“Mhm”

Ling Ru woke up because of the scent, it was cooking! delight filled him as he woke up bit after bit, so when he woke up to see a beast above the fire, he was in a bit of a melancholy due to the reality that awaited him, but he pushed it aside when he remembered what had actually happened.

He had been dreaming of home, of his family and how he actually did not hate them, he tried to say goodbye but whenever he did, no words came out. He could practically talk with them like usual, except say the words goodbye. Ling Ru had gone to sleep in this dream, and when he smelled food, he had an innate longing for it to be his mom’s cooking, and his family he would wake up to.

Harsh reality hit him when he woke up and saw the beast. This beast was similar to the other tiger-snake beast, it was probably the same kind. The beast that was on the floor when Ling Ru went out, was gone. Baba and the other male demons had removed it, Ling Ru just sat up and noticed how Baba had placed him so that Ling Ru had been sleeping while leaning on him, it was quite an emotional thought.

Baba had no reason why, but he liked this little fellow, after hearing from the females about the spears, he had appreciated his work. He himself was the group leader, and bringing in Ling Ru was his decision. He wanted to speak with Ling Ru himself, since Ling Ru could speak at such a young age, and even make weapons like that, he was definitely someone special.

But for Ling Ru, speaking to these fellows was hard, he had already gotten a bit of exp in the language skill, but the fact that the language sounded like gibberish to him, yet it felt like it translated automatically when they spoke, it was really weird.

“We caught a beast, eat.” Baba tapped Ling Ru gently on his head and pointed to the beast. When Baba was at Ling Ru’s age, he had been fed by his dad, but after the incident last night he knew Ling Ru preferred to do it his own way. Ling Ru nodded gently to Baba and then he went to get a spear he had created himself, of course not with a stone attached to it. It would be stupid to use a good weapon to cook meat, especially since it was his own creation.

After picking the shabbiest of the wooden spears, he went back and stood in front of Baba, he still could not reach the beast that was above the fire, so he needed to ask Baba to raise him up. While he had learned the language, the weirdness and obscurity of it made it hard for him to make specific sentences, it took him some time to come up with the right sentence.

“Baba, can you help me reach the beast?” Ling Ru asked a bit awkwardly, and if he was not red all over, he would have red cheeks, he had just busted himself in naming Baba, he had accidentally said it out loud. Baba raised an eyebrow as he looked interestingly at Ling Ru.

After a few seconds of time, Baba gave him an answer. “I will help you if you tell me what Baba means.” He was very straightforward in his manner of speech, considering the weird demon tongue language. Baba was very interested in the word, mostly because of the tingling in his tummy when he looked at Ling Ru, it was a form of curiosity and relations. Not love, but more like a familial relationship, like dad and son, or uncle and nephew.

“Baba is the name I gave you.” this sentence was relatively easy to output, it was three words in the demon language which had the same meaning as that sentence. Baba was a bit stupefied, he pointed at himself. “I am a demon, I have no name.”

Ling Ru shook his head and spent some time thinking of his wording when he was done he turned around and looked at all the demons in the cave. “Names are personal, demons have names, demons are a race, not a name. I am Ru, Baba is Baba. Names are used to know who is who, it is good to have names.” The wordings was a bit special because it was hurried.

It was like he was talking to a baby when he spoke, he tried to keep it simple. After he finished speaking, the other demons looked at him, before sharing interesting looks between each other. One of the females was first to respond, she even stood up and wore a playful grin.

“Ru, I want a name!” her voice was enigmatic and a small fire was burning in her eyes. Ru was right from her point of view when they lived in demon city, demons had no names. Stories were often told about humans, also about fairies and other races, and they had names. Why was it wrong to assume that demons should have names too? It was wrong to assume that demons could not have names.

The surge of energy in her words had Ru smiling, he really liked that kind of personality, be it, first come first serve. “Okay, I will name you Red! You are the only one with such a clean and light red skin out of all of us.” When he finished, Red mumbled her name and looked at herself and the others, it was true, her skin was in a way a unique red when compared to the others.

She nodded and said “Red!” with power. It was lucky for Ru to be able to know the word for red because his vocabulary was still quite small, luckily his demon language skill was close to levelling up. Since Red had gotten a name, Baba too had one, the others were still ruminating the meaning of names.

The other female was shyer, she was fidgeting with her fingers, trying not to be exposed to being eager in wanting a name. Red helped her along by saying out loud. “You need a name too, Ru can you give her a name?” She first looked at the other female, and then looked at Ru as she asked him the question.

The female that needed a name shyly nodded and said “Okay”. Ling Ru nodded and scratched his bald head while thinking. She was the second female, shy and if compared to Red, she was quite female for a demon being, even a bit cute. “Flower, you are fragile but can be beautiful, cute and pretty. Flowers are beautiful!” He had no way to convince her, and neither did he want to directly compliment her.

Instead, he gave her a name based on a flower instead of based on her, at least by the reasoning he gave. But she was adorable and cute, so flower was not wrong. He just did not have insights into picking a specific flower and did not know any kind of flowers in this world. He only knew they existed because one the males mentioned it in a story he told last night.