"When people don't do any evil things do the bad things stop happening?"

"Well. People have never really done that before. Not for a long time, anyway."

"We could try it but since our debts aren't like human ones I don't know how much we'd learn from that."

"I guess. Humans have a very hard time not doing evil things, a lot of people think it's not possible for us anymore. - in some cases the connection is obvious, though, like, if you kill a person then the person is dead."

"That does seem to follow."

"Yes. And, uh, people mostly think that's bad. There are lots of times when you have to, but it's still - it'd be better if the world didn't have death. I think."

"Rána asked me if I knew any stories of humans becoming fairies."

"I see."

"I don't. And I don't know what you'd be doing magic to - I don't know what it is that makes humans and fairies different, aside from the speed, and you're sped up now and still different."

"Yeah. I know one but I don't know if it's true, and it doesn't explain how it happened."

"I could slow you back down, and work on it for a while, if you wanted."

"...I might want that. Not until the baby's older. And I don't... I don't really have anywhere else safe to go."

"Well, maybe it wouldn't be very long for slow people. Or maybe it would. I don't know. - how would I say that in Arabic -"

Yeah, sure, she can try her best to say more things in Arabic.

Then he will want to talk linguistics and not ethics for the rest of the day.

Yeah. That's fine.

How do humans learn languages and what's spoken where and at what age do they speak and what sounds do they have the most trouble with? And does that vary between native languages? How did she learn each of these and did most people know them and how would you say all of that in Latin? Are some of these languages related to each other? How do languages change over time?

Humans learn languages best when they're small, so her son would have a much easier time learning whatever fairies speak than she would. They can learn later but it's harder. They usually start speaking between one and two years. Lots of things are spoken in different places, she can point out some areas on a map. People are good at different sounds depending on what their native language is, yes. She learned most of these from talking to teenage concubines who had been kidnapped from far away and could not speak to anyone else they had access to, so no, most people didn't know them, although probably they did wherever the girls came from. She can't say all of that in Latin but she can probably come up with parts of it. She does not know a lot about how languages are related but maybe it has to do with how closely the people who speak them are related? She does not know a lot about how languages change over time but she can probably give some examples of, like, shifting idioms or something.

He is interested in shifting idioms and interested in the relatedness of peoples and interested in the concept of a teenager and how humans talk about aging and the passage of time.

She can talk at some length about all of these things.

He is so happy! They're occasionally interrupted with servants bringing food, and once with one of Rána's brothers with a question. At no point does he seem to get tired or anything.

But eventually she will. She has no particular desire to push herself past that, especially given that he will surely run out of questions she can answer at some point, and she would like to put this off, because answering them is the best thing about this place.

At some point she informs him that she's tired and that they can do more of this later.

He pouts about this but does not object (possibly cannot object) and asks if she needs an escort back to Rána's.

She's pretty sure she can find her way back alone.

Then he'll see her later!