Ankyra Sound Always had high, high hopes

yes hello federal officers? i would like to report a fourth-wall-breakage plz n thx send the aliens immediately

Did he forget to blink? Maybe, maybe not, he wasn’t entirely sure. He was so focused on watching her that he didn’t remember that eyes need to stay lubricated until there was a stinging sensation in his, forcing him to close them in a seconds-long blink. Yeah, that made things better. It didn’t matter much anyway, because she didn’t respond to the greeting directly. But hey, he could still work with it! He decided that he would just keep an eye out for any signs of confusion as the conversation continued—what could possibly be a better way to figure out which language he was using? Definitely not listening to his own words, that was way too easy.

Aningan stared at her for a second before shrugging his shoulders and answering with, “Family. Old family.” He’d been surrounded by the language up until leaving the glacier. “I used to only know that,” he explained. “But then I met the uppik—owl, you’d call her—and she helped me learn this one when we were traveling. And before.” He had also heard the common language in passing and was able to use that and his friend’s teachings to gradually learn it as a whole. There were times, though, when he couldn’t match words and meanings together, but he did his best to make those moments few and far between. “Sometimes I get confused with them,” he admitted, seeing no reason to hide it; it was the truth, after all, and not something easily hid. “They’re easy to mix up.” Even though they sound absolutely nothing alike.