Itaruko nods, but takes the pen and writes: I'm not human – I'm a Luna. My world does not have anything like this, as far as I know.

Right. I should have said "people". You're not offended? Drek, I always make that mistake, our world has nonhumans too. But they like to be called metahumans.

I am not offended, he agrees. I'm curious about the metahumans, though. And I assume 'drek' is some curse word?

Er, yes. Metahumans appeared around a century ago, right around the time magic came back. First it was just elves and dwarves, born to humans, distributed randomly from what they could tell at the time, they didn't have very good genetic testing and anyway everyone knows it was magic now. Elves are like humans but taller and with pointy ears and really pretty. Dwarves are shorter and tend to be more magic resistent, especially to mental magic.

Then came orks and trolls, but they weren't born as such. Suddenly some humans just sort of -- spontaneously became taller and grew tusks. Usually teenagers around puberty. Everyone started panicking, especially when the censuses came back after thirty years and revealed that orks live about half as long as humans do, and trolls not much longer. But also because racism.

That is kinda horrible! Is there any chance this was intentional by some unhelpful parties, maliciously altering some people's genetics for reasons of unclear motivations?

Nope. It was all connected to the magic coming back. Some people think the dragons are responsible for metahumanity, but they aren't taken too seriously. 

Oh, they have dragons? Any idea why the magic came back?

Seems like every thoumatologist has a theory. And yep, there are dragons. They're giant, can shapeshift, and are an order of magnitude smarter than the smartest of metahumanity.

Have they existed all the time or did they reappear with the magic?

They reappeared with the magic.

When did they first have magic, if it came back? To Itaruko's knowledge his planet has never had magic.

It's also somewhat suspicious that they seem so similar, the species he's acquainted with and humans. Any chance they did some sort of colonization thing that they then forgot about? He's pretty sure his species have history on his current planet, but he can't think when anyone would have done a colonization mission from his planet, especially if they've been there for a while.

No colonization projects she's heard of. The thought is kind of unsettling; corporations aren't exactly shining examples of benevolent imperialism.

The magic first came back about a century ago.

… So when you say came back, came back from where? He was assuming you had it at some point in the past, before the century ago, then it disappeared, and you got it back at that more recent time.

Apparently the dragons and some elves had been sleeping for a half-dozen millennia. She doesn't know too many of the details, but apparently before they spent thousands of years hiding underground and in volcanoes and glaciers and trenches, there were spirits roaming around. And they could do magic. There's an "astral plane", apparently that has something to do with it; Naomi doesn't know exactly what. She doesn't know much about mages or spirits except for what they teach in history classes.

Well, Itaruko is curious but it is probably not immediately relevant seeing as she is not herself a mage.

She suggested exploring – how about they go do that while he tries learning some basic sentences and teaching her likewise?

Sure! They can go towards the trees she pointed out earlier. And take that pen and some paper with them, and some food ...

Sounds like a good idea! Hopefully he'll just be able to light his way in the forest if it gets too dark.

Which means they can stay out later than they would otherwise!

They walk. Naomi learns Itaruko's language. 

The forest gets quite dark quite quickly, in fact. The trees form quite a thick layer above them and the light from outside the forest will quite quickly disappear if they continue in.

Itaruko can, however, create a ball of lumen and keep it hovering a few meters in front of himself, if they wish to continue.

"Let's keep going for a bit."

So they do! Itaruko keeps teaching her his language, and he is relatively good – not amazing, but relatively good – at focusing on necessary vocab and doing diagrams to represent what it means and writing down translations where necessary.

After about ten minutes of walking they will come across a tree with slightly glowing fruit. The fruit is green and red.

"More food! Want to take some back to the hut and call it a night?"

"Sure," he responds, nodding. "It might not be food, though," he continues, writing a black-pen-translation of same.

"What do you mean by 'not food'? Not edible? Dangerous?" She pauses, considering the multicolored fruits she's picked -- three of each. "Do they look like something that's poisonous on your world?"

"Not edible, dangerous, something like that. They don't look like anything in particular but they are in fact glowing fruit in this weird place and I wouldn't typically eat random fruit off some random tree in some random forest, so, my point is that I'm being hesitant to class them as safe to eat."