It took around what I think might have been a year, judging by our physical growth, but we’ve all finally managed to get a pretty good grasp on the elven language. The pull and push factors that got us to learn were about the strongest one could get, and rather close to the conditions under which a real infant learns. We were being pulled by the fact that everyone was patient and gave clear examples of every word they were saying. We were being pushed by the fact that without learning elven we would have no other means by which to communicate.

We still struggled with the specifics of the language, but we could manage well with the day-to-day conversational phrases by this point.

It is also hard to tell time based on my own physical growth. I have no idea how the normal rate of elven aging is supposed to go, but I have recently been hearing a lot of astonished comments from adults about how me and Tia are growing “almost as fast as a human.” So, perhaps it is not so bad a guide after all?

There was also one more thing that helped us learn the language faster, and it came from a rather astonishing source. It turned out that Tia actually somehow knew the language it had evolved from.

“A lot of the words sound very similar to the language spoken by my mother’s people,” she had said one night. “It’s a little different, but there are some things… like ‘Idirr,’ the elven word for running. It is actually the words for flowing and foot from the old language of my mother’s people.”

“That sounds like natural language evolution to me,” I commented. “It’s like they decided to base their language on a poetic form of yours, but eventually, over time, the flowery terms broke down into just simple words. It would be very natural for a language to progress in that way over time. Under normal conditions, that is.”

“Yeah,” Rolwen picked up my thought, seeing exactly where I was going. “This is another world. How the heck would they have a language from Earth in their history that could evolve into Elven? Actually, better yet, where the heck is your mother from that they spoke this language, Tia?”

“Huh? Umm… Well, I don’t know the name of it, it’s just my mother’s people, that’s all I know. I didn’t really think about stuff like that back then when I was younger,” Tia said.

“And I suppose you don’t know how long ago it was either?” he asked.

“How about this?” I cut in. “What was the name of the biggest and most important city in the area where your mother was a god?”

“Umm…” She trailed off, but she appeared to be trying hard to think of something to answer my question. Meanwhile, I was trying to think of something that could jog her memory.

“What was the name of the greatest conqueror king of your time? And what was the name of his city?” I asked.

“Oh!” Tia said. “Well, I heard about this really scary god named Marduk. His people conquered everybody, and he started absorbing a bunch of other gods and got a lot more powerful. My mother had nothing to do with rulership, so he left us alone, but it was really scary when he was around doing all of that.”

“And!?” Rowlen demanded, getting a little excited. “What was the name of that god’s city? What were his people called?”

“Err… I don’t…” Tia stammered.

“It’s fine,” I interrupted them both. “Marduk is finally the name of a god I recognize. He’s the ancient Sumerian god of Babylon. That would mean Tia became a god over six thousand years ago. So, I guess the question is whether or not there’s any chance other worlds like this one could have had contact with Earth way back then.”

“Ancient aliens? Oh no, Asa’s become a conspiracy nut! Ow!” Rolwen chuckled, and then promptly got a jab in the ribs from the silent Levin who had apparently had enough of his antics. “It’s just a joke. Calm down, son!” Rolwen complained, getting a head-shake and eye-roll from Levin.

“Umm… Well, actually, it would be a lot easier for other worlds to contact Earth back when me and my mother were still worshiped. That was before the barrier around Earth went up.” Tia said.

“Barrier?” I asked.

“Yeah, something just like the one Ether-guy put up, only a lot more sophisticated and powerful. It had the same function anyway, it blocked off the flow of spirit energy. Spirit energy is what fuels the divine power of gods, so they all decided to put up a spirit barrier around the entire planet in order to concentrate the spirit energy. It worked really well too. It concentrated spirit energy on Earth so much that it made the spirits of humans stronger, and then the stronger humans made even more spirit energy, and then…”

“A positive feedback loop,” I commented.

“Sweet! So, that means we’re hyper super-powered because we’re from Earth? Isekai cheat powers for the win!” Rolwen cheered.

“Wait,.” I said. There was something else in that which stood out for me, “you said that Ether-guy made the same sort of barrier here. And it seems to just keep our energy inside this tree-room, right?”

“Yeah,” Tia confirmed.

“So, what would be his reason for doing that?” I asked. “Before, you said he thought my release of spirit energy would look to him the same as if I was bleeding, but if that was the case I’d think his meditation lessons with that lower-grade method of his would have been a lot more frequent in the past year.. I mean, it makes sense he would do something like this barrier too, but it would be an almost literal band-aid solution. That’s some pretty serious half-measures. He has barely even bothered since that first session.”

“Maybe he’s just lazy,” Rolwen commented, “would explain why we’re being kept inside, though, if it’s because they think it’s for medical reasons.”

“Or maybe it’s because we’re naked. Seriously, why don’t they just give us some clothes already!?” Levin commented. Yeah, that’s something we didn’t really discuss all that much. We’d gotten kinda used to it, but it had definitely been something that was on our minds.

“Maybe he was trying to do the same thing as on Earth and help me grow like those gods!” an unfamiliar voice said. It was a sharp high-pitched child’s voice, just like ours, but it had a much more innocent tone to it. I looked over to the source of the voice and noticed there was a fifth child in our little circle, sitting around in the dark. The child, who I couldn’t really determine the gender of, was dressed in a simple white outfit that looked like a bed sheet was attached to their shoulders and allowed to drape over their body. It was, however, decorated with a fine emerald trim and had leafy decorations on the shoulders that looked like real living leaves growing right out of the garment.

“Who’s there?” Rolwen asked, looking around blindly in the dark toward the general direction of the person who spoke. That’s right, I almost forget sometimes these days that the boys can’t see in the dark like me and Tia can.

On the subject of Tia, she let out a loud gasp and brought her hands to her mouth. “A spirit!” she said in excited wonder.

“Umm… I can turn on the lights if you can give me some mana.” the new child, apparently a spirit, said.

“Oh?” Tia said. “Well, we don’t have any fey here, but I think Asa should be able to give you some mana anyway. Her meditation can get almost any kind of energy.”

Wait, it can!? She didn’t mention that before!

“What are you talking about? Elves are fae.” Rolwen said, bringing up the other big issue with Tia's comment.

“What!? Really!?” Tia seemed shocked. She seriously didn’t know elves were fae? But more importantly, though, what is this mana they are talking about? I knew about mana from heaven in the book of exodus, but somehow I got the impression she was talking about the stuff that’s associated with magic in these newer computer games.

“Wait, does that mean I might be able to do magic now?” Tia said, all but confirming my suspicions. She somehow seemed very pleased with this realization.

“Hold on, did you seriously not know elves were fae?” Rolwen asked.

“Ok, I’ll give you mana!” Tia said, excited and clearly ignoring Rolwen. “What do I have to do?”

“Careful not to bite.” I warned her.

“I can control when I bite!” Tia snapped at me with a mildly aggrieved expression, but she seemed to forget it pretty quickly and looked back to the spirit child.

“Well, you just have to touch the floor, and then think about wanting the lights to turn on,” the spirit child said.

Those seemed like kinda strange instructions, but Tia didn’t even question it. She immediately did as she was told, and the soft green glow of the magical lights that illuminated this space came to life. The lights in the room were some kind of glowing veins in a network of ivy-like leaves that completely covered the ceiling. The adults always turned them off when they left by touching the wall. There was no sign of a light switch of any sort. They just touched the wall and seemed to focus on it for a moment, and then the lights would turn off. Then, they’d go downstairs and somehow the wood of the floor would actually warp to cover up those stairs.

I always figured it was some kind of magic they were using, since Tia had already told me about spirit energy and magic and some things like that, but I had sorta expected the spirit child to be the one to do it. Didn’t they just tell Tia how to do it herself instead?

“Ok, how did that even work?” Tia said, only now acting curious about the strange points there.

“No,” Rolwen said, “the better question is, who the hell are you, and how did you get in here!?”

“No,” I said. “The only question I want an answer to right now is where you got that outfit.” I knew right when I said it that this was probably the single most female thing I’ve said in this new life, but it was an important question given our complete lack of clothes that Levin had previously pointed out. I get that this child is a spirit, but if I see an opportunity for clothes on my back, then I’m going to take it.

The child looked like they were preparing to answer the other two questions, but as soon as I asked mine they made a very difficult face. “Uhh… well… I was kinda born wearing this,” the child said, dashing my hopes in an instant.

“For the other questions, uhh… I’m a nymph, I’m the spirit of this tree!” the child declared and then gestured up and around us. “I grew up and got smart off of all the spirit energy from you three.” He/she said, and gestured to me, Levin, and Rolwen in turn.

“Uhh, anyway, you want some clothes, right?” The child suddenly made a whip-lash turn back to my subject. “I know you do because I learned from the thoughts you had in your spirit energy! You don’t like being naked, right? Well, I can ask the elves to make some clothes for you. They’ll listen to me. Tree spirits like me are important!”

Well, that was good news, but now I was a little confused about how this kid jumped around from subject to subject. She was seriously worse than Tia. Why do the people with real usable information around me always have to be so flighty?

And yes, in my mind, this nymph was a girl now. Being female is literally part of the definition of being a nymph.