Captured by aliens (It was his own fault)

34. Toru understands words?

After this, they walked out of the office, Ri went over to get Toru, while he went over to prepare things for it to learn to grab.

Ri brought Toru over, who seemed to be looking back to where it was before for some reason, but they didn't pay too much attention to that.

Now, they were going to hope that it understood what they wanted, so, they sat down and Ri grabbed something as Tonuk pointed to him, saying "Oyut".

Ri grabbed some other things and Tonuk repeated the word, making sure that Toru was paying attention.

Toru seemed to at least be curious, though it did start to make a frown after a bit of time.

They didn't know why it got annoyed, seeing as it liked to learn words, but either way, they tested out whether Toru understood or not by placing a vegetable in front of it and saying the command.

It frowned once again and crossed its arms, which is something they had seen before, and it showed discomfort, while the frown showed anger or annoyance.

It was a bit confusing, but after a repeating the command a couple of times it finally picked it up, sighing in annoyance.

They decided to let it be for a while to chill out, since at least now they knew that it understood, as it waved the plant around in front of them and then tossed it to the side.

They got up along with Toru and went their own ways, but before going back inside his office, Tonuk decided to see what Toru was doing, just to know why it was looking back so much before.

He tried to be as sneaky as possible while following it, and thankfully it didn't seem to notice him somehow.

Toru went into the storage room and started repeating a sound while covering part of its face.

He couldn't see very well since the light was off, so he turned it on, only to see his ink vial spilled on the floor along with a page soaked in the ink.

Toru yelped and seemed very jittery and stressed, so he tried to calm it down, nudging it out of the room carefully.

He first inspected Toru incase that it got some on its fingers or if it ate some, which it fought against as he had to put his claws in its mouth to open it and see any stains, but thankfully it hadn't drank ink.

He let Toru go and went back to the storage, where heard Toru outside making a lot more noises than usual, which was weird since it only made then when others were near it to hear.

But for now this was an easy thing to fix, by simply pouring some absorbent powder on it and sweeping it up when it was done.

After cleaning the spill and recovering his vial, he took it back to his room and then tossed the soaked paper in the trash, after which he closed the door so Toru wouldn'tgo back in.

Thankfully the spill hadn't reached any boxes, but while he was there he decided to look for something to with Toru.

They didn't have practically anything meant for pets in his house, other than some basic things that Toru didn't like too much, but it seemed to like the puzzles, though before he went over to give it to Toru, he realized it could confuse that as a reward for spilling the ink, so, he shouldn't do that.

Still, he set it aside for a little bit later, planning on using it to have it follow the grab command happily.

At least now he knew why it was annoyed before, as it wanted to go back to continue doing who knows what.

He was going to have to ask Ri on how he had missed a whole paper and possibly ink, on the floor.

But, that would be later on, as he had found a game that he got when he visited the tourism area in the technological area of the planet.

It was a simple one, you had to organize small Tonovo shaped robots to dodge being captured by the opponents Muru robots, based on the species that hunted Tonovo before.

He wondered if Toru would be interested, although he was a bit worried about whether it would try to attack and eat the robots.

He was leaning towards letting it see, since it hadn't ever done anything like that.

Still, he was wondering where the snow plows were, since it had been quite a long time.

At least since the lights were off at the shelter the Turos would stay asleep for a while, plus, even if they missed breakfast, they were fairly chubby, so they'd be fine after getting treats.

After a bit of contemplating, he went for Ri, who by that point wasn't even writing anymore, instead staring at the paper thinking, and then for Toru, who was already in the living room.

They set up the board and started playing.

Fun fact:
Getting stripes on their fur is not the only way that Tonovo change in the winter, there is also a couple behavioral and dietary changes.

For starters, their diets change to be almost entirely made out of plants, although most Tonovo and Dije purposefully eat meat to maintain better health, despite it tasting fairly worse to them at that time.

Along with eating a mostly plants, the amount of food that they eat changes, for Tonovo, their appetite increases, as the sudden stop of sun makes plants drop fruit and leaves spontaneously, so, to prepare for the future, slightly less bad winter, they developed an instinct to eat a lot to bulk up, meanwhile, the Dije eat less, as the change is more gradual and the food slowly decreases for their species, using less energy over time and needing less nutrients

As to other changes, the increased amount of blood being sent to digest the food and to warm up means that there isn't as much being sent to the brain, this means that in the winter, Tonovo become a little bit dumber, basically, same with Dije.