Head-shake. Then smile. "Not really. I am working on my own to figure out words for 'speech' and maybe 'do not interrupt'." She says, more to herself than for his benefit.

...okay!

He goes to make her lunch; he gets a little fancier with it than the last few meals.

And then she gets back to working on 'speech'. Which she thinks it's easy to spin from translation, but there might be a problem since they don't have the concept of using one's voice for communication, which is the thing she needs to get across.

Next time she takes a break, he's sitting outside working on converting things to crafting-material again; when he notices her he takes a break himself to show her the books he brought her - there's about a dozen of them, with illustrations suggesting they're meant for small children.

That's okay. Given the givens, she wasn't expecting them to have how to teach adults. Is her friend going to teach her or is she supposed to self-teach?

He's not actually sure the best way to teach an adult to read, not having done it before, but he thinks it'd make sense for him to read the books to her, and she can take notes on what the glyphs mean and ask him questions and take it from there, does that sound good?

It does. She will write down the translations for various glyphs on a tablet and the rules of how their writing works on another tablet.

The stories are cute and simple, each taking only a few minutes to read; the set is a series, about a curious young crow who investigates the lives of the people and animals around him, in one book following a crafter as they do their household chores, in another trailing a herd of deer for a day, and so on, always returning home to his flock at night to tell his older flockmates about the strange things he's seen and how glad he is to be a crow.

Her host explains that the text of these books is a bit simplified, to be easy to read: writing for older readers is a bit less linear, with descriptive modifiers rendered as additions or modifications to the words they're applied to rather than their own glyphs like they are here. But it'll be an easy enough transition for her to make, he thinks.

Aww, that is adorable. She makes notes of what glyphs she finds most important. Are there any that mean more abstract things like "question" or "false"?

There are glyphs for those; they're the sort of thing he pointed out as usually being written as modifiers rather than separate glyphs.

Cool. She will write that down, figure out how to write things to the effect "request word", "yes", "no", and "other option". And be generally content with that progress enough to divide her time between that and the translation magic.

He's content, too, to spend most of his time putting her new house together, with occasional breaks to read to her and an eventual second trip into the forest for more books. The building comes together at a reasonable pace, and their shared vocabulary reaches basic functionality even sooner.

She is spending her time refining the magic translation. Not just single word translations, she tries her hand on figuring out a translating charm. She knows how to make a translating charm... using a conservative estimate of ten thousand times more energy than she has available now. Eventually, Phaidra decides it's a long term project and focus on more immediate solutions.

The basic functionality is very useful, and with a combination of that and her own research, she tries to pass on the concept of speaking.

It's not especially surprising; she does make noises much more often when they're communicating than when they're not, and it's not a huge leap to think that someone could encode meaning that way just like they could encode it in text.

This doesn't help him understand her, of course.

She guesses that shouldn't be surprising. Probably it works in the same way how it's much harder to learn merfolk sign language after growing up? Anyway, she kind wants to clarify a few things. Like, how it's a bad idea to interrupt her while she is doing magic.

He, uh, wouldn't do that anyway, probably, it's rude? If she wants to be really sure she can just do it in her tent or her house, he's definitely not going to bother her in there, but - crafters don't?

Phaidra guessed it was the case, but she wanted to be sure. It's dangerous. It's how she got here, and she is lucky to be alive.

Yikes! Well, it's not going to be a problem here, at least.

Which is good. She also wants to address yet another thing.

The vocabulary is good enough to pass the most relevant things, even if not all the details. The bottom line of it is that the world is dying/dangerous/dark the people there are trying to find a place to live. Which is why she was dealing with teleportation magic in the first place.

Is his world a good candidate for that? Is there someone she could talk to about that?

There are people who know more about the world as a whole than he does, who'd be better able to answer her question; he doesn't have a straightforward way to get in touch with any of them but he can work on it. As long as they aren't too disruptive and don't bring the problem here with them he can't imagine anyone minding very much though.

She is trying to figure out how to communicate the concept of "leader". It isn't in the basic vocabulary, and she is not having an easier time deriving from existing words. Eventually, she decides to ask if he knows "empty places". They have a lot of people (tens of tens of tens) that need some time away from danger (tens of tens of days), at very least. Phaidra thinks they can do not disruptive if they are apart? Phaidra was surprised by many things here.

Yeah, there are plenty of places that don't have many people - he doesn't have a map or anything, that's one of the things she'd need to ask someone who knows more about the world. He can probably get an atlas at the next community they stop at, he's trying not to ask the people here for too much while they're still unsettled.

Phaidra wants to apologize (written as 'Phaidra wants them to know she is sad because of fire') but doesn't know how.

Speaking of communities, do people live closer in other places? Does everyone here lives apart?

They'll be fine, they'll just be fine faster if he doesn't poke at them too much.

Crafters have territories, yeah, it's a species thing. That's why she can be sure he won't go into her house; once she's moved in it's hers and not a place he can be without her obvious permission. And settled crafters claim not just their houses but the area around them, the same way - if she sees a territory marker like this, that's what it means, that the land beyond it is claimed.

Huh, okay, so no poking. And respecting the territory markers very strongly.

Actanaians sometimes do that, but not as strongly? Dragons (a kind of Actanian which she draws as a lizard with wings) do that most often, but is not something common. Phaidra thinks most people live with a part of their family, and maybe the entire family claims the territory? And with the world dying, they have to fit a lot of people together, because they don't have other option.