[https://i.imgur.com/0prXl8i.png]

Aleph piped up brightly. Distracting Pylo with mulling any further on the anguished and deep tragedy of the poor stonecutter and her mountain friend.

Such respect for each other!

Such kindness and passion.

Such a fundamental failure of understanding?

It was beautiful.

Pylo was looking forward to sharing the tale with her sisters!

Wait Aleph was talking.

“-after that, I guess maybe we should tell some silly stories ya? So I figured I’d get started on this one time while we were out in the noodle reed paddies-”

“Oh no you don’t! If you tell that story I’m going to tell about that time when you were-”

“Nuh uh! NUH-UH! You already went, you have to wait till everyone else has told a story before you can go again!”

Pylo hiccuped a bit and coughed out a few resiny spores that had built up when she cried. Tunie had settled after confirming that Pylo was fine, just deeply moved by a very powerful story.

But still such delightful nuance!

“So it was back when I was a dozen years old that-”

Pylo however saw an opportunity there and chimed in.

“Excuse me, Could you repeat that bit again?”

“What? When I was a dozen years?”

“Yeah... that’s an amount of time? How long is that amount of time?”

Aleph made a bit of a face then looked over at omega then her expression brightened.

“I think I’m gonna have to teach you the smaller bits first... So this is gonna be a second, between my first clap and second, ready?”

Pylo nodded, it didn't sound like it could possibly be a particularly short amount of time.

Aleph did a quick slap of her hands together and then with each palm into its opposite squishy deposits past the first joint distal from the torso.

“There, that was a second, so sixty of those is-”

“Excuse me... you mean that...”

Pylo tapped her lip with a fore phalange, then twisted it around to tap again in roughly the same amount of time.

“Is a single unit? Don’t you use smaller ones?”

Aleph tilted her head a bit then shrugged.

“Well we cut seconds up if we really need to measure something specific... sometimes a lot... you just cut as much as you need really”

Pylo tilted her head.

“That seems like a silly way to do it, how do you explain to someone what a second is without being there?”

Aleph blinked a bit then shrugged and looked at Omega.

Omega shrugs.

“We’ve never had to before the Traders arrived? And when they are here we can just show them I guess?”

Pylo huffed again to dislodge a few spores that had not cleared fully.

“Wait so you just are going along with a silly arbitrary time unit like that? No wonder you don’t know how to think about numbers at all”

Quarti laughed and shook her head apparently amused by something.

Aleph however was making a face.

“Now I’m pretty sure that was rude, like being mean rude, not like the whole constantly sounding like you want to lick my-”

Omega made an interrupting sound.

“What she meant to say, how would you describe a second in YOUR time units?”

Pylo huffed and looked at each of their heads.

“I don’t know how I’m going to fit it in there with what you use for saying, you really really store numbers wrong... Like I thought it was the squawker box that was broken before... but I think it’s actually your words that are”

Omega looked at aleph, then at Quarti.

Quarti however immediately shoved her hand out and waved it.

“I want to experience how you speak numbers dear and lovely Pylo! Please tell me most directly and I shall endeavor to explain?”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Pylo shrugged, worth a shot, maybe it would even help the poor passengers think better.

Of course however, pylo cheated and queried her ring to find the exact conversion. Who in their right mind would try to give exact time. But the terran’s didn't need to know that.

“That’s about a Buroʊrɛrgɛkr of time... a give or take some fiddling... I can’t get a perfect measure of exactly how long without special tools”

Quarti’s body froze for a moment before shuddering, eyes staring out into the expanse before laughing.

“Oh, that is a vast... but you speak it so small? So light and swift? Aleph! Omega! She counts by so much, such... it is eternities of division across the breadth of a blink to her. Yet she grasps them in a totality and speaks in but one verse multitudes”

Aleph blinks.

“She counts time by very tiny amounts? So a second is a VERY big number of them?”

Omega tilts her head to the side.

“How tiny? What exactly are you counting?”

Pylo tilts her head to the side.

“Time of course, what else would I count? Why do you count so much of it with your seconds? Seems arbitrary”

“No I know you are counting time, I meant what um... what interval of time? How do you pick something to slice it? You must pick something?”

Pylo peered deeply at the words forming in omega and still could not quite follow the logic. Maybe the Flatlander’s brain had suffered damage after all from the downshift.

“I just count the time interval... why would you count by anything else? Everyone will agree on it simple as can be, it’s the basis of the Trade Speech for a reason”

Quarti had started laughing again.

Omega was getting confused and frustrated.

Aleph suddenly grinned brightly!

“The Constant! She counts in the light interval constant!”

Pylo blinks then squints at Aleph a bit before grinning and nodding! Clever kid had realized it.

“Ah yeah, I guess light is a way to think about it... But it’s just the time interval... it’s not like you could cut it up any further... simple and obvious... None of this trying to cut up arbitrary seconds... That’s just foolishness”

Aleph blinks a bit.

“But the Light interval is TINY! Like completely absurdly TINY... How do you even keep track? That’s like I’d need to use scholar notation to even begin to say it and that’s a mouthful”

Pylo huffed and shook her head.

“This is what i mean by you Flatlander Toothscum people are thinking about numbers all wrong! I’ve been using numbers like this since I was an infant! There are nursing rhymes and creche games and everything!”

Omega raises her hand out waiting for a chance to speak. Why they all did that was confusing but pretty obvious to pylo at least.

“Uh... yes Omega?”

“You keep calling us uh... Seeds burst and spilled sticky sown and flourishing fecundity in the gums and molars rotting filth fruit... Uh I think... What is up with that... and can you please... uh maybe stop?”

Pylo tilted her head around.

“What? But that’s what you are... you are toothscum people, you live in the food scraping pieces of a world beast”

The Flatlanders all had blood rush to their faces. Even Quarti, although she was smiling in a bemused and somehow inspired manner.

Lips and mind quivering over the sounds of the meaning she had pulled from Pylo’s statements.

“Oh my dearest Pylo! I am going to have to use that raunchy euphemism for terra in my next work, such visions of depravity it inspi-”

Aleph however interrupted with a squeal.

“That’s It! It’s my turn to tell a story and I am going to TELL ONE!”