"I'm not sure what you mean," she says, which of course is not going to be particularly helpful, but allows her a method to attempt to prompt something else, and to convey tone.

- Unless one of those items is in some manner a communication aid, she corrects her thoughts. (Bias. More effort required.) 

The bird says something, Valanda asks a clarifying question, the bird answers.

"I'm sure what you mean," Valanda says, enunciating very carefully.

Comprehension of the bird appears, indeed, applicable.

She considers utterances for informational and confirmation-testing usefulness.

"The bird can translate what I say? That is correct, or that is not correct?"

(Can she distinguish words in what they are saying?)

More conversation in the foreign language. The bird echoes parts of what Sheridan said, translating individual clauses and sometimes words. Valanda asks a question including the word "bird" and the bird answers.

"The bird can translate, that is correct," Valanda says. "The bird... not can translate what I say? The bird can translate, I'm sure what you mean."

He picks up the notebook he had before and opens it to the page that's half-filled with the map he drew earlier. They're listening in case she spontaneously starts talking about magic but if she doesn't it'll be useful to have pictures to point to to ask.

She sets her brain to attempting to memorize word and phrase correspondences. 

That is a very curious translation capability. But certainly useful and exploitable.

"You or the bird will remember the words? If I say many different words, you will remember all of them? Or you will remember some but forget some?"

Valanda listens to the translation of that and starts frantically taking notes. "Forget some," he says sheepishly. It's a shame she hasn't said "thank you" yet, he isn't sure how to convey that he wouldn't have thought of that until it was too late otherwise. When he has everything she's said so far transliterated and translated, he points to his notes. "Remember all of them," he says. He pauses, thinking, then tries stringing some words together on his own. "I will forget some but the..." he points to his notes and says a word in Hari "will remember all of them." He smiles and hopes that conveys the idea of gratitude well enough, then turns the page and starts drawing magic symbols to ask her about.

"Notebook. Writing. Write, write down. Record."

She considers base useful vocabulary (very different, somewhat unfortunately, from vocabulary foreign language lessons commonly begin with. Can't simply refer to such), as well as questions.

"Is this your house? Yes? No? May I record your language also?"

He writes that down on the bottom half of the page with the magic symbols on it. On the facing page he draws a box, divides the box into several smaller boxes, points to one. "This," he says, and then gestures around the room, "yes, but this" he makes a gesture that encompasses the whole box-of-boxes "many house." Maybe she'll guess he means it's an apartment. "Yes, you record!"

She guesses.

"Apartment. Apartment complex. I do not have my own paper and pencil. May I borrow some?"

"Yes, apartment! Yes, you borrow some." Valanda removes three sheets of paper from the notebook, adds the most recent few words to his list, then hands over the pencil. "My pencil, you borrow, but your paper, you have the paper."

He takes the opportunity to pet the bird perched on his head and thank the bird, but then he pesters Sheridan rather than let her write. "May I have your language," he says and then he says a word in Hari. "Your language, you my apartment." He hates practicing languages he isn't good at yet. This is awful. He does everything he can to seem totally at ease anyway.

"Thank you." She can switch between writing and responding fairly effectively. "I'm not sure what you mean. I am speaking Capital."

If there are any remaining signs of not-ease, she will pick up on them.

Well, he's not very used to hiding things from people who are very used to humans. On the other hand, some of his body language is copied from other species.

"I am speaking Capital," he echoes carefully. It's useful even though it's nothing like an answer to his question. "I speak Hari and Ilan. Hari..." he holds up one finger and counts "one" in Hari, and two fingers and three and so on, and when he's done with all ten he shows one finger again and gives that a word that isn't "one" and then two and gives that a word that isn't "two" and goes through the whole sequence again. One two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve. "Capital?" he asks.

It's probably too much to hope that Capital uses the same word for "twelve" and "magic" like Hari but the connection between them is obvious enough that given the one he can definitely get to the other. No matter how differently they use it, magic has to be the same everywhere, right?

In that case, she picks up on it. Does not have enough data to conclude which of very many potential sources may be causing it; files it away and continues collecting observations.

Listing language names from another world is not a good use of vocabulary. "I also speak several languages." She takes notes, returns the pencil, and goes through the numbers through twenty.

He writes down the numbers. He sighs when the bird tells him "twelve" doesn't seem to mean anything else that Sheridan is thinking of.

"Twelve," he says. "One, translate." He points at the bird. "Two, you may not. Three," he points at the flowers. "Four," he mimes holding a baby. He trails off, obviously expecting her to know exactly what he means. This should be comforting in its familiarity once she gets it. It's pretty surprising she hasn't thought to talk about it yet.

She could develop guesses, but that would be an incorrect direction for her thoughts, when opportunity to ask is so present. "I'm not sure what you mean."

For a moment he looks at her in blank incomprehension.

Then he wonders if maybe she's from such a small population they don't have every kind of magic or a population that doesn't recognize the different kinds as a category or hasn't figured out that inheritance magic does anything yet.

Okay, he doesn't need to talk about magic in general, then. "You, my apartment," he says. "Not" and he mimes flying. "Not" and he mimes walking. He would like to make it as obvious as possible that what he wants to know is how she got here and he is carefully tailoring his body language to suggest this as clearly as possible in the absence of actual words.

"You are asking how I arrived here?" That did not appear to be what the number-correspondance was about, thought in retrospect it may have been the intended meaning of "Your language, you my apartment." Given that he switched to the numbers and then returned, it's possible the numbers also had some relation to that in some way. Though it could also be simply switching to another topic when one seems unproductive, and then back.

(He left the correspondence list incomplete, potentially suggesting he thought she could fill in. And he was surprised that she did not understand. That is not enough information for concluding the answer. But contributive.)

"Yes! I am asking how you arrived here!" He writes down the words. He is so excited. No one on this continent can teleport. If he gets the one and only teleporter working for him, he can make so much money and buy up as much land as he needs, he can probably even buy state-level sovereignty for as much as he'll be making, if she tells him how in enough detail he can eventually sell that, too, to other force mages at whatever absurd price he wants.

If she knew he was thinking this she would consider it unfortunate that she would be about to disappoint him, but she reads people, not minds.

"A light-whirlpool-phenomemon I had never previously heard of appeared over the kitchen table and swallowed me. This is not something that to my knowledge ever happens."

Okay, so Valanda just spent most of his savings on a random foreigner who isn't the person who invented teleportation. He still has the random foreigner. He writes down translations of new words and phrases. What can he still get out of this? He still doesn't know for sure that she doesn't know how to do anything they don't know in the Empire.

A light whirlpool is a strange thing to do teleportation, as if an illusion mage and a force mage were working together. If it were intentional, he'd guess the illusion mage had marked the portal or whatever it is, but this sounds like something else. It's possible it's not even magic. Maybe that kind of thing just happens by itself sometimes, very rarely.

"Are you going to sell me?" the bird asks in Hari; Sheridan probably won't understand it all of it but if she's been paying very close attention she might recognize some of the words.

"No," says Valanda. He shakes his head and thinks and then speaks to Sheridan again in Capital. "You... not translate, not..." he points at the flowers again. "I borrow you, you...?" He makes a gesture that if she were familiar with this continent would put her in mind of a caralendar tutor prompting a student to complete a pattern. Maybe she'll pick up enough of his instinctive body language to guess what he's asking. What can she do for him?

Her saying that caused him to be sad/disappointed, where before he'd been excited. Some potential answer to that question would have been very positive for him, and it was not the actual one. He saw her appear; if someone appeared in front of someone from her world, they would not be straightforwardly excited when they asked about it. It's an unheard of thing. So it is likely that here in some way it is not.

She has been paying very close attention but she does not know 'sell', which is rather core. 

She is not familiar with this continent. 

"Are you asking what work I can do?" And adds, "Question words. Who, what, where, when, why, how." ('borrow you', that is - possibly indicative. He does not have many words to work with, but that that one came up in association at all remains so.)

He writes those all down. He thanks the bird. He praises the bird.

"Thank you. Yes, I'm asking what work you can do." He deliberately acts as welcoming as before. No need to seem like he was only being nice because he wanted her to teleport things for him. There are other kinds of work that could make this investment worth it.

She considers what she should say, from the direction of what abilities of hers she can convey as an answer, and what abilities she may or may not want known.

Her central skillset is not very easily expressed as an answer to that question. She doubts that 'taking a beating' is within the desired answer.

"Domestic work. Chemistry and biology. Gathering information. Strategy and strategic advice. I am familiar with security systems where I come from. Some nonstandard computer skills. Experimental procedure. Some games played for money where I come from." She deliberately leaves out, for the moment, physical combat, disguise, what exactly she does with security systems and computers, and that her particular skill and experience with gambling is giving her owner unfair advantages.

Notes notes notes. All theoretically useful, nothing Valanda can see a use for at the moment. Most likely to be useful is comparing her continent's inventions against the Empire's.

This is all going to be so frustrating without a shared language. He rereads vocabulary notes. He thinks. "What security systems do you have where you come from?"

More preferably she could practice language as well, since she is the one in the location where everyone will not speak hers. But at the moment that trades off against gaining words. She settles for parallel practicing in her head, for now. With no feedback, which is severely suboptimal. But, tradeoffs, such it is. And she is experienced enough in it.

"Alarms. Motion detection. Temperature sensing. Remote monitoring. Sensors on doors and windows. Glass break detectors. Locks of various sorts. Access control."