Yeah, that's fair.

Probably Griffie's notes are a good sample of words ey wants to know in this language. What is this language called, anyway? Ey'll use the 'draw and write incomplete notes and ask questions' strategy to get vocabulary. Eir requests seem to contain a fair amount of stuff related to travel, plants, animals, combat, and magic. Some of the magic questions don't really make sense to Vaal.

Also, Griffie is totally up for many consecutive hours of this. Is Vaal?

He knows a lot about most of those topics and can keep talking for at least a few hours.

People travel by riding horses, or they teleport (he demonstrates), or walk (he demonstrates that too), or take a boat down a river. Hylians - like the people here - sleep during the night at stables. Rito do that too but other kinds of people usually do different things. Vaal can draw detailed diagrams of the internal anatomy of several plant species (including bananas) and talk about their preferred climates. He gets cagier about combat and magic. Magic exists! Combat happens! Sometimes in combat people use weapons - his bow is a weapon, for instance - and sometimes they die, which is the thing where they stop being able to use their bodies until the full moon rises bright red. Or sometimes for longer than that. Potentially forever.

At one point Vaal stops to make the argument that someone should share their lunch with him since he's busy doing something everyone here wants done. Sometimes people interrupt to try to ask if Griffie needs anything, or tell Griffie things that relate tangentially to the conversation, or to fill in vocabulary Vaal doesn't have or won't share - especially about fighting, and where monsters hang out - or to buy Vaal's stuff, or to warn Griffie that Vaal is evil and wants to kill them all.

Griffie needs a place to sleep for a few hours where people won't kill em, but it doesn't need to be soft or indoors per se. Can ey get space here at the stable like that? Ey doesn't have rupees but ey can do work.

Also, what's up with Vaal being evil and wanting to kill everybody? If he isn't doing spy work, why would someone omnicidal be a banana merchant, and if he is doing spy work, he's kind of really bad at it if people here are aware of his goals and he hasn't abandoned his identity. Griffie can only communicate so much of this but will try.

If it doesn't need to be soft or indoors, it's traditional to catch a nap outside by the fire. There are too many people around for attacks, for the most part. - That being said, there's totally work to be done, if Griffie wants to clean up after horses or go take five hundred rupees to a fairy fountain.

Vaal is mildly frustrated to be having this conversation without enough shared vocabulary to actually explain things. "There is a person named Ganon. Ganon wants to kill everyone. Some people do things for Ganon. Those people are called 'monsters'. The other people here, Chork and Banji and Dabi and everyone, they fight monsters. I don't fight monsters because I want everyone to die. Instead, I sell bananas for fewer rupees than people who get into fights on the road."

"Do Vaal and other people want to say more later?"

It seems several of them really, really want that.

"I am here later. I want to know things. Vaal and other people say things. I know things from Vaal and other people. So I want to here."

Griffie has noticed the time, and would like to communicate another concept now. Preexisting sketch of cloud person in notebook! This cloud person is Griffie. Preexisting sketch of plant person wearing clothes and armor in notebook! This plant person is Griffie. Cloud person is from plant person. Magic. …regular plant of the same type the plant person is, also a preexisting sketch. This plant is Griffie and is person. Plant is from plant person. Magic. Plant Griffie is for sleep. Later: cloud person no, plant person yeah.

"Cool."

And now that nobody is going to be all "who are you and what did you do with the air elemental", Griffie will detransform before the Wild Shape time runs out.

No one pokes them. Vaal kind of obviously wants to, though.

"If Val touch me, Vaal know more for kill later? I want not die."

Vaal tilts his head. "I guess in theory? Not really, though."

"Oh, don't worry about that," says one of the other people, "worry about the Calamity if you're going to worry."

Yeah, fine, Vaal can poke if nobody here expects that to be a problem.

"Calamity?"

That... is one of those questions that everyone has an answer to. The Calamity is that dark cloud around the castle! The Calamity is that time a hundred years ago when the kingdom fell and people died! The Calamity is Ganon, the opposite of Hylia, and he's going to destroy everything! Or he isn't, because a hero is going to stop him, or because he clearly hasn't done it yet! The Calamity is a God, which is like a spirit but more powerful - a spirit is what Griffie is, probably, or Farosh or Dinraal or the blupees - there is however unanimous agreement that "Calamity Ganon is a really scaled-up version of a blupee" is the worst explanation.

Is Calamity some kind of general term for a kind of problem? If Ganon is the Calamity and the calamity is a cloud or an event, why does anyone work for that entity, how would it pay people, presumably it's not the case that every 'monster' is like 'I want people to die even if that means they try to kill me about it sometimes'? How is a cloud an event? If Calamity is a cloud and a person and sort of like Griffie but more powerful, then if Griffie is a cloud will people think Griffie is the Calamity?

Monsters work for Ganon because they're evil, which means they work for Ganon and hurt people. Or maybe monsters don't work for Ganon at all, monsters just happen to destroy things, and Ganon likes that. Vaal seems pretty confident that they're getting paid in magic things Griffie doesn't have the vocabulary for yet, but someone else points out that people had monster problems even before the Calamity.

A cloud is an event if the event is a cloud appearing! Griffie will not be mistaken for the Calamity because Griffie is the wrong color. The Calamity is purple. Some people start arguing about what color cloud Hylia would be.

Someone assures Griffie that they don't need to worry about how a cloud can be an event, they just need to not go wandering in the plain to the east.

If there's something in the east that turns clouds into events or events into clouds it seems concerning and like someone should do something about that. On the other hand, it sounds like 'a cloud named Calamity appeared, and the event of it appearing is also called Calamity for some reason, and people also call the cloud Ganon when it's hiring people, maybe because Ganon is the name of the business the cloud runs or something' is a decent summary of events? Which does not imply magic that turns clouds into events or vice versa.

It seems to be widely believed that Griffie should not try to figure out the details before they have more vocabulary.

Thaaaat is pretty reasonable.

Also, do any of the following names sound familiar? 'Torag', 'Dai-Kitsu', 'Asmodeus', 'Thyslin', 'Fandarra', 'Axis'?

One of those seems to be a term used in linear algebra. Someone thinks Torag might be someone who died a hundred years ago - "no, I think that was Daruk," someone else says. Some of these people met a Thyslin once! Nice person, lived out east, came by on the way to Rito Village.

Yeah, this does not sound like even the bigger-name cross-alternative deities are known here. This is pretty low-population, but no name recognition for Asmodeus or Dai-Kitsu strains the bounds of plausibility if they're known elsewhere in the world.

Anyway, Griffie would like to get paid to clean up the stables, and then do some more language practice, or possibly do language practice during if someone is willing to stand near the stables to help with that.

Banji, whose job that would otherwise be, is happy to make the stables someone else's problem and also happy to try to make conversation if Griffie wants.

Convenient. The conversational method is more pleasant than working as a party to all pick up a language from the same books without actual native speakers on hand.

Maybe Griffie should try to tell the story of the cooking pot that died and solicit vocabulary and corrections throughout? (In Griffie's telling, after the first cooking pot gives birth, a second cooking pot has twins, and the pot's owner commissions fancier and fancier cooking pots to attempt to gain similar from the trickster.)

" - What - oh, giving birth, like a mother? You're sure this is a pot? ... Two at once is called twins... Oh, my, what a story that is. Does that happen where you come from?"

Griffie laughs. "No. I think the story did not happen. And in the story, when the person said the pot gave birth, that also did not happen, he just put in another pot."