So she's not allowed to leave - hardly a surprise but good to be sure.

"Can you read?"

"No."

"I don't have anything to write with here but if you'd like to learn we could start with the sign on the wall."

"Okay."

"Since I know this language only by magic I have little experience with its phonics but it at least has an alphabet - here, these are all the same letter, 'E', do you see any more Es?"

Eefa can point to the other Es one at a time.

"And that's making a bunch of different sounds in these words," she reads them off, "- and some places no sound at all - but I think it would never go 'oo', for example, here's a word with an 'oo' in it -"

It's not a great primer and it's not the language she knows the alphabet song for but it's something to do.

Eefa isn't the best student but when it's obvious enough what Pelape wants her to do she's reasonably good at doing it and that counts for something.

Pelape wants her to learn to read! And also incidentally to figure out how her omniglottalism works.

It's not very obvious during the letter learning phase whether her omniglottalism is doing anything in particular.

Is Pelape herself an omniglot. Can she retroactively understand the lyrics of Voan songs.

Nope!

When they've wrung all the obvious first pass educational value out of the sign on the wall, Pelape will ask Eefa if she can understand a Voan song if she sings one.

"Yes?"

"What's it mean?"

Eefa can repeat it back? Well, she didn't remember the entire thing but she can try. Pelape understands it when she does.

........does it still rhyme and scan.

Yeah.

"That's so weird. I know that song but only by memorizing all the sounds in it, I don't know the language it's in, but when you sing it back I understand it."

Eefa blinks at Pelape in confusion.

"I know, like, twelve words of Voan. Like, uh, in the song there's 'bird', I know that one. Can you hear the difference between 'bird' and 'bird' and 'bird?" she says, switching between Voan, Anitami, and English.

"They're different ways of saying bird?"

"Yes..." Wait, which one did Eefa just say. "...when you said that just now, what sounds did you use for the word?"

Eefa is confused.

"Bird?"