"...well, we still need protein." Kyeo puts the herring in his basket, and some jerky.

"How much do people normally like grain?  Also what's cultured meat."

"I'm used to eating bread every day. I guess I don't know what I'd eat if I didn't need to do it enough to get full."

"Yeah, grain's very popular, I'm actually confused that you have so many vegetables, a lot of people don't like those that much. Cultured meat is meat that's grown in vats sort of like - uh - I've never actually seen it done, but it doesn't involve killing animals."

"Huh!  I like vegetables a lot, and I think that's pretty usual.  Maybe it's - if you have worse eyesight, what if things also don't taste as good to you?  Also breads and stuff are slightly more expensive compared to other things but I don't really know why that would be."

"That's weird, grain is cheap - hm, actually, grain is cheap per calorie, I'm not sure it's actually very cheap per bite."

"Hmm.  - Anyway, did you want to do showers while we're still out and about, or come back later."

"If it's more convenient to do it now we can."

"Either way; 's no difference to me."

"Then I think right before we sleep is ideal so we'll be relatively freshly clean when we set out."

"Makes sense."  Sarham and Kyeo and groceries go in cart; cart goes to Lornell's house.

There's a sufficient volume and awkwardness-to-carry of groceries that Lornell actually uses the interior stairs, though they don't constrain themself to walking at the aliens' pace and have all the food in their apartment by the time they get there despite taking two trips.

"Is the local alphabet simple to learn?"

"I don't know how I would quantify that!  I guess some kids do end up learning it before they're old enough to just copy it; apparently I did.  - I know that that was probably a way of asking me to teach you the alphabet and yes, I can, just I also think the more literal question is interesting too."

"If your alphabet were difficult we might want to work on a different commonly spoken language that had a simple one," says Sarham. "But yes, if yours isn't too bad - and I'd imagine it could have been, it'd only have to be learned once! - it seems good if we pick it up."

"I've heard about some places that have really complicated ones, yeah, even though I don't know any myself.  - But I guess it makes sense, if we really did come from the same place as you did originally, like it seems?  That some of the stuff would've held over."

"It depends how long ago that was, there was a lot of human existence before the invention of writing."

"That's very strange to think of - how long before or after writing was there a drug called something similar to morphine?"

"I have absolutely no idea. I don't know how much processing is required to turn a poppy into something people'd take usefully."

"Right, but the word - sorry, I shouldn't let myself get so sidetracked; this is another thing that's a better conversation to have with the researchers probably."

They start writing down the Cretari alphabet.  Several but not most of the letters have vague resemblances to Kularan ones and it has a few phonemes that Sarham and Kyeo aren't used to.  Lornell is a decent teacher once they get over the conceptual hurdle that their students ever have to be presented with a piece of information more than once in order to memorize it.

They're both pretty quick by the standards of their people, Kyeo a touch moreso at least at this.

Lornell has no point of comparison but is patient anyway.  Once they have the alphabet down they can move on to common words?

Sure, they've heard some and can guess at those and write down what Lornell tells them.

They're willing to keep it up for as long as the aliens want, provided they can occasionally do gymnastics simultaneously.

"Probably I should also give you a phrase to memorize asking people to copy your language - do you want me to have it specify for them to take the one you're about to speak, and then you say something in Kularan, so they don't get the other one?  It's not really good enough for definite protection on being able to have private conversations but - to keep things consistent."

"I get that we shouldn't count on it, and also it's not really fair to Kyeo, we both speak the same pair of languages and this one is my native one and the other one's his. I just wanted a word with him privately about something but in the future people can probably grab Ibyabekan from us no big deal."

"Okay!"  They come up with a phrasing - and tweak it slightly so that it only contains phonemes they're already used to pronouncing - and teach it to them phonetically.