At one month, Erman had managed to sort out a few more words, but they'd begun to slow in progress. Nagisa had illustrated all the verbs she could think of, and every noun and adjective in the room had been exhausted. There was very little they could progress in those areas without her being allowed to go outside. He had gotten a hang of the alphabet she was using, though he'd also picked up on the fact that she knew more than one. They were working with the absolute simplest, by far the simplest lettering system he'd ever heard of. She had taught him the ins and outs of each letter and how some of them changed depending on context, but the rules were still very basic. It was a language of urgency, near as he could tell. From a culture where time must have been very short. He knew more relaxed languages tended toward longer words.

The only way to get any farther was to show her more things, but that would mean either bringing something down for her to see or taking her up to the surface. He'd said as much to the people in charge of the facility, but there was no way to tell if there was any chance of it happening. He'd been given a place to stay in a facility nearby, deep underground. There were three guard stations in rapid succession between him and the room where Nagisa was being kept, and it took him a good half hour to get through them all, but it wasn't more than two hundred meters. There was nothing for him to do in his room other than sleep, eat, and work on devising better means for communication. They'd given him a small whiteboard and a large one to work with, as well as a pair of markers and a towel for erasing. But he was running short on options.

It was on this day, just as he was heading out of his room to go see Nagisa and spend the day with her, that the doctor he had seen on the first day arrived. A tall man in a military uniform stood behind her. The doctor gave a slight bow, to which Erman responded with a deeper one. She smiled formally. "Erman, this is General Aster. He is here to see the progress you've made."

Erman had been informed that all information regarding Nagisa was to remain in the room with her. He was not to mention anything about her outside that room, even to the guards outside, and certainly not mention her name. He simply bowed to the General. "It's good to meet you. I was just headed there now."

The General returned the bow, far more shallow, but quickly turned away. "We never met, you understand. This did not happen."

"Naturally." Erman figured he could live with that. "Right this way."

He led the two of them through the guard stations, which took three times as long to pass due to there being three of them. Finally through with it all, they entered the small blank room where Nagisa sat alone on her bed. She smiled when she saw Erman, briefly regarded the doctor, and utterly ignored the General. He had expected perhaps some caution or nervousness about him, but she didn't seem interested in his presence at all.

Aster stepped ahead of Erman, then turned back to him. "So... what have you taught her?"

Erman wasn't entirely sure how to approach this. He knew they wanted him to teach her their language, but all he'd really accomplished was learning some of her language. "Alright, so for starters, the language she speaks is actually far simpler than ours, so I thought it would be better to learn how to talk to her than to teach her how to talk to us. We've primarily communicated by repeating a word and demonstrating its definition. It's also a an extremely primitive language, more so than any we have previously been aware of, and as a result I've come to realize that many of the words she says carry the same meaning regardless of most of the defining features of language as we know it. For example, her name is Nagisa. You can say that any way you want, faster, slower, higher, lower, enunciating it however you like, it's still her name somehow. I believe she may have a relatively large vocabulary as a result."

The General didn't seem to care too much about all the things he'd learned, but did latch onto one point in particular. "So it is not related to any known language at all?"

"No sir. Not in the slightest. Her written alphabet is so simple, some letters are comprised of no more than two straight lines."

"That's good." He nodded. "That's very good. You said you learned some of her language, then. Like what?"

He shrugged. "Oh, mostly just verbs and a few nouns. An adjective here or there."

"Verbs and nouns are what we're looking for. Can you give me a demonstration?"

"Sure..." Erman was starting to have misgivings about the General's intentions, but he went along with it. He turned to the subject of the conversation. "Nagisa." She had been watching him the whole time, but seemed to perk up when he said her name. "Stand." Reluctantly, she stood up. He thought for a moment before coming up with the right word. "Spin." She fixed him with a weird stare, but then complied. He got the feeling she was starting to understand what was going on.

Nagisa spun around once, then stopped and placed her hands on her hips. Finally, she acknowledged the General, looking him up and down. She said something, but Erman only picked up a couple words. The General looked to him, hoping for a translation.

Erman sighed. "We haven't gotten to full sentences yet. I don't know what she said." He paused, then straightened himself out. "Sir, I wanted to make a request. We've run out of things to demonstrate here, so I can't really learn anything more unless we got new material to work with. So, um..."

The General stood over him, a very stern look on his face, but then spoke very reassuringly. "You've made some good progress so far, from the looks of it. If you say you can't do any more here, then tell me what you need. We'll make sure you get it."

He took a deep breath. "I want to take her outside. Maybe have a safe place where she can stay, away from any population centers, but somewhere she can see and learn. I need a more open environment. I was thinking a house, a farmhouse maybe, in the Dhyaseil District. It's quiet, no commotion, they're used to visitors, don't ask questions, and wouldn't have a clue that her language is so unique. It's a great place to keep her away from the public eye, and would make my work so much easier in more ways than one."

The General frowned. "That's a bit much for you to be asking, but I see you're smart about it at least. I'll make sure your request is heard. It may take another month before we can get that done, but I see no reason to decline. I hope to see some progress out of this move, though. Listen to me. I want you to be able to mediate a conversation between her and me within a year. Bare minimum."

He nodded smartly. "I'm on a learning curve. I think most of the hard part is behind us."

The idea was that there would be no visible guards, so that when Erman and this strange girl entered the Dhyaseil District together, they wouldn't attract any major attention. There were curious neighbors, as there always are when a young couple moves from the city to the country, but they would think nothing odd of two kids making their way in the world. Erman just hoped he would be able to pass himself off as a guy who had married a girl he could barely communicate with. He wondered how long it would take before he was able to explain to Nagisa what the cover story was.

One day, he was shipped out to the Dhyaseil District to take a look at the house that was purchased for them. The farmhouse was now registered as belonging to 'Erman and Nagisa Kadestri'. There were large fields for crops surrounding the house, but nothing had been grown there for a long time. The last owner was a retired millionaire who could afford to just sit back and enjoy the end of his life. It was a good choice, and would allow him and Nagisa room to teach each other. He thought, maybe a bit selfishly, perhaps they could do more than that here. Perhaps they could build whatever life they wanted together.

He arrived by bus, made to look like public transportation but really he was the only one on it. The stop was a mile off from the farm property, which was itself a few miles across. The house was on the close side at least. It was on the long walk in, alone, that he realized how much work it would be to live here. Going anywhere and doing anything required being in shape. He wasn't out of shape, really, but this was something he would certainly have to work on. He reached the path up to the house, another half mile, and realized he had no idea how long it had been since he got off the bus.

Finally, after more walking at one time than he'd ever done in his life, he found himself standing in front of the farmhouse where he would be living for the foreseeable future. He took the next few steps, four steps up onto the front porch and reached out for the door. His first physical contact with the house, touching his fingertips on the door handle, was warm. Everything about the house felt warm. Peaceful. He stepped into the house.

All the rooms were empty. Wide and open, with dusty glass windows framed on the wall. The wooden floorboards and the late glow of sunlight cast a brown-gold atmosphere around him. The walls were thick and well-insulated, keeping the outside temperatures where they belonged and keeping the indoors temperature agreeable. The paint was holding up well for its age, only showing through or flaking off on rare occasions. Every room went the same way, and he started to imagine what it could look like.

Fields of wheat around the house would cast everything in a warmer golden glow. Soft furniture to sit on and look out the window at the world outside. Freshly grown food waiting in the kitchen to be prepared. And Nagisa resting peacefully on the soft cushions of the couch. He shook his head. He was letting his imagination get away from him. He needed to focus on the moment at hand.

The empty silence of the house returned, but the hope it held for him remained. This would be the place he would be staying with her. Maybe there was a General who wanted to command her, and maybe there was a government who wanted to find out where she came from. Maybe she was the point of interest for a number of scientific fields, and maybe no one would ever really know her true nature. All he wanted was to learn to communicate enough so that he could let her know, so that he could tell her, that he had fallen for her from the moment he first saw her.