Between VTMNR and Lettow coming back from the Beckoning, Elisa and Cieszmir meet often at Things.
At first she thinks he's funny and something to laugh at - an Old Man Yelling At Cloud exasperating the rest of the clan by getting to the top of Thing hierarchy and insisting on holding them in Latin just so he can lecture people about making sure they learn it. When the other Gangrel decide pecking order by having Myrcha kick people around, permanently ensuring he's not on charge again (because Myrcha refuses to kick him), she's just as amused by everyone else.
In this time Elisa has been learning Polish to feel more connected to Lettow. Eventually Cieszmir realises that she's conversational in modern Polish, and tries to talk to her, only to be saddened that they barely can. Still, Elisa's conscious of the fact that Lettow's dialect of Polish is probably closer to Cieszmir's than modern Polish, so she tries hard to talk to him anyway. He's pleasantly surprised by this because most people give up quickly. So between the two of them, they end up figuring out the commonalities between modern Polish and Cieszmir's old dialect, and Cieszmir starts teaching her his version of it and giving her lists of words and phrases to practice with between Things.
Once she understands him well enough he confesses to her that his crusade for Latin is entirely selfish - that he's completely lost in the modern world and can't learn modern English and doesn't know how to without Embracing a new childe, and is afraid that the childe would just abandon him anyway. He has no ghouls except Myrcha, and no connections to the modern world except for family members whom he's been out of touch with for so long he doesn't even know if they're still alive. (He often asks after Lettow, but nobody recognises his pronunciation. He did manage to track down his uncle Art though, which is why he's in the Southwest - Art pointed him in this direction but didn't tell him people don't pronounce Lettow's name the Polish way.) He just wants to find his childe and ask him for help. Elisa promises him if Lettow comes back she'll ask him if he knows "Lez-tov."
But he struggles. He stayed in the wilderness for a good century knowing he'd be a bit out of date when he got back, but underestimated just how much the change of society would accelerate. The forests got smaller, the cities got bigger. The humans started being up at all hours of the night, not just daylight. They pushed him deeper and deeper into werewolf territory and by the time he finally emerged, the world was unrecognisable.
After learning all that Elisa feels really bad for ever laughing at the guy. She says she can't focus on learning Latin now because she's focusing on her Polish, but she does promise that once she's confident her Polish skills won't decay she'll start to learn.
She also ends up reaching out to one of the prominent Gangrel Anarchs who turns up to the Things. She doesn't like Elisa much because Elisa works for the Camarilla, but Elisa's like, hey, you care about accessibility, right? Well turns out that Cieszmir was pushing Latin so hard because it's a very accessible language for Kindred of any age and that he speaks to people like once a year because he doesn't know how to learn modern language and is so out of touch he doesn't know where to start. She knows that Anarchs in general resent elders*, but like... sounds like some of them, especially in our clan, are really struggling. Would you consider just... giving that some thought?
* Although I headcanon it's not as strong in Gangrel; given how independent Gangrel like their childer to be I headcanon that they blood bound their childer way less than other clans, so Gangrel childer are more likely to be upset their sires were too absent than too present.
The Anarch says, well, she's never considered it that way. She doesn't see many other Anarchs wanting to do the elders a favour by learning a whole language, but she'll let their clanmates know and see what they can do. Gangrel elders are probably way more likely to deal with this issue than elders of other clans, and most of the resentment young Gangrel have are towards elder Ventrue, Tremere and Toreador, for example, not their own. I think Anarch Gangrel would want to help out their own clan, even if they're elders, given that Gangrel were some of the few elders (along with the Brujah) that actually left.
So at the next Thing the Anarch ends up speaking up about it. And also speaking to Cieszmir in Latin - she's been learning in the meantime. And Cieszmir is absolutely delighted by this to the point of near tears. That Thing ends up being what makes Elisa put her Polish on the backburner for a bit and turning to Latin, and practicing with Harley and Perry.
