Ye Zheng looked at Andrew silently, and Andrew curled his tail up and looked up at Ye Zheng, as if waiting for Ye Zheng's praise, and let Ye Zheng praise him for what he said.
One man and one fish looked at each other for a while, and Andrew looked at Ye Zheng calmly without blinking. Ye Zheng sighed and suddenly said, "Actually, you don't have to lie."
"Lying" is also a new word.
Ye Zheng then explained: "It just didn't sound good, Andrew said it sounded good, that's a lie."
"So, you can say something bad." Ye Zheng lowered his voice and said sincerely to the mermaid.
"It doesn't sound good." Andrew said immediately, without hesitation, as if waiting for Ye Zheng to say that.
…
"Actually," Ye Zheng said with difficulty after being silent for a while, "this time you don't have to..."
Ye Zheng looked at the mermaid who was looking at her with her head tilted in confusion. She originally wanted to say not to be so honest, but thinking about it, she had to explain "honesty" again, and maybe the mermaid would be insincere again. Change your mouth. So Ye Zheng couldn't help swallowing the following words.
She was a little crazy inside, she didn't know what to say. The reasoning is that she told Andrew not to lie and force it to be nice, but his reaction this time was too fast. Compared to just fiddling around for a long time before saying "good", this time he said "not good" and he couldn't wait, which greatly hurt Ye Zheng, who felt good about himself at first.
Ye Zheng stopped herself wisely, she felt that if she struggled with Andrew's answer, it would make herself even more stupid. She decided to forget about Andrew's second answer at once, and turned to the question before it: "What about you, do you want to learn to sing? Or do you already know how to sing?"
Andrew looked a bit confused by Ye Zheng. It was still fast when it came to memorizing Ye Zheng's vocabulary, and it all depended on interest when imitating Ye Zheng's pronunciation. It was a little difficult to listen to Ye Zheng say a complete sentence.
Andrew grabbed the words "you" and "singing", he thought about it seriously, and flicked his tail unhappily, "No."
So far, Ye Zheng has not heard Andrew sing, and when he heard its concise "no" word, Ye Zheng did not ask any more questions. The mermaid's ability to understand Ye Zheng's language has also gradually developed. Ye Zheng feels that the mermaid still has its own biological habits, especially its vocal system, which has also matured step by step.
Ye Zheng felt that he understood Andrew's unhappy emotions: after all, he is not yet fully grown, he must want to sing but can't.
Ye Zheng nodded understandingly and decided not to mention the "sad thing" of the mermaid again. She thoughtfully stuffed a piece of dried fish for Andrew and let it chew by itself. While she herself continued to write with charcoal on the big leaf, the mermaid continued to lie on her lap, watching intently.
Andrew is much more interested in the shape of words used by Ye Zheng than in pronunciation. Ye Zheng also thinks this is a good thing. She guesses that mermaids live in the sea, and the sea water is both corrosive and light-blocking. The mermaid race should only rely on sound and sound waves to communicate and spread news, and they should have no words.
Andrew's interest in words is somewhat like that of Earth humans. In the opinion of a large number of people, foreign language writing can always improve the style, just like in the Middle Ages, if you don't learn French, you can't show nobility. In modern society, non-Chinese foreigners like to tattoo Chinese characters in various fonts on their bodies, even " "Beef noodles" tattoo on the body can make people who don't understand Chinese feel tall.
Ye Zheng's font is still good, her Chinese characters are slender and powerful, and her squiggly English is also very similar, which is very in line with the aesthetics of mermaids. Especially Chinese with many strokes and English with many letters, the more complicated it is, the more Andrew likes it. However, compared to Chinese, Andrew still prefers to read cursive characters in English.
Andrew also used to happily hang a leaf on which Ye Zheng wrote the English word "beautiful" on his chest, and Ye Zheng used a small straw rope to tie it to the fins on his chest. It is a pity that the fonts written on the leaves were washed away by the sea water after entering the water, and the leaves also fell off.
Andrew was unhappy for a long time, and Ye Zheng finally had to hold his claws and use his sharp nails to write again on the harder shell. Touching the curved nicks on the shell, Andrew happily took the shell to the sea as if to show off.
The longer Ye Zheng spends with this big fish, the more he understands the habits of mermaids.
It is not the same as the images of mermen and mermen in fairy tales or myths. Ye Zheng could only imagine what a mermaid should look like when reading novels or movies, but only now, the image of a mermaid is vivid. Andrew is a big beast, but he is greedy and stinky, and he especially likes to show off his collections to his peers—perhaps in the world of mermaids, collections are also something worthy of showing strength.
Those things that Ye Zheng thinks are beautiful but not special can always make Andrew collect them happily, and Ye Zheng can always feel the pride of Andrew every time he returns to the sea to show his collection to his companions.
The only downside is that after Andrew finished showing his collection, he liked to send those shell coral crosses ashore for Ye Zheng to collect. I don't know how it developed this habit, Ye Zheng also knows that mermaids don't fall in love with the shore, and Andrew is really a special case. However, Ye Zheng felt that Andrew's putting the collection on the shore should also be regarded as a way of expressing his trust in himself, so every time she put away the collection for him with kindness.
But the problem now is that the small stone nest that the mermaid gave her can no longer hold the mermaid's collection.
The stone nest was very short, and at the beginning, Ye Zheng and Andrew slept in it was just right. But when Ye Zheng and Andrew were growing, Ye Zheng jumped taller, and Andrew's grew faster. Andrew, who was about to be two meters long, stopped squeezing the stone nest with Ye Zheng very early, but even so, the stone nest was not enough for Ye Zheng.
In Shiwo, she had to lie down and grow taller, and she also had to store hay and Andrew's collection. The originally small space seemed to be getting smaller and smaller, and Ye Zheng's hands and feet were not enough.
In the past few days, whenever Ye Zheng couldn't use her hands and feet to sleep, she always wanted to mention to Andrew about changing the nest, but when she woke up in the morning and was busy all day, Ye Zheng often forgot. And by the time she was about to close her eyes to sleep, Andrew had already gone back to the sea.
This time, Ye Zheng remembered this when he saw Andrew learning Ye Zheng's strokes, scratching the conch shell clumsily and then stuffing the conch under the haystack.
She pushed the merman, made Andrew look at her, and then pointed at Xiao Shiwo: "This one, do you want to change it?"
Andrew followed Ye Zheng's line of sight, probably not understanding what Ye Zheng meant. It put down the things in its claws, and after looking at the mouth of the stone nest, it began to climb inside, as if trying to squeeze its larger body into it.
"Wait, that's not what I meant." Ye Zheng quickly grabbed the mermaid who wanted to squeeze in. She was afraid that the mermaid who couldn't turn around inside would get stuck, "Small, I mean it's small."
Ye Zheng waited until the mermaid climbed back out with difficulty, and then got in again. She curled up in the stone nest and let the fish look at herself. Andrew looked at Ye Zheng at Shiwokou, touched her feet, and then tugged at her.
"clank."
Ye Zheng climbed out, "Understood?"
Andrew nodded: "To the clan." The answer was concise and generous.
Ye Zheng was satisfied, she touched the mermaid's head, and seeing that it was still looking at her expectantly, Ye Zheng felt that it needed a bigger praise, so she lowered her head and gently touched its tail with the back of her foot tip. The tip of its tail has grown larger than before, making it more silky and supple. Andrew, who was touched by Ye Zheng on the tip of his tail, happily flicked its heavy tail, and then lay back on Ye Zheng's lap with some joy.
The next day, Andrew really brought a bigger nest, which not only allowed Ye Zheng to stretch his hands and feet, but also allowed Ye Zheng to stand up and walk five or six steps inside the nest.
Ye Zheng looked at the "nest" in front of him in awe.
It was the skeleton of a huge sea creature. It seemed that the sternum and spine were complete, and the surface was covered with a thick layer of seaweed.
Andrew and several of his kin brought the skeleton from the sea. Standing in front of this skeleton, Ye Zheng could almost imagine how big this sea creature was when it was alive.
But the problem now is that Andrew's friends are reluctant to go ashore, and after Andrew pushed up this pair of bones, he couldn't do anything with the heavy weight.
Ye Zheng stood by the sea and watched Andrew staring at the skeleton frame in a daze, and saw that it stood up and worked on the skeleton frame for a while, and the skeleton fell down with a "crash".
It looks like it intends to unravel the nest of the bones and then re-cover it.
Ye Zheng didn't expect that this skeleton was actually tied up, and the mermaid actually understood architecture! Andrew refreshed Ye Zheng's understanding of mermaids again.
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