"I appreciate that."

"So is there anything you want to do in particular next?"

Well, is he conveniently thinking about any options that seem interesting?

He's thinking the things she's most likely to want—or the things he'd be most likely to want if he were in her place—would be to check books out or differences in technology or walk around to get to know the place and understand the culture better.

"I'm curious about the technology," she confirms. "I won't know where to start, obviously."

"Oh, well—what did you see here that's very new and different? Computers and electronics in general seems to be a pattern..."

"Yes, we don't have those. Or the thing I rode in, or the kind of pavement it went on, or anything the fellow with the beard has, or the thing that took us between floors."

"Okay... things you do have? Might be too general, but I'm trying to see how far I should try to explain and show stuff..."

"We get around with horses, alone or hitched to carriages. We have - hm, we have glass but not in such large panes. I can't figure out what all the materials here are."

"Why not in such large panes?"

"I don't know, I've just never seen a plate of glass larger than about -" She gestures.

"Huh. How is glass mostly made where you're from, do you know?"

"I'm afraid I've never looked closely into glass manufacture. Conventional glass manufacture, anyway, I've tried sculpting it with my bare hands for fun."

He nods. "Yeah, makes sense. There's—probably a way to fit that into a history of glassmaking so I can figure out how far back you are..." He goes to Wikipedia and starts looking stuff up.

Large-paned glass was a relatively recent invention on Earth too. Kiri doesn't have to read over his shoulder to "read over his shoulder".

"Okay, hmm... Gunpowder? Is that a thing?" He's speaking English for the word but the concept is clear enough in his head.

"For fireworks - we don't use them the way you're thinking."

"How are wars conducted? No explosive weapons?"

"Welce doesn't usually get into wars. There are, I believe... ships? Swords?"

"Yeah, okay, I think I might be able to work with that. Do you prefer to go out and see tech or read books or the internet?"

"Going out would be fun but usually I have my brother along to make sure I don't trip into range of anybody and it took him a while to get the hang of it so I'm not sure I could reasonably expect you to manage with that today."

"What's the hard part about it?"

"You need a good intuitive sense of my range and how easily I trip and you need to be able to catch me and shoo people at the same time."

"I see. And the fire could burn people if you stumbled. How about a wheelchair?"

"I wouldn't burn people! I have perfectly good control over that, it's my actual body I'm not good with. Wheelchair seems like it'd work fine if people'd give me enough space, that's a clever invention - I'm sure we have chairs with wheels but not quite that nice so I've never had the tradeoff make sense."