Rootworld learned the Surface peoples’ language almost immediately.
Not through study, but through listening.
Sound, intent, rhythm, and emotional pressure are all recorded by Rootworld’s living systems. Spoken language is treated as another environmental signal—no different than vibration, heat, or light. Once patterns repeat, meaning is inferred. Translation follows naturally.
Surface-Kin were unsettled by how quickly they were understood.
Rootworld peoples—Fauns, Drow, Floroids, and the Rootbound—can speak Surface tongues fluently, often with accents shaped by cavern acoustics and bioluminescent rhythm. What surprises outsiders is not comprehension, but context: Rootworld speakers often understand why something is said before how it is phrased.
In Rootworld, speech is never isolated from intent.
Beyond spoken language, Rootworld inhabitants also communicate with plants.
This is not metaphor.
Plants respond to touch, breath, tone, and presence. Rootworld people learn to “speak” through:
Pressure and pacing
Harmonic humming
Stillness and patience
Ritualized gestures
Plants answer by:
Shifting growth
Altering light
Changing texture or resistance
Withholding cooperation
Conversations are slow, deliberate, and remembered.
Surface-Kin technology cannot translate this dialogue.
Rootworld never needed to.
Language, here, is not owned by people.
It belongs to the system.