Page 105 of Culture and Curiosities
“Let us take our visitors somewhere out of the sun and provide them with refreshments and then I will give you and you alone a full understanding of the language situation.”
Daddy put enough Daddy in his voice that the confused professor finally stopped his automatic pushbacks. He was a pain in the butt too, but I was pretty sure that was because he was a teacher of some sort and they always thought they were right.
The professor finally seemed to give in because his shoulders did a tiny jerk movement I realized was our version of a nod as he responded to Daddy.
Weird.
Heads nodded and shoulders shrugged…did anyone on Earth do it differently?
I needed to travel to more places that had people if I didn’t know the answer.
“We’re getting a place to sit and some food while Toman breaks down the details about why everyone can’t get English.” Honestly, I wasn’t sure we’d have done any better on the hospitality side of things if the situation had been reversed.
“Is there any language on Earth they could learn that wouldn’t have anything kink related?” Kaden asked a great question even if he was from Florida and everyone he’d come with had been nuts.
“I don’t think so…not any productive language I can think of. I mean, maybe some tiny ones?” We’d have to get like small island in the Pacific kind of tiny for me to be sure. I wasn’t sure there was any reason for them to learn something like that, though.
Sure, they wouldn’t get a kink vocabulary but they wouldn’t be able to speak to anyone in America either.
Or anywhere else for that matter.
“Wren?” Daddy saying my name out loud had us tuning back in to his conversation. “There are a tent and chairs set up on the other side of the portal.”
Daddy pointed to the other side of the large rock the portal seemed to be set into. “It is just out of sight.”
Thank goodness.
It wasn’t as hot as some of the deserts on Earth I’d been to but it was hot enough that we were sweaty and uncomfortable already.
“That’s great. Thank you.” Everyone back home was going to be amazed at how boring I could be.
Professional.
Yes, that was a better word even if boring was more correct.
“If I’m going to get sweaty, it’s going to be doing mate things or something fun.”
Daddy didn’t react on the outside but on the inside he chuckled.
“I’d have to agree, my mate, I have gotten very used to the different forms of what you call air conditioning.”
“Please tell me you’ve got something like that over in the tent?”
As Daddy gestured around the rock, I turned to everyone else. “Let’s go sit down and then we’ll watch the show as Toman explains the human mating practices we’ve picked up.”
“If they have not set it up already, we can make the air cooler for us while we wait.”
Yes!
“Thank the ancestors.”
That got another laugh from Daddy but I was a good translator and focused on the group. “There seems to be air conditioning-like spells that he can put on the tent if they haven’t already been done.”
Nearly everyone blinked in confusion but Betty’s husband Albert frowned. “I think I remember my mother doing something like that when I was a child but it was a long time ago.”
Yeah, there’d been a lot we lost just because we hadn’t needed it. Humans were amazing innovators and we’d done a lot of that on our own.
We behaved ourselves admirably while we walked around the large boulder in a single file line with our belongings and without saying anything that would make anyone laugh.
