Closing the door behind Buck, the woman led him to a comfortable living room, the floor, carpeted, had a nice texture, which made it quite enjoyable for the deer as he let himself lie down, still facing the woman. She had sat on a brown-red two place sofa, and was looking anxiously around, everywhere but the animal in front of her.
"So," she said, twisting her hands from the stress she had to endure "I guess I might introduce myself to you and vice versa, my name is Kateline."
Now the he noticed, her voice wasn't sounding like other humans he had herad before.
"And mine is Buck, quite generic, I know." He cocked his head curiously to one side. "I don't think you are from her, your name doesn't sound like it would be said normally, and your voice is different."
Kateline laughed nervously, before she answered. "Well, you see, I am not from here, yes, I was born in France, it's very, VERY far away from here, if you see what I mean."
"I fear I don't quite get it," he admitted.
"Well, luckily, I'm a teacher, so it must somewhere near," she bagan to muble so low that despite is excellent hearing, Buck himself couldn't understand.
The woman had gone to a closet, and was searching franctically inside, before she pulled back what the deer thought looked like a branch that would've been made straight, and burnt on specific spots.
"This," she explained "is a ruler, and this," she pointed to the smallest lines "are millimeters, a way to put distance in numbers, you understand the concept of distance and measurement, right?"
The animal nodded positively, getting a relieved sighed from the human.
"So, ten of these," she once again pointed the lines "make this one," she moved her finger to a slightly longer line "a centimeter." Kateline counted something, and moved her finger to yet another line. "There is no distinction from them, but every ten centimeters, you get a decimeter," she explained, before taking each end of the ruler between her palms "and so ten of them, or a hundred centimeters, give one full meter, which is a standard unity if measurement." She put back the ruler in the closet, and came back while asking "You do know what standard mean, do you?"
"Well," Buck thought "standard must mean something like common, I think?"
"It's something used frequently, am I wrong?"
She smiled, and approved with a nod of her head.
"So, now that you understand that, we have a bigger way to mesure distance, kilometer, it equal one thousand meters."
In Buck's head, the word translated to some symbols he immediately recongnize as numbers, from what Ty had told him about school.
"And France is... many, many hundreds of kilometers away from here."
Kateline seemed somewhat sad, but wuiockly smiled again. "With that being taken care of, how about we talk of you."
Taken aback, the deer had no real explanation, except from earlier. "Well, as I said, there was chemicals and-"
She cut him off right there.
"Hold it there boy, first, now that I think of it, chemicals would've been more than likely to kill you, and if by miracle you had survived, you would be certainly mutated, your body would've undergone random change, most of which could've been bad to you, if not all. Two, I don't think you would've been able to develop such vocabulary and polite manners without exterior help, and you said to be in search of a friend, maybe they helped you with that, but there's no way things can be as simple as you simply encountered them and began to talk, no way." She stopped, and now slightly red n the face, the woman was trying to breath normally. "I want to help you, but if I have to trust you, you have to tell me the truth, please, Buck, I really want to help, but not until you tell me what really happened."
He only had to see the look in her eyes to know she was being sincere. With a sigh, the deer spoke.
"Well, then sit back, it's going to take some time."