…now that ey's focusing more, the level of presence of disembodied souls is really weird. Why is nobody taking the souls to their plane or otherwise using them.

The single functional building is probably the place to go. Ey heads over.

There are several humanoids milling around in the vicinity of the building. A trader staggering under a heavy backpack is just arriving; someone else is setting up an easel.

At the sight of a person-shaped cloud creature, one of the children tries to run over, and is stopped by a woman who drops the horse fodder she was carrying and looks at Griffie with deep concern.

The cloud is going to remain at a distance, get a notebook and pencil out of the bag it is somehow wearing, and start taking notes! (Griffie has pretty good hearing.) In response to the looking, it will wave and then point to itself and say 'Griffie'.

That's somewhat less concerning. One of the men climbs out of the goat pen and steps into the building, and returns a moment later with someone else who looks at Griffie and shrugs and says something that puts the others at ease.

The painter sets up so they can paint Griffie, or at least try to. Once the adults have calmed down one of the children runs over to offer Griffie a green gem.

The painter is free to try to paint Griffie, but air elemental forms want to move. Ey can as a courtesy try to move in place, but ey can't really hold still.

Ey accepts the green gem from the child, points at it, and makes a curious noise.

The kid explains at some length, or perhaps explains briefly and immediately digresses into explaining something else.

This is not what Griffie was hoping for, but ey will take a lot of notes while trying to figure out what, specifically, all these sounds are about.

The kid eventually tries to poke their hand through Griffie's cloud form.

The form may be fluffy at the edges, but it isn't gaseous all the way through, or at least not gaseous enough to be poked like that. The cloud backs away a bit, though this could be rationalized as part of its fidgeting if you tried.

Someone notices this and shouts at the kid, who shouts back but also leaves Griffie alone.

The man who was in the goat pen and the one he fetched to look at Griffie talk with each other and then both wander over. Goat guy points to himself and then to the other person, saying, "Chork, Vaal," then tentatively points to Griffie and says, "Griffie?"

Griffie will identify emself as Griffie, and then confirm the identities of Chork and Vaal.

Those sure are their identities, or at least they haven't changed their minds about them in the last second.

Chork squats down and takes a blade of grass between his fingers. "Grass," he says.

This gets noted down in the alphabet the child's speech was noted down in, with another word in a different alphabet next to it.

Also, the cloud will point at the notebook and make an inquisitive noise.

Vaal makes an enthusiastic grabby gesture at the notebook, to which Chork says something pointed and holds out his hand.

The cloud will move with the notebook into grabbing range. Ey opens to an illustrated journal entry at the beginning, reads a sentence aloud while using the non-writing end of the pencil to follow along in the text, make a high-pitched hum, and then turns to a blank page, holds out the pencil, and makes a low-pitched hum. Ey then puts the book open a bit to both sections, and waits to see if Vaal or Chork will point at a section or make a noise or do something else.

Vaal points to the blank page and says something.

Vaal can have a pencil and the book open to the blank page! Griffie is going to still be ready to take the book back if Vaal, say, starts flipping through to random pages. Nothing very secret is in here, but still.

Well, first, at any rate, he and Chork have both traveled some and together they can put together a pretty good map of the nearby area. At one edge of the map are some mountains that Vaal sketches in deliberately vaguely - "Gerudo Highland," he says, and points to them and then to the mountains visible to the south. At the north end he sketches in some more unintentionally vague mountains, and likewise names them Hebra. He passes the pencil to Chork for a lot of the local details. Chork adds Washa's Bluff and the Seres Scablands and a stretch of road and a bridge over a canyon (which he identifies as the one right nearby), and pretty much everything between Shae Loya and Mijah Rokee, and between Tena Ko'sah and Ludfo's bog. He marks a spot that he calls Tabantha Bridge Stable and points to the nearby building. He passes pencil back to Vaal, who marks most of the rest of the road from Gerudo Stable somewhere in the southern mountains, up across three rivers and past another stable to reach Tabantha Bridge, and then alongside the canyon for a while before making a sharp turn and reaching Rito Village. Vaal marks four forks in the road, and draws them leading to a snowflake, a castle, a... glowing mountain, or maybe a volcano... and what looks like one mountain split right down the middle.

Vaal points to himself. "I, Vaal, am from the south." He gestures vaguely at that part of the map. "Chork is from Tabantha Bridge Stable." He points to that spot on the map. "Griffie is from...?"

Griffie does not point at the map! Ey says "Griffie is from Erlonn. Erlonn is from Aubea. Aubea is from Suaal.", takes the pencil, quickly jots down the place names Vaal gave in the same script ey used to note down the child's speech, and then flips to another page, on which ey draws … a sphere. It has ice caps at both poles, and the view ey draws shows some of a very large continent with some weird gaps in it and two smaller continents to the east of it that look like they might have broken off of the large one, the southern of which has a large dotted-line circle over the east side and the ocean.

Ey circles the sphere with the back of the pencil. "Suaal". Ey circles the southeastern continent. "Aubea".

The two of them discuss this, startled, before deciding they probably need more vocabulary.

Chork gestures for Griffie to follow him around so he can point to more different objects.

The cloud attempts to make context-appropriate happy noises, and is following Chork to take notes.

Some of the other locals watch them, but they seem more interested than wary at this point.

"Fire," Chork says of the one with the communal cookpot suspended over it.

"Omelet," the person cooking dinner adds cheerfully.

An assortment of spare ingredients are sitting nearby, which Chork labels - "Wildberry, pepper." And in the stable - "horses." And over in a separate pen - "goats."

Chork steps onto the road and gestures in the direction it runs in, back and forth. "Road."

He frowns for a moment, trying to think of something else useful to name, and Vaal interrupts - "Horses are animals. Goats are animals. Vaal and Chork and Griffie are people."

Griffie will ask clarifying questions.

Is a candle flame also "fire"? Is this constantly glowing rock from Griffie's bag "fire"? How about the sun?

Is this sketch of an unpaved narrow path a "road"? What about this preexisting drawing of some skybridges and elevators through a tree city with arrows indicating a path?

Are birds and insects "animals"? Is a bokoblin "people"?

A candle flame is fire. A constantly glowing rock is not fire. Whether or not the sun is fire seems to be a hard question that half the people around get involved in trying to answer.

Only fixed contiguous walkways are roads.

Birds are animals. Insects draw some debate and some soapboxing by one of the kids.

"No, that's a monster," Chork says about the bokoblin.

"That's a person," Vaal says, and he and Chork look at each other and come to a silent agreement not to argue about it.

"That's a bokoblin," Chork says.

"Yeah, that's a bokoblin," Vaal agrees.

Okay. "Fire" is probably fire and not light, or a hearth, or such.

The debate about the bokoblins is kind of concerning, though evidence in favor of the word meaning 'person' and not 'humanoid' or such. The name bokoblin will be noted down, along with notes about the debate.

Also! An agreement word! There is a related word Griffie would like to solicit. "Vaal is person, yeah. Vaal is road…" ey looks to the helpful people expectantly.