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Sophie would like it on the record that, when she accepted the job, she didn't know that the Librarian had to do so much bloody politics. She could be out healing the sick, like Natan in his day. She would love to be out healing the sick. Instead, she's in one of the innumerable studies of Hush House, searching for a book for Hokobald, even though she wishes dearly that she could toss him out on his shiny arse. She doesn't mind helping out Yvette, or Arun, or really most of the others. It's just Hokobald in particular who should really go fuck himself. But it is her duty to remain strictly neutral, and she takes that duty seriously. So she'll find his damned book, and watch like a hawk while he reads it. And should he happen to violate that neutrality himself, well, she might have a few things in her pockets to introduce him to. (Swaddled Thunder isn't casual to make, nor the Rubywise Ruin in case of violence. But she's made them enough to feel they're replaceable, at least.)
Smile! Not too exuberantly because they're sad but smile!
She starts looking for lexeme breakpoints. It's a very fluid language, but she's pretty sure that word was separate, what about this one? She doesn't have enough corpus to construct even very wrong sentences, but she can indulge the echolalia a bit before gesturing for more new language.
Ridaya is easy to prompt into clarifying word boundaries!
She also looks like she's getting an idea.
Ideas: probably good! (Some ideas are bad, but it's hard to imagine one that would hurt right now.) She smiles encouragingly.
Ridaya holds up a finger, then... makes a weird set of very precise gestures while saying a few words in a different language. (She looks like she's done this thousands of times.)
Then she starts making a bunch of differently-colored spheres, cubes, and other regular polygons, all about the size of a marble, all looking frail (like they could crumble any moment), and all appearing floating in the air between them. Each one takes her a bit of concentration and a few seconds.
Impressive! Some work of... she doesn't really know what art might do this. Impressive nevertheless. She claps her hands lightly.
(The applause earns her a brief, slight smile.)
Ridaya moves most of her shapes off to one side, arranging five in a row in front of Sophie; black-green-white-purple-black.
She says a five word sentence in the language, first at normal speed, then slowly, tapping each object in order. (Sophie will recognize the middle word as one that was in both Luto's initial phrase and Ridaya's first sentence).
She pauses to see if Sophie is basically following along.
Sophie follows! (She's briefly confused at the repetition of black, then clears her preconception and gets back on track.)
Ridaya brings over two blue shapes and swaps them for the black ones, flips the green one upside down, then repeats the sentence, except the first word is now 'Ridaya', the last word is now 'Sophie', and the second word is in a different tone.
She iterates through configurations of blue/black and Ridaya/Sophie - all 4 are valid, apparently, and the green-flip version of the second word is associated with 'Ridaya'.
Black for nouns, blue for proper nouns? And the language might be tonal, that's a fun complication. (But it's complicated to tell a semantic tone apart from emphasis, this early in hearing a language. Reserving judgment.)
Ridaya continues to introduce new sentences and word variations in this manner for several minutes! Sophie will pick up that it's a tonal language, but tone appears mostly be used for verb conjugation.
Via pointing, Ridaya gives her the words for most objects in the room, easily indicable body parts, and a basic suite of verbs. (The verb in her five word sentence was 'speak/talk', apparently.)
It might be a bit early yet to notice, but Sophie doesn't forget words. And she's got very good grammatical intuitions.
"...sad," Sophie attempts. "Sadness that you are sad. I would help if a thing would help."
Through the tears, she manages to say "No thing can help" and then adds, rather bitterly, "Ridaya says no thing can help. And no thing can help if Ridaya no help."
Ridaya looks a bit like she's been stabbed in the chest. Metaphorically.
"[Unknown(1)], Luto. I - I [Unknown(2)] [Unknown(third person pronoun)] [Negation] [Unknown(3)] you, I-I can't, [Unknown(1)] [Unknown(1)] [Unknown(1)]"
She drops to her knees, not at all gently.
Half-paralyzed by awkwardness, Sophie finds herself distractedly going through the motions of a process she is very familiar with. The tisane is a simple one, sweet and soothing and just the thing when one has been crying. It steeps quickly, and a bit of cream leaves it the perfect temperature and a lovely shade of pink. She could make it with her eyes closed.
She would not have said she could make it without a cup, or water, or... ingredients of any kind.
But it would seem she could. Because she is, currently, holding a cup of hot-but-not-scalding witching tisane, which she was not holding a minute and a half ago.
She offers it to Luto, since it's not getting any warmer, and starts on another in the absence of anything better to do.
(...Ridaya still looks like she's struggling a fair bit, but she nods gratefully at Sophie.)
And in a minute and a half there will be tisane for Ridaya too.
She's going to... test the limits on this ability, a little bit.
If she tried to make Swaddled Thunder, could she? (Absolutely not.) If she tried to make more Regensburg balm? (Easily.) If she tried to make... Pyrus Auricalcinus? (She'd need some wood, but it's not beyond the realm of possibility.)
Hm. File it under "abilities she might have actually already had and not noticed". How are the others doing?
Ridaya accepts the drink and drinks the entire thing in one go. She steals a few glances at Luto, but doesn't say anything.
She catches Sophie's eyes and... reaches out a hand?