Intrepid does not have a good amount of talent at singing! Still, the phoneme song seems to be really helping her learn to make all the different noises.

Mrrr she wants to take notes but that might be rude...

"Maybe you can ask about notes? Or recording?" Intrepid sends her after a bit.

She flips the poffins over in the frying pan.

"...Do you mind if I record this?" she asks Umbreon. "It's really fascinating."

She thinks for a few long moments, then shakes her head.

"-is that a yes recording or no recording?"

She chuckles and nods once.

"Okay, cool." She gets her phone out and sets it up to record.

She runs Intrepid through the phoneme song again, then starts on another song, which possibly involves counting (possibly eevees or pokemon; the word that's changing the least - though the language sounds like it has weird pluralization rules - is introduced by the umbreon by pointing to Intrepid with her paw and saying it, pointing to herself and saying it, then gesturing between them and saying the dual form, then gesturing to Ellie and saying something that might've had a 'not' involved, attached to the same word).

There's not a ton they can get through before the poffins are done, of course, but the umbreon seems to be a pretty patient teacher.

That's pretty neat. Ellie asks Umbreon some questions while they eat, getting a feel for how correct her intuitions were.

Mostly correct! Some of the weirdness with counting comes out, too - their language has a base nine counting system, not a base ten, and the weirdness with the plurals was that they have a separate form for 'one [noun],' 'two [nouns],' and 'three [nouns],' and instead of a set plural form after that, the first three forms repeat - so 'four [nouns]' and 'seven [nouns]' both use the 'single' form for the noun, while 'five [nouns]' and 'eight [nouns]' uses the dual, and 'six [nouns]' and 'nine [nouns]' use the triple. (An unspecified number of things always uses the triple form, which is the simplest and is what umbreon gives when asked about the word for a noun.)

Words for negation are apparently kind of complex, but the word the umbreon used for Ellie was pretty much 'not an eevee,' and the counting song was in fact counting eevees - umbreon says 'nine eevees' a couple times, slowly and broken up into word parts, until it becomes apparent they share a root.

This is all really cool!

...Does Intrepid want to do reading or keep working on this tonight?

...Hm. This is super cool and fun, but her head's getting kind of full, and she thinks it'll help her brain if she switches to a different kind of learning? And then the umbreon can take a break from teaching her.

Sure.

Does Umbreon want to read along?

Given how she starts squinting, that might sound suspiciously like it requires being in touching range.

Well. Technically, yeah. Ellie doesn't have a great solution for projecting the text here. If she had a portable screen or something she could flick the text over to it and make the words big enough to be seen from further away, but she doesn't.

Yeah she's going to stay over here. (But she doesn't seem very offended by the offer, at least.)

All right. Ellie and Intrepid will just curl up together, then.

Intrepid doesn't mind. She likes cuddling Ellie, and the umbreon's not being unfriendly anymore, so.

Reading! She's getting to where she needs Ellie's help with the words a lot less, though she might also be memorizing this story.

They can switch to a different story, maybe. Ellie's always liked this one, a myth about Arceus and the creation of the world.

It's pretty, yeah. (Snuggle.)

Intrepid drifts off to sleep while cuddling Ellie again.

Ellie waves good night softly to Umbreon.

She waves back, then curls up to sleep. 

Sleep time for everyone.

Umbreon follows them again the next day, playing with Intrepid some - and then pausing, still hovering in the trees' shadows, as they reach the forest's edge.