Ooh, sneak preview of the director's cut!

Hrahragh is faintly adorable: "This word is not mine" sounds distinctly like a number of cumbersome German constructions to come out of my mouth, so it rings true.

The flow of attention is better: Hrahragh (whose name I still have to refer to your text to spell correctly...) to Maevyn, M to H, H to Grushak, G to Maevyn, and then finally Grushak to Mushog- it better reflects how Grushak has to trace the path of mischief back to its orkish source.

Reveal in the footnotes: Hmmm. Upon thought, that does seem like it would work better for a scene focused on interpersonal relations and how Maevyn finally gets decent orkish lessons. The scene can either focus on the funny (eeeeew, tapeworms!), in which case the punchline needs to be out there and strong, OR it can be about the interactions between the characters. You've picked one, so play to that aspect. And, after all, this will be something like the third time (explicitly, and certainly there have been more off-panel) that Mushog has lied to Maevyn to make her say something funny. We're expecting it by now. We'll be skipping ahead to read the orkish dialog.

An option for the future (which you may have already thought of) would be to use the usefulness of the lessons to both Hrahragh and Maevyn to give them more screen time together. Hrahragh would clearly not directly engage in the lessons, and probably would be well into his AP Orkish Dialectial Studies, but he might hang around to see if he could get clearer explanations of the finer grammatical points. Just a thought.

(Hrahragh is adorable! Clearly, my sunburn has penetrated my skull- I think an orc is adorable.)

SO, yeah. It flows better, and I'm flattered to be of service.

By the by, Do you have a normal beta reader, or do you self-edit?