"Oh." I bit my lip. "But I thought we were near the ocean?"
"Oh, I got this," Kanik said, hopping up. "I will be right back."
And with that, he hurried from the room. Next, I heard the sound of his feet on the stairs. That brought up one more question.
"Am I not allowed to know what is on the second level?"
"The what?" Zasen asked.
"Sacund floor," Rymar answered, mangling the first word. "Tail har."
"Tell," Zasen said, enunciating the word. "Her."
So Rymar pointed at me. "Tell her."
Which made the Wyvern turn his eyes back to me. "Rymar and Kanik have their rooms up there."
"And you?" I asked.
He shook his head. "You are sleeping in my room."
"So where will you sleep?"
He patted the arm of the couch he was sitting on. "Right here, just like a gentleman."
I nodded, taking that in. Thankfully, Kanik's return made all of us look at him, meaning I didn't have to figure out anything polite to say in response. I wasn't sure how I felt about sleeping in the Wyvern's room, using his bed, and taking over his space. I also wasn't about to offer to share it with a man!
"Zasen, you can start lunch," Kanik said. "I got this."
"Dismissed," Zasen joked before jerking his chin at Rymar and rambling off words that weren't English.
With a nod, Rymar pushed to his feet and the pair left, but Kanik was busy spreading a large piece of paper out on the low table between us. In his other hand, he had a book. One in his language. The paper was large, but once it was spread across the short table, he knelt on the other side. First, he gestured to my book, then to the map before him.
"Look closely. This is the world now. In your hand is the world of a thousand years ago, or almost." One claw traced a section of land. "Idaho."
I looked, then looked at the map in my book, then looked at his again. "But…"
He pointed to the east, indicating the water. "Inland sea. It translates to the Vestern - er, Western Interior Sea and happened when the poles melted. It didn't happen fast, but it still ruined the empire that existed at the time. It was called America, and Idaho was a part of it."
"The ice melting did all that?" I gasped.
Kanik nodded enthusiastically. "And it got hot. Really hot. Fish died because the water wouldn't hold as much air. Plants couldn't grow where they were supposed to, and millions of people starved."
"Millions?" I was skeptical, convinced he'd made a mistake in his choice of number.
Kanik simply nodded again, making sure I could understand. "Millions, because once upon a time, there were a lot of people on the planet. Now? Not so much. And everything is bigger." He lifted the other book and opened it. The words made no sense, but the picture did. It showed a man beside a dog, or maybe a wolf. "Back then, they looked like this." He flipped a few pages. "Now, it's like this." The canine's back reached the man's ribs instead of his thigh.
"That's amazing!"
He laughed. "Coming from a girl who spent her life underground? I'm sure. Rabbits used to weigh about ten pounds. Now they're closer to forty. Everything is bigger, and that makes it a lot more dangerous."
"Cows?" I asked, thinking of the things I'd read about in my forbidden library.
He shook his head. "Didn't live. Supposedly, there are some on the other side of the sea, but none here. All extinct."
"Deer?"
He stood and held his hand just above his head. "A lot bigger. One feeds a few families, though."
I gestured to the book he held. "And that's your language?"
"Yes."
"It doesn't look like English," I pointed out.
He turned the book so the words faced me. "It will once you know the rules. The first thing to know is that double-V, what you call a double-U, is pronounced differently. Like V. That's why it's Vestrian, not Westrian."
"Why would it be Westrian?" I asked, sure I'd missed something.
"Because," he explained, "we live in the western hemisphere of the Earth. When people shifted to share one language and the borders of countries no longer meant anything, English became Vestrian."
ThirtyZasen
Rymar and I made a light lunch for the four of us. It used the remainder of the bird from the night before. Twice, Orin - Ayla - offered to help. Both times, one of the guys assured her she didn't need to. Then Rymar muttered to me how he had no interest in eating anything made by someone who didn't know about spices, let alone the difference between duck and pheasant.
Which was something else I hadn't thought about, but it made sense. The girl had been surprised at the simple meal we'd made last night. She'd called the trail food we'd made from game caught and all but burnt over an open fire "juicy." Supposedly, her meals in the Mole base had been made from simply vegetables, fungus, tubers, and meat.
In other words, she knew nothing. And yet, she'd mentioned that her supposed wedding had been held in the "dining hall." To me, that sounded like a communal area, and potentially a tactical target. And now that we knew what language she spoke - and could fumble through our vastly different accents to communicate - I might even be able to convince her to tell me more.
