Merrin is trying to focus here, okay! 

...Does she now know any words in this language referring to the specific capabilities that Estha has talked about having? There's the food one - he didn't actually explain how it worked but can she find any new vocabulary that her brain indexes under 'food-producing economicmagic' or something like that? And the surviving-temperature-extremes one, she thinks he said something about that, can she find any newly-acquired vocabulary for what it is or might be...? 

Oh, those are [spells]!

She's not going to get the proper name of the [spell] off of thinking about what it does.  The part where the [spell] is producing things sounds like it might be [conjuring] them, though?  And if you want temperature not to bother you, you'd maybe want [energy] [resistance] to [cold] or [fire] [damage]?(*)

(*) Not actually the same thing, but it's what's going to turn up if you start looking for specific words lying in that direction.

Oooooooh shiny! New magic categorization system implanted directly into her brain via vocabulary transfer! That is so sci-fi a concept even if it is technically apparently accomplished via some sort of mentalistmagic and so strictly speaking is not the science fiction genre Merrin continues to be dubious of that sort of logic ever giving useful predictions. 

It's so cool though! ...What words does she know for - kinds of entities - specifically kinds of entities that one can think at over interstellar distances and get specialabilities from? 

Interstellar distances?  The main thing that has a connotation of [granting] you [spells] over interstellar distances specifically would be

[Dark Tapestry]

[horrors]

and especially the 

[Outer Gods].

...Those are not words that feel like they have incredibly positive connotations, are they.

Buuuut probably she should just talk to Estha, at this point. 

Does her new language ability suggest an idiomatic way to ask him in this conlang about the entity acting as a source of his [spell] capabilities that the her he remembers apparently also gets [spell] capabilities from, or is she stuck doing awkward word-for-word translation from the Baseline equivalent sentence? 

(Merrin has, perhaps, become a little distracted from the part where she and Estha are on a time limit to communicate about urgent logistical information and make time-sensitive plans.) 

Who are you a [cleric] of?  Who is your [deity]?

Oooh and there are definitely associations Merrin could dredge out of those words with more effort, even if she is now realizing that she should, perhaps, focus on more immediate matters. 

...She should probably not be that confident that she's poked her new vocabulary and conceptualassociations the exact right way to generate the correct hypothesis and question on literally the first try. 

"Are you a cleric? If so who is your deity?" she tries to ask Estha in his conlang, and since he told her not to worry about making the vibes weird for him with her expressiveness, she's not trying to hide that she's tentatively a bit pleased with and proud of herself for extracting that question out of newly-acquired vocabulary alone; she thinks that took nonzero cognitive skill, probably, that he should not necessarily have been taking for granted that she would obviously have. 

(...He didn't say it was his conlang, did he, not in the dath ilan sense of a language he invented or even that of an existing conlang-speaking-community he joined. He said it was spoken by a particular utilityfunction of entity. Can she figure out how to say that phrase in her new vocabulary? If it's a particular utilityfunction then that might imply a whole categorization system of utilityfunctions and Merrin finds categorization systems moderately shiny in general, can she figure this one out from new vocabulary alone...?) 

Unfortunately Utopian has a one-syllable word that means utilityfunction, though Esta only knows it as 'everything you want and how much quantitatively you want it', and that's what Merrin's internal question will return rather than [alignment].

"I am a 6th[-circle] [cleric] of a [god].  I'm not yet telling you Its(*) name because your knowing that has additional consequences; though you were once Its 2nd[-circle] [cleric] before your knowledge and connection to It were stripped away by a worse and more alien great [divinity]."

(*)  Utopian does not have gendered fucking pronouns lol.

HEY!  It's RUDE to tell people information that's deliberately misleading like that, if it's not part of an incredibly elaborate prank they'll figure out later!  You're making it sound like it's a cognitohazard to HER, and ACTUALLY you're just selfishly worried that if you say the words 'Hell' or 'Lawful Evil' it'll tick off the Chaotic Goodie!

Shut the fuck up, dath ilan.

SUSPICION ALERT SUSPICION ALERT ESTHA IS DEFINITELY CONCEALING INFORMATION AND MERRIN SHOULD NOT BE LETTING HIM SET THE FRAME THAT THIS IS FOR HER OWN PROTECTION IT COULD WELL BE SELF-SERVING 

Can Laierthe please chill and not do the mental equivalent of screaming in her head like that! He's being really distracting right now and Merrin is trying not to be super weird and suspicion herself in this conversation and Laeirthe is not making that easy!

(Merrin very briefly does the odd body language thing again, and then seems to shake herself out of it within a couple of seconds.) 

....Also. She now has an additional concern. That might be relevant to Estha's okayness. 

"When I was thinking about - [gods]? Is that the general term for {entities}," she's swapping the Baseline word back in there, "or is [divinity] the general term, I can't tell for sure which if any is the," grabbing the Baseline word again rather than spend time carefully checking if translations are actually the thing she means, "the {supercategory} - anyway I was seeing if the vocabulary would give me hypotheses for what your 'entity' was, and I got [Outer Gods] and [Dark Tapestry]. I...think...I'm guessing purely off word-associations that you're saying that your [god] is not a [Dark Tapestry] one, and the one that - made this happen - maybe was? And I - how sure are you that the [god] giving you [spells] is still the same one? I - because - when I was wondering what could cross very large distances, the vocabulary I got was the [Dark Tapestry] and [Outer Gods] words...?" 

Hopefully this is immediately and obviously stupid to anyone with context!

"Rule one of the Dark Tapestry.  You do not think about the Dark Tapestry."

"Rule two of the Dark Tapestry.  You do not think about the Dark Tapestry."

"Our god is most certainly not an Outer God."  Asmodeus is in fact not that powerful, though this is the sort of concept that is carefully introduced at 4th circle and Mariona is not on that whitelist.  "What sent us here was, yes, of the Dark Tapestry, and that's all the talking we should do about it.  I have been trying not to think about it.  Knowing anything about a powerful Dark Tapestry entity potentially brings you to Its attention and connects It to your mind, body, [soul], and location.  I am not authorized to know the name of what sent us here, and now, unfortunately, I know it anyways."

Flat, cold, commanding, and rapid.  The sort of Exception Handling language that informs someone under your command that if they take another six steps forward they will die.

....Okay then. Taking Estha's response at face value: yes, the thing she said was really stupid, just, in a different and even worse way than what she'd been worried about! 

Wow! You know what would be really nice: if Merrin could actually! trust! that this was more-or-less Estha as she knows him - just with additional bonus [spells] from a [god], somehow - and therefore trust him to be acting with full cooperation and telling the truth when he says that this topic is genuinely actually cognitohazardous and that is definitely not a self-serving justification for scaring her into not asking any more questions! 

"Understood," Merrin says immediately, and - she wasn't really thinking ""about"" the...things that she is now also not thinking about the vocabulary term for...due to literally not knowing anything more than the connotations she could pull out from introspection, but she can now can continue not-thinking about that whole vaguely-defined corner of conceptspace in her new linguistic vocabulary, she does have that much mental discipline. Estha did seem actually stressed, she thinks? But, of course, she's not sure that she can read him better than he can conceal things from her. 

Anyway. Not knowing Estha's deal is presenting Merrin with the dilemma that, on the one hand, maybe it is UNWISE to be trying to extract information from linguistic introspection on her own and she should STOP and just learn what he judges is a good idea to tell her. But ALSO this is one of the few ways she can learn anything about him from sources that are even slightly uncorrelated with "exactly what he decides he wants her to know", and, just, arghhh. 

(...Speaking of vocabulary and concepts, what was that word he said? [Soul], that one, it was the one that most obtrusively lacked an immediately obvious 1:1 Baseline transaction...?) 

It's a thing at the center of your consciousness that's durable!  Would survive plane crashes, even!  It's what you'd call back to resurrect the dead!  They can be sold for big money!  Messing with it involves [necromancy].

(You're not going to get straight-up dictionary definitions from Share Language.  If you don't have the concept, it'll throw the speaker's associations around the edges, and definitely not prioritize the connections that would be most useful for you to know about.)

Those sure are some associations!!!! What???? 

This makes sense to Laeirthe! It's like the thing that his fictional instance has that can possess bodies. ....Roughly. He's equally at a loss for how the 'can be sold for a lot of money' part can possibly fit - 

"And yes, I have considered the possibility that my anomalous [prayer session] and [spell loadout] is because that Dark Tapestry entity which sent us here is the thing actually giving me spells.  I will own consideration of that issue."  This last sentence is even easier to say in Utopian than in Baseline.

"To return to your nondangerous question:  [Divinity] is anything that grants [clerics] [spells].  [Gods] are the most normal case of that, corresponding to most [clerics].  Our [divinity] is the most ancient and powerful [god] that is still, in that certain sense, normal."

"Understood," Merrin says again, and mentally notes her new vocabulary term for the sort of thinking at his [god] that Estha was having trouble describing properly in Baseline.

She feels like she's lost her stack trace, here, weren't they in the middle of gearing up for a different topic focus before Estha decided they ought to overlap him-having-her-language and her-having-his-language - 

Laeirthe is busy feeling a moment of brief irritation at how this-Estha keeps talking about his [god] as also Merrin's [god], because from his perspective that is just...not true? Whatever the relationship between Merrin now and the "Merrin" who this Estha remembers, this Merrin has had an entire life and backstory that does not seem to be full of gaps better explained by having forgotten having [spells] from a [god]. 

Personally Kalorm thinks this Merrin is cooler. It's uncool to be getting all your capabilities from some sort of weird otherworldly entity instead of just being really good at things on your own. 

CAN THE PEOPLE IN HER HEAD PLEASE SHUT UP AND LET HER FOCUS RIGHT NOW 

"- We should decide what order to cover topics in while we both have the language [spells] active," Merrin says. "I still think it probably makes sense to try to fill you in on all of my Exception Handling gear while you speak Baseline?" She's speaking Baseline now, except for inserting [spells] at the appropriate place. 

"Agreed.  That was a good idea."

This feels VERY UNNATURAL to say without having tortured Merrin at all.

(Cultural Adaptation to widely shared dath ilan culture in Merrin's rough vicinity is not going to get you Merrin-specific rules about this issue.)