Page 116 of Phoenix's Fire

She grinned. "And Ayla os har," she tried in Vestrian.

"Is here," I corrected.

Meri huffed and flung up her hands. "Is. Here."

"Yes!" Kanik praised. "Lessa, try that in English?"

The tan Dragon groaned. "Ayla iss heeere."

"Use a little less emphasis," Kanik told her, switching to Vestrian. "All you have to do is speak the words, not drag them out."

So Lessa nodded and tried again. "Ayla is here?"

"Yes!" I gasped in Vestrian, hurrying over to claim my chair. "I mean, you have an accent, but everyone here does."

"I do?" Kanik asked.

I nodded and changed to English. "Yes, your accent makes the words bounce. Meri and I like it."

So Kanik turned his attention on Saveah. "Your turn," he said in English. "Pick a word, then tell me in both languages."

Her eyes jumped over to me, then back to Kanik. "Phoenix. Phoenix?"

"Cheating!" Brielle said. "Myths are the same in both languages."

"Because," Kanik told all of us using slow and enunciated English, "myths aren't in either language. Long ago, the world had many languages. Those languages made words for things that didn't exist outside their minds - "

"Imaginations," I offered, giving him a better word.

Kanik nodded. "That's the word I was looking for. But because the thing only existed in stories from that one culture, it was the only way to describe it. Phoenix, Wyvern, and even Dregin."

"Dragon," I corrected.

"Ha!" Lessa barked out. "See, some change!"

But Meri's head whipped over to her. "That was right."

Lessa's eyes got big. "What?" Then she switched to Vestrian. "What did I do?"

"You spoke English," Kanik told her. "And well."

Saveah groaned. "How?"

So Lessa leaned over the table towards my sister. "Okay, so what I've been trying to do is imagine how I'd talk with pebbles in my mouth. If I just mush up Vestrian a bit, then pretend I have a full mouth, they say it sounds better."

Meri's brow was creased as she tried to follow that exchange in Vestrian. "Are pebbles rocks?" she asked me in English.

I nodded. "Small ones. So how much of that did you get?"

Meri shrugged. "I think she said she put rocks in her mouth to speak English?"

"Pretends to," I explained. "And when I was learning Vestrian, I kinda pretended like I didn't open my mouth all the way. The guys said I was getting closer."

"Like how?" Meri asked.

So clenching my jaw, I said, "Like this. And if you make your tongue flat and hard, it sounds closer. Then swap a few letters..." I rocked my head, showing I was making a change, then switched to Vestrian with the same clenched style. "It comes out where they can understand."

Saveah stared at me with her mouth hanging open. "Oh-kay," she tried, overly mouthing her words. "So. This. Is. Better?"

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