what in the longdark spitting-pit is that
This was a bad idea this was a bad idea this was a bad idea.
Holly runs as fast as she can but the demon's faster. She has no idea where Lightning's gotten to; maybe he found a tree to climb. She on the other hand has been diverted into a treeless hill and she's careening down a slope, trying very hard not to trip.
And the demon's gaining on her.
She's never seen anything like it and neither has Crystal; maybe Book knows what it is but Book's asleep. It's mostly mouth - it looks like a cross between a floorlength mirror of a mouth and a snake to propel the mouth along.
And Holly's not fast enough.
The mouth catches her.
But it doesn't hurt.
Where are we?
----
with Minus (kappa)
with Mark (kappa)
with Max (Benedict)
in Terraria (kappa)
with Emma (Marri)
with Erin (Rockeye)
Holly runs as fast as she can but the demon's faster. She has no idea where Lightning's gotten to; maybe he found a tree to climb. She on the other hand has been diverted into a treeless hill and she's careening down a slope, trying very hard not to trip.
And the demon's gaining on her.
She's never seen anything like it and neither has Crystal; maybe Book knows what it is but Book's asleep. It's mostly mouth - it looks like a cross between a floorlength mirror of a mouth and a snake to propel the mouth along.
And Holly's not fast enough.
The mouth catches her.
But it doesn't hurt.
Where are we?
----
with Minus (kappa)
with Mark (kappa)
with Max (Benedict)
in Terraria (kappa)
with Emma (Marri)
with Erin (Rockeye)
no subject
Max grabs his bag and zips it up impatiently- and then realizes he'd probably benefit from staying as long as the two linguists are here. He puts it down on a sofa on the other side of the room.
no subject
no subject
Trevor, meanwhile, opens to a blank page in his notebook. "So, the two-people thing... they keep switching off, right? There's probably something in the language that denotes which one of them is talking, or it'd get confusing. Do you think we should look for it in pronouns, verb conjugation... something else?"
no subject
no subject
He flips through his notes, looking for something.
"...but then, we don't know whether it's even important to tell people apart, for them. We don't know how these pairs function, culturally. Hard to make assumptions."
no subject
Pyay noms pizza crusts.
no subject
Trevor puts down his notes. "Gah- okay, we need to... we've got the sounds and alphabet, that's good... where do we want to go from here, though? Usually I'd start asking about pronouns and useful prepositions, but we don't know if they even have grammar terminology, much less how to ask about how their parts of speech work."
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Max looks up at... whichever one she is. She hasn't said much since the mweelsrow questioning, so he's going to guess... Pyay?
He stops himself from asking "You doing okay?", since she likely wouldn't parse it right- and settles on "Is the food good?"
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
...He wonders about her mouse supply. She discarded several dead ones, earlier, and he doesn't know whether that's normal and if she'll need to buy more mice on top of food, later.
"Uh, mouse..." Both of the linguists are gone- he's back to having to puzzle out how to phrase things. He doesn't know if she knows "die" or "new"...
"Your mice sleep, but... before, hours, maaso, mice... dead, mice..." He takes a scrap of paper and draws a mouse lying on its back with Xs in its eyes. He's not sure it's recognizable, so he draws a live mouse next to it for contrast.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
But... yes, she can set a leaf on fire by stealing all the heat from a large object... instead of just swapping their "temperature", it's actually moving the energy. So... she warmed up by killing off her mice, stealing their heat and freezing them to death? It seems kind of wasteful, but he nods with understanding anyway.
no subject
no subject
More interesting is that muilsroo appears to be a free heat pump- creating heat differentials of arbitrary sizes at no cost. Either it circumvents entropy- god, he hopes that's the case- or it's drawing on a power source that can transmit over distance and across the boundaries between universes. The latter, he imagines, might help the physicists track down Kweengow, unless the power source is no closer to Kweengow- or, Kuigao- than it is to Earth. Both options are encouraging.
"Muilsroo cold..." he trails off. He's not sure how to ask about it, but... why take heat from all those mice? Why not from the ground, or the air, or... just a single mouse? He doesn't recall her dead mice being at absolute zero- a limit on how much heat can be transferred from something?
Trevor comes back, toting what appears to be an older desktop computer and monitor. He sets them on a desk and starts wordlessly plugging them in.
"No laptop?"
"No laptop."
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
"Prepositions, prepositions. It'll make it an order of magnitude easier to talk about things if we can talk about relationships between them. In, under, on, before..." Trevor supplies.
"Might want to stick 'clip art' in your search, cut away details that'll distract her from identifying the thing you're trying to show?" Max adds, hearing that. Trevor takes a deep breath.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)