The woman shuddered and stopped breathing for long enough that Ferrudion decided to inspect her soul. It looked fine, no imploding going on.
Finally, the woman gasped and drew in a rugged breath.
“Please, lu!upanne!”
Ferrudion glanced at Kalou Dan who immediately understood and translated,
“Lu!upanne is a word for a good you do to others. To kill a bad person quickly, to not give pain to them, like that.”
Ferrudion tried to find a concept that matched those words.
‘Relief? No, that is a bit lacking. Favor? A bit much. Hmm, a bad person would be an enemy of mine. Giving an enemy a quick death... Kindness? Nah.’
He shrugged and gave up.
“I do not intend to kill you,” he told her out loud.
Through their soul link, he projected,
『But there could be pain.』
He kept the communication to the idea level. It was less precise and not at all comprehensive, yet Ferrudion was sure that the concept of pain would obliterate her mortal soul.
Even his godly soul had been damaged when his mother first conveyed the concept to him. It was such a vast concept…
‘Now that I think about it, I could have restricted it to the specific kind of spiritual pain that is soul overloading. Then again, who knows what the future holds.’
All the while, the pahipiti remained motionless, her soul undoubtedly processing the sense of possibility enveloping the complex but vague idea of pain he had shared with her.
Eventually, he received his response in an inkling of acceptance washing through the link.
“I help-ammenne you.”
Ferrudion looked at Kalou Dan.
“She intends to help you.”
“What is this -ammenne bit?”
“It is her word. We say do-amunu something. It is like we intend to do.”
“They are two words for one thing, then?”
“Not exactly. It can be used for things. The water cannot intentionally calm, but sometimes it calm-amunu.”
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Ferrudion was now very confused.
『“Explain.”』 He threw the idea of explaining at the woman.
The woman clutched her head and grunted. Then she sighed and said,
“It is to talk about… after. When the wind stops, the water calm-ammenne.”
“Ahh!”
‘And here I thought mortal languages lacked such foresight. Why did they never teach me this useful form?!’
“I…”
He had been about to say, ‘I see, ’ but since this new mortal had a resilient soul, why should he settle for anything but perfect words?!
『“Understand.』 Instead of throwing everything at her at once, Ferrudion slowly transmitted the idea of comprehension to the pahipiti.
“Lamappe (understand),” she said after a moment.
“Very good. I understand,” Ferrudion repeated with a grin.
Kalou Dan looked at him dubiously.
~~~
Ferrudion spent the last few hours of the day throwing ideas at the woman and waiting for her to utter the corresponding word in the language of these people.
He also asked her about some of the words he had heard earlier. While greater gods did not always know everything they had heard, they could certainly recall it.
Thus, he learned that Kalou Dan was Kalou Saha's nephew. And while this was a merchant ship, Kalou Dan was actually something called a “minor noble”.
Unfortunately, while he could throw ideas at the woman, whose name was Lemme Om Apox, she could not do the same. Thus, Ferrudion did not have the faintest idea what a “minor noble” was. Other than a type of mortal, of course.
At this moment, he was having a conversation with Kalou Dan as he tried explaining just that.
“I showed you the area on the map, the Ironforest Kingdom, yes?”
Ferrudion shook his fist twice in agreement.
“I am from there. There is a small area called the falunu ahini Forest paloni. My family is strong there.”
Ferrudion sighed. “Family” had been one of the words he had learned yesterday. And still there were so many that he did not know.
He directed an idea at Lemme om Apox, 『“Control.”』
She took a moment and said,
“Po!oheyppe (control).”
Kalou Dan muttered “Po!ohipou” under his breath.
“Does that mean your family controls the area?”
Kalou Dan looked between them, clearly fascinated.
“Yes. But what is she?”
Ferrudion grinned.
『“Mortal translator.”』
Lemme Om Apox frowned as two complex ideas hit her soul, one after another.
“A-word-ppema (translator).”
“A-word-pouma,” Kalou Dan corrected her pronunciation.
“Translator teyleymeyshe (mortal),” she finished and shot the teen a murderous glance.
The teen did not dare correct her this time.
“Right, she is my mortal translator, duh!” Ferrudion exclaimed.
The “duh” was the result of him asking her for a way to indicate a sense of disdain at someone's failure to grasp the obvious.
“I want to switch topics. I have wanted to ask this for a long time. How do you have fun?”
That's right, Ferrudion had finally learned their people's word for fun!
“Fun? Oh, fun!” the teen repeated the word as if only now grasping its meaning.
“I like to le!imou.”
Instead of sitting through the teen fumbling with words to explain this one, Ferruduion stated determinedly,
“Show me.”
An hour later, he regretted it.
Although he had already learned the squiggles these mortals used to record their language when they had explained their map to him, he did not appreciate these objects filled with columns upon columns of them.
‘There are too many words I do not know.’
At least, he now knew the meaning of “le!imou”. It was the act of staring at these objects filled with squiggles: reading.
It had little to do with the kind of reading he was familiar with, but that involved concepts and required soul sensing. Since these mortals were incapable of soul sensing and their souls too weak to process concepts, he understood why they would use this inferior method.
Still…
“This is not fun.”
“Oh. What kind of fun were you thinking off, Pelou Dean-agam?”
“Falling out of the sky.”
“Oh, that's what that was about.”