thisavrou_log | (no subject)

Who: Link & Tali
When: Beginning of February (backdated 5eva)
Where: to the mess hall...and beyond
What: The buddy system is happening \o/
Warnings: None

Luckily, the mess hall is pretty empty when Tali shows up - she can sit on a table with a glass of water, watching the door and making sure the first person who walks in with no idea what the hell what they're doing is going to get accosted. That's assuming Link manages to get to the mess hall.

Well, if not, she has more than enough time on her hands to go scouring the ship top to bottom looking for... Maybe she should have gotten a description. Come to think, she's not even sure what species of person is going to come walking through--

When what looks at first glance like a human child wanders into the mess hall, she considers for a second just waiting for him to come to her - she already described herself, albeit vaguely. And at least he's prepared to see an alien now, if nothing else.

...But she's not good at that sort of waiting, so she slides off the table and makes her way over there.

"Hey, ah... Are you Link? I'm Tali."

And if it's not Link, well... Probably no harm done.

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She's not totally sure if he's shy regularly, or overwhelmed with everything going on...or some mixture of the two. Either way, he's a kid, and... Well, at least most of them got to become adults before they were thrown into this. She feels bad for everyone brought here, to a certain extent, but for Link right now, it's a sharper stab of a feeling than usual.

"No problem," she says, voice kind as she smiles down at him. "That's what I'm here for."

She gestures towards the kitchen area. "Do you want something to drink? I can tell you about the ship - show you the MID if you want, answer questions..." This is her half trying to figure out for herself what being a buddy actually entails, half actually telling Link. "And I can show you around the ship!"

...She's trying.

He goes through her questions like a check list in his head. He isn't really thirsty, and he understands how to navigate the ship, more or less, since he has a map. But the MID itself?

"They showed me how to use it, a little," Link says slowly. "I know how to use the map. But my letters to you didn't look right. It's strange." The fact he's calling the messages 'letters' says more than he thinks it does.

And, if he's honest, it's more frustrating than strange. He didn't have this much trouble when he was learning how to read and write. He doesn't understand why it's being so hard. But he doesn't know if he wants to admit it. It's kind of embarrassing, too. Normally, he learns fast. What did he miss during the first explanation?

But, even though he doesn't want to admit any of that, he's never been afraid to ask for help when he needs it. "Will you show me how to write them properly, please?"

Edited (I swear I'm done now) 2016-02-24 16:02 (UTC)

Letters. Tali's so completely tech-age that it takes her a second to figure out he means messages, and she looks clearly puzzled in that second before it clearly dawns on her and the confusion fades away from her expression. When she figures it out, that...actually does tells her everything she needs to know, really.

"Sure, I can do that. Come on." She gestures them over to sit down at the nearest table. "It's easy when you get the hang of it, but if you're not used to it..." The face she makes is sympathetic. "It's probably really confusing to start off with. I promise you'll get used to it, though.

"Have you never used tech like this before?"

Link shakes his head. He follows Tali to the table and climbs into a chair. He makes sure his wrist with the MID is resting on the tabletop. "I thought it was magic," he admits, "because we don't have anything like it."

If it was magic, he thinks he'd understand it better. A magic item that's a map and sends letters instantly? Yeah, he can see why someone would make something like that. It'd be really useful, but it must be really hard to do, since no one's done it yet back home. But this isn't magic. It's... technology. Which is so new to him that he's not even sure where to start.

For example... He points at the letters on the MID, the ones he's supposed to touch in order to write words. "Why aren't they in order?" Because, instead of following the alphabet, it reads QWERTY. It doesn't make any sense to him at all.

"Actually," she says lightly, "When I first saw magic, I thought it was some kind of weird, advanced tech. Magic doesn't exist where I'm from. I think everybody gets confused here, one way or another."

She's half convinced magic is just different laws of physics that could be explained by science were science only advanced enough. She'd have a hard time convincing anyone not from home that biotics - attacking people, levitating oneself, all sorts of things that look like they defy physics - weren't magic at all, just a series of reactions pretty well-documented by science.

...Either way, she's not sure that helps Link any - they're mostly in a universe very much defined by technology.

"I don't actually know why the keyboard looks like this..." she says, glancing down at her own. "We all have implants so we can understand each other - so I can use this keyboard, it's just weird." She pauses, then, "But keyboards in my language - Khelish - they're out of order, too. For us, it's so we can type easier. I mean..."

She holds out her own wrist with the MID so he can see it, and taps out a simple Hello, how are you? "In Khelish, the letters are ordered so that the ones we use most are in the centre, and the ones we don't use much are farther out."

...But then she grimaces, gesturing at the English layout. "This looks like it was made the opposite way around."

She shrugs at Link, looking slightly apologetic. "Sorry that's not much of an answer."

Hmmmm. Magic and tech... Link wonders what the connection really is, if they're so similar. He'd ask about it more, but he thinks he's going to wait a little bit. Focus on the letters first, and then, once he's got that down, he can bring it back up. He's curious.

He listens intently to Tali's explanations about the... keyboards. It's funny to him to use a music term for letters, but he's sure there's probably a reason for it. But, ordering the letters based on what's needed most often, that makes sense to him.

Link shakes his head. "It's a good answer," he assures her. "It doesn't make sense to me, either. But maybe it does to English." He peers down at the keyboard on his MID. There's still something bothering him, before he loops back around to magic and tech. "My words didn't come out as nice as yours, though" He decides to follow her example, tries to write out the same message, but it ends up coming out, hello ho ware youm