"I was being sarcastic. I'm not very nice to people who I don't think exist, I'm sorry."

"I forgive you.  But what's the rest of your name?  I won't call you it if you don't want me to."

"I really hate my first name a lot and plan to replace it on all my legal documents at home with a superhero name. If I ever go home. But my full middle and last are Masaharu Swan."

"That still fits.  But I suppose you might not be anything."

"It'd be strange if everyone here or in my world were anything, because probably we'd eventually notice name-personality clusters even if they didn't correspond to birthdays."

Ari finally gets the first knot undone, unlocking a fair bit of slack to unwind.  "Apparently there's an entire country of hers and my-uncles.  Which is just really crazy to think about."

"Yeah, wow, do they have to time their kids really carefully - or I guess there's the artificial wombs so maybe it's not hard."

"Other geminis are allowed in the country, they just don't help with governance.  And I'm the first incubated New Year's; they're waiting to see how I turn out before they try any more."

"Huh, is there some reason you might not turn out like anybody else?"

"Not that any adults have told me.  ...I mean I'm the first delayed incubated one of me.  I think sometimes people use them right away but that's just pretty normal.  I don't know how timing works with mothers."

"Huh. What's the country called?"

"Verona."

"What's it like, I've only just met you and haven't known him for much longer so I don't know what kind of country a lot of you would tend to make."

"It's nice.  I don't really know what others are like because I was just visiting Rome for the first time yesterday, and then after not very long I was here instead."

"Is Rome where Latin comes from?"

"Yes."

"That's how I remember it too only Latin is not mutually intelligible with the thing we're speaking now. You don't even seem to be obviously gravitating away from words that have Germanic roots or anything."

"There's probably some sort of translation magic happening!  Is my guess."

"Huh. How would you spell, say, all our names," Haru asks the kid.

"Ummmmmmm.  I don't want to."

"Okay, can you spell other things that you already know how to spell?"

"Believe.  B-E-L-I-E-V-E.  Philosophy.  P-H-I-L-O-S-O-P-H-Y.  Horizon.  H-O-R-I-Z-O-N."

"I think 'philosophy' is Greek. Don't know the roots of the other two, 'horizon' could be a Latin word but I doubt 'believe' is."

Ari gets the next knot faster, and after another couple seconds Haru's free of rope, though not of handcuffs.  Huuuuug.  "I feel like that doesn't tell us much about whether there's translation magic.  Like, it would have been pretty conclusive if something was off about the spelling somehow, but I don't think we've ruled anything out here."

"I think I'd notice if I could suddenly spell words in an unfamiliar language, even if I didn't notice suddenly being able to speak it."