Tlaa hot -" Miming of deadness.
unblinkered
Max studies these drawings. So... if he understands how heat works correctly, muilsroo seems to be following conservation of energy properly, here. He's not sure if that's in contrast to it being violated with the sleep thing, or if sleepiness isn't technically a lack of energy, and talking about sleep in terms of energy is an idiom he hasn't examined properly. Max decides he needs to go for a wiki walk on the subject of sleep sometime soon.
But... yes, she can set a leaf on fire by stealing all the heat from a large object... instead of just swapping their "temperature", it's actually moving the energy. So... she warmed up by killing off her mice, stealing their heat and freezing them to death? It seems kind of wasteful, but he nods with understanding anyway.
But... yes, she can set a leaf on fire by stealing all the heat from a large object... instead of just swapping their "temperature", it's actually moving the energy. So... she warmed up by killing off her mice, stealing their heat and freezing them to death? It seems kind of wasteful, but he nods with understanding anyway.
inourhead
She flips through the dictionary. "Two, three mouse -" She taps his alive-mouse picture. "And, Pyay cold, muilsroo cold mouse, Pyay no cold, mouse cold, mouse -" Taps dead-mouse picture. "And one, two mouse -" alive-picture tap tap.
unblinkered
So... the more mice she distributes the cold across, the less chance they have of dying? Unless... she's using "two" and "three" to refer to specific mice, not saying "two or three mice", as an approximation? He's not sure what she's trying to point out, but he nods in agreement.
More interesting is that muilsroo appears to be a free heat pump- creating heat differentials of arbitrary sizes at no cost. Either it circumvents entropy- god, he hopes that's the case- or it's drawing on a power source that can transmit over distance and across the boundaries between universes. The latter, he imagines, might help the physicists track down Kweengow, unless the power source is no closer to Kweengow- or, Kuigao- than it is to Earth. Both options are encouraging.
"Muilsroo cold..." he trails off. He's not sure how to ask about it, but... why take heat from all those mice? Why not from the ground, or the air, or... just a single mouse? He doesn't recall her dead mice being at absolute zero- a limit on how much heat can be transferred from something?
Trevor comes back, toting what appears to be an older desktop computer and monitor. He sets them on a desk and starts wordlessly plugging them in.
"No laptop?"
"No laptop."
More interesting is that muilsroo appears to be a free heat pump- creating heat differentials of arbitrary sizes at no cost. Either it circumvents entropy- god, he hopes that's the case- or it's drawing on a power source that can transmit over distance and across the boundaries between universes. The latter, he imagines, might help the physicists track down Kweengow, unless the power source is no closer to Kweengow- or, Kuigao- than it is to Earth. Both options are encouraging.
"Muilsroo cold..." he trails off. He's not sure how to ask about it, but... why take heat from all those mice? Why not from the ground, or the air, or... just a single mouse? He doesn't recall her dead mice being at absolute zero- a limit on how much heat can be transferred from something?
Trevor comes back, toting what appears to be an older desktop computer and monitor. He sets them on a desk and starts wordlessly plugging them in.
"No laptop?"
"No laptop."
unblinkered
"Discovered that her magic thing might violate the second law of thermodynamics, but... that's for the people at the physics department to worry about. She knows the word 'dead' now, maybe?"
inourhead
"Charming," says Victoria. She plugs in the laptop and opens it up. "Anybody have suggestions on where to start with the google image search vocabulary expansion project?"
unblinkered
Max shrugs and goes to check his Reddit thread.
"Prepositions, prepositions. It'll make it an order of magnitude easier to talk about things if we can talk about relationships between them. In, under, on, before..." Trevor supplies.
"Might want to stick 'clip art' in your search, cut away details that'll distract her from identifying the thing you're trying to show?" Max adds, hearing that. Trevor takes a deep breath.
"Prepositions, prepositions. It'll make it an order of magnitude easier to talk about things if we can talk about relationships between them. In, under, on, before..." Trevor supplies.
"Might want to stick 'clip art' in your search, cut away details that'll distract her from identifying the thing you're trying to show?" Max adds, hearing that. Trevor takes a deep breath.
inourhead
"We don't know much about how familiar she is with stylization. Stick figures translate, apparently, but clip art might be confusing in a completely different way," Victoria says. "The blocky colors, for instance, or things like - most grapes aren't purple and a lot of diamonds aren't diamond-shaped, that sort of thing is visual shorthand she won't have. I'll see what I can find in the way of - colors, and then we can do prepositions with colored dots." Typety typety.
unblinkered
Trevor digs around in a box for some markers- he finds yellow, orange, green, pink, and light blue highlighters, a red pen, and a blue pen. He draws a row of colored circles, and then transcribes the pronunciations of their names in the the Nlaaki alphabet as labels. Some don't quite fit- the right vowels aren't available.
It's an awkward transcription, and Trevor gets frustrated. He eventually sees Victoria pulling up colors on her laptop, and hastily crumples the paper. She can handle this.
It's an awkward transcription, and Trevor gets frustrated. He eventually sees Victoria pulling up colors on her laptop, and hastily crumples the paper. She can handle this.
inourhead
Sohng's attention bounces as directed. She writes her own approximation of the sounds, and her own translation (she obligingly teaches the linguists how to name colors in Nlaaki likewise).
Then Victoria collects a little cardboard box that once held chalk and some of Trevor's highlighters. She teaches Sohng the word "box" and gets to work on prepositions: the green one and the red one are next to each other. The green one is in the box. The blue one is on the box. The pink one is next to the box. The box is under the blue one.
Sohng writes and nods.
Then Victoria collects a little cardboard box that once held chalk and some of Trevor's highlighters. She teaches Sohng the word "box" and gets to work on prepositions: the green one and the red one are next to each other. The green one is in the box. The blue one is on the box. The pink one is next to the box. The box is under the blue one.
Sohng writes and nods.
unblinkered
Trevor asks for and takes down the Nlaaki words for these, and suggests trying to figure out verb tenses, if applicable.
Max, meanwhile, likes a suggestion that has been provided regarding the money issue- rather obvious, but probably easy to do. Turning objects into gold and pawning them- if she could make an entire apple peanut-y with a single peanut, it'd likely be even easier to do with a simple elemental material like gold. He'll have to investigate, later, whether there's any limitation that would prevent this.
Max, meanwhile, likes a suggestion that has been provided regarding the money issue- rather obvious, but probably easy to do. Turning objects into gold and pawning them- if she could make an entire apple peanut-y with a single peanut, it'd likely be even easier to do with a simple elemental material like gold. He'll have to investigate, later, whether there's any limitation that would prevent this.
inourhead
Sohng is not yet schooled enough in English to have any hope of following a Reddit thread, so she can produce no comment.
Eventually all the basic prepositions have been added to her glossary.
Eventually all the basic prepositions have been added to her glossary.
unblinkered
Max passes the time by reading up on sleep. As he suspected, sleep doesn't actually increase the body's available energy, but rather regulates a number of metabolic and mental processes.
Which... does not actually make it less confusing to Max that sleep can be offloaded onto a mouse. Surely mouse sleep differs enough from human sleep for the transfer of "sleepiness" to be considerably asymmetrical? And it can't just be offloading the chemical signals telling the body it's tired- somehow the processes of sleep are actually being done, presumably. He gives Sohng a funny look from across the room.
Trevor quizzes Sohng on some simple pronouns, and learns 'sin' and 'mri'. "D'you think they distinguish between subject and object pronouns?" he asks Victoria.
Which... does not actually make it less confusing to Max that sleep can be offloaded onto a mouse. Surely mouse sleep differs enough from human sleep for the transfer of "sleepiness" to be considerably asymmetrical? And it can't just be offloading the chemical signals telling the body it's tired- somehow the processes of sleep are actually being done, presumably. He gives Sohng a funny look from across the room.
Trevor quizzes Sohng on some simple pronouns, and learns 'sin' and 'mri'. "D'you think they distinguish between subject and object pronouns?" he asks Victoria.
inourhead
"We can find out. Unless she's deliberately simplifying everything for us and that's a simplification it would occur to her to make," says Victoria. And she starts brainstorming a list of little skits to act out with their small available cast of people and verbs in order to elicit that kind of distinction.
unblinkered
In the course of these skits, they discover that Sohng uses a different pronoun to refer to the group of Victoria, Trevor, and Max than she uses to refer to Victoria and Trevor alone. After some confusion with regard to the referent of "you" when asking Sohng about Sohng and Pyay together, they nail down the dual numbered pronoun.
inourhead
"Old English had dual pronouns," says Victoria chattily. "In the first and second person. If it's common to have two people in one body no wonder they'd need it in Nlaaki."
unblinkered
Trevor draws a table of Nlaaki pronouns next to their English counterparts, indicating which numbers and cases are exclusive to each language for Sohng to look over. Max gets up and peeks at the table.
"No gendered pronouns, huh? Did you establish if they have gender the way we do?" he asks the linguists.
"No gendered pronouns, huh? Did you establish if they have gender the way we do?" he asks the linguists.
inourhead
"Do you mean did we establish if they mark it in language or did we establish if they have genders? She seems happy to use the same third-person pronouns for all of us."
unblinkered
"More... is she going to understand where you have that gender column, what we're dividing 'he' and 'she' based on? Since they don't have it marked... I mean, they still probably have it, I'm just checking."
"We'll handle the 'just checking', thanks," Trevor replies, scrutinizing his table.
"We'll handle the 'just checking', thanks," Trevor replies, scrutinizing his table.
inourhead
Sohng chooses this moment to helpfully point at everyone in turn: "She. He, he. She." Victoria, Trevor, Max, herself. "Yes?"
They did go over this with Gloria earlier.
They did go over this with Gloria earlier.
unblinkered
"Ah! Uh, okay. Never mind, then." Max, after looking over some of the notes on Nlaaki, heads back to his laptop.
Trevor looks up at a clock on the wall, and turns to Victoria. "S'past office hours. I'll probably be staying late, but when's your girlfriend expecting you back?"
Trevor looks up at a clock on the wall, and turns to Victoria. "S'past office hours. I'll probably be staying late, but when's your girlfriend expecting you back?"
inourhead
"Oh, good point, I should probably get going in the next ten, fifteen minutes," sighs Victoria. "We're supposed to watch The Wire together."