And now she's sharing a tiny apartment with a very startled person. The walls are white, one wall has a tall narrow window, if she looks behind herself she'll see that the only door latches from the inside. The whole room is four feet by four feet, made even smaller by the railing along one wall that might be for someone to hold onto for balance. There's a pile of necklaces in one corner and a quilt on the floor. The room's other occupant, when they get over their shock, leaps to their feet glaring murderously and says something very angry in a tonal language.

No citizen's card (not odd - plenty of people who didn't have estates didn't wear them at home); the carriage and way-of-speaking doesn't give her a clear indication of stratum. What is he wearing and the like?

She's still in her slave collar, because that's the law and they're risking quite sufficient trouble already; doesn't drop her cover body language when she's in public areas. Gofer-type uniform rather than domestic. Convenient, at the moment.

Something incredibly bizarre and fascinating just occurred and she would of course like nothing better than to attempt to gather more about it, but handling acute problems has the precedence. 

She does not look behind herself. She looks demurely down.

"My apologies, sir."

(Details on the necklace and quilt? Can she see out the window?)

The necklaces in the pile are strings of metal beads that seem to be painted, except that the colors change constantly. Several of the beads are the same color or pattern at any given time. Out the window is a five-storey building painted in some kind of abstract foresty design in green and brown. Here and there are balconies whose railings are being used as trellises for grapes and other vines. The person who lives here is wearing loose calf-length pants and a loose sleeveless shirt. No shoes, though there's a pair by the door, but socks.

The apologetic tone seems to mean something to them, because they don't shout any more. They echo the words carefully as if they've never heard them before. Hesitantly they try a question in another language.

That is a desirable outcome.

Her brain process does not produce any information or associations on color-changing beads, this architecture style, this clothing style, or either language. Hair style? Scars, calluses, fingernail style, signs of anything on their clothes or skin, and such like? Details of the quilt?

She can further attempt the several languages she is fluent in and then the several more she knows some amount of.

Valanda's hair is in a ponytail. Nails short, hands not callused at all, clothes apparently undyed. The quilt is made of rejected, streakily dyed dull yellow wool. Or maybe it's just carefully, artfully designed to look like that. The squares and the stitching are vaguely irregular like it's handmade. Sloppily handmade.

Hearing more unfamiliar languages makes Valanda very happy for some reason. He turns around and reaches under the pile of necklaces for a charcoal pencil and a notebook. He opens it to a clean page, draws something that might be a map of an island or continent, then looks at her expectantly.

Neat ponytail, messy ponytail? Can she see what it's tied up with? Dirt under nails? Details of the stitching?

Details of the pencil and notebook? Anything else that indicates something else lying under it?

She also looks at the island/continent.

Dirty hands, but clean nails. He might be an artist who blends sketches with his fingers. The ponytail may have suffered a little in the last few hours, seems to be tied with string. The quilt is lumpy like it might be hiding things. The stitching was not done with a sewing machine and on closer inspection the thread seems not to have been dyed. The pencil is less a precisely-manufactured art supply and more like a stick of charcoal partly wrapped up to keep it from marking everything. The notebook has a metal spiral binding and the pages aren't white paper. The pages he flipped through on his way to this one were used very efficiently like he was trying to cram as much stuff into as little space as possible.

The continent is almost U-shaped but sort of squarish and thick-bottomed and has an extra bite taken out of it. There's a mountain range. It's not drawn with any great degree of artistry. The smoothness of the coastlines suggests it may have been drawn from a vague memory. The longer the stranger looks at the map, the more pleased Valanda seems about something.

Available data continues to not produce many larger associations. The dirt on hands seems to be from the charcoal or the like?

Anything she can tell about what the items under the quilt might be? Anything she can see from the pages given the time she had to see them?

Pleasedness is generally better than not, though it is considerably better if she knows what exactly it is responding to than not.

That is not evoking any islands or continents she recognizes. None of the languages got responses; she shrugs at the map and shakes her head.

It sure does seem to be from the charcoal. There are a couple small smudges of the same on the quilt, in fact. It's not obvious what's under the quilt except that the unobviousness means there isn't anything very big and solid. Maybe just more fabric. The pages had obscure diagrams or illustrations or something and cramped writing with no paragraph breaks.

Valanda gestures for her to have a seat if she'd like and starts putting on necklaces from the pile.

She sits and takes this opportunity to in fact look around at what had previously been behind her. (Details on latch, door, railing, window, and shoes?)

The latch is large and looks like it would be possible for someone without much manual dexterity to operate. The rail is varnished wood and seems to serve no function except to make the room even smaller. The shoes are leather and seem to be wearing out. The window has a shutter, currently open, but no glass.

When Valanda is absurdly blinged out with all his necklaces and three bracelets, where the pile was there's a flat metal rectangle, not apparently color-changing or even unusually-colored at all.

Squatting down in front of her, Valanda speaks softly just to get her attention. He mimes eating. He raises his eyebrows. He gestures at her. Assuming she's as human as she looks and eats with her mouth, which is a big assumption, she should probably understand that as "are you hungry?"

As a slave it is prudent to be in the habit of not refusing food when offered, but her recent access to such has been more than sufficient. And there are multiple compelling reasons not to immediately take the food of strangely-and-possibly-not-well-provisioned people in whose closets she unexpectedly appeared. 

She smiles and shakes her head.

Nod, smile. He tries asking her if she's thirsty.

Smile, headshake. (It would be unfortunate if he were from a culture where her accepting is a necessary social ritual, but by her knowledge and conjecture that would have been more likely to involve an attempt to give her the materials in question, rather than inquire about them.) 

Nod, again. Valanda gestures for her to stay put. He points to himself, mimes walking away and coming back. Gestures again for her to stay put. Raises his eyebrows as if to ask if this is okay with her.

Smile, nod.

Excellent. Valanda leaves, shutting the door behind him.

Decision factors:

• She is currently to observation physically able to leave.
• Arguments for:
  • doing so could potentially enable her to more quickly determine where she is.
  • whether she was transported by someone's intention or not, the local person could have negative intentions with respect to her.
  • if the transportation is secret and this is not desirable, she might have a higher opportunity to expose it.
• Arguments against:
  • if she was transported by someone's intention, measures of control she was not aware of could be present, such as guards on call.
  • if she was transported sufficiently far away, she might be in violation of some law pertaining to slave behavior, and this would be noticed if she started wandering outside. Attempting to address this with stealth is not likely to be successful on a street she has no familiarity with in full daylight, and considerably likely to bring trouble.
  • Myna is likely to be able to get her out of trouble, but not without unpleasantness in the interim, and not without expenditure.
  • if the transportation is secret and this is desirable, this still raises the chances of exposing it.
  • there could be some reason non-negative reason she was transported here and to this person in particular.
  • there could be a negative reason but she will have more opportunity to learn about it.

Altogether it does not seem a better path-selection to attempt to leave than to stay, so she stays. Nothing in the room appears worth the risk of moving or touching it, so she stays where she is. 

She redirects her brain's central analysis to the transportation itself.

Theorizing without data is not desirable, but she is limited in data. A foundation of possibilities will serve her whether she can acquire more or not. She sorts them out.

• Those behind it could be the Imperial government, or a different party.
• This could have been done on purpose or by accident. The Imperial government + on purpose is not likely.
• 'A different party' heads a large variety. Myna's people + on purpose is not likely. 
• Different parties have a spectrum of positivity and negativity that cannot be easily collapsed into axes.

As such: the Imperial government or Myna's people, by accident (experiment gone wrong, the like). Some other party, on purpose with some intention, or by accident.

The effect could also be easily reproducible, or not (this can approximate to an axis).

That is as far as she is likely to get without further data. She looks around the room for anything she may have overlooked, and for further detail out the window.

If she looks down at the street below she will see that there are furry quadrupeds going about their business, most of them wearing strings of the same color-changing beads Valanda has, some of them parasitized by large color-changing leech-like creatures. There are also some snakes, some of which are accompanied by floating bead necklaces. She'll have to watch for a while to see any humanoids.

That. Is. Not expected. At all.

She runs a standard diagnostic for whether she is hallucinating; returns 'either no or it is still best path-selection to proceed as though no'.

She proceeds.

It is not completely impossible that the Imperial government or some other group is running a very extensive successful secret experiment in biological engineering. It is not, altogether, very likely. A priori, 'transportation to another world' and similar events are also at the least, not likely. But popular reaction notwithstanding it it quite the opposite of scientific to proclaim occurring events to be impossible. (Color-changing beads, no clear strata, the unfamiliar island - observations move to connections.)

Tabula rasa. If that is the case, she cannot make assumptions about patterns she is accustomed to applying being applicable or true, must observe without expectation. The brain will easily fall into familiar patterns, underproduce the very strange. A bias to keep in mind, and to oppose.

As simpler beginning, she considers her previous reasoning set.

'On purpose' is less likely. There might be some reasons to attempt experimental translocation on a slave not one's own. There are far less to send such one to a different world. The layout of accident possibilities remain possibilities. Additional possibility that it was done from this world, and not hers. That could be on purpose still; she does not know what motivations they might hold. If most anyone in the world had discovered and was aware of another, Myra would have known, and so she would have known. Not certainty. But sufficient probability.

She lacks data about what this world may hold and how to act in it. This current situation at the least appears stable.

She continues to stay.

Valanda returns after less than an hour, wearing far fewer necklaces and carrying a potted flowering plant, a glass bottle, a pair of gold bracelets, and an iridescent blue-green hummingbird. He greets her warmly in a language she won't understand, sets down the plant, locks the door, and offers her the bracelets. They're close to the right size for her.

Details on the items?

If she is in another world, they are unlikely to be familiar with the slavery laws and signifiers from hers. But politeness is still advantageous.

Smile. Headshake.

Valanda accepts the refusal with all the good grace you don't expect of someone whose plot to magically enslave someone has just been foiled. Everything about how he moves, how he speaks, the expressions he makes all suggest that he's trying to be welcoming and helpful and is very sorry for shouting at her earlier.

The bracelets are very plain and fasten shut rather than being large enough to slip over a hand. The plant has a cluster of drab small flowers surrounded by floral-looking white sepals.

The bird says something in a quiet, high-pitched voice. Valanda uncorks the bottle for the bird to drink from and says something to the bird, then turns back to Sheridan and asks a question.

She can think of benevolent reasons to be offered bracelets (a law that all black-haired individuals should wear bracelets, for instance). She can also think of non-benevolent ones. He has not responded in either anger or worry (real or feigned) so that is not the highest priority for further understanding, at the present.

Welcoming affect is generally more positive than not, but can, of course, also be feigned. 

She does not understand the bird (if applicable), or the question.

The lack of response isn't helpful. He makes a vague circley gesture in front of his lips and points to her. If he can get her talking, the bird can translate, one way at least, but no magic he knows of can translate silence.

Of course, when he woke up today, he didn't know of any magic that could teleport someone. Who knows what they've learned to do on her undiscovered continent presumably somewhere in the antipodes.

"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." 

Write write write. What useful words. That doesn't sound better than what the Empire has. It sounds worse. Locks, sensors. Valanda's walls are unbreakable, the window is unopenable if he doesn't want it to open, the door can be held shut the same as the window if he feels like expending the power and doesn't trust the latch. Whatever glass break detectors are, they don't have them but they probably don't need them. It's possible the other continent just prefers to let would-be thieves in to give them more rope to hang themselves, make sure no one trusts what looks like an opportunity.

"Do you write security systems?" he asks. If he's very lucky, she'll grasp that with his limited vocabulary he's trying to describe spell-design. "And you gather what information? You have what chemistry and biology? What is a computer?" He has a translation for that but the translation was "automated arithmetic system" and he wants the details on her magic abacus design. Maybe he can sell the plans for it to a team of whatever sort of mages it needs. He can give her half the proceeds if he does and recoup some of today's losses.

Obviously she does not grasp this at all; understands it as planning/design/programming/setup. 

"No, though I likely could if I needed to. Where I come from, generally information about people, locations, events. I am not sure what descriptions of my level of chemistry and biology you want. I don't have a formal degree."

A very potentially informative question. It's not likely that they simply call them something else; the bird had translated everything else without causing questions. 'Do you not have computers' is obviously not an informative question. 'What technology level are you at' is not likely to be. 

The room does not have a light visible anywhere, nor a lightswitch. Not something she'd found necessarily odd at first, since it looks like a closet (if with a window). But he'd not taken her to a larger room. 

"Do you have electricity?"

Good of her to finally say "needed" and "want" and "if" and the like, Valanda's been waiting to hear "if" for a while now. The bird stumbles on "electricity" but eventually "useful lightning" is the tentative translation. From context it sounds like the magic abacus is made of lightning. Valanda draws a picture of a dark cloud and lightning striking from an implied ground up to the cloud. "Electricity?" he asks, pointing to it.

Another strange thing is the lack of elaboration on which parts of security system design she could do if she needed to. If she can design combined spells for several mages on her own, that's a very useful talent. Maybe she's a knowledge mage who used magic to understand how the other types of magic feel to have and use. Or maybe she thinks it's obvious that she's the knowledge mage and handles sensors. If she is, she's very unspecialized. People and places, not, say, translation or noncontagious disease diagnosis. Makes it sound like she's not very good at finding out any particular thing.

"Lighting is a form of electricity." And that is probably a no. "Where I am from, a different form of electricity is used to power a lot of technology."

He hasn't answered the chemistry and biology question, so she can't elaborate on that yet. 

Meanwhile, "I'm going to start listing some words that might be useful after things I say. City. Country. Empire. Room. Important. Laws. A little."

Where she comes from she is good at finding out quite a variety of particular things, but she doesn't expect to be anywhere near as much so here, certainly at first. Deduction needs knowledge.

It sounds like what her home continent has is not better magic but better nonmagical technology. Which means instead of a one in twelve chance (one in six if he counts the bird) that he can do whatever she can teach, it's certain he can do it. Materials will probably be more expensive than if it were magic, but as long as he turns a profit...

"Thank you! The words are useful! This room is in Thelm Ret. Thelm Ret is a city in Ehima. Ehima is in the Empire." He flips back to the map of the continent. "This is the Empire. This is Thelm Ret. This is Mar Geru. Mar Geru is a city in Har. 'Mar Geru' is Hari, 'Thelm Ret' is a different language. This" on the southeast coast, he points to it "is Anavel Sani City in Anavel Sani. Anavel Sani speaks Ilan, Har speaks Hari. All of the" he hesitates, not completely sure if the word is right "countries speak Hari. Hari is the language in the Empire." He smirks. The bird makes a sound that Sheridan might not recognize as laughter. It's only a little funny even if you get the joke, which Sheridan won't. "...Oh," he says. "I will... not-arrive here, I do not have but I will have" he decides not to bother translating "Hari Ar Sarag Marsaehu, I will arrive here, you will have Sarag Marsaehu. You will not borrow, you will own. If you own, you speak Hari. When you speak Hari, I ask you, electricity, technology, you ask me laws. You here. When you're sure what laws, you may not-arrive here, you may the city, the Empire. If you're not sure what laws, you may here, this room, or... I will say, when I arrive here. You want something?" He mimes food again, in case she's changed her mind about that.

He is excited again. 

He is asking about what she can do; he'd said 'borrowing' her (as opposed to asking about her world, or the whirlpool phenomenon, like a scholar-type might, or more about her, or a variety of other topics); he wants to use her for work. He wasn't asking her if she can do specific things; he is less likely to have a project in mind; he wants to make use of her work in general. He gets excited when it seems she might know something new to him, but is not a scholar-type; he likely wants to make use of it too.

Also the distinction between borrowing and owning is important here.

It seems she chose words well.

She does not get the joke, though she notices the smirk. 

She's heard those words. Has to check her paper for 'language' but 'Empire' she just heard. 'Hari is the language of the Empire'. 

"Leave. Province? Food. Thank you very much, I would be glad to learn more of your language, and your laws. "'Hari is the language of the Empire' is an object? How long do you expect to be gone?"

Well that question would be easier to answer if he spoke more Capital. He finds the edge of the rectangle of sunlight from the window. He puts his finger on it. He moves his finger. "This leaves, when this arrives here, if not food, I arrive." Shorter than his last errand by a lot. "If food, I arrive here." Still well under an hour. "Yes and no, is and is not an object, when you have you will be sure what I mean. You want food, when I leave?" He's not sure if she was just giving him the word or actually requesting it.

"I ate recently, no thank you."

Valanda asks the bird whether it'd rather stay or go. It stays perched on his head. They leave.

She memorized the indicated sunlight location; keeps track of time.

He does not have reason to know she's a slave, and if he'd cared very strongly about her not touching his things he could have expressed as such. She is thoroughly practiced in returning things exactly how she'd found them. This is not sufficient when she might be being monitored by Imperial guards, or with someone who had set up unknown security or would be checking for fingerprints and the like. At this point she will accept the remaining risk.

What is under the blanket? Will the metal rectangle hold anything interesting if she picks it up and looks at it? Did he leave his notebook?

The quilt is folded double to fit in the small space. Between the folds there's a change of clean clothes that have been mended several times and might be a little small for Valanda but at one point they were nicer than the ones he's wearing now. There's a wool blanket, or maybe that's a cloak. There's a small half-empty bag of nuts. There's a lump like there might be another notebook and some harder-to-guess things against the floor but for some reason without any visible nails or anything like that the quilt just refuses to be lifted off the floor. He did leave his notebook but it's written in at least two languages that share an alphabet without any warning when he changes between them and the diagrams are not anything familiar except one thing that could be a braid or a DNA helix with the ends circled and labeled for some reason.

The metal rectangle was face-down. The other side is blank except for a carving in the same alphabet as the notebook. It says "The Law Will Find You" if Sheridan could read it. Wait, no, it's not blank, suddenly it starts displaying a silent movie of a big cat levitating. The cat does not look happy about it. A caption scrolls across the screen. The cat seems to be pulled in different directions by unseen hands. It looks even less happy about this. It's ripped apart and dies. The movie is abruptly over and the metal rectangle is just a metal rectangle again.

What kind of bag? How is the cloak made?

She does not try harder to pry up the quilt. She explores the way it's stuck on. Smooth seam, or intermittent like if it was nails? Can she see anything at the seam? Is the outline an exactly shape or more freehand?

He was transliterating things she said into the notebook. If it's written with an alphabet, she should be able to figure out a lot of letters from that. If that's enough she will decipher the elements she knows of the carving (the, law, will, you, but not find). The caption probably goes by too fast for her. Based on the 'law' part and the lack of anything else happening, a top conjecture would be 'execution', though other options are very possible. Which would then also mean that in this world it is possible to levitate and manipulate things without contact. (Conversely, if it is a trailer for a movie or similar, it does not necessarily tell her anything about what they can do in reality).

What is the rectangle like? Does it seem to have internal components somewhere? What changes when the displaying starts?

Burlap bag. Looks like it's made from a couple scraps that may have been part of ill-fated larger bags at some point. The cloak is a wool square with fasteners on two adjacent corners.

The quilt is stuck as if it were superglued. There's no visible seam. It's not intermittent like nails. It's freehand, in some places it's stuck to the bottom of the wall, in some places it can be peeled up to reveal half an inch of wood floor.

She'll have some difficulty figuring out how to read Hari vowels from Hari-alphabet transliterations of words in a non-tonal language, the way tone is written is unobvious and for that matter Valanda's inconsistent about how to write non-tonal words. And if Capital uses more than five vowels and ten consonants Valanda will have had to improvise spellings.

The rectangle is a metal rectangle. Might be steel. There are small holes in the corners as if it's meant to be easy to tack it up somewhere. It seems to be a sheet of steel. The corners are rounded and it's polished and smooth and unlikely to accidentally cut someone. When it starts displaying things, it starts displaying things. That's about it. The display also isn't obscured by reflections even though in a pinch the metal is polished enough to serve as a mirror.

By the time she's done figuring out as much as she can about the Hari alphabet there won't be very long left before Valanda's expecting to return.

Usefully, she also heard him or the bird saying the Hari words, and isn't new to tonal languages.

There are 'theories' one does not usually entertain, but being transported to other worlds by surprise phenomena rather adjusts protocols.

She remembers what he sounded approaching last time and has been listening for that as well as watching the sun, but a buffer is preferred. She returns the last of what she looked at to how she found it; sits and reviews her notes externally (and what she has of the alphabet additionally, internally).

She has even more warning this time than last. A voice speaks in Hari. It's not Valanda's voice but there's not another set of footsteps. When he opens the door he hands her another rectangle. This one has sound as well as pictures. There's another big cat, but this one isn't being killed, he's just talking.

"...and that's the end of this episode," he says in Hari, then it goes blank for a second and when it reappears he has a different set of props with him. "Welcome to a new episode of Hari Is The Language Of The Empire. I'm Mahan and I'll be teaching you Hari. I am an agerah. This is a tree. This is a rock..."

And on it goes. Valanda smiles at her but assumes she'll want to listen without him talking over the teacher, so he says nothing to her and is very quiet when he speaks to the bird.

She smiles back, because that is social. "Thank you." She watches the rectangle. She pays enough side attention to see if she can catch anything he and the bird say.

Valanda wants to know if the bird wants to stay with Sheridan or go with Valanda when he has to go to work later; the bird wants to stay with Valanda.

"Do you want a name?" Valanda asks the bird. Hari conveniently doesn't distinguish "name" from "word" so she'll have heard the word before.

"I have one. I'm Iri," says the bird, which surprises Valanda.

"Huh. Iri. Sure. I need you off my hair while I fix it, you mind?"

The bird perches on his shoulder instead while Valanda finger-combs and re-ties his hair.

The show teaches a lot of forest-related vocabulary, starts a new episode in an orchard, teaches farming-related vocabulary. The farmer is another of the kind of talking cat called an agerah, this one named Riha, whose explanation of how he farms is a little beyond the intended audience's comprehension level and makes reference to magic. Episodes are pretty short. If the show was designed to hold interest or make memory easier, it sure wasn't designed to do that for humans. There aren't really signs it was designed to do that at all. Valanda isn't using the pencil at the moment, though, if she has more space left on the three pages he gave her.

That is not an ideal design for language acquisition, but it is not an uncommon one. (Perhaps she should tell her host that she can design a better language curriculum). Getting as much as she can out of information provision she does not have convenient access to is a skill she is very practiced at. She is good at conserving writing space. She focuses more on core words, functional words, structure, how expressions are put together, important words, words with broader applications. Takes notes with prioritization of important but not-commonly occurring words. Pays attention to pronunciation. Imagines how she might write words in what she gathered of the alphabet.

It would be more effective to have more space to practice, even internally. If her host is not busy, she will look somewhat up (there's a sequence of mostly specific vocabulary going on) and see if this draws his attention.

(What are the references to magic like?)

He's looking out the window. Looking at people isn't inherently rude but it's a little intrusive and she doesn't have anywhere private to go by herself. Iri doesn't care much about rudeness but also doesn't bother to tell Valanda where their guest happens to be looking.

The references to magic will be very unclear at this point. "I'm a green mage," says Riha. "I make plants grow faster and more efficiently and produce bigger fruits. I can roughly triple, sometimes quadruple the yield and ripen fruit earlier in the season than anyone else around here. I'm working on getting a crop in fast enough to have two a year but it might take a different spell to start the trees flowering again in summer. That field over there is owned by a death mage and we trade magic. He kills pests when I get an infestation and I make his strawberries grow bigger and faster. We barter rather than use currency because we're not very liquid out here in the country." The interview ends that episode and the next is set on a different sort of farm, naming things. These are sheep, these are goats. This is wool, this is a fence.

Valanda will just keep politely looking out the window for a while unless she says something.

She does not know enough words yet to understand this thoroughly enough to pick up on it.

He does not appear busy and 'how they respond to her interrupting them' is useful information to obtain.

"Excuse me?"

Valanda turns away from the window and if Sheridan is seated he'll squat down to keep level with her.

"What do you want?" he asks in Capital, in a tone of voice that suggests it's a lack of familiarity with Sheridan's language and a lack of knowledge about what she might consider rude, rather than any actual resentment, that determined his choice of words.

Meanwhile Mahan tells her that this is a rope and this is a bag and...

"I'm sorry to bother you. Is there a way to pause this?"

"No pause and I need the pencil, I want to write how you say that."

She passes him the pencil.

"How long is it?"

"Um. No, not how long." He's not sure how to explain in Capital and he doesn't think she can understand if he says it straight out but he switches to Hari anyway: "it repeats. Episode one, episode two, episode three, four, five, six, seven, eight... episode one again, then episode two, episode three, four... and it repeats and repeats. Does that make sense?"

She catches the repetition in the numbers. 

"It repeats? It's a loop? How long is one repetition?"

He puts his finger in the sunlight. He moves his finger over to the east wall. He crosses the room. He traces a line from the west wall to where the sun is now. "That's one day," he says in Hari. "Hari is the Language of the Empire is three days and..." he thinks about it and then traces about two or three hours of sun movement. "And maybe that much. You'll want to watch it again if you have to sleep." He is not looking forward to sleeping in this room with the show going on all night.

"Three days and a few hours?" She doesn't understand the rest of what he said.

"Yes, three days and a few hours," Valanda says. He hopes Iri translated "hours" as a familiar unit of time because they measure time the same way and not because the magic can't tell the difference between different measurements of time shorter than a day.

Attempting to watch it for three days straight is certainly not an effective learning method. So missing pieces as needed to take other actions only makes sense.

"Could I ask you a few questions? It will make it easier for me to understand."

"You may ask."

"Thank you.

Do you use magic?" 'Have magic' is more likely to bring on reverse questions about her world, which she would prefer to avoid if possible. This way she can be taken to mean if he personally uses it. And if she is completely mistaken in the supposition, then she will come up with something she meant instead (the translation has been shown to not be perfectly flawless).

She's been talking to him this whole time and didn't notice he was a person? How weird. He wonders if they have people who don't have magic on the other continent. How would they even become people without it?

"Yes."

That is a rather important thing to know. And now she knows the word as well.

"Might it be possible for me to get some translations directly from the bird? I could gain some core words, and confirm ones I learned."

"I don't care, do what you want," Valanda tells Iri in Hari.

"I don't know how to ask her to pay me," says Iri. "If she even can."

"Iri wants..." Valanda mimes barter, giving with one hand and taking with the other.

Meanwhile Mahan is naming colors. This leaf is green, this cloth is blue.

"Compensation? Payment?

What would Iri want as payment?" she doesn't add that she doesn't exactly own anything; this seems apparent.

"I don't know what I want," Iri confides in Hari to Valanda.

"Is there anything you wish she would do differently?"

"No and I don't know what she could do for me. I wish I knew more about where she's from. Oh, that's what I want." Iri changes to Capital to try to speak to her. "I want where you come from."

That, she supposes, is something she indeed has to offer. "What would you like to know?"

If she's familiar with the body language of this species of eusocial bird people, she'll recognize Iri's shrug. If not, well, that's why Valanda echoes it in more human body language.

She is not familiar.

She considers this a rather silly way to ask a question, but, such a way it was asked. "I am also from an Empire. I've lived in several locations in it, including the capital city." Not that she'd gotten to see much of it. "As I mentioned, where I am from electricity is used to power a lot of technology. Where I come from, a series of episodes like this would be watched using technology. There is generally a way to pause, or rewind, or move to a different episode." Does this appear to be a kind of information Iri is interested in?

"Thank you," says Iri. "You want translations directly?"

"As opposed to?"

"I don't know how to figure out what she wants from me," says Iri, trembling like a scared bird. Iri regrets asking for payment. Iri regrets agreeing to this. Iri regrets existing. Iri regrets literally everything.

"You asked," says Valanda, "might it be possible for you to get some translations directly from the bird. What translations?" He doesn't add that Iri is terrified of her and that he suspects Iri hasn't bothered to remember much vocabulary and doesn't know how to ask for clarification besides repeating things. That's a little beyond him to explain.

She notices the body language.

"If I say some words or sentences, can Iri tell me how to say them in Hari?

"Is Iri alright?"

Alright, ha, Iri has everything they've ever worked for and nothing they've ever taken for granted and no idea what to do with any of the things they've been told all their life not to want and

also Iri hasn't really been paying attention to which words mean what and can't read Valanda's notes and Valanda's no help either, he just shrugs and now Iri's left the stranger waiting while they think and

"Can Iri tell me how to say them in Hari. Yes. Iri can. Is Iri alright," and Iri translates that into Hari. It's using a concept that's slightly slant of anything Hari has words for but it's close to a couple of different concepts. "Iri ar riuh i erhes au?"

Iri still seems distressed, and unfortunately this is an area where it is rather hard to assist given impeded communication.

"I'm not upset at you in any way, if you are worried about that. I am not asking you to do anything except tell me how to say things I say in Hari. If that is distressing I won't do it either. Is it?" 

She notices the lack of an exact word match. Does she know any of the words within it?

Refusing wouldn't be any less distressing and since Iri got payment up front it'd be dangerous to wait and let her decide she's owed something else later. And if Iri does more than they owe that's either dangerous or helpful, you can usually guess which by species but humans are rare and Iri isn't sure if they'll see weakness and press their advantage or if they'll want to be fair and repay Iri for helping.

Iri translates that for Valanda and then answers. "I tell you how to say things you say in Hari."

She might've heard on Hari is the Language of the Empire that it's important to make sure your sheep are "erhes" but it's not a word that's very easy to define by pointing at things. She's likely to recognize "Iri ar" as the same construction that starts "Hari Ar Sarag Marsaehu" and she might recognize "au" as a verbal question mark, if she's been able to tell when Valanda and Iri are asking each other questions and when they're making statements. Or she might recognize it when it shows up in Iri's translation of what she just said, which ends "ar au?" "Riuh" shows up there, too: "ar riuh" is the entire first clause and then it comes up again when in Iri's translation she says if it will make Iri stop being riuh she won't ask for more translations. It's possible she can parse the whole sentence, especially knowing what it's supposed to mean.

She can somewhat parse it. Something like 'Is Iri not-upset-at-her/undistressed and __ ?' The first part not in fact being what she meant, if the upset-at is important there. She notes to keep that in mind, but decides not to attempt in-depth investigation, at the moment. Not highest priority, and if it has to do with some cultural difference she will be better set up to understand it once she learns more.

"Thank you. Is there some reassurance or help I could give you that would make anything better? 

Do you have an established signal for 'I am saying this to you' as opposed to 'please translate this'?"

Iri trembles and translates all of that into Hari for Valanda.

"She's trying to tell you she'd rather back down than fight with you," says Valanda.

"Oh," says Iri. Iri thinks hard about how to answer in Capital. "Is reassurance, is better, is all right." They get some help from Valanda figuring out how to answer the other question. "No established signal."

By body language xie is at least somewhat in fact reassured, and if she is to attempt more she would want to wait for greater knowledge as well as intimacy level.

(She does not have enough words to understand Valanda's sentence.)

She nods.

And that seems an omission in translator work, but, is as it is. "Would just saying 'translate please' or the like be alright?"

"All right."

"Thank you. Might I be able to also practice language with you? It might go easier, if I can also say what I meant to say in Capital."

Iri doesn't understand what she's asking for and that's terrifying but Valanda did say she's not dangerously inclined toward Iri right now. Iri will just try their best to figure it out.

"Yes. Practice."

"Thank you." (Xie's scared again, but the rest of the situation features continue to hold, so, no clear procedure for addressing that. She is not about to do anything unpleasant on purpose and she will watch for information as she is able.)

It would be useful to ask about scheduling - she can schedule herself for learning between the not-video and translation and practice, but it would be of assistance if she knew if either of them had opinions on aspects of her going about that, or planned to ask her to do something else, or head off elsewhere themselves. But at her current level of language it is likely better to start acting and watch for responses and change, rather than try to ask.

She looks back at the not-video for a moment, thinks. Then turns back to Iri "Are these correct? Could you correct me, please, if they are not?" And she produces a few short sentences in Hari. 

"Correct." Now Iri thinks they understand what she wants. This shouldn't be too hard.

"Thank you." And, if no one appears to object to this, she will set herself into alternating between the not-video, sitting silently as she repeats words to herself, asking Iri for translations, and production practice. 

They leave her to it for a while but then Valanda gets her attention.

"You might not understand this so I'll translate it afterward. I have to go to work soon but before I do I should show you where to find the bathroom and get water to drink. In Capital, that's... you and I go, you know where, uh..." Valanda makes a vague gesture meant to convey that he can't really explain. "You and I arrive here, I go to do work, you here. Go?" Valanda opens the door.

She nods, stands up. "Thank you." Says it in Hari, this time.

The hallway is painted in vaguely naturalistic streaky non-patterns of dark green and brown. Light comes from a window at one end of the hall. There are lots of doors and there are stairs.

This floor's bathroom is accessible for at least five different species and not really optimal for any of them. They have soap and running water, though not sinks per se. Valanda demonstrates that the water is drinkable. There doesn't seem to be a way to run it hot.

Valanda is very relieved that they don't run into anyone and leads her back to his room before anyone has a chance to show up and take some kind of offense at her or wonder where she came from.

Access to restrooms and water is considerably preferable to absence of the same. "Thank you," she says again.

(Can she see how it seems to be working? Is there plumbing? What is the style of the stairs? What is the hallway floor like?)

The plumbing seems to be pretty hidden in the walls. There's nothing that couldn't be strictly mechanical. The stairs are within the range of acceptable heights for a human and there are handrails on both sides. The hallway floor creaks like wood and is covered in soft carpet in dull natural colors. It might have been tie-dyed but that would only explain parts of the design.

How does the metalwork look?

"Do I need to unlock and lock the door to go to the hall?" she asks Valanda back in the room.

it looks like they use silver for it, is how it looks.

"Unlock the door, go to the hall, arrive here, lock the door." The mechanical lock is a deadbolt. Valanda can lock the door from the outside with magic but doesn't know if Sheridan can.

That's certainly something.

So she does not need to lock the door from the outside, and he did not mention anything having to do with magic. (Sheridan cannot). "Thank you."

Yeah, he's just leaving the whole topic of magic for later when they can talk to each other better.

"I go do work," he says. The bird goes with him. "You lock," he says, pointing to the lock, just before he closes the door.

A new episode of Hari is the Language of the Empire starts.

"...I'm Mahan and I will be teaching you Hari. Today we'll talk about magic. This is Ariu. Ariu is an illusion mage. Ariu will show us illusion magic now." There's a good view of a bare patch of ground between them. And then projected on that patch of ground are twelve symbols. "This is an illusion of magic. We call it that because there are twelve kinds." ("Magic" and "twelve" are the same word in Hari.) "You are watching Hari is the Language of the Empire on an enchanted object. It is enchanted with illusion magic. This is the symbol for illusion magic." He points to it with his tail. "I am a void mage. Using void magic is against the law. Do not use void magic. This is the symbol for void magic."

A snake slithers into view. "This is Agi. Agi is a force mage. This is the symbol for force magic. Agi will do some force magic." Agi levitates. "Agi is levitating by using force magic."

Agi slithers off, to be replaced by another furry creature who does sun magic. The furry creature transmutes elements. The symbol for sun magic looks like a sun.

There are twelve kinds of magic and by the end of the episode not all of them will have been demonstrated but all of them will have been named and their symbols pointed out.

She locks the door and watches the not-video.

What a rather important episode. (Ah, she had noticed the homophone-(which-turns-out-to-in-fact-be-more-than-that). She does her best at understanding with her current capacity - fortunately this appears to be an episode with higher quantities of simple sentences and repetition and such. Twelve kinds of magic, each does something different. People appear to be identified as types of mages. Void magic is against the law ('illegal', like 'bathroom', and related concepts, are words she'd asked Iri for) but the speaker does not seem to be concerned about identifying himself as a void mage.  

(And ah, this appears likely to have been what her host had been attempting to get at with the numbers earlier. She thinks back to that conversation and its pattern. Had he thought she had appeared by (their) magic? ...Had he thought she might have appeared by magic she could do? That might explain the topic-patterns, and the excitement-then-dissapointment.

And - had she, in fact, appeared by their magic? He didn't seem to recognize her description, and the not-video had not shown anything like it, but it is not odd to have advances or experiments not known to everyone and not described in commonly-available educational materials.

Not much she is able to do with such a hypothesis. But she keeps it in mind.)

The transmutation explains the silver, she supposes. 

She copies down symbols and brief notes, notes questions.  

(Is the transmutation specifically elements? Has anyone been identified as more than one kind of mage? Has she heard a word that seemed to be not-mage? What were the other kinds? Are enchanted objects mentioned for any other kinds?)

The sun mage transmutes elements. A structure mage alters chemical compounds. No one has been identified as two kinds of mage or zero kinds of mage but it is possible that they wouldn't be featured in an episode like this, just to keep it simple. The kinds of magic are force, structure, illusion, sun, death, command, heat, knowledge, void, inheritance, green and defense. The symbols for these are, in order, an arrow, a bunch of circles touching each other, a vague squiggle, the sun, a horizontal line, an empty circle, a rectangle that's half black half white-outlined-in-black, a brain shape with a squiggle on it, a black square, an X, a leaf, an arc over a dot that looks a little like an umbrella.

The episode doesn't demonstrate heat, knowledge, inheritance or green magic. Command magic is demonstrated by pointing out that a gold bracelet was enchanted with it. It is not explained what the bracelet does. It looks like the ones Valanda offered her earlier. One of the mages who appears on the show is wearing four, one on each leg.

The explanations of the kinds of magic not demonstrated lean heavily on presumed familiarity with the twelve symbols. It's not really possible to figure out what all of them do.

...and he's Mahan and welcome to another episode of Hari is the Language of the Empire, today you'll be learning about the bloody wars of conquest that led to the existence of a one-world government! Aren't you so lucky to live in the Empire instead of a nation that isn't the Empire and would definitely be extremely bloodily destroyed. Modern conveniences like a total lack of alternative states sure are grand.

This appears potentially relevant to the level of pertinency of her chemistry knowledge.

She thinks she can form some conjectures about command magic. (She notices the bracelet similarly).

If she remembers correctly green magic was mentioned in the farming episode (as was... death magic? (This not-video could certainly be structured more conveniently, she lets herself observe. But she is well used to taking knowledge from less than convenient setups)). Heat she can guess at, though she may not be at all correct. Knowledge and inheritance not so much so. Void magic continues unclear. 

(She wonders why sun magic has that name; it seems an odd one out.)

She is from an Empire herself, and is long in the habit of not making facial expressions and the like at such pronouncements. She sets herself to paying attention to conquest-relevant vocabulary (and/or seeing if they got some language educational value, into their propaganda episode).

Of course the propaganda episode teaches vocabulary. Blood. Death. Fight. War. Cooperate. Peace. Safety. Law enforcement. They show maps of the continent with the polities that used to exist. They compare it to a modern map.

They mention minority languages and where they're spoken. The two biggest minority languages among people who can pronounce Hari are Ilan, spoken in the southeast, and Devin, spoken around the bay in the southwest. There's also Ereli, North Essi and South Essi, but people who speak those can't pronounce Hari. This is okay as long as everyone understands Hari and all the people who can pronounce it speak it. People can also watch Understanding Ereli to learn Ereli.

Isn't it so nice that the Hari Empire allows linguistic diversity to exist. Without them maybe people would go to war and all the speakers of a minority language would die. On the other hand, the Hari Empire also makes it easier for people to understand each other by teaching them all Hari. If you like languages, you like the Hari Empire! If you like transcontinental trade and understanding people from far away, you like the Hari Empire!

There's a little bit of math about the resources diverted to fighting wars and how not doing that leaves more for literally anything else, like inventing more efficient ways to farm or having regular flights from city to city, which couldn't happen if they were at war, now, could it.

It's a long episode and clearly biased but their treatment of the subject is detailed and includes lots of useful vocabulary words. A lot of effort is made to make concepts like "war" clear. An intermediate student would probably be able to understand everything and learn a lot of new words. Parts of it might go over Sheridan's head.

Parts of it do go over her head, but she appreciates their effort, detail, and vocabulary words. She also appreciates maps, and copies down quick details.

All other factors being equal she does approve of allowing linguistic diversity, trade, understanding people, and preferences for funding useful things over wars and for lack of genocide. (She of course is perfectly aware of bias being certainly present, and that lack of inclusion in a propaganda episode of elements such as 'war crimes' and 'less bloody alternatives that could have been chosen' and 'oppression' and 'various horrible things the government does and countenances' does not likely reflect the lack of such things in reality.)

What polities used to exist? Is one-world government literal? How about the other continents?

Is 'some people can't pronounce Hari' conveyed in a way she would understand? Are there any examples of speech in the other mentioned languages?

Is the math presented in a way to give her some information on their math notation?

Is the existence of flights conveyed in a way she would understand (for instance with images)?

There is no mention of any other continents anywhere in the episode. There is no mention of foreign relations involving anyone from any other continent. No other continents appear on any maps. Small islands near the coast of this continent appear on one map. Information on other polities is limited, there's only any detail on two larger ones, Anavel Sani and Thervigenia, the former now a state and the latter totally lost, and one tiny island one, the Sovereign Republic of Anemone Bay.

There's a sample of North Essi with a Hari translation. It isn't completely obvious that it's not produced by a vocal apparatus that could also pronounce Hari, but it might seem likely just from that sample. It's also mentioned that illusion mages can pronounce Ereli even if they're agerah or caralendri.

The math is all explained verbally, not written.

The existence of regular flights is illustrated with a map and a video of an airport in Mar Geru.

...and he's Mahan and he'll be teaching you Hari, today's lesson is about common materials! This is coal, coal is the sixth element, this is wood, wood's not an element, this is a candle, the candle is on fire, the fire is using vital air, vital air is the eighth element. This is steel, steel can't be made by a sun mage but can be made by a structure mage. This is silver, silver is the forty-seventh element, it can be made by sun mages. Silver's a common material for door handles, taps, things a lot of different people have to touch. This is gold, it's number seventy-nine. This is titanium. This is adamantite, three parts titanium to one part gold. This is platinum, very useful for a few very specific applications that Mahan doesn't go into detail on. This is glass, this is graphite, this is cement. Try to avoid lead. It's not safe to use lead for things people might eat or drink from. It's not safe to make elements that might be radioactive. Don't assume a compound is safe just because the elements it's made of are.

Mahan seems to have no trouble at all getting examples of precious metals to show people and "adamantite" is clearly an everyday word.

Totally lost?

Is this use of illusion magic demonstrated or only mentioned?

In that case she will note mathematics vocabulary. What math do they seem to be using?

Anything to indicate the existence of flights/transportation from said airport, or is it just 'bustling people'?

Useful vocabulary. (Incredibly useful and fascinating magic; she wonders if they might have made chemistry discoveries quite ahead of her world). She notes their chemistry knowledge. (Anything about coal vs diamond and such like?)

Yes, if one lives in a world where some can transmute elements she imagines that would lead to such a said-trouble-free state of affairs. 

The use of illusion magic to speak Ereli isn't demonstrated. The video shows a flight taking off, but unlike a nonmagical plane it takes off by heading straight up for a while first and the video cuts to something else before it starts moving any other direction.

They do have a separate word for graphite and seem to know which things are elements. They're a little sloppy about the purity of their examples of elements, but that might be because Mahan isn't a chemist and this show is about language.

Valanda is gone for hours. It starts to get dark. The show doesn't provide any quizzes or any pauses to let things settle. An average human would probably find it increasingly difficult to make any use of it. If spaced repetition is a concept this world has, there is no evidence of that in the design of the show.

Then that will tell her that they do have flight, while not apparently having electricity. Interesting. She makes a note of wanting to know if it uses the force magic, instead.

Is there any indication of what determines the form of an element a sun mage ends up with? Also, of how the transmutation handles amounts? Would a mole of one give a mole of the other, or does it match by total number of subatomic particles, or something else?

That would make sense, given that he went to work.

Is it harder to watch the show in the dark? Are there lights in the apartment?

She has noticed these features of the show; wonders dryly if they might appreciate advice on language education theory. 

She is not an average human, but for all the work various learned memory tricks and practice and the like can do, not in fact a perfect absorption brain unit. She takes breaks (preferably on episodes that seem comparatively less useful) to repeat and review vocabulary, practice production in as much as she can without anyone else present, engage in some limited-space physical activity and brain-restorative operations, get water.

Total number of subatomic particles seems to stay constant.

There are no lights in the apartment, but it's still twilight, not night, when Valanda gets back. He knocks.

"It's Valanda," he says in Hari. "Unlock my door."

That is fascinating.

She unlocks the door.

Iri is with him. He locks the door once they're inside.

"Hungry?" he asks. He mimes it for clarity. At this point a human who ate right before she arrived might be hungry. And she might not have.

Has she, in any of the episodes she's watched so far, seen people acquiring food and eating it and nothing negative happening as a result (for instance, at a market?)

Yeah, there was a crowd scene at a market where a lot of foods were named. In the background, some furry creatures ate some fruit. Someone humanoid but not human ate hard-to-see food of indeterminate origin in another crowd scene. Birds like Iri drank nectar straight from flowers in an episode that mentioned them.

That is as safe as she has a reasonable likelihood of being. And food is important for proper functioning.

"Yes, thank you."

Valanda gets a bag of nuts out from under the quilt and offers it to her.

"If you have any questions, I can try to answer them now," he says in Hari. He knows it's absurdly optimistic to expect her to understand but he's tired of Capital and forgot some of it while he was at work.

"Thank you." She eats nuts.

She has 'question' and the smaller words, and can conjecture from there.

"If I have questions, you can try to answer?" she checks in Capital (she looks at Iri).

Iri translates and otherwise stays silent.

"Yes," says Valanda.

"I have many questions. But I think I will not understand many - answers? - now. I will learn more, then say more questions," she says, in halting but clear Hari.

"What are important laws of the Empire? Any I will understand?" This she repeats in Hari and Capital, for practice and clarity respectively.

"Don't kill any people. Don't hit or eat people you don't own. Don't take any things or people that aren't yours. Don't damage someone else's things. Don't go anywhere you're not allowed to be, like into someone's house or apartment without their welcome. Don't lie about whether someone committed a crime. Don't make anyone leave a public place. Pay your taxes, I'll help you figure out how much, you don't owe any yet. There are some others but they only apply if you own slaves. Those apply everywhere in the Empire. We're in Ehima right now. Ehima also has other laws. Don't use void magic. Don't lie while selling things. Don't cut down any trees you don't own. There are laws about when and where you can fly and what kinds of buildings you can build, but I don't know them because I don't fly or build buildings. There are also some city laws. Maybe I should just get you written copies tomorrow, there are laws I don't think about much."

She clarifies or attempts to determine various words she doesn't have or is not sure of.

Was 'slave' in the not-video?

"Void magic is not illegal other places?" (From the not-video she had understood it was).

"Will it teach me reading also?" (the not-video). 

There were slaves in the video but she hasn't gotten to the episode about slavery yet. She may not have heard the word. If she doesn't guess a translation Iri won't be able to pluck the Capital word out of thin air.

"Reading Hari is easy. I'll teach you tomorrow. Void magic is illegal other places but it's not illegal under imperial law. There's imperial law. The Hari Empire enforces imperial law. Every state enforces other laws. Every state enforces a law against void magic. There could be a state where it was allowed, but there isn't one."

"Understood. Thank you.

What is void magic?

'Slaves'?"

"If you own a person, that person is your slave. Void magic is magic that makes there not be things. It makes empty space. Not empty like air, you can breathe air. Empty like you can't breathe. Empty like nothing. And then not empty because then things rush in to the empty space, but before that it's empty like it would be if you flew above the air."

Nod. "Thank you." She marks this important word. "Could I see it, if someone is a slave?"

"Vacuum?" She asks in Capital.

"Why is it illegal?"

And, it is information about their world again that they know that. "Are there people here who fly above the air?"

"Yes, vacuum," says Iri.

"Yes, you can see that Iri is my slave." Valanda points out the gold anklets. "And you can see that I'm not." He indicates his own bare wrists. He doesn't mention that he was definitely trying to get her in his thrall with his offer of enchanted bracelets earlier. He doesn't look sorry, either. "Void magic is illegal because it can't be undone. If we make everything void there will be no ground to stand on and no air to breathe and no food to eat. There are no people here who fly above the air. Can you do that?"

Clarification of a few words as needed. Nod.

She receives the new information about Iri, back-combines it with past information-without-that-context-at-the-time such as how Valanda spoke to xer, and xer wanting payment for answering Sheridan. Not enough general information to draw most conclusions yet, but more is helpful.

She makes conjectures about the connection, with respect to the bracelets, but does not currently comment on it. 

"Do all the bracelets have command magic like in the episode, or are some just for seeing?

Do many people own slaves?" (Given that it seems he does, while living in this apartment.)

"But death magic is not illegal?

I cannot do that. We can make some machines fly above the air, with technology. But we cannot put people in them."

("In space?" she asks in Capital, to get the word.)

Turns out there's not a single Hari word for outer space. Iri calls it the void beyond the world.

"You can make a bracelet and not enchant it, but if people see you wearing gold bracelets they'll think you're a slave. Wearing unenchanted bracelets would be a lie, I guess. It's not a very useful lie. It would mean people would think someone was protecting you. And if a slave commits a crime, the owner is the one who gets punished, but if you're just pretending, then people would figure that out when they couldn't find your owner. You would be safer if you were spoken for but you have no reason to trust me on that."

He shrugs and takes the bracelets he tried to trick her into wearing earlier and sticks them to the wall. They stay as if the wall were magnetic.

"Might be better to just take that off the table." And give her one less thing to try doing to him while he sleeps. Which reminds him. "If you don't want me watching you sleep, you can sleep while I'm at work this morning. Lock the door and I can't unlock it from the outside."

He frowns at some of her questions. They seem like very strange sorts of things to be unclear about.

"Yes, lots of people own slaves. Death magic is legal. I'm not sure why you'd want a law against it. The government pays death mages to go around helping sick people, it's good for preventing epidemics. Tell me how you fly above the air, isn't there nothing for your wings to beat against?"

(She generally continues attempting to clarify words as needed and switching between Capital and Hari as seems more optimal for being understood and also practicing.)

"Bracelets for slaves are always enchanted?" And, "will there be an episode on slavery?"

"That is very very generous, thank you.

Watching me?" (Does that have a figurative meaning she is not aware of?). "And, you do not sleep?"

"In the Empire where I am from, usually richer people own slaves, and the government owns slaves, and other people do not." 

She definitely does not have the Hari for this, but "it seems that death magic and void magic have the similarity that they can be very useful but also very dangerous. So I was clarifying on the one being illegal while the other is not."

"We do not fly with wings. We -" she thinks if there might be something to compare it to. "How do your flights work? Are they force magic? They cannot fly in space?"

"If they weren't enchanted they wouldn't do anything and then the slave could disobey. There will be an episode about slavery, yes. I sleep but I wouldn't expect you to trust me not to wake up and watch you. I'll tolerate you watching me sleep because there aren't any better options. When you've been here and able to work for a couple weeks and know the laws, then I'll help you find a place of your own."

He wonders why rich people and the government want that many slaves. Maybe labor is more useful where she's from.

"Void magic and death magic are different. It's not that void magic is dangerous every time you use it. No one expects someone to use so much void magic that suddenly there's no air to breathe. But if one void mage gets rid of one pound of stuff one day and then the next day another void mage does the same thing and  then the next day another void mage does the same thing..." Valanda spreads his hands. "Death magic isn't like that. New animals are born to replace the dead ones. Nothing replaces what's lost to void magic. Our flights are force magic unless you have wings. I guess a force mage could get to space. It'd be a long trip and they'd have to carry air and the vital air would be turned into poison as they breathed. And it wouldn't get them anything. They could go light a torch from the sun, I guess, I think that would make the torch transmute elements instead of compounds? But sun mages already do that. I guess maybe they could go pry a star out of the edge of the world and carry it home. I'm not sure what stars are. Maybe they're useful somehow."

"Thank you. You are very very kind." (And apparently tried to trick her into magical slavery, which suggests a likelihood of ulterior motives, but that is less useful to say.)

"I'm sorry, I do not understand. Does 'watch' mean more than 'look at'? Does to be looked at when you sleep hurt you?"

"Thank you, I understand."

"Torch? Light a torch from the sun? Why would it do that? Edge of the world?

I know what stars are where I am from; maybe they are the same here. How do you learn about the sun and the stars and what is outside the world?"

"I'm not sure what you're confused about. If we sleep in the same room, one of us could wake up and look at the other, yes. Or one of us could wake up and try to enchant the other. I don't know anything about the sun and stars, I'm not educated. There might be people here who know what stars are. I think a knowledge mage could tell but I've never asked. I'd like to know what you know about stars."

"Where I am from, if someone looks at someone else when they are asleep, nothing bad will happen. Here something bad will happen?

You can enchant differently if someone is asleep?

Could you explain about the torch? This is not a torch that is on fire and for giving light?"

Where she is from, the stars are giant balls of gas very very far away. They are made mostly of the first element and the second element. The sun is a star that the planet is closer to and goes around. You could not light a torch from it, because you could not go near it without dying - they burn and are very very hot. Also the world does not have an edge; it is a sphere.

"The sun might be that hot, I guess that would explain how it can heat half the world at a time. The sun is made of the first element and turns it into the second element. Uh, I know that the ground that this building is on is a sphere but I don't know how far the void goes or if there's anything after it. You seem to be confused about some things but I'm not sure what you're confused about. It's sometimes easier to hurt a sleeping person, depending on what kind of magic you have and what kind they have. I don't think it's ever harder. Sleeping people don't notice things and can't protect themselves very well. I guess I could kill you whether you're awake or not. Maybe you could do the same to me if you wanted, I don't know. You seem to know more about the sun than me so maybe I'm wrong about what would happen if you lit a torch from it, if you could do that which you say you can't."

Nod.

"Yes, you could.

You could blindfold me, or tie me down while you slept, if that would help you?" (she is not especially worried about her vulnerability to him. If he wants to hurt her, it is and has been clearly trivial for him to do so.)

"I don't know if your sun is the same as my sun." (She is still confused about the torch and the different kinds of magic, but it does not look like trying to clarify is achieving anything useful.)

"Of course I could, but there's a chance a judge would decide that was assault. I wouldn't know how to help you figure out if our sun is like yours, I never learned any science. What kind of mage are you?"

And even if a judge would accept her testimony that she permitted it, she presumes he cannot trust that she would give it.

Inconvenient. (She does not like that he might have to worry about her all night.)

"I do not think I am a mage. You?" (Not very much point to try to keep this secret, she thinks. If it will cause problems, then such it will.)

It will definitely cause problems!

Valanda squeaks. He flaps his hands almost like he's trying to fling something away. "No no no no no no no, I thought, I, I thought it was a, a person, I, I, I, Iri did you know it wasn't a person, did you know and not tell me, it's, it's, it looks, it's, no no no no no no no..."

"She's not less of a person than I am," says Iri.

"You're, you're, that's different, thwilit are people, you're not this, you're not an animal, you don't look like you're whole, you, you, no no no no no, it's a, it's, no no no no no, I, I, I talked to it, I talked to it, I thought, I thought..."

Valanda backs up as far away from her as he can. He stares at her straight on for the first time.

"Do you, is there, is there something wrong with just you or, or, or does your entire world just not have any people, there's no, there's no magic, there's no people..."

Yes, this is a problem.

She is very much not sure how to attempt to solve this problem.

"I'm very sorry to distress you. Is there - something particular you're worried about? Have people without your kinds of magic caused some kind of problem?"

"Our kinds? Do you have some other kind of magic?"

"We don't use the word magic for anything we have, but I'm not sure what decides what is magic and what is not? Some people in history used to say that rain came by magic, or birds used magic to navigate, or people with a stronger discerning-sense were magic, or people who could do a lot of math in their heads were magic. Yours seems different than that, but I do not know enough about it right now." (This is not how she would by default have talked about this, but he seems very upset and she is very uncertain of what exactly might talk him down.)

Iri translates "discerning-sense" as "knowledge magic specializing in people's health and other personal information" and Valanda's too desperate to be suspicious that Iri might be phrasing it that way deliberately to calm him down.

"Everyone has discerning-sense?" he asks, borrowing the Capital word. "That's, that's something you can do that animals can't? It not like, not like us, we don't all have the same magic. I think maybe it's a translation problem. It's a translation problem, it's Iri's fault, it's, it's, you have a similar word that doesn't mean the same thing, 'magic'" (in Capital) "doesn't mean magic, it's, it's... unexplained things or something, you just all have an, an unusual type of knowledge magic, and it's all the same so you don't need a word for the whole category, that's all, that's all, you're not, not, not some kind of thing that looks like a person and talks like a person and, okay, you're a knowledge mage and you don't have twelve kinds, that explains a lot, you just have one kind of magic but you have it, because you're people, of course you're people."

Valanda takes several deep breaths.

"I'm so sorry."

...Sure. 

'Somewhat lying' is not the most stable of solution mechanisms, but Iri seems to be going along with this one, and she has not currently thought of another one, and he was very very upset (and Iri was not, so this is not just an interworld issue). And this could possibly cause some problem if and when more interworld contact occurs - certainly scientists are still studying discernment-scence, but she's not expecting the answer they produce to be 'magic' any more than she's expecting the answer to 'why is there more matter than antimatter' to be 'magic'.

But if contact occurs she predicts plenty of scientists will promptly insist that the local phenomena clearly has a physical explanation somewhere, and if needed she does not think it will do much harm for her to pretend to be the kind of person who would find 'maybe the answer is magic!' to be an appealing hypothesis.

"We have our discerning-sense and animals do not, yes." (This is clearly not the time to discuss that people with impaired discernment-sense are also people, nor any theories on animals).

"Please don't blame Iri - you are correct, where I am from in the current time "magic" (the Capital word) is only used to mean things that do not happen in our world. If I had read a story about your world it would have called your 'magic' (the Hari word) "magic", so I borrowed the world, and Iri translated what I meant. I did not know there were other concerns, or I would have chosen better words. It is entirely my mistake, and I apologize.

We do not have twelve kinds, though some people can do things with discerning-sense that others can't.

We are definitely people, yes. 

It is very alright. It would be odder, I think, if sudden contact between different words never caused such misunderstandings. Even meetings between different cultures in the same world often do. But we are certainly people.

You do not have discerning-sense? That must have been difficult for your ancestors."

More deep breaths.

"Oh. It sounds like normal magic doesn't happen in your world, so you were right to use that word for it. And Iri knew what you were talking about, so that was right, too. The definition of our word 'magic' is anything that some but not all people of every species and no animals can do. All people can talk in some kind of language, so that's not magic. Animals can walk, so that's not magic. A twelfth of our population could learn to do what your discerning-sense does. I'm not sure if it's more difficult for us not having it but I doubt it's more difficult than not having death magic."

"I do not think we have what you have, no. 

That makes sense." What an interesting - and potentially... problem-involving... concept. "Where I am from, we only have one sentient species, so we may not have had the same concerns.

Are there animals here who don't have magic but will try to learn your language and talk to you like a person would?" (Best find out, if there are - dynamics such as that, present.)

"Yes, having death magic sounds like it could have helped our ancestors.

As it is, discerning-sense is what people use to keep from accidentally begetting a child, and to know if someone is carrying a disease before they have outward symptoms, and to help the sick and injured, especially when there is not technology. So we are fortunate to have had it.

Those are the knowledge mages?" (And, has any of the language she's learned or episodes she's watched tell her anything about this world and strata, or gender?) 

"Knowledge mages can do all that. We do have talking animals, they're" a species name she won't have heard yet. "They're black birds bigger than Iri, they eat already dead meat and whatever else they can scavenge. They usually just say 'ah! ah!' but you can catch one and teach it to say 'food' or 'water' when it's hungry or thirsty. I don't think they can use sentences but I think they understand the words they say. Do they have those where you're from?"

"We have birds that can be taught words and phrases, but no animals that could carry on a conversation the way I have.

Do knowledge mages read strata for you, then? Or do you not use those at all; I did not see signs in the episodes. And how do most people tell the genders of those they interact with, then?" (The language she'd heard didn't seem to have the words or grammar for it, but that they clearly have - Valanda's is as clear to her as anyone's at home would be, and Iri's was clear if not something she'd encountered before. Which, while she would not find the converse surprising either, should not be surprising, for another species.)

Iri attempts translations. "Awareness of your sex" comes across, with caveats. The other thing is harder. Iri spends a while trying to explain what they're getting.

"Thank you, Iri. Okay, no, I think only Iri's species has strata, if we understand what that is. With some species you can tell sex by looking. For instance, caralendri women are larger than caralendri men."

Iri interrupts. "Not sex. Them knowing their sex."

"Oh! You can read minds? But only to tell what someone else believes their sex is? How can you tell the difference between that and being able to tell what sex they are? Are people wrong about that a lot?"

This is such an uncomfortable topic for Valanda. He didn't really need to have to think about someone looking at him and thinking about him being a woman. Looking at him and thinking that's something important to know. Oh, and the mind-reading. That's also bad.

The complexity of translation is at least a strong suggestion that something is different. She listens for words she knows and such.

She considers the implications of a society mostly without strata (not, of course, that she is likely to be able to accurately project-imagine. Though fortunately she in this case will not need to.) 

Nod. "That would be a great difference from the Empire I am from, then, if you do not have strata." 

She tries to understand the rest of what he's saying. Since he said 'with some species' it seems to be about the gender part of what she asked rather than the strata part. 'With some species you can tell __ by looking. For instance, caralendri ___ are larger than caralendri ____'. Given the topic she might assume those should be 'gender' and some genders, but given the rest of the phrases that's blatantly nonsensical. As would 'Not __. Them knowing their __' be, in that case.

She attempts to generate possibilities; considers them with models of a world in which people don't have a discerning-sense...

"...People in your world guess people's genders by looking at them? ...That sounds like it would be distressing for a lot of people!" (...Mental shuddering is not to be allocated space in her active mind right now; that space is needed and being used.) 

"Does your society use 'gender' to decide how to treat people? In that case I will pay you one ring if at the end of a month you've acted as if you believe I'm male. Does that sound good? ...Do you understand what I'm offering?"

"...we use it to decide what pronouns and words and inflections to use when we talk? Hari has seemed not to have those. Is that what you do? ...that also seems as though it would be distressing to many people.

I'm sorry, I don't know a core word, there. You're offering to pay me to act as though I believe you're... something? Is that a gender-category here? ...Have I been using the wrong one for you? I am so very sorry if so. My discerning-sense has been saying you're male, but perhaps it doesn't read accurately given a different world. I'm very sorry; of course I'll change that immediately, if you let me know what I should use." (If this is the case she needs to apologize and such further of course, but confirming the problem is first, there.)

Iri is able to translate that very straightforwardly.

"Your discerning-sense says I'm male," he says in Hari. (Mind-reading! She can read his mind!) "It has to be reading something about my thoughts or my preferences. I'm..." Valanda grimaces and twitches. "I'm not male, I'm..." (Valanda looks like he's just bitten into a lemon and has to stop and steel himself) "...female, you could tell if I undressed, but I want you to keep acting like I'm male. But that's what your discerning-sense can see, isn't it? You have enough people who are wrong about their sex to know you're looking at people's thoughts and you have a word for the thing that's in people's minds instead of their bodies. Because you can read minds. Can you read minds in any other circumstances? Can you see my memories? My favorite foods?"

"What gender am I?" Iri asks.

She continues to try to put understanding together from what she can gather. ("minds", "bodies", "wrong about", "undressed", the way he flinches and steels himself...). Form a resultant picture. Appropriately take into account 'if something seems rather inconceivable and a skew line, that can be expected of a different world' and 'it is easy to let too little data and an imagination run away with one', knowing she is likely still affected by both biases.

(Will continue to not be allocating space to personal emotional reactions to the forming picture; that is not what she is doing at the moment.)

"If - I am understanding correctly. Your - system - seems very - unfortunately set up, in this regard. And has been - significantly harmful and distressing to you personally, if I am understanding correctly. I'm sorry.

Of course I will keep acting in accordance with your gender.

We - I suppose I would imagine we have some people who are wrong about their gender - people are wrong about all sorts of things, they can be wrong about their favorite color or about if they are in love. It - does not seem often very generally relevant?

I - would have said I do not understand how undressing is relevant, but if I understand correctly your society - guesses gender from what body someone has? Again, I'm very sorry.

...In my society purposely referring to someone as a different gender than they are is understood as psychological torture."

"I - do not think I can read minds? I can sometimes understand what people are thinking from their body language and similar, but it helps to have more background social knowledge than I do here. I - do not know anything of your memories or food preferences."

"Not something I've run into previously," she says to Iri.

"Your 'gender' is something inside your mind? It's... the sex that your mind has?" Valanda uses the Capital word for lack of a Hari word for gender. "Here no one talks about that. My gender is male. Your discerning-sense is correct."

That's all in conveniently short, carefully enunciated sentences so she has a better chance of understanding. He can't quite say everything he wants to that way though.

"What purpose does sorting people by gender serve in your society?"

"Understood. Is there something you would prefer in my actions, that would be affirming here, as you lack it in language?

I - suppose it is in your mind. Most facts about oneself are, are they not.

I'm not certain exactly what 'sex' means, as you use it? It is about bodies? We have [{word for what might be summarized as 'traits that tend to come up in body dysphoria'}], and [{word for 'can you get pregnant or get people pregnant', generally private}]. And [{'reproductive class'; used to talk about animals and plants and such}]. 

Many people in my world prefer it - they find it psychologically salutary when it is correct, and upsetting when it is not, or when it is not acknowledged and they wish it to be. Some people find it an important feature of partner selection. Some people find it pleasant to sometimes be in groups of those similar. Not everyone has such a preference, or cares. But it is very common."

"Sex is the third thing. Sex is" her word for it. "Some people don't care about sex most of the time. Agerah don't care very much. Essi don't care at all. Caralendri care a lot. I think... a lot of male caralendri want to be female. I'm not sure if that's gender. It might be. But they aren't treated like it just because they want to be. Caralendri have to change sex before they can change how people treat them. Does that make sense?"

...She supposes if everyone in one's species were [agender in the 'not experiencing gender' way] and no one had [physical dysphoria] it might - make some sense to use ['reproductive class'] for people? Though clearly there is not a good reason to extend that to people who had those things. Perhaps there was some past power dynamic among species that was responsible for the phenomenon? (Continuation of suppressing shudders and the like.)

"I think so. I'm - very sorry about your society.

Change sex? Is that like [{word for something like ''transition'-related physical change-making things}]."

"Yes. It's that. Caralendri do that. No one else here does that. Where you're from, people change sex?"

"Not like caralendri," says Iri. "On purpose, not by accident. I think they cut off breasts."

Valanda blinks.

"I do not know what caralendri do. We have technology to change some [{'traits that tend to come up in body dysphoria' word}]. Not currently enough to do everything people can want - we cannot currently cause a body to produce different gametes, or let someone become able to carry a pregnancy. Further advances are worked on, and hoped for. But we have various forms of surgery, and can change our hormone balances, and such things."

"You cannot cause a body to produce different gametes." Turns out Hari has a word for gametes, who knew. "You cannot cause someone to be able to carry a pregnancy. You can cause your 'hormone balance' to change." If Hari has a word for hormones it's not one Iri and Valanda know. "We cannot cause someone to be able to carry a pregnancy. We cannot cause a body to produce different gametes. We cannot cause a 'hormone balance' to change. Caralendri don't cause it. The body produces different gametes. They can carry a pregnancy. The 'hormone balance' changes. No person causes it." Shrug. "Tell me more about causing these things tomorrow. I have to go to work in the morning. I'm going to sleep now. I'm going to lock the door in a way you can't unlock. If you want to go sleep in the hallway, leave now. Otherwise the door doesn't open till morning."

Acknowledging of the new information.

If she's worried someone will assault her or the like, the hallway clearly gives more people the opportunity. If she's worried he'll assault her, being in the hallway is not actually particularly likely to protect her.

"I would prefer to stay here, if that's alright?" May she make a final trip to the restroom and such?

She can do that.

"If I left it so you could open it, a force mage could open it from the outside," he says.

That is useful to know. (She says so.)

"Is that a common problem?"

Is anyone else in the bathroom? Does it have stalls or the like?

"No, because it's hard to do and illegal."

There's more than one! None of them are human. None of them try to talk to her. It has curtains that reach from almost the ceiling all the way down to the floor.

She can observe herself to have manifested a desire to hide behind a curtain when undressing. That - will need to be dealt with. Cannot really be dealt with right now, and there's not benefit to potentially causing trouble for herself without need. She hides behind a curtain.

No one seems to think there's anything unusual about wanting to hide behind a curtain.

As soon as she gets back Valanda locks the door and curls up on the floor to sleep.

Will it bother him if she watches the not-video some more? Can she do that in the dark?

It's not like she can make it stop playing. In the dark it's weird, too visible for the amount of ambient light but it doesn't work as well at illuminating things around it as it should for how bright it is.

Aaaaaand he's Mahan and he'll be teaching Hari! This episode is about the water cycle. There is a cloud up there. This is water. This is the ocean. This is a river. This is a river delta. The episode is filmed while flying, she can get a good bird's-eye view of part of the continent. It makes pointing at a whole river more convenient. Water evaporates, it goes up, it goes from the ocean to the cloud. Then there is rain, the water goes down, it goes to the river. Then the river goes to the ocean...

She wonders idly if they planed some of these episodes by taking submissions.

She continues with learning strategies.

Then, careful to give her host his space as best as she can given what is available, she also sleeps.

Valanda gets up very early. He makes sure she's also awake and lets her know he's leaving. Iri goes with him.

The show is still playing. The next episode is about formal logic.

She wakes up when he does.

She plans to sleep more at some point, but vocabulary for formal logic is of interest. She listens.

Then she can learn how they say because, therefore, imply, premise, conclusion...

The second half of the episode seems to be about probability.

The next episode is about... she won't have heard the name of the subject in Hari before, but it's another one with diagrams.

Useful words.

She'll listen to that one too.

It's about game theory. It's also propaganda. This is the prisoner's dilemma! It works like this! The government's job is to force everyone to cooperate! It's true that if not for the government you could kill or eat or kill and then eat your neighbors but actually they would probably beat you to it and you'd be sad. And dead. And tasty.

This is a stag hunt. This is cake-cutting. This is chicken. The Hari names might be different than she's used to but if she's familiar with the concepts they're pretty similar.

Completely absent: any mention of altruism in experimental results. Maybe they just didn't think it was interesting to talk about? It's kind of a long episode even without any speculation about that.

Useful episode.

She's familiar with the concepts, and as attentive to localizations as she can be given her vocabulary level.

Lack of discussion of altruism will not actually be something she finds unusual, given where she herself first learned the concepts - it is not as though her parents sold her into slavery for being a Protector because it was high status.

But it is notable to her that this is the approach in an educational dissemination apparently made generally available. As well as that game theory is included in it to begin with (and used as a propaganda tool, apparently, here.) (Back home, of course, game theory is certainly curriculumized for Alphas, but not generally otherwise.)

The next episode is about slavery. Some people can't just participate freely in society because they keep breaking laws or don't understand the law. Such people need to be enslaved or else their neighbors are in danger. You can only become a slave after committing certain crimes, usually more than once, or being too disabled to understand the law or being born. Not being born to enslaved parents, just being born.

Slavery can be enforced by using command magic. Oh look it's the bracelets. Command magic can keep people from doing things but not make people do things.

Make sure you don't free any slaves who aren't allowed to be free! If you buy a criminal you can't just dump them where they could commit more crimes. If you have a disabled child you don't want to take care of don't worry, you can get help getting rid of them!

Ah, good. She pays attention.

...She sees. That - certainly explains the ability of a common person to own a slave. And likely connects to the explanation of slavery Valanda had given being 'responsibility' focused as it was.

Is it said how one frees a slave? Is it said how people generally stop being slaves, given the 'born' form?

Charming. (...do people in general in this world tend psychologically/sociologically Alpha-like?)

She files information as informative about the world, and about people and situations she may encounter. As well as into the 'problems of the world she is aware of' category.

It's mentioned that you're allowed to free them if they're able to follow the law. There's no more detail than that.

People in general in this world show few signs of being held back by moral concerns. The slavery episode, for instance, includes no rhetoric about it being for the slaves' own good.

The sky brightens. There are some simpler episodes where Mahan just points to things and names them. Some of them overlap with previous episodes. It's hours before Valanda comes back.

She would not expect such rhetoric particularly, but she will notice the pattern.

Such episodes, and overlap, are useful.

She watches episodes, and practices vocabulary, and practices putting together communication. She takes breaks for cognitive reasons as well as for exercise, water, and restroom use (she uses the curtain). She continues, for now, to avoid being out of the apartment except when necessary.

Eventually he does come back with a platter of dried fruits and bag of nuts. He sits down and sets them down in front of him.

"Have some if you're hungry," he says. He has some of the fruit. "How's your Hari now?"

She is hungry, and has some fruit and nuts. (Her caloric and nutritional needs are really not being sufficiently met, but she is used to that kind of thing and is not planning on commenting on it without further information, yet.)

Her Hari is improving. She can demonstrate. 

"That's great progress, you're very fast. I think we can try asking you some questions." At least she won't have to answer in Hari, they have Iri. "Tell me what you know about biology."

"Thank you.

Could I first ask you about some laws?"

"Yes, ask."

"You listed things that were illegal, yesterday.

In my country some other things are illegal - it is illegal to try to overthrow or undermine the government, and to say negative things about important people connected to the government. And there are laws about - social hierarchy, and behavior. Do you have those?"

That seems far beyond her language skills but okay if she wants to try to talk about it now. He tries to explain in short declarative sentences with smallish words.

"You can take over the government by convincing people to vote for you. It is illegal to try to take over the government by killing the people in charge. It is illegal not to follow the law. It is illegal not to pay taxes. You can tell people you don't like the government. If we understand 'social hierarchy' you mean what caralendri and thwilit do. The government does not care about that. Iri says 'behavior' means things you do. All our laws are about things you do. I'm not sure I understand your questions correctly."

Well, it's rather important to know.

"Vote?

I don't know what caralendri and thwilit do. In my country, if I write a paper that says someone in the government is - terrible and incompetent, I can be arrested. If I go to someone of a higher strata and insult them or am rude to them, I can be arrested."

"Voting is... if the Imperial Chief Justice dies, who will be Imperial Chief Justice? Seihra says 'I would be good at it' and Ariu says 'I would be better' and Seihra tells people why she would be the best and Ariu tells people why he would be the best. Then free people say 'I want Seihra' or 'I want Ariu' or both. Then we count how many people want Seihra. We count how many people want Ariu. If more people want Ariu then Ariu is the new Imperial Chief Justice. That is voting. Voting is saying you want Ariu or Seihra.

"It is not illegal to be rude. It's dangerous but it's not illegal."

He's not sure how to explain caralendri. If she spoke Ilan and he felt like spending even more money on her he'd get her a soap opera to watch and figure it out herself. But she doesn't and he doesn't.

"Ah, I see.

We do not do that for the government.

What decides who can say 'I want to do that, vote for me'?

It is dangerous because the person you are rude to might attack you? Is that legal for them to do?"

"It is not legal to attack people but they might be rude to you. They might not want to buy from you or sell to you. They might illegally attack you.

"Saying 'I want to do that, vote for me' is called running for office. The answer depends on the office. It's different for the Imperial Chief Justice than it is for the Governor of Anavel Sani. For every office you have to be free."

Understood.

"How do people become free?"

"Their owners choose to free them. There's a little paperwork, not much. Or sometimes they're free if their owners die."

"I heard in the slavery episode it's different if they're a criminal?"

"Yes. It's illegal to free someone who can't follow the law. I don't know if you're legally allowed to be free here, that's one reason I don't want you going places and talking to people. You could break a law by accident. I don't know if I would be in trouble if you did."

"Why would you be in trouble?"

"I didn't tell anyone that you're here and don't know how to follow our laws. I didn't enslave you, either."

"Is there a law that you should?"

"I don't think there are laws about what to do if someone from another universe gets accidentally teleported to your apartment. I think someone will decide what the laws about that should be after they find out about you. I think it's less likely they'll decide I did anything wrong if you follow our laws."

Nod.

"I want to learn your laws and how to act.

The episode said you can only become a slave after committing certain crimes, usually more than once, or being too disabled to understand the law or being born - is that not entirely the case, then?"

"It's if you can't follow the law. If you're too young to. If you can't understand it for some reason. If no one taught you. Even if there's no reason, if you just clearly don't do it and no one is sure why. Those are just... examples of how you'd tell, I think. And some people are executed instead, for the same crimes, it depends on whether they think it's possible to control you. They'd kill me, for instance."

"I'm sorry. Why?"

"Because they can't use command magic on me. I'm warded."

"You are - defense?"

And - it would be incorrect to do this lightly, and unideal to have her current limits on information sources. But she does have the not-video, which would be hard to fake, and has not been lying as far as she can ascertain. If he wishes her harm he can do her harm. He should not be harmed by her, that is not acceptable.

"If it is so much safer for you, and possibly the law, and you will promise to free me again when I am better oriented, you can go ahead and put those on me."

"You want me to say I'll free you? Is that right? Why?" Maybe there's some additional magic that she didn't realize was magic in her world, something to make promises binding somehow?

She considers whether or not to tell him. Certainly not that she reads lies well; he'd be more careful about it then, if he tried, and she'd have less information. Something partial, maybe.

"If you'd said something like 'why would you need me to promise, don't you trust me' that would be suspicious, and that would be useful information, then.

If there's a way to sign a contract I'd certainly prefer it but I can easily imagine possibilities where that would be impossible or cause too much trouble."

He has no idea whether, in the case where they decide she shouldn't be allowed to be free in the Hari Empire, contracts with her would be valid.

He's pretty tempted but this seems like an obvious trap. He's not sure what kind of trap it is exactly but it's definitely some kind of trap. A really confusing one that might involve otherworldly magic he's not familiar with.

"I don't have to do that if you stay here and read the laws when I bring you a copy."

"I would not want to stay here forever, but I can certainly stay until I have learned enough, and would very much want to read the laws.

You have been very generous to me, and I certainly would not want your life to be in danger over me."

Oh, now he gets it, she cares about fairness like an agerah.

"I'll be back soon. I'm going to bring you laws to read."

"Thank you."

It's a while before he's back. When he returns he has another pair of metal things. They're both a lot larger than the one for Hari Ar Sarag Marsaehu. But for what they are they're surprisingly small. They show live feeds of documents but it might not be obvious they're live feeds because they're just sitting there. The titles are Hari Imperial Law and Ehima State Law. Each one has a color-changing circle with a hole in it in one corner.

Ehima State Law is double-sided and written in small writing but it's a pretty unwieldy size even so, maybe two square feet.

"Ask me if you don't understand," says Valanda.

"Thank you.

I can't read yet."

"Oh, right, I said I'd teach you." He sighs and sits down. He opens his notebook. He writes some symbols. He points to each one and makes a sound. It's not a hard alphabet as alphabets go and he doesn't seem to be explaining a dozen ways to pronounce each letter.

She knows some of them, but she's not going to give sign of it, given how she obtained the knowledge. She pays attention. She has a good memory and very good sight-cipher-reading (which this in some sense amounts to). Is he including the tones and such?

Yep, he shows her how each vowel is written for each tone. The system might not be obvious but it's consistent and easy to remember.

She doesn't expect orthographies to be generally derivable from first principles. She continues to pay attention. Can she make her own copy of the alphabet?

He lends her his pencil for it and examines her writing to see if she's doing it right.

Letters, letters. No letter combinations doing something different? If there are she should note those.

None that he mentions.

Iri, meanwhile, watches the whole lesson.

Whenever he feels he's covered what needs to be covered, she can start attempting to make her way through the laws.

The imperial laws should be mostly familiar to her by now. Turns out there aren't very many of them. The language is very precise and detailed. Punishments for first, second and third offenses are listed. They sometimes differ by species but in general they're pretty lenient for an empire with no concept of morality and no qualms about ripping people apart to make an example of them. Fines are the first resort for most things.

Ehima has a lot more laws about a wider variety of things. Making any false statement in the course of advertising any product is punishable by a fine, for instance. There are state taxes, too. Her lack of familiarity with these laws will probably leave her confused by the legal language.

She's going to be confused by legal language a lot, that is a fairly predictable consequence of having started learning the language yesterday.

She makes use of Valanda's offer and asks as needed.

Are there in fact no sedition laws? What are punishments between 'fines' and 'execution'? Can she get any information on torture use from this? What happens if someone cannot afford a fine?

It's not illegal in itself but Ehima has some state laws that could stretch to cover sedition if judges were motivated to interpret them that way. Imperial law has no restrictions on speech but a lot of the actions someone interested in overthrowing them might want to take are otherwise illegal.

Besides fines and execution there are classes about the importance of the law and how to meet your needs without breaking it. Command magic can be used just to keep someone from being violent. Ehima sometimes exiles immigrants but not natives. No one seems to be sentenced to torture but it isn't specified how people condemned to death should be killed and it certainly doesn't say it should be humane or gentle. There is no information on how the courts determine guilt but it doesn't say they don't torture suspects. It doesn't say what happens to people who can't afford fines, either.

What kinds of laws and actions?

She blinks somewhat at "classes about the importance of the law and how to meet your needs without breaking it". (If she ends up back in her world, maybe Myra can find a way to import that.)

That seems like an omission. She asks Valanda about the fines. Also about the legal process.

"It's not always the same thing. There's judicial discretion and sometimes if your victim is alive they can have some influence. The way we know who's guilty is by using knowledge magic. Sometimes we can watch what happened."

What kind of variety of things can happen?

That is a useful thing to be able to do.

"You can be enslaved or killed. You can just pay as much as you have. You can pay some and then pay more later."

Nod.

Law reading.

Anything else likely relevant to her? Anything she expects to have a difficult time following?

Well, theft is illegal even if the property you're stealing is a person and they asked you to, for one thing.

This is not in the least surprising.

Anything particularly complicated? Are there in fact no laws about appropriate social behavior toward one's 'betters' and so on?

Also, while she is reading, what are the laws on how one may treat one's slaves?

There are in fact no laws on either of those things! Sort of. The fine for freeing someone who can't follow the law is higher if the reason they can't is because of your actions, for instance because you hit them on the head until they were too brain-damaged to understand what's against the law.

There might be more complexity hidden in other documents these ones reference, like the one defining adequate safety precautions in building design. Immigration and forest use are both kind of complicated but not likely to be relevant to Sheridan unless she decides to move away somewhere.

Charming.

If she decides to design a building, immigrate, or use a forest, she will research accordingly.

He has to leave again in the afternoon.

There's an episode on the names of different professions. This caralendar is a farmer, he grows apples. This human is a butcher, she sells meat. This essi is a professional defense mage who makes wood buildings fireproof. This caralendar fishes. This agerah is a tutor who teaches people to read.

Magic seems to make a lot of things easier. The farmer can sit down and use magic to make his apples pull themselves off the trees, for instance. But magic seems to be the biggest source of labor-saving inventions: they don't seem to have tractors or chemical fertilizers.

Valanda doesn't have time to answer more questions before bed. He doesn't bring dinner.

From all these 'this is', does she have a general derived understanding of what all the species are and what they're called?

Can she gather anything on how this works with who has what jobs (obviously they can't be doing it by strata) and how people obtain them? And how this relates to what magic they have?

This is going to become a problem, and probably indicates an underlying one. Three options seem to occur: 1) he needs less food than her, and has not realized she needs more. 2) he is eating while away and not bringing her enough for some reason he has. 3) he is also not eating enough.

Can she noting anything that would point to one of those? Does he seem hungry/show signs people do when hungry? Conversely, does he show signs of having eaten while away? (How about Iri?)

She should probably be able to name the species of people in any crowd scenes she sees, if she remembers everything she's learned. The big cats are agerah, the other furry creatures are beluli, the humanoids are caralendri, the birds are thwilit, the snakes are essi, the parasitic worms are ereli.  There doesn't seem to be any information about certain species doing certain jobs. There are some obvious inferences she could make about non-force mage essi and thwilit.

He does look a little thin but not enough so to be sure he's not eating well. He seems annoyed but it's hard to be sure if that's because he's hungry, because he's sharing space with a stranger, because he spent so much of his savings recently, because he's spent so much of his free time answering her questions...

Iri doesn't eat the same foods and might be eating while they're out.

She has a good memory. (Parasitic worms?)

Any observations she can make about people in some jobs seeming more well off than others, having apprentices or children with them...?

She will attempt more active inquiries in the morning.

It's a little hard to tell who's how well-off in a society where different things are hard to get. There are sometimes children in crowd scenes. All of them have bracelets. Some are working. Whether they're the children of the people they're working for isn't always clear except in the case of one human child carrying things for a snake.

She might still expect things like more worn clothes to correspond with less wealth? What kind of differences in personal adornment and such do people display? In body language?

She might find that the number of coin necklaces someone is wearing is a more obvious clue, except that people clearly don't go out visibly wearing all of their money.

There's an agerah who seems to have dyed his fur dark blue and a belul who's dyed hers glossy black, but most people don't have dyed fur. Most bracelets are gold but some are other metals. Some people have necklaces that aren't coins and don't resemble the bracelets. An essi slave, awkwardly wearing a bracelet like a belt, has an intricate design painted on his head.

Or there could just be naturally blue fur and natural variation in essi patterns. It's hard to say.

Hard to say is to be expected, from having just arrived in a different world. She'll keep collecting. (She doesn't like the feeling of it, like missing a sense, almost. But that is hardly the important thing.)

(Citizen's cards appear to not be used here, meanwhile.)

She works on Hari and sleeps, again.

Valanda wakes up and wakes her up early again.

His stomach growls audibly. That could just mean he's going to get breakfast out. Maybe.

She wakes up when he does without needing to be woken.

If he has a moment of attention for her, she's wondering if there's maybe some kind of work she could do, to pay him back somewhat for his generosity, and possibly for more food? Some kind of piecework she could do from here maybe, if she still should not go out?

"Can you make anything? Can you repair anything?"

She can, but she isn't sure what kinds of things that she can do need doing in this world, since it's so different, and she images if she tries to guess she'll come up with things that do not and therefore sound silly. As two examples, she can sew and embroider by hand, and she thinks she would make a fairly good calculator.

"Can you make shirts and pants that humans can wear? Like these?"

Probably not near as quickly as someone who's done it for a while, but given a pattern and materials she'd expect so. (Of reasons she expected it to be useful to be able to impersonate different strata, this was not one, but that hardly means she can't use the skills.)

"I might be able to market that. Anything else you can do? Can you spin wool?"

Theoretically, but not very well, and it's been a while since she's practiced; her sewing and embroidery are much better. She can knit and crochet - worse than sewing, still much better than spinning. (Do they have crochet?) She can do a few other threadcrafts and expects she could pick up more if needed. She expects she can pick up many sorts of small labor-intensive handtasks. She can repair various things from her world, but expects things to be different here.

Do they have calculators? (The job, not the technology; she assumes they do not have that.)

"I can ask around and see if anyone needs a lot of computation done. If they do I can show you how to write numbers. Anyway, I'll let you know if I know more when I get back, I need to leave now."

"Thank you."

She goes back to Hari. She pays attention to various details. Does this world appear to have plastic? Synthetic fabrics? The printing press?

Probably none of those but it sure is hard to tell what materials things that might be under illusions are made of. The printing press seems to be an almost definite no. Things in general look handmade.

Then when Valanda returns she'll suggest copying writing as another task she might be able to do.

And eventually potentially see about selling formulas.

He's in a bad mood when he gets back but it doesn't seem to be directed at her. He's carrying some papers.

"Someone needs help calculating tides," he says. "Tides are when the ocean gets bigger and smaller. More information in here." He hands over the papers. They include one blank one but it won't be enough space. "Ready to learn how to write numbers?"

"Yes, thank you.

Are you alright?"

How about if he just completely ignores that question. Certain letters double as numbers, isn't that neat. Here's one, two, three, six, twelve, a hundred forty-four. If you want to write seven you write six and then one. Sixteen is twelve three one. Here's a plus sign, here's a minus sign, here's times and divided by.

"If there isn't anything then you leave a space. Some people put bars on either side of it like this or a circle around it like this to show you left it blank on purpose because there's nothing."

If she's still attentive he'll explain the calendar.

Do they seem to be using something like base-12, then? And not have place value?

She's attentive. She asks about other important symbols (parentheses? equals? variable conventions? decimal (possilbly not decimal, here) points/fractions? negative numbers? trigonometric functions?)

Well, Valanda doesn't seem to be familiar with place value or parentheses or functions. Whether that's because they haven't been invented yet is unclear.

"Those are good questions."

He takes his remaining savings and walks out.

Different math system and lack of conveniences will slow her down (she could convert to the system she's accustomed to, but they may want to see her calculations) but if he left her the pencil she'll get to work on the tide calculations.

(Does observing Iri get her any more possible information on what the problem might be?)

Iri is afraid but not shrinking away from Valanda.

After an hour they come back with an agerah. Valanda doesn't even try to invite him in. The agerah rests in the hall and sticks just his head in the door.

"I'm Saiu. I teach math. May I use the wall with the window for visual aids?"

"Yes, do that," says Valanda.

"How much do you know now?" Saiu asks Sheridan.

...It would have been convenient if he had told her about this plan first, so that she could prepare and ask relevant questions. But this is how it is.

With no direction, she goes for her Iota body language.

Considers the risks, but she needs to know, and it had been said the Empire is multilingual, and most people cannot recognize every language that exists on hearing it.

She will ask Valanda in Capital (and as few and simple words as possible) if she should lie or tell the truth.

"I'm not sure what you mean," he says in Capital. In Hari: "ask him your math questions."

Maybe his cognitive functions are being affected by hunger.

"I'm sorry," she says politely to Saiu.

He has suggested that if she's found out about the wrong way he might get executed. And she thinks she might manage survival at this point, if he throws her out in anger.

It is very likely, she says to Valanda (in Capital), that she knows some math this world does not, does math in some different ways from this world, and so on. If she is truthful about her knowledge, Saiu might notice this. If this is the point, she can do that. Otherwise, she needs to try to pretend otherwise.

"She's hesitant to ask how to write some things because she isn't sure if her ideas are new and doesn't want you to steal the credit. Can we work out a deal where you don't tell anyone what she says?"

"Twenty-four rings."

"I don't have that many. Three?"

They work out a deal. Valanda pays extra. He is even less happy than before.

This really seems to be defeating the purpose. Not much she can think to do about it right now.

Could Valanda say 'truth' in Capital (which she will just said, so he doesn't have to already remember) if she should tell the truth about the math she knows?

If she says that whole phrase he'll tell her to tell the truth about the math, very heavy emphasis.

She says the whole phrase.

Understood (not that she was planning differently, with respect to not telling other truths).

Truth it is.

She's not sure how they divide up subjects here, she says to Saiu. She uses a somewhat different math-writing system. It goes by tens and has place value and a symbol for 0. Here are some things she doesn't know how to write in this system (she repeats the ones from before, if she knows the words from asking Valanda, and paraphrases otherwise). She knows adding and subtracting and multiplying and dividing numbers, and working with math and shapes, and working with variables and functions, and the math having to do with triangles, and some other things also. (She does not know how to say 'arithmetic' or 'geometry' or 'algebra' or 'trigonometry' and asking for translations is probably suspicious). (She purposely limits the list for now - she is still not entirely sure Valanda understands potential situations, here, and it is more possible to say more than to unsay.)

Saiu can guess some of what she means.

Variables are represented by whatever squiggle you happen to feel like making. He demonstrates with illusions on the wall. There's a straightforward equivalent to parentheses. There's a way to write fractions and negative numbers.

Math having to do with triangles? He knows some math having to do with triangles. Did she know the angles add up to a straight line? Isn't that neat. He's not really sure what math having to do with triangles she's thinking of but he's very interested in possibly meeting her again later when her Hari is better to ask her about her decimal system.

She did know that, it is very neat. Other shapes have similar things but triangles have other neat things.

She is working on her Hari!

Symbols for say sine (she paraphrases)? Exponents? Square roots etc? Logarithms? Infinity? Factorials? Permutations and combinations? Pi? (She paraphrases a lot). How do they write very large and very small numbers? (this is also relevant to her curiousity about mages, though she doesn't mention this.)

Saiu is pretty impressed that she came up with these ideas independently. There are conventions for writing some of them but others don't seem to be formalized the way she's used to. The ratio of a circle's circumference to its radius is approximately six and forty-one hundred-forty-fourths but it doesn't have a special name or symbol.

Math is very interesting.

She will ask him various other things. Are there things he thinks are important she may not have thought of? In between, she will try to acquire more world information. How much math do most people know? What kinds of things do people usually learn more math for? Where do new math ideas usually come from?

Educated people can do arithmetic, at least, but Saiu's not sure what else people learn if they don't care about the subject. Saiu can't really understand needing a reason besides how great math is to learn math. Math ideas come from people noticing things! Two hundred years ago a caralendar noticed that a cone has a third the volume of a cylinder with the same base and height. More recently a different caralendar came up with a trick for quickly finding all the primes up to a certain number.

If she wants to learn things systematically he can recommend a book! Just a ring for the recommendation! Valanda winces and scowls.

Math is great, but some people also want to use it for jobs. Do people usually do their own accounts? Does the government hire people to do math and figure out things like taxes? Do people learn math to build things?

Interesting! (She wants to ask if it is a coincidence that both were caralendri, but is wary of the topic without knowing more, and does not ask.)

She politely declines the recommendation.

What math is he usually hired to teach people?

Saiu does his own accounts. Math is used for taxes and building things and timekeeping and other things. So far this year he's taught four young agerah to do arithmetic but last year he had more interesting work, someone wanted to know how to draw regular polygons.

Oh, does he teach the timekeeping, she would like to know more about that.

Oh?

He talks about timekeeping for a while.

Eventually he's spent as long at this as Valanda paid for.

She pays attention. She thanks him.

Valanda closes and locks the door. He stares out the window for a while.

She won't disturb him. (She'll review math notes.) (Any Alpha instincts toward 'why on earth did you do that' and the like that weren't taken care of by being a Protector, practicing for and years of slavery more or less did for.)

(It does occur to her that if he decides to hit her lack of discerning sense is an additional factor that would make that a more dangerous proposition. She strategizes for how to attempt to handle that.)

"You eat when you finish your tide table. And so do I."

He leaves. Iri stays.

Does Iri by any chance know what's wrong? (And be at liberty to say?)

(Also, does Iri by chance know if the tide-table-orderers want to see her calculations?)

"Lost his job. Ariu doesn't think defense magic is the right kind and wants to try some other kind now. I don't know if they want to see your calculations."

That would certainly be a reason for a bad mood.

She thanks Iri for the information. Ariu? Also, does Iri by chance know why he suddenly decided to hire Saiu?

She will continue to assume they do, then, and write out the calculations in the local system, though she can still speed up the process by mental arithmetic whose answer she then writes down.

Aaaaaa. Iri is not an authority on anything. Aaaaaaaaaaaa!

Iri guesses.

"You couldn't do the work you're supposed to without knowing more math."

She can tell Iri is anxious, but not specifically about what. Produces some guesses.

Offers reassurance that she won't be annoyed by not-100%-correct information, that she is asking to have more information than she does otherwise not to make final conclusions from only that, and she won't be annoyed if Iri doesn't want to answer.

She's still curious about Ariu, if there is anything Iri could tell her.

She suspects from nonverbals she's getting better at this to be a guess and not knowledge. She thanks Iri anyway. ('Did it maybe occur to him to ask me first' is not a useful question to ask Iri, and she won't).

"Ariu wants to be immortal. I don't know anything else. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

She sees, thank you.

Does xie know where Valanda went? Does xie know anything more than Sheridan does about behavior advice given the mood?

"Probably looking for work. I don't know."

Sheridan thanks her again. She works on tide calculations.

Valanda comes back with some honey for Iri and a list of unsolved problems that rich eccentric math enthusiasts have offered prizes for solving. They can make rent if Sheridan can square a circle or calculate two pi to the nearest sixty-one billion nine hundred seventeen million three hundred sixty four thousand two hundred twenty-fourth.

"If none of those seem easier than the tide chart just keep working on that."

Squaring a circle has actually been proven to be impossible, if that is of interest to the enthusiast. She has to do a calculation to figure out which place that corresponds to, but does know pi to more places than that and can convert the relevant truncation back.

"I'll take them the really precise number tomorrow if you'll write it down for me. If it's impossible to square a circle you probably need to prove that. How much paper will you need for the proof?"

She can write it down. If the enthusiast will pay more for more precision than that, she knows more, too.

She can look at how much space she needs to write with the charcoal and give him an estimate, but that would be in her system and this involves more concepts about which she's not sure how they get represented locally, or if they in fact have local analogues. She can more simply give the reason, and its logic, if that helps at all? (The 'if such-and-such is the case, then it would be impossible' was also a much later idea than the question itself, in her world.)

She can propose a few more ideas to sell (more specific than things like 'the idea of place value', though that is also available, if he knows a market.) The volume and/or surface area of a few other shapes, since that was mentioned? A few others that seems like possibilities, given the information she has?

Also if there is someone who would pay to have some numbers multiplied quickly, who doesn't need converted calculations, and this is not something they already have tools for, she can do that? (Adding quickly can be done just fine with an abacus, she knows).

"I'll look into all of that tomorrow while I'm out." He hesitates, about to say something else, but then he doesn't.

He rests. He doesn't seem very interested in talking right now.

She won't bother him.

She'll convert and double the relevant amount of pi and write it out on its own bit of paper and work on tide tables and Hari. (She hasn't brought up other things she could potentially sell yet, because risking overwhelment seems suboptimal, and he responded unpredictably and not very well to her introducing the math area. But she's keeping some chemical formulas and such in mind.)

The next day he leaves for a while. When he comes back mid-morning he has more coins than he left with but not as many as he's spent since her arrival.

"There's someone who's interested in an explanation of your system for writing numbers. I don't think the price is very good but I don't know enough about math to be sure or get you a better one. They're checking your work on the very precise number and they'll pay when they've decided you're right. They won't cheat us, they can't get away with it."

(Does he seem to have any food?)

That's fine - as she understands they need the money; a lot depends on place value, so people knowing it might help sell other things; and getting it from her might make people more interested in other contributions she might have.

(Can't get away with?)

He doesn't seem to have brought any food.

"We have a scryable verbal contract and witnesses. If you think your Hari's good enough to write an explanation of place value, do that and I'll take it over when I go check that they're satisfied with your other thing."

She thinks she can manage, examples do most of the work anyway.

She writes up an explanation with examples, base-10 in the system she knows and a sample base-12, one using letters for the lacking symbols and one using the magic signs since they have the number correspondence anyway. She'll check it with Valanda before she'll give it to him to bring over.

"I like that system. Have you ever used one more like ours?"

It is really incredibly useful.

Various parts of her world have in the past, yes - the place value system is an invention like anything else.

"Why did you change to using place value?"

Well, it is very useful. With a basic set of symbols you can easily and quickly represent numbers up to very large (and down to very small) ones. It makes operations much easier. (There's an additional system for even larger and smaller numbers). You can see how it makes addition and subtraction easier if you've used an abacus. With multiplication and division you gain even more.

Eventually he leaves again. When he comes back he brings a lot more money that he doesn't show any sign of meaning to give her and some raw meat chunks that he encourages her to share with him. He seems much happier now.

She is not particularly expecting to be given money. She will be irritated if she gets food poisoning or something but she is not a picky eater, nor possessed of much of a disgust reaction. Food is appreciated.

"If you get the tide table done in less than a month and we don't have any emergencies we'll be fine now, I have enough time to find another job but I might have to move back to Anavel Sani to do it. Do you think you can manage that?"

If whoever gave him the tables/people here generally think this amount can be done in less than a month at a reasonable pace, then she is fairly certain she can do it in less than a month. She also continues to have reserves of ideas to sell.

...having enough to eat is better for math doing, and if there's more she could do to make that more possible she would both want to and it would be advantageous to the larger goal.

"Oh. Yeah, I guess food is important. I'll get more tomorrow. Anything else you need?"

She'll need more paper as she works. She would work faster with a better writing utensil (and possibly surface) but she understands if that's not available. It would be useful if she could work on this parallely to learning how to start going out and such so that she can both improve and do that.

"I'll bring more paper tomorrow. Study more Hari and I can show you around the neighborhood... soon, maybe."

"Thank you."

And she will work on tables and on Hari.

The next day he brings back apples and honey in the mid-morning and a little more money.

"If I showed you around today, what would you do?"

Follow him, look at things, listen to things. First ask him for some advice on how to behave, carry herself, respond to things that might happen, etc.

"Good. You should stay quiet and avoid looking at people too much. If you do look at someone don't look them dead-on in the eyes. If you look someone in the eye by accident blink or look away. It's probably safer if you don't talk to people. Any other questions?"

Is one of her body languages better than others? She's guessing Omega or Iota, but is one clearly better (she can demonstrate them)? What does looking people in the eye mean (she won't do it.) What does she do if someone starts talking to her? What other kinds of things might happen she should be prepared to respond to?

"Not a lot of people are familiar with human body language. If someone is, I don't think either of those is the safest thing you could do. Maybe something like..." He demonstrates. He seems to think she'll be safer looking more confident. "Looking someone in the eye means you're spoiling for a fight or think you can do what you want to them. If someone talks to you it depends on what they're saying but I'll try to handle that if it comes up. Probably nothing will happen."

The ones she knows come out of strata, so it might be different from humans in this world.

Interesting. She watches and adapts and puts together a better one given-information and demonstrates it so he can give her feedback.

Understood. Thank you.

He declares it good enough.

"Want to go now?"

She does.

Then they can go.

There are elevators. How they function is not immediately obvious. The ground floor lobby has a different color scheme entirely than the hallway on their floor.

And just down the street is a market with several open-air stalls and room for more in a big open square surrounded by buildings some of which might be businesses. Someone is transmuting elements. Someone is sharpening knives. Someone is selling meat and blood. Someone is selling nuts and dried fruit, someone is selling fresh fruit, someone is selling honey. An agerah offers to dye their hair or skin or clothing with her magic. Valanda ignores her completely.

She keeps the body language he'd said was fine. She looks around, attentive not to look anyone in the eye or at anyone in particular too much.

(Do they seem to have bread and similar products? Vegetables?)

Doesn't look like they have anything like that.

"This is where I buy groceries," says Valanda. He keeps walking. They pass what might be a very large park.

Huh. (Had she seen any of those in the not-video?) Also, anyone selling alcohol and the like?

Nod.

What kind of park?

There doesn't seem to be anyone with alcohol on display at a stall at that particular market. She might've seen vegetables for sale in a not-video scene in some other city with more humanoids.

The park is wooded. The trees suggest a temperate biome, maybe on the lucky side of a mountain range. The streets do slope but between tall buildings and tall trees it's a little hard to see far enough to confirm that.

The next place Valanda wants her to see is a building designed to give the illusion of being larger than it is and make visitors feel small.

"That's a government building," Valanda says. "It's where I got Hari Ar Sarag Marsaehu."

But no bread and similar products at all. Interesting.

She'll wait to ask questions until they return.

She has a fairly good sense for slope.

She observes the architectural - choices.

Nod.

(Who else is around on the streets? What are they like?)

Most people around here are furry quadrupeds. A couple people have other people latched on and drinking their blood right there in public. An entire flock of Iri's species flies by. A human also flies by, apparently by magic.

"This wasn't a disaster! Want to get something to eat on our way back?"

Observing, observing. Do any people seem richer than others, more confident than others, like they're given more respect than others... Anything corresponding to jobs/positions/familiar status/etc?

Yes, thank you.

Some people wear the symbol for a type of magic. What this correlates with is unclear. Some of those people are free and some are not, the flying human is one of them but the others aren't human, it's not that common a choice but she'll see more than a couple. The person transmuting elements is wearing the sun magic symbol. Free people look more dominant but there don't seem to be strata per se. One of the agerah in the park has what seem to be kittens with her.

"What kind of food would you like?" Valanda asks when they get back to the market.

Any more confirmation or refutation for the obvious hypothesis that it correlates with having that magic? Or, if what is unclear is who wears one and who doesn't, for hypotheses that it might refer to education, or accreditation, or work?

She's already aware of the lack of strata, and looks for what they perhaps do have.

Cooked meat and fruit might be a good choice out of what she has seen, if this is a reasonable option? (What appears available at the market does seem to be sufficient explanation for what exactly he'd been bringing back.)

It seems like it could correlate with having that magic. Nothing obviously refutes any of those hypotheses.

"...Oh, of course you'd do that. You want the fruit cooked too?"

Of course she'd do that?

Either is fine, if one is easier or cheaper or such.

And here is where they can buy fresh fruit. There's apples, peaches, a few kinds of berries.

"What kind do you like?" Valanda asks her.

She is not picky, but she had apples this morning, so, something else? Berries are probably good. (She thinks about nutritional needs.)

He gets a couple different kinds so she can try them and see what she likes best. The seller removes the wards keeping them fresh before handing them over. Valanda eats his half quickly before they move on to the next stall.

"Well, now do you know what you like?"

"Thank you."

She's really just not very discerning. She can pick food mostly based on nutritional needs and cost.

"How about meat, do you care what kind of meat we get?"

She would prefer cooked, if possible? (She's mostly thinking of digestibility, familiarity, and it making less of a mess. When they return she needs to ask if death magic or other wards are used to prevent food poisoning.) (She's still unsure what he meant by 'of course you'd do that', and says so). But she can adjust if needed.

"I'll explain when we get home."

Since she doesn't seem to have a preference he gets the pork. The butcher seems to have an arrangement with the fruit seller to handle wards on the meat. It's raw but Valanda visits a nearby building where a human jeweler wearing the heat mage symbol on a necklace agrees to cook their meat for them with magic.