Soft fluff and happy burbles!

Very quiet polite "Eeeeeeeee." Happyflapping with the other hand.

Okay, with numbers she can establish yes and no. On a new page she draws two dots and a 2 and labels it "yes" and draws three dots and a 2 and labels it "no". Then she points at these pictures and says "Yes" and "No" about them respectively.

The creature mimics the "eeeeeee".

Then she studies these new diagrams intently.

"One two?" she says of the two dots. "One two three?" of the three.

"Yes." Points at the three dots: "Yes three, no two." Points at the two dots: "Yes two, no three."

Two dots. "One two yes?"

Three dots. "One two three yes?"

Two dots. "One two three no?"

Three dots. "One two three four no?"

"Very good!" She makes a pretty decent attempt to imitate the happy trilling noise.

Quick but recognizable sketch of Petal hatching out of an egg?

Meep of recognition! Tiny hop!

She trots away under the table, picks up the smallest fragment of her eggshell using her mysterious telekinetic powers, brings it back out, and sets it on top of the sketch.

Ari desperately wants to know how an alien egg got into her apartment, but even if they had perfect mutual understanding, she couldn't reasonably ask the being that came out of an egg about how the egg got there and expect an answer.

She picks up the flower petal, holds it in/over a bit of eggshell, and mimes it hatching too.

Curious trill...

The creature trots up to the petal and noses it, then levitates again and floats off to the same dried flower from which she harvested the petal originally. Again, she sort of gently rustles the flower a bit for five seconds or so and produces a soft fresh petal out of seemingly nowhere, then floats back to Ari, deposits the petal neatly next to the pad of paper, yawns a tiny yawn, and plods tiredly over to the strawberry to nibble several more nibbles of it and then curl up next to the saucer for a nap.

"You really do violate all my assumptions about reality, you adorable little alien," she murmurs softly.

She is, on some level, a bit scared, because goodness knows what this being will grow up to be. But in her long experience, all beings grow up better when given resources and security and love, and there's no sense being scared when there's nothing for the fear to do. So she lets the wonder and the curiosity dominate.

She doesn't call the newspeople, even though they desperately want to be called in this sort of situation. She doesn't call any other scientists, either; she can handle this mystery herself without drowning the little darling in nosy giants. She places a few carefully-chosen bids on the prediction markets and goes to make herself another cup of tea, leaving the adorable scientific revelation to nap in peace.

The adorable scientific revelation naps for slightly less than twenty minutes and then wakes up, eats some more strawberry, and picks up the second petal to wear as a hat. It rests between her antlers and curls fetchingly over the tiny gem on her forehead.

OH NO that is TOO CUTE. Fortunately Ari is a grandmother and has exactly the right reflexes for this sort of contingency, namely, taking several more photographs. And then procuring a couple of blueberries and a couple of peanuts, since the strawberry is presumably not nutritionally complete, though given that some of that energy is getting used to levitate and create matter who can be sure.

She gives each new food an experimental nibble. Blueberries get a sort of purring sound; peanuts get an excited squeak.

Ari names each of the foods so that more of any of them can be requested later, and also demonstrates the words for "egg", "eggshell", and "petal" while she's at it.

It takes her some practice ("egg! shell! egg shell!") but after a few minutes she can confidently associate each of these objects with its name. She also knows "Ari", for Ari, and "Friend", for Plasma, which labels she proudly volunteers with solemn gestures of a tiny hoof.

Awww. "Yes, Plasma is a friend." 

"Friend can fly!" volunteers Plasma.

"That's right."

"Friend is very small."

"Yes, your friend is very small, so you be gentle. Like with Creampuff." (Creampuff is the neighbors' kitten.)

"Yes mooooom."

"Good." Ari checks on Plasma's food and water dishes and grabs herself some more of the fruit and nuts; she had been planning to make lentil soup tonight but nope, tonight is first contact with a baby alien. Does Petal want a shoebox lined with fluffy hand towels and the words for eating, drinking, and (by way of being shown a photograph) sleeping?

She perches on the rim of the shoebox with a happy trill, but before she accepts any more vocabulary, this dialogue merits further investigation!

"Friend Plasma yes?" she says, pointing at Plasma. "Friend Ari yes?", pointing at Ari. "Friend yes?", tapping a forehoof gently against her own soft fluffy chest.

"Yes. Friend Plasma," point, "friend Ari," point, "Friend . . ." point and hope this will be interpreted as a name request?

"Friend Petal," she declares firmly, tapping herself again.

"Petal! Yes!" What a good name.

Where are this baby's parents, she wonders for about the fiftieth time, and are they an advanced civilization, and are they going to be annoyed about their offspring learning Convergentlanguage instead of their own language? The egg and the relative independence at birth suggest against a technological civilization to the extent that one can generalize from Firstplanet life, but on Firstplanet those limits are set by the need for very large brains, and human brains are nowhere near the theoretical limit of what evolution could pack into a head. Also, while those structures on their head look like a deer's antlers, their presence at birth suggests a function more central to survival than a deer's mating display. Also there's the fact that the entity's head is small in absolute terms but enormous relative to the body, though that might change with later growth. And there's the range of phonemes the entity can produce, and the telekinesis which is a sophisticated manipulator if there ever was one, and the fact that a technological civilization could assume enough control over their own reproduction and development to render all her priors and heuristics so much candyfloss. 

She turns toward Plasma where he's swinging on his kotted rope toy and asks, "Where was Petal's egg before it was under the table?" Parrots aren't the most reliable witnesses, but they're better than a random generator and sometimes respond to 'No making up stories, now.'

"Don't know. Saw Petal first, egg second."

"That's okay." 

(She is not the sort of person to flinch away from the thought that she would learn a lot from vivisecting Petal. She is also not the sort of person who would ever do that, and she knows this about herself with a certainty that precludes worrying about it. She has taken classes on ethics and introspection, she has taken the surprisetests that everyone who signs up for them takes at randomly chosen times averaging out to once every fifteen years, and she knows herself well enough that she doesn't have to think about how well she knows herself--this whole sentence has been narration of reality only, and not of Ari's thoughts.)

Ari offers some more words: "up" and "down" and "high" and "low" and "move" with a bunch of hand-gesture examples, and watches carefully for how well Petal grasps the difference between a direction and a location.

She seems to absorb "up" and "down" and "move" relatively straightforwardly.

When Ari gestures "high" and "low", she levitates to the height of the "high" gesture and says "High yes?", then to the height of the "low" gesture and says "low yes?", then to approximately twice the height of the "high" gesture and says "high high yes?"

"High high is higher." Time to introduce "higher" and "lower" and possibly also "same height"!

With easy access to many example elevation levels, Petal is soon able to clarify that 'high' and 'low' are relative descriptors and not approximate measurements. Then she gleefully goes around the room describing altitude relationships between named objects.

"Plasma higher Ari! Ari higher peanut!" A quick float downward to eye level. "Petal same height Ari! Petal higher eggshell!"

And with a mischievous gleam in her eye, "Friend Petal higher petal," pointing at the first petal she harvested which is on the floor far below her. "Petal higher friend Petal," attempting to point at her hat but being foiled by the shortness of her limbs.

"Yes!" She crouches a bit so that Petal is above her head, then sticks her hand up so it's higher than Petal is. "Ari higher Petal and Petal higher Ari!" she says with a laugh.

She looks back and forth between Ari's hand and Ari's head in amazement. "Ari higher Petal yes! Petal higher Ari yes! Ari higher Ari?? Ari lower Ari?? Ari same height Ari yes?!"