"Yeah... you were mostly tail before and used to having a lot of you in contact with the ground. Whereas walking involves a series of controlled falls from foot to foot and you have to make sure the next foot is where it needs to be in time to catch you." She demonstrates in slow motion.

"Hm," says Erian. "Maybe I see what you mean. It looks hard, though. Then again you'd probably have a lot of trouble figuring out how to get around without legs if you turned into a lindworm all of a sudden."

"Probably. I'd probably have taken a long time to figure out how not to flail if I moved the tail at all, and in the meantime I'd have had to get around by sort of pulling myself forward with my claws, you had those."

"Yes," he says, looking at his hands and flexing them. "Except for surface details, the hands are just the same. At least there's that."

"That should help with learning to do things like write if you don't already know how - I started with that, did you? - and pick things up."

"Started with - what do you mean?"

"When I turned into a human I could already talk and read and write. If you were living in a swamp this whole time I assume you didn't learn to talk the usual way, can you also read and write?"

"I'm not sure what the usual way of learning to talk is, so I don't know if I did it or not, but I don't think I was born knowing. And I don't know about reading or writing at all; I haven't tried."

She has a sack of her possessions handy and this includes writing materials. She writes: This is a sentence. She hands him the paper.

He peers at it, shrugs helplessly, and hands it back.

"Okay, no automatic literacy for you. You might want to learn that - you could get along without reading easier than getting along without walking, it doesn't come up nearly as frequently during most people's days and I can read you things if you like, but it's good to know."

"Okay. I'll try to learn."

"Taphinieu may have had another spelling in mind but I'd be inclined to write your name like so -" She writes it. "And his is thus and mine is like this."

Erian peers at the written names.

"...Have you eaten anything? Since, uh, last week? Or more relevantly last night, have you eaten the sorts of things humans eat or has that been overlooked in the confusion."

"Do humans need to eat every day?"

"Yes. Ideally more than once. Do lindworms not?"

"If I've only been eating very small things, sometimes. But mostly no. That seems inconvenient."

"A little, but we have more variety than fish all the time followed by weekly maidens."

"I ate things other than fish," he says. "Frogs. Sometimes deer. Sometimes birds, but they're very hard to catch. Other things. What do humans usually eat, then?"

"Sometimes any of those things, and also various plants, and some more kinds of meat. And milk and things made of milk, and eggs."

"Should I eat things, since I'm human now?"

"Probably. Let's get you to the kitchen and you can try some things. And practice walking."