There were so many things I didn’t know at the time, mostly because no one tried to tell me what was going on. I thought it was because I didn’t understand the language yet, but later I found out I didn’t understand the culture at all.

I kept studying the language, mostly because I didn’t have anything else to do. All three of “my” aliens helped me learn, so I wasn’t ever really bored.

Lyraan seemed to enjoy teaching me their language. We had a lot of conversations, starting with really simple things. Beginner stuff, you know? Draxaar started teaching me manners for eating and socializing. Obviously, that started off slowly because I couldn’t understand him, but he eventually figured out how to use gestures for me. Xandria apparently wanted me to become a sports star or body builder, because she made me do so many different exercises that made me so sore I could barely move, even when I was so sweaty I couldn’t stand myself.

In fact, every time I worked out, all of them seemed to relax and become happier. It was really kind of weird.

The daily activities weren’t anything special, so I’ll summarize the important things I learned. The main planet for these people is Letear, and the aliens call themselves Letearen. Sort of like Earth and Earthlings. They colonized most of their solar system and are a member of some kind of United Nations for planets. Also, there are a lot of other kinds of aliens out there. A lot. But like Kial told me that first night on the ship, Earth is so far away from all of them that we’ll never (probably) get to join the club.

Lyraan started teaching all the words for the aliens I was most likely to meet, and Draxaar taught me how to behave around them. Xandria thinks that everyone is a potential enemy, so she kept trying to make me a warrior or something like that.

The Letearen language is called Woliteal, and the grammar is really different than English. I felt like I had to think backwards to form sentences. I learned the vocabulary a lot faster, but they couldn’t understand me because I couldn’t put the words in the correct order. This also slowed down my learning how the society worked, which made Draxaar kind of annoyed.

Letearens are a formal people, and they expect everyone to know their place in the pecking order. I figured I was automatically at the bottom since I was the outsider, you know? It took me the longest time to realize that I wasn’t because I was so used to being the invisible kid that other people sat on because they didn’t realize I was there. I’ve also been mistaken for a trash can.

Letearans measure time in two different ways: traditional and intergalactic. Anything that isn’t strictly homeworld stuff uses the intergalactic measurements, kind of how Earth uses time zones and the international date line. While we were travelling back to Letear, we used intergalactic time. It’s a little bit longer than Earth time, but making the conversion doesn’t make understanding this any easier, so I’ll just use the same words (day, hour, week) and not give myself a headache.

I was on the ship for about a month before I felt like I could actually have a real conversation with any of my staff. Yes, we’d talked and gestured and communicated, but it wasn’t a proper conversation. Well, it still wasn’t a proper conversation, but at least I could sort of talk with them.

I’ll share an example of how our talks often went, but remember that this was all in Woliteal, and I was struggling worse than a high schooler trying to hang out with college students.

“Hey, Lyraan?”

“Yes, Lady Patty?”

“Person … here … why where are?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Person … person person …” –here I made gestures– “here are where?”

At this point, Lyraan would look at me blankly while trying to guess my meaning, before suggesting a few things.

“Do you mean, ‘here are people’?”

“People, yes. People, umm, people, uhh, are where here?”

“Hmm. People, where, here … Where are people?”

“Where are people! Yes! Here where are people?”

“Here where? Here/where?”

For this attempt, I made gestures and sounds of an airplane flying by, since I didn’t know what sound a spaceship made. That often confused Lyraan more, and we would go back and forth more times until something would finally make sense.

“Aha! Where are the people on the ship!”

“That, that! Where people on ship are!”

I would spend a brief moment feeling proud of myself and my effort while Lyraan would consider how to answer my question in words I could understand. Then we would repeat the same pattern in reverse.

“Hmm, how shall I say this… Lady Patty is here. In this room. The other people are outside this room. Not in this room. They are all performing their duties at their stations, and it’s hardly reasonable to wander about to interrupt them with a sightseeing trip. Erm, they are working. Working.”

I would understand something like this: “Hmm, how … say … Lady Patty is here …room … people … room … (so many words I didn’t understand) … Erm … carpet. Carpet.”

I guess my inability to understand Woliteal spared Lyraan the embarrassment of explaining why I wasn’t allowed to meet anyone else on the ship.