*NOTE- Remember English is now using these {} brackets while the other language is using the common"" quotation marks*
While he was thinking about this, Iris began to lead him to the next place. The building she led him to was slightly bigger than most of the other houses. As she led him inside he a bunch of chairs and a woman sitting across the room. Through introductions he found out her name was Brenda. After being introduced to each other, Iris continued a conversation with her leaving Leo out for the moment.
He took the time to examine Brenda and found that as far as he could see, she didn't have some kind of "uniqueness" to her. Then their conversation ended as Brenda grabbed a few items for Iris, it was then that he could see what kind of building this was and Brenda's role. She was a teacher! He recognized some of the items she handed to Iris as things such as crude flash cards, with characters he didn't recognize on them. As he was wondering what Iris needed them for, she then turned to look back at him and then he understood with a bitter smile. They were for teaching him.
After apparently thanking Brenda for the supplies, Iris then led Leo back towards the house they started at and the passed it. As they kept walking he gradually heard the trickle of water over the rest of the daily noises. A few minutes later a beautiful pond surrounded by dark green grass cam into view. As Leo looked up he could see a small waterfall feeding the pond from further up the mountain. The area was very serene.
Seeing his reaction to the area Iris smiled and promptly found a nice patch of grass and sat down. Pointing to area in front of her, she indicated he should do the same. After he sat down she then pulled out the first of the flash cards. The moment he saw it he couldn't help bursting into laughter, apparently he had gone from preparing for college back to elementary school in what felt like only a few short days to him.
The card Iris held up was a thin slat of wood that had a crude drawing on it with some characters below it. What was on the card though was a picture of a tree. Iris then pointed at the picture and said,
"Tree!"
He couldn't help smiling at her as he repeated the word back.
Like this his lessons began. She would hold up a card and pronounce how to say the word corresponding to the picture, and wait for him to say it back. As such he quickly learned how to say words such as tree, rock, water, and mountain relatively fast. After ensuring that his pronunciation was correct, she then moved on to basic greetings.
It took some effort for him to realize what she was trying to say, but after hearing her name in the sentence repeatedly; he began to realize she was saying,
"My name is Iris" as an example of self introduction. And so his lessons continued. As he quickly began to learn introductions and greetings, Iris was visibly impressed by his progress. He could only smile ruefully though as he remembered nearly failing foreign language classes in school. He reasoned there was a difference in only studying for an hour a day, and needing to learn just to establish basic communication.
As the sun began to set Iris put the lessons to a halt and then taught another phrase,
"Time for dinner" as it had already been quite a while since he had eaten the stew Leo was once again quite ravenous. He never appreciated learning another languages words so much before. After cleaning up the materials Iris led the way back to the center of town, there Leo was greeted with the towns full inhabitants setting up what looked like a feast. A new group of people were off to one side covered with blood up to their elbows.
From the smell, Leo deduced they were hunters that had just finished cleaning a kill and that was what the appetizing smell was. As one of their members saw them walking over and alerted a woman who seemed to be in charge. As the woman walked up Leo noticed several things at once about her and the hunters.
First was that she had a third eye in the middle of her forehead. He watched as while her two normal eyes were on them, her third eye was darting back and forth around the village as if it was trying to examine everything it could at one time. He guessed this is what let her become the head hunter, being able to keep track of multiple things at the same time.
Second, all the hunters were wearing the same tight fitting leather outfit Iris was. Realizing that this was probably something like a uniform for hunters, Leo decided that it seemed to fit her. It also explained what she was doing in the middle of the forest when he fell. Recalling the scars on her hands, he reasoned they were probably the result of skinning and cleaning game.
And lastly was that as the woman approached Iris gave her a small bow and respectfully called out to her,
"Master, welcome back. Was there plenty of game to be found?" The woman looked her over and smiled.
"Yes, we came across a herd of tusk Giants in the valley. We were thinking of trying for one when we heard the howl of some high wolves nearby and didn't want to get caught in the conflict. We settled with taking a stag lord while we were returning."
Leo could only make out a very small amount of their conversation but was pleased with the improvements he had already made. As if she had just noticed him the woman then turned to him and said,
"I'm Natalie, head of the hunters. Now what do I call you?"