doe, a dyr | Glowfic Constellation

Deshi pulls up Chatdabble, which she uses to not completely forget everything she knows about foreign languages she picked up from watching foreign TV, and tells it to pull up a lesson in LOW VILSHU from an L1 of OTHER.

The tiny creature is fascinated and delighted by this alien device and its promise of words. She diligently attempts lessons, though she may have some trouble interfacing with the device. On the other hand, her capacity to absorb vocabulary is fearsome for her age; on the third hoof, she is fairly well stymied by verb tenses, which she can recognize decently well when prompted but has a really tough time producing without a recent example to echo.

Chatdabble is adaptive, and will soon be throwing her new vocab in every sentence while drilling the verb tenses.

Verb tenses remain a thorny issue no matter how hard she practices, but after enough vocabulary has gone by she remarks, "Floatgoat name is Petal."

"Did you just decide that, or was it already Petal before?" asks Deshi.

"Petal doesn't know word before!"

"Did you know another language and have a name in that language that means Petal or did you pick this yourself because you like 'Petal'?"

"Petal is best plant part," she explains. "Plant is best... doesn't know word."

"...living thing?" suggests Suvi.

"Nooo..."

She goes to the rock poster and bobs up and down at the lapis lazuli, faster and for less time and with more exaggerated movements than when she's pebblemaking.

"What is word? Petal does what? Go to rock, get small rock. What is word?"

"...we can't do that, so we don't... have a word for it," says Deshi.

"...clone?" suggests Suvi. "Except it's not exactly the same... extract? Har...vest? Copy?"

"What is clone? What is har vest? What is copy?"

"Copy is - make a thing that's like another thing. Like, I can - copy this Vilshu exercise off the screen." Deshi grabs paper and demonstrates. "It's still there but I have a copy. Cloning is like copying but it's mostly for living things and with lab equipment. Harvesting is like if there's a tree and I pick a fruit off it I harvest it."

"Harvest," she decides. "Harvest from plant, harvest from tree, harvest from rock, harvest from many things. Plant is best."

"Why are plants best?"

"Best!" she insists.

"Best for what? Best at what?" tries Suvi.

She scrunches up her tiny face in deep thought, then finally concludes,

"Doesn't know words."

"But you went for the rock instead of trying to go outside and find a plant?" says Deshi.

"Outside?"

Deshi points out the window. Her window looks down on a street where people and animals are going by on various nyooms and on foot.

Peeeeer out the window.

"Outside!!" she says, with great excitement, and gently bonks her antlers against the window, which is totally unaffected by this.

"- do you want to leave?" asks Suvi tentatively.

"Would you come back?" asks Deshi.

"Goes outside, finds plant, harvests from plant, comes back," she says. But after a moment's further thought, she adds, "...first, naps."

Tiny naptime.