He had put his full attention on the books, but he probably should have paid more attention to the girl. As he set down his own makeshift sack of goodies to move toward the books he was assaulted by a verbal deluge. It seemed the girl had a lot to say all of a sudden.


    He didn’t understand a bit of it of course, nothing more than chirps and squeaks entering his ears. He wasn’t sure why she was using that language and not her rumbly voice, as he had never indicated he could understand it, but it was still the most he had heard her talk. When she picked up one of the books he became a lot more interested though.


    He turned the lights up a little, they were still at a quite dim setting from the attempt to acclimate the girl to the dark, since it seemed they would be doing a bit of reading and he didn’t want to bother with eye strain. It had the side effect of derailing the girls monologue though. She seemed to brace then get confused and forgot whatever she had been babbling about.


    Her bout of confusion ended with another round of being excitable though, as she opened the book and turned it to him. She also seemed to be pointing at the other book as well, even if he was still processing. The book he could see seemed to be some kind of nature book with a picture of a moose in it. He recognized the lettering but couldn’t read the words. The heartbreakingly low number of words indicated it was either a children’s book or a picture book of some kind. Not really helpful, as he had a way of working out the individual characters, what he needed were the rules for grammar and structure. It wasn’t a total waste of time, but it was more of a sideways move.


    “Moose.”


    Going off a whim and trying to get the girl to find a point he could understand, he tried to get her focused on the book in her hand. His word made her stop and think for a moment at least. As he went to point and say it again she actually beat him to it. Pointing at the book and copying him, she was clearly getting better at speaking. Her word was understandable the first time, even if she ruined it a little trying to make her voice low. As he hummed his approval and was about to congratulate her, she surprised him again. She pointed at him and said “Moose” all on her own.


    It took him a second to figure out she thought he was a moose, so he pointed at himself and tilted his head in question. He wasn’t really sure why she thought he looked similar to something that had antlers, but her chirp and repeating of the word seemed to confirm she was quite sure of it. He checked his own head to see if something had grown since the last time he looked, though all he got was a handful of smooth black hair.


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    ‘I need to find a way to shave.’


    Since he didn’t seem to have sprouted anything unknown, he assumed the girl was taking creative liberties. He wasn’t sure just how substantial those liberties were but as the girl seemed unreasonably happy at the moment, he would let it slide.


    Happy enough to drop the nature book and rush back to her pillowcase bag. He frowned a little at the mistreatment of the poor book, something he would need to train her out of, but he didn’t say anything as it let him pick it up himself. She seemed to want him to do something with the other book, though he was more interested in poking around this one a bit.


    As he looked through the pages, there seemed to be quite a few animals. The book itself was thin, clearly meant for children now that he had it in hand. No more than a small blurb near each picture. It was possible he could gather some grammar rules from the blurbs, but if it was meant for children he would never be able to tell if they were ‘correct’ or just easy to understand. At the very least it would let him learn the common stuff like ‘the’ or ‘a’ and how to end a sentence. Not much when you had technical documents to go through, but it was a great start he wished he had a while ago.


    It did seem the poor girl was taken aback by that fact he was more interested in the book in his hand than the one she seemed to want him to read. He started to worry that he had given her the mistaken impression that he could read the books to her. It was clear that she knew enough to speak….


    .. or was it clear?


    For all he knew she was spouting as much random babble in her chirpy language as she did when she spoke all rumbly. For her it might make sense, but he had no way to know if she was just making things up and he was reading too much into it or not. She might have no idea what the book said and wanted him to read it to her. His short language lessons might be the first bit of structured speech she had ever heard.


    He sighed and rubbed his head. This was going to take forever to work out and he wasn’t going to do it standing. It was clear that whatever the girl knew it, he would need to teach her his own language to be sure she wasn’t talking nonsense. She had at least reacted to English when he spoke about her book, so he wasn’t starting from nothing anymore. If he could get her to talk in at least broken english, teaching her would go much faster. The only problem being he didn’t have the time while he was searching the deck level and she couldn’t follow him until she understood not to run away. There was just more and more that needed to be done and it all seemed to want to be done now.


    ‘I can at least see what she says as I translate what I found. God, I need a damn shower.’