Welcome to Gaia! ::

Katalina shrugged. "I assume there's more," she said offhandedly. "I don't really know. It's...it's not the kind of thing you think about, if you understand me. It's almost like breathing. The human shape we think about because it's so hard, and some of the younger folk see achieving it as a sort of coming-of-age. There's more, I think, but I don't know what it is. It's just part of us. Like how some of us can communicate with sea creatures - except that's not really the same, because not everyone can do it." She thought for a few minutes, lapsing into silence.

"Well, the kelpies can do it," said Katalina, frowning. "And a few others. Basically, I think the rule is that if they're at least vaguely humanoid, they can do it." She shrugged. "The older undines can, too, I believe, but that might be something you should ask them."

She felt a little bad that she couldn't help him any more than that - she was being very vague. But she just didn't know enough to be more specific.

Katalina watched him amusedly. She casually floated as close as she dared and looked over his shoulder.
The marks he was writing down meant nothing to her. She could only assume it was easier for him to understand than her.
"What does that say?" she asked, curious.

Katalina looked more carefully, but the marks still meant nothing. "Is it in code?" she asked dubiously, trying to figure it out. "Do you have a code so no one else can read it?"

She could speak human tongue fairly well, but of course she had never learned to read it. She had no idea what he was writing, much less that every sound had a letter or combination of letters.

Katalina shook her head, confused. "No. What the young ones need to know is passed down by the elders, or through stories," she said. "If we can't remember it, then it's not important. That's why you write things down, isn't it? To remember them?" She asked this a little uncertainly, as though she wasn't quite sure.

She carefully examined the shapes, nodding a little. "So...do they have sounds, too?" she asked. "How can you have a whole language with only twenty-six sounds?" Her tongue had hundreds of sounds, and even then it was sometimes hard to express oneself.

Katalina, however, was already lost. There was no way she would turn down this opportunity to learn more. "Yes," she replied. "I want to know how it works." Looking a little shy, she said, "I could try to teach you our language, too, if you want. As a...as a thank-you?"

She didn't really know if she could teach it to him - it involved some complicated tricks of the tongue, and she'd never taught it before. The young ones just...picked it up. But the least she could do was try, right? In exchange for the learning he was going to give her, the least she could do was give him a chance if he wanted to learn her side of it too.

Katalina watched as Joshua went through the letters, occasionally nodding and sometimes just trailing behind, trying to pick up on something that confused her. Writing didn't seem so hard, after all, she thought. She'd expected it to seem more difficult, more daunting, than just this. But it was twenty-six little letters, with one or two sounds each. How hard could it be?

She could learn this. She wondered what Joshua would think of her language when it came her turn to be the teacher.