Intermission 13 Page 12

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“Sorry I’m late, the mushrooms were acting weird.”

“How are the handsign lessons going?”

Still tricky. It’s not like like when you and I learned it, when we already knew the language.

I asked Botanya to help since she learns so fast.

so fast

Yeah, like that.

“Well, I guess we keep trying until we figure it out. We can’t really take Ix with us anywhere until we can talk to them.”

We did figure out a few things.

Like, apparently elementals have a concept of gender!

Ix says “them” is okay, but—

HER

“Oh! They did one!”

Good job!

So, when she’s in her ice form, she says she’s a woman.

But when she changes to fire form, he’s a man.

“Huh. Is that an elemental thing, or is it just how Ix is?”

I’m not sure. But she picked up that I was using different signs to refer to you or Kamau, and she started correcting me.

“Well, I’ll make sure I refer to you properly from now on!”

THANK YOU

“wait”

“do those words mean different things”