"Nosir."

Does he have a cell signal.

Nope. His pocket everything is very confused.

It's in good company. He hasn't spent enough time around trees to be confident these are weird trees but they do look it.

The red holds very still and watches him.

He turns his pocket everything off again and on again. He walks around a bit. 

"All right," he says. "Possibilities: we have been inexplicably teleported to someone's private meditative retreat and they block even emergency cell signal. We have been inexplicably teleported back in time. We have been inexplicably teleported some other place - if it's another planet we're absurdly lucky we can breathe. We have been kidnapped by aliens. Got anything I'm missing?"

"Forward in time?" she suggests after a moment. "Incompatible signal."

"And maybe there's forest around because we finally figured out how to season other places, sure, that could be it." Sigh. "You should calm down, I think you're slightly likelier to get out of this alive than before the inexplicable teleportation."

She does not stop fixedly watching him.

It was not exactly a stirring reassurance but a strong one would have been dishonest.

"If we were brought here deliberately," he says to potential alien kidnappers, "it is our custom to explain why, by who, and for how long. And there are people at home I would be grateful for the opportunity to contact with an explanation."

The trees do not respond.

Was a bit of a long shot.  

"All right," he says. "I think we should probably start walking, there can't be that much forest."

"We," she says, "sir?"

"If we're in someone's bizarre resort or a little bit in the past or the future, you're probably safer if you're not alone and it's not as if whoever owns this land will feel comfortable trusting that you didn't touch anything when there was no one watching, they're gonna want to cordon it off for a few rainstorms anyway. If we're in a situation stranger than that then it seems like two people are probably safer than one, do you disagree?"

Wary watching. "No sir."

"I stopped by because my sister-in-law asked me to, she'd gotten an email from one of your neighbors asking if you were alive and if there was anything we could do."

"Thank you sir." Level, not quite wry.

He sighs. He starts walking. "I'm Aitim."

She doesn't seem to take that as a prompt for her name. She walks, carefully in his field of vision but a pace behind so he can lead.

He knows her name, he looked it up before he went in to talk with her.

If they're on Amenta somewhere it shouldn't be that long before they find civilization.

Well, civilization resolutely fails to appear. Shasali is surreptitiously noting the position of the sun periodically to see if he's walking in circles.

He can manage to keep the sun on his left. How about high-altitude vantage points or power lines or places where he gets cell service, any of those?

Nope!

"When it's dark we'll be able to see if there are any satellites up."

She doesn't answer.

There is the sound of a baby, crying, off thataway. Her head jerks up.