Firefly Ravine baby did a bad, bad thing

Mahler, like so many others, took it upon himself to teach her words in the common tongue. Despite its necessity, and its endlessness, the topic of conversation had become somewhat trite for the banshee. As much as she wanted to speak fluently with all of the others she met in these strange lands, Isleña was so tired of learning words — and then relearning them, when she inevitably forgot the word — and it exhausted her mind and body when everything in the world was always a lesson.

But beggars could not be choosers, so like the dutiful student she was, she grinned and repeated the words and attempted to commit it to memory.  “Burds,” she said thickly, the word sitting firm and bulky upon her tongue. The man himself had an accent nearly as strange as her own, and from the modulations of the second word he spoke, Isleña strong suspected that was the same word in his own lexicon. Figuring this was all the permission she needed to do the same, the girl nodded and said with a definitive tilt of her chin “Quşlar.” Then, hoping to impress him once more [she found that she did love to please him], she posed the question “Do you like… burds?” to him and raised an eyebrow expectantly.