They’d been talking over tea when Petra mentioned it- the melancholy that came with not being understood. Mercedes understood. As a child, she’d learned her family’s tongue before the one that Fodlan as a whole spoke, and speaking in such a different manner, words harsher and so much less fluid, some that made sense and others that seemed confusing beyond belief- it was exhausting. Mercedes couldn’t even conceive of it happening now, as old as she was. Her smile turns sympathetic, and she desperately wracks her mind for what little she picked up in her month abroad.

“Speak with me. I am of poor knowing Brigid for speaking, but I am more understand if you are speaking,” she says in her broken comprehension of a language she’d been immersed in for a month, beaming when Petra lights up in turn. “I am to be trying my best to understand!”