‘Uh … sure?’

‘Thank you,’ Roveg said. He emptied the vial onto the table. ‘Could you assist me, please? I need this as flat as possible, and I believe your paws are much better for that task.’

Tupo did as asked, looking puzzled but intrigued. A few seconds later, xe’d provided Roveg with a flat patch of dirt.

Roveg flexed his frills. Yes, it would do. He extended a right foreleg, and with its pointed tip, he drew a neat vertical line in the dirt, dividing the makeshift canvas cleanly in two. Then, with deliberateness, he took both a left and right foreleg and began to tap tidy indentations, starting near the dividing line and then spreading horizontally in opposite directions. He completed one pair of lines, then another pair above it, then another. After a moment, he leaned his torso back up and looked at Tupo. ‘What do you see?’ he asked, gesturing at the patterns.

‘Dots,’ Tupo said.

Roveg expanded his abdomen happily. ‘To you, yes,’ he said. ‘To me, these are sentences. This is how we Quelin write.’ He pointed closer. ‘Look carefully. What do you see?’

The child squinted, rubbing xyr lips together fervently as xe extended xyr head over the dirt. ‘They’re the same on both sides. Or … wait.’ Xe frowned harder. ‘They’re kind of different.’

‘Ah, you’re clever, Tupo. Yes, that’s exactly right.’ Roveg gestured at the sentences. ‘Everything I’ve written on the left side has the same literal meaning as everything I’ve written on the right. They are the same words. But each side represents a different means of speaking. Right now, I’m speaking to you with the vocal organ in my throat.’ He tapped his exoskeleton right where it lay over his oesophagus. ‘This is the only thing I use when speaking Klip. But when I speak Tellerain—’

‘That’s your language,’ Tupo interjected.

‘That’s right. When I speak Tellerain, I use both my throat and my … hmm. You don’t have a word for them in Klip. The … hard structures I have in the back of my mouth. They make sounds like this.’ He rattled his mouthparts together in quick staccato, releasing a chord of loud clicks that amounted to nothing but pure gibberish.

Tupo was delighted. ‘Do that again.’

Roveg obliged; the child laughed. Roveg continued with the impromptu lesson. ‘Tellerain is, in a way, two languages in one. Take the word for …’ He looked around the museum. ‘Rock. What’s the word for “rock” in Mululo?’

‘I don’t speak Mululo.’

‘No?’ Roveg was surprised by this. It seemed extreme for Ouloo to not teach her child xyr own official language.

‘I know, like … a few words. But I speak Piloom with Mom.’

‘Oh, my mistake. I didn’t realise your mother’s from Ulapot.’ A small Laru agricultural colony, located in Aandrisk territory. He’d heard of their regional language, but never heard it spoken.

Tupo was surprised. ‘Nobody ever knows Ulapot.’

‘Of course I know Ulapot. They export the best redreed in the Commons. So, what’s “rock” in Piloom?’

‘Oelo,’ Tupo said.

‘Interesting. In Tellerain, there’s only one word for “rock”, but you make it in two ways. Spoken through my throat, the word is trihas. Spoken with my … other things, the word is—’ He released a crisp set of clicks. ‘Put the two sounds together, and you get …’ He demonstrated the layered word.

Tupo attempted to mimic the clicks with xyr tongue, and failed spectacularly. ‘I can’t do that.’

‘You don’t have the mouthparts for it. No one does, and so no one can speak proper Tellerain aside from us, just as no one can fully speak Hanto or colour language. There aren’t many other sapients who make the attempt, but those that do only speak Simplified Tellerain, which uses the mouth sounds only.’

‘But that’s not … that’s not the whole word,’ Tupo said.

‘The meaning comes across. If you were to say trihas, I’d know you meant rock. But the …’ How to explain this to a child? ‘The flavour is missing. You know how some words just feel better than others?’

‘I guess.’

‘Well, I can change the way a word feels a lot by just changing the clicks. Listen again as I say trihas.’ Roveg spoke the word in full, throat and mouthparts together. ‘That’s a boring way to put it. That’s how you’d read it off of a dictionary feed. Now, if I was telling you that the rock in question is quite beautiful, I’d say it like this: trihas.’ The clicking this time was made further back in the mouth, a little sharper, a little deeper. ‘But if I was annoyed at this rock, if I had just stepped on it and hurt my toes, I’d say trihas.’ The accompanying clicks were exactly the same as before, only harsher, messier. Roveg exaggerated the sound like an operatic villain, so that Tupo could clearly hear the difference. He gestured again at the writing in the dirt. ‘So, you see – the left side of our writing tells me the throat sounds, the right side tells me the mouth sounds. At first glance, you’re right, they look like mirror images of each other, because each side represents the same words. But those differences you see, like how this letter is higher than its counterpart – those are directions. They communicate the feeling I’m trying to get across.’