"Yeah, I think the thing I'm posing affects more what we're hearing than what she's saying."

"Would you say that 'flour' and 'flower' are homophones?" he asks the kid.

"You just said the same thing twice."

"Yes. Do you know what things I referred to?"

"The parts of plants widely regarded as being prettiest?"

"The other one's a food, does that help?"

"Oh, flour.  For baking?"

"Yes. Are you used to those sounding the same?"

"Yes."

"One and won, two and too and to, four and for?"

"Yes?"

"...are also all different words that sound the same in Latin as you know it?"

"I think so.  But you didn't say what they meant so it could be different.  Ummm, aught the number like ought as in should, fourct the number like forked as in using a spiny cultery?"

"Fourct is not a number in English but we have forks the utensil. Aught is a kind of weird old term for zero and does sound like ought as in should."

"Aught is zero and fourct is four-zero, but in an eights way not a tens way."

"Huh, you use base eight? Just in Verona or all over the world?"

"All over the world.  Rome likes tens and they surround us so I have to learn that too."

"What about timekeeping within a day, how's that work? Ours has lots of sixes."

"Onect aught seconds in a minute and minutes in an hour, fourct hours in a day, eight days in a week, four weeks in a month, eight months in a year."

"Onect aught is... one zero zero in base eight, is... sixty-four? I think? I am not at my peak math skill right now. Which is close to sixty, which is how we have it. Fourct is four times eight is thirty two? That's substantially longer unless your seconds are shorter."

"Ummmmmm.  I have not all the way learned the conversions yet.  And I haven't been here an entire day."

"Is there a phrase you say to mark seconds when you don't have a clock, we say 'one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand' and so on."

"My apologies, I don't know."

"Alas. Xavier is there any movement on the prospect of getting interdimensionals like us home now that there's two? - is it just two?"

"I was not informed of any specific others but would be unsurprised if there were, or if more proceeded to show up.  There's not already a way to send you back but it's being worked on and people seemed hopeful about the outcome."