My top lockdown achievement is learning every single word of the Vy'keen language in No Man's Sky. I don't think that's even supposed to be possible.

I just happened to meet a warrior with infinite patience at a low point in my life.
Literally, due to some bug one of the Vy'keen in one particular space station didn't grey out the option to teach you one word of their language after being talked to.

So I decided that the way I felt, I might as well let them talk until they ran out of words. Tell me about your world, mate. Tell me what you know.

It was a long day.

For the first half hour (I didn't time it, that's what it felt like) they taught me words that they found useful in one way or another, for trade, arguments, making friends... Then, he ran out of those, but was happy to teach me Everything Else. How much could that be?

The infinitely patient warrior kept teaching me, despite keenly waiting for an unknown other, forever repeating the same sentence before asked again: let me have another word, just one. "sister". "desk". "expected". They grumbled and cheered.

Gradually, the words in the sentence they repeated as a greeting every time became understandable to me. An hour in I had "expected", then "welcome".
Two hours in, I understood that I was "always welcome, naturally."
Can you teach me one more word?
He shrugged. isotope. Cuddle.

"Interloper is always welcome, naturally, but not who was expected".
Never mind, friend. Tell me about your world.
Them. Water. Preventable. Plague.

Early on, there had be a chain of Leave. Now. Or. Tomorrow. Will. End...
At least that's what I remember. I was wondering if whoever coded this had dropped a word chain in for anyone who might get lonely enough to listen to a Vy'keen warrior for more than an hour.

We kept talking. A few times I felt forlorn, when the words had become alphabetical, and I reached the end of what must be one set of quest vocabulary (zzzz) and found myself back at words beginning with a.

Then, suddenly, he fell silent.
I walked away.
There's no punchline to the story. I can now read what Vy'keen say to me. That warrior is still waiting, I don't know who for. Maybe someone imagined the rest of their story. Maybe not.

I felt like the sun was rising outside the space station and we should all go home and sleep and forget about what was said in a lonely night, waiting for people who never appear. Who knows why. Plague. Fuel. Family. But then, the sun is always up in space.

isuihuit okch egenzema anlongfeny.

(P. S. I don't want to spoiler: There are other ways in the game to learn languages, which aren't asking some stranger fire a word at a time... so don't give up!)

P.P.S. Sorry about the tired uneven gendering in this thread! Should all be "they".