She finds herself: on the floor of somewhere grassy.

It's also quite pleasant and calm, with a cool breeze passing over her and a few noises from what are presumably nearby people, and– some small whooshing noise.

That's a much better result than she would have expected from being eaten by a giant godtouched snake, really.

She should probably get up and figure out where she is.

Is the grass short enough that she can see nearby people without fully standing up? She's a bit weak in the knees right now.

Yes it is! … In fact, the whooshing noise was probably coming from over by that girl over there! The one who seems to be slightly confused by something and who's turning around to look in her directly right now.

It seems like she was playing with fire or something – Airta probably noticed a flame just going out.

"Pardon me for intruding."

Her language seems to dislike singular vowels and consonants. It's elegant, somewhat harsh-sounding, and very clearly foreign.

Well, the other girl blinks a few times on seeing her, and then says something in her own language, making it very clear that she doesn't understand the one that was just used. She looks rather confused.

Her language seems vaguely Germanic, if that's a reference that's available for comparison.

It's not. Airta would be startled, except she has used up all of her startled for the day.

She lays her head back down on the grass. "I seem to be lost." The way her voice is shaking should convey something, even if the words don't.

The other girl tries another language – or at least, probably tries another language, because it sounds different, slightly more flowing – and then points at herself and says, "Ev."

The now-covered-in-grass mysterious stranger sits up again, facing Ev. She puts her hand up to her neck, and says, "Airta." For a moment she seems like she might say something else, but only a moment.

Ev looks at her, says, "Airta," and then points at the ground and looks confused.

How do you even begin to explain 'I was teleported here by a giant snake with a mirror for a face' to someone you don't even share a language with?

Airta looks confused. She makes a confused noise. She makes an unfamiliar gesture that can be assumed to have something to do with confusion.

Ev nods, trying to make it clear that this means she understands. Then she shuts her eyes for a moment and focuses.

Airta scrambles to her feet quickly, and starts backing away. Her blessing isn't indicating that there's any danger, but she didn't sense any danger before the snake appeared, either, and this girl's blessing is something to do with fire.

And then a small flame, about an inch in diameter, appears about a meter in front of Ev! She opens her eyes and frowns slightly at Airta, but indicates the flame with her head and looks questioning.

Oh.

Airta nods slightly, and makes a brief, affirmative noise.

Ev nods and then– looks over at the town, checking for people, and finding none decides that they might as well try learning a language!

"I am Ev," she says, pointing at herself. "You are Airta."

Airta gestures to herself, "Am," she gestures to Ev, "Are?"

"I," she points to herself. "You," she points to Airta. "I am," she points to herself again, then finishes, "Ev." Point at Airta. "You are Airta."

"I am Airta," she says. She pauses briefly, then asks, "You am, I are?"

"I am," she points to herself. "You are."

She gives an unsurprised nod, and looks at Ev expectantly.

She points at the ground – trying to make it clear that it's the ground by also pointing in a circle around her, not just directly down – and says, "Ground," then picks up a piece of grass and says, "Grass." At herself, "Person." At Airta, "Person."

At the mention of grass, her attention turns to her dress. It's much greener than it was an hour ago. She spends a moment or two brushing away any prominent pieces of grass that are still stuck to it away, muttering, "Grass..."

Then she turns her body a little bit, so that Ev can see the nape of her neck. There's a small icon drawn in slightly luminescent purple lines drawn on her skin there, looking a bit like a book. Or an eye. She gestures towards it, and makes an inquisitive noise.

"Tattoo?" she says, hesitantly. She flicks her own hair away and turns her head to show her own neck – it's blank of any mark.

"Ev tattoo are," she says, and makes a noise and a gesture evocative of fire. Then she makes an inquisitive noise. She seems fond of those.

"… Magic?" she asks. She points at her skin and at Airta's neck and says, "Tattoo," then focuses to summon fire again and says, "Magic fire."

She gestures to the grass, and says, "Grass," and she gestures to herself, and says, "Person." Then she asks, "Grass, person, are?"

"Nouns?" She names a few other things: a wall, the sky, a flower. "All," she says, indicating each of the previously mentioned things in turn, "are nouns?"

She hesitates for a moment, and then asks, "Grass, person, am, you, are?"

"Grass is, person is, you are, I am. Grass and…" she looks around, points at the flower again, "flowers are." Then repeats: "Grass and flowers are."

"You is noun? Am is noun? Grass and flowers and you and I and and and are and am is noun?"

"You is a noun, am is not a noun, am is a verb, grass and flowers and you and I are nouns, 'and' is not a noun, are is not a noun, are is a verb." She pauses and then says, "I am Ev, I am not Airta. You are Airta, you are not Ev."

Infodump, hopefully with the necessary components. She'll repeat it more slowly if necessary.

"Grass and flowers are?"

She nods. "Grass and flowers are there," she says, pointing at them. "Grass and flowers are alive, I am not grass and I am not flowers. I am alive. The wall," she says, pointing at the conveniently-placed wall, "is not alive. Clothes," she says, pulling at her shirt and then at her pants, "are not alive."

... Alright, she clearly doesn't have enough vocabulary to extract specific words. She nods at Ev.

… Well okay then. Ev will raise an eyebrow and point at her clothes. "Clothes." Does that get a nod?

Airta tugs at the sleeve of her dress. "Clothes," she says. She tugs at the skin of her wrist. "Not clothes?"

"Not clothes," she agrees. "Skin," she says, tracing a finger over her arm, palm, and then tapping her face.

And then: "I am Ev," she says. "I am human. I am alive. You are Airta. You are human. You are alive."

"Human is noun? Alive is noun? Airta is not noun?"

"… Alive is adjective," she says, feeling like she is possibly going into complicated territory with this. Oops. "Airta is name?" She can just drop the articles, who needs 'a' and 'the', not a new language learner, that's who!

Airta is going to have a lot of trouble with articles.

"Adjective and noun and verb," she seems confused and pauses for a moment before hazarding, "Are?"

She nods, then says, "Adjectives and nouns and verbs are words?"

"Magic tattoo... Magic tattoo noun is alive word?"

She tilts her head. "Magic tattoo… is noun?"

"Magic tattoo person and magic tattoo grass and magic tattoo human and magic tattoo flower. Word is?"

"… Magic?" she tries. "Tattoo," she says, indicating Airta's tattoo, "is magic? Magic tattoo person, magic tattoo grass…" she shrugs.

"Magic alive is tattoo alive is word?"

"Magic is not alive, tattoo is not alive…? I am alive, you are alive, person is alive, human is alive?"

She makes the same gesture she used when she was emoting confused before.

Ev seems to understand it as confusion. "Magic is not alive, tattoo is not alive…?" she repeats, seeing if that gets the confused action.

Airta seems a little bit frustrated.

"Tattoo is not alive. I am tattoo, I am magic, you are tattoo, you are magic?"

"… I am not tattoo. I am," she pauses, considers, then says, "magic," nodding. "I do magic, fire is magic." She does the fire again.

"You do not tattoo?"

She indicates her neck and says, "Not tattoo…?"

Airta indicates her arms, and her torso, and asks, "Not tattoo?"

She shakes her head – her arms are currently visible, but she pulls up the sleep to show the shoulder, still with no mark, and indicates her unmarked legs. "No tattoo."

Well, she's not going to ask Ev to strip. That would be rude. She'll just take as a given that Ev has some sort of bizarre sourceless blessing. Maybe she's utilizing a godtouched plant? It's probably better to ask when she knows more words.

"Person is human? Human is person?"

She nods. "People," she says, indicating the both of them, "is person and person. Humans is human and human."

Airta just sort of stands there for a few moments. Then she asks, "Person and person is not person?"

… Does she not have plurals? "One person," she says, holding up a finger. "Two people," she then says, holding up two and pointing between them. "Three people," she says, holding up three. Then: "One human, two humans, three humans," and she holds up the appropriate number of fingers with each phrase.

Airta sighs in relief.

"One noun, two noun, three noun...?"

"One noun, two nouns, three nouns. … One thing, two things, three things. Noun is thing."

"Thing." She has a little bit of trouble fitting her mouth around the word. "One, two, three?"

"Four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten," she says, counting them up. Then she puts her fingers down and says, "Numbers. One is a number, two is a number, one and two are numbers."

Airta nods.

"I talk," she says, pointing to her mouth. "I am talking." Then she jumps. "I jump." And then she does it a couple more times, and while doing it, says, "I am jumping."

These are not words that Airta needs, in particular. She nods again, though.

Ev was more meaning the grammar, but okay.

She spends… quite a long while covering more vocabulary and grammar with Airta, actually – apparently she doesn't have anything else to be doing, such as possibly asking someone what the hell in reference to the newcomer – but eyes the town a bit from time to time, making sure nobody's coming out to check on her.

Airta is kind of surprised that Ev is willing to spend so much time teaching her the language, but doesn't intend to comment until she has the vocabulary to properly express gratitude (which she expects will take a while, given how Ev seems to choose words to teach.) She picks up vocabulary and grammar quickly, with only occasional bouts of utter bewilderment. She never quite gets articles, though.

Well, articles aren't really that necessary, especially with lots of use of pointing. She gets to the words of gratitude after she does imperatives, because of course those are super useful when you're in a foreign country, but still.

And then she tries to get some information about what Airta knows about magic – magic tattoos? Ev is almost certain they don't have those! Well, you could have them, but they're at least not standard, so she's not sure why Airta expected her to have one, so it's possible she knows about something useful.

Airta knows a lot about magic! She knows almost as much about magic as anyone in her world does! Which isn't very much. She knows that semi-random people, animals, and plants at semi-random times gain semi-random magical abilities, and also a mark somewhere on their persons that seems to correspond loosely in design with the ability gained. Some bloodlines tend to get more semi-random abilities than others. That's pretty much it. She doesn't seem to view the mark and the ability as being directly related.

She also thanks Ev for teaching her the language.

Ev is happy to be thanked and then apologizes because she has never had to teach a language before. "… Magic is not like that here."

Airta has nice things to say about Ev's improvisational skills! "I kinda guessed," she says about the magic.

She smiles and then asks if there are any obvious words that are missing from her vocabulary that she would like, and then fills them in if applicable.

Airta has a lot of obvious words missing from her vocabulary that she would like! Unfortunately, some of them don't seem to exist in this language. She doesn't understand how you get along without words to temporarily designate things without known names. It doesn't seem like a very good design choice not to include them, she doesn't say, because that would be rude.

… If she conveys how these words are used, Ev will actually also agree that they sound useful and agree that it's probably annoying that they're not included.

And then she will ask if it's rude to ask about someone's magic or if she can do that, and also what is her particular magic if she doesn't mind sharing?

It would be rude to ask a combatant about their magic, but Airta is not even slightly a combatant! Her magic lets her find paths to places, and also warns her of danger except when it's a giant teleporting snake with a mirror for a face! She has some trouble explaining that part.

… Ev can try to supply words of animals if necessary, especially if Airta indicates that it's reptilian, but she seems extremely confused by the idea of a teleporting snake with a mirror for a face, hardly surprisingly.

Danger sense sounds useful, though – does she know if it only happens if she would get hurt, or does it warn for some non-hurt things? (She goes through this question kinda slowly.)

It warns her for a lot of things. She isn't exactly sure how it chooses. She's less sure now than she was an hour ago, even.

It seems to warn mostly for things that would impede her in some way. She can get a sense of how dangerous they are, but it casts a wide net. It warned her when she was about to enter an unpleasantly lengthy conversation, once, although that was a bit of an outlier.

So it's definitely weird that it didn't do it for the snake with a mirror-face, then, since that probably got in her way just a little, yeah.

Ev looks back at the town, hair blowing around a bit in a breeze, and then asks if Airta wants to meet new people or not.

Airta is tentatively in favor of meeting people. Airta would also like to know about strange tattoo-less fire production magic.

It's… extremely slow to start off with, but as far as she knows it works for everyone, it's just whether they bother to try learning.

Ev could try teaching it to Airta, but it'd take a long time to learn – not that much effort on Ev's behalf, but a lot on Airta's.

Airta might be interested! There are some other things she feels she should figure out first, such as whether there's anywhere she can stay, and how she's going to earn her keep. And whether or not she'll be capable of using this place's magic. No one in her world seems to have it, so...

Nobody here seems to have whatever magic she has, so that's possibly interesting, but the magic they have here is kinda difficult to activate or start off with, so while she is somewhat surprised that they don't have it she isn't totally thrown.

And then Ev is filling in a bit of vocab and it occurs to her– "Shadows?" she asks. "The animal things that mark the ground. Do you have those?"

"Explain mark the ground?"

"… For magic? They dig," she mimes it, "and mark it for magic."

"We do not have those."

"… Huh," she says. "Might be interesting to test that with your danger thingy." Pause. Reword. "Your danger sense is useful, maybe."

"Shadows are... dangers?" Plurals are very irritating and irregular.

Ev nods. "Shadows are dangerous, town is not."

She looks back at the settlement, hesitating a bit, then asks, "Do you want to see?"

"Is seeing shadows danger?"

"No, seeing isn't dangerous," she says. "But – see the town now," she indicates the settlement, "and maybe see shadows tonight?" She indicates the wall.

She hesitates briefly, then nods.

So Ev starts walking in the direction of the town. It really won't take very long to get there.

And there's not much for Airta to do but follow her.

She practices sentence structures on the way.

Ev will help by correcting any few she might get wrong, but then they are at a building near the edge of the town.

She keeps walking. People around them seem somewhat curious about the newcomer but nobody actually stops them.

Airta tries not to be too visibly uncomfortable with the curious onlookers! She doesn't really succeed, but she hasn't been comfortable in this universe yet, so no one can really tell.

The town is relatively pretty. It doesn't look too undeveloped, stone houses and oil lamps, but it doesn't exactly have lots of modern technology. People seem to look after the area, planting flowers and such, and the town seems to have quite a few residents.

After a couple of minutes, Ev stops outside one of the larger of the buildings in the area and says, "My house."

Airta is impressed by the town! The architecture is very novel.

She nods at Ev. She hasn't been talking so much since there started being more people around.

And oh look it's Ev's father! Who seems somewhat surprised about the newcomer.

Ev will explain that she mysteriously appeared in a field and also what they've been doing since, unless Airta has any objections.

To the extent that she follows the conversation, Airta seems to think these are reasonable things to explain.

Native conversation examples! So useful for learning the language, aren't they.

Too bad she's hardly had any time to learn it and so she's probably not getting, well, approximately anything out of this apart from some keywords.

And then the conversation ends, the father says, "Hi there," to Airta, and then he leaves unless Airta stops him or wants to talk to him about something. (Like who he is, how she will stay here, something like that. Though presumably Ev will help arrange something.)

Assuming Ev taught her greetings, she responds to the father with, "Hello." She also makes a sort of bowing motion that gets arrested halfway.

She isn't confident that she's fluent enough to extract any of that information from him, and doesn't really have any reason to ask him questions instead of asking Ev.

Ev actually taught quite a wide variety of things, after her feeble first attempt at communication and teaching. Then her father leaves.

She goes into the house, indicating that Airta should follow.

Airta follows.

Now that they are in a relatively quiet, private location, and Airta has seen the village, she has a lot of questions about the village's economy! She expresses them very creatively.

Ev will try to answer them! She'll also try to correct Airta's grammar, politely, where necessary, and offer vocabulary that might be useful.

Airta's asks about a lot of things, including the village's agriculture, whether it belongs to any sort of larger political entity, what sort of trade there is...

She makes some mistakes involving articles and adjectives, but seems to be picking up the grammar fairly quickly. She absorbs the vocabulary, but she hasn't heard any of the words used enough to make a useful distinction between similar ones, so her phrasing isn't going to get more standard immediately.

The town sort of belongs to the country, since it's within the country, but they don't have any larger political entity that actually controls them or directs how they do things, at least not on a day-to-day basis. They do trade with other towns, though.

After a while, Ev will ask if Airta is hungry. Seeing as they have been talking for a while and she mysteriously dropped into a field before that.

Airta indicates that she is indeed hungry. She then immediately asks several questions about the state of metalworking, such as how rare various metals are, and whether they have steel.

They do have steel! They have– well, not all that much metalworking, though there are other towns that focus on it more than they do, but they're a pretty big town as the towns this place go, so they still have a decent amount of it.

Rarity of metals is a bit screwed with because you can get a sorcerer to transmute them if you have one on hand who knows how to do it and is willing to do it and you have some of the required materials, but they don't have much in the way of rare metals because they don't actually do much mining. The surrounding area is quite dangerous, hence the wall around the town, and it's a bit difficult to gather materials if you're limited in the area you can look for them in.

Food consists of: bread, fruit, and some sort of red meat if she would like it.

Airta eats some of all three foods in between asking questions. Are there dangers other than the shadows? Why are the shadows dangerous? Do people often go outside of the walls?

Well, there are wild animals but those can be fended off quite easily for the most part. Especially if you happen to have fire – she smiles at this point – even if you're not greatly practiced with it. There are some weird creatures that are probably shadows in some sort of disguise or some sort of magical accident – vocabulary, here we come – and the shadows are mostly dangerous because they will attack you if you get in their way, or if you happen to be conveniently disabled near one, and also they vary in size and the large ones are really horrible if you provoke them.

People do relatively often go outside the walls, but that's as an absolute – most people stay within the walls most of the time, or go outside a small distance, but quite a few people leave in large groups for protection purposes. Also their town has quite a high population of sorcerers and people trained with various weapons, and they have relatively frequent excursions to visit other towns for trade or communication, so people have more freedom to move about from this town than in most of the others.

Plus you can go out alone in the day. If you're lucky, there won't be any fog on your journey and you'll be able to get safely from point A to point B.

This world's magic sounds really convenient, except for apparently somehow being related to the shadows. Which sound inconvenient.

Airta will interrupt her stream of questions temporarily, in order to finish eating. She'll then inquire at what time Ev would like to go look at shadows.

The magic is really convenient! She's sort of curious about Airta's world's magic, and might ask more later, but for now she'll just talk about what's probably more relevant to Airta right now.

Ooh, times! This means that Ev gets to explain clocks and how their system works, how long an hour is, that sort of thing, with limited vocabulary. She does so, tries to make sure Airta understands, and then basically says 'approximately late evening', very helpful of her.

Airta doesn't ask for much further clarification.

She has more questions. Grammar, this time. She wants to know how plurals are derived from their singular form, or vice versa if that's how it's done, and she wants to know what the deal is with adjectives. And articles. And she wants to understand more precisely how the different pronouns and words for "to be" are used. And then she switches to asking for more specific vocabulary. She tries to pay attention such that she would notice if Ev was bored of answering language questions, but it quickly becomes apparent that she's not going to run out any time soon.

Ev is kinda curious about the new person, so she's interested to see how she fares learning the language, what parts she finds easy and what parts she gets stuck on, that sort of thing, so she actually won't get very bored anytime soon. They can… probably, actually, spend another while doing this.

Her dad comes back after about an hour, so she has a short conversation with him – something about living arrangements and Airta – but then they can resume the discussion.

Airta would also like to know about living arrangements and Airta.

Well! There is currently no obvious place arranged for her to go, though there might be an empty house around somewhere – she might not want that, though, since it probably wouldn't have any food in it and also they're not sure if there is in fact one available – but she could probably stay in this house for a bit?

That sounds like the best available option, and she appreciates their generosity. (She is not quite that articulate, although she is entirely grammatically correct, which is better than could have been said a short while ago.) This prompts a slew of questions about etiquette, followed to some about gestures and body language.

Ev is willing to answer them! Her father seems… slightly amused, probably, though he doesn't show that much, and disappears to go do– something.

They can continue this for a few hours, probably with a change of scenery partway through both as a break and so Ev can show Airta around the town a bit more and give some words for various things that can't be found in houses.

Then it looks to be nearing sunset.

By now Airta is capable of holding a conversation, although she takes a noticeable amount of time to put sentences together, and there are plenty of words that simply haven't come up yet.

She'll look at Ev questioningly when the sun reaches the top of the wall.

They should probably go look, yes!

Ev shows her the way to a part of the wall where you can actually climb up, then talks to the couple of people on guard there and assures them that they'll be okay and will make sure not to do anything stupid.

Airta trusts that either Ev will know what stupid things not to do or her danger sense will actually function. She will tell something like this to the guards, if they ask her slowly enough that she can parse it, which they probably won't.

She'll climb up the wall after Ev.

There are fortunately steps built into the wall – there's an archway in it, since this is one of the gates, and then you turn to the side before you get to the gate itself and climb up some stairs built into the wall, since it's rather large.

Up the top: there are parapets at the edge and they can conveniently see over and into the distance. Outside the wall are quite a few fields and orchards that are presumably used for food, probably only in the day so as to avoid the dangers of the shadows, and it continues to be near sunset.

Airta might notice a small blur in the distance. It looks sort of like concentrated heat distortion, doesn't seem particularly large, but it's quite noticeable.

Airta stares at it. After a few seconds, she points at it, and then, after a few more seconds, she asks, "What is that?"

Ev looks that way and– "The blur? It's like a shadow, but usually attacks sorcerers, people who do magic."

"Do you know why?"

Shrug. "The monsters don't talk. They're just dangerous."

"Can you hurt them?

"With fire," she says. "Not much, some."

"How do they start?"

She shrugs. "People say things but they don't know."

"How do they..." she gestures vaguely. "Move, things?"

"They– reach and pull," she says, miming putting her arms through something and then pulling backwards. She shrugs and says, "It's weird."

"Monsters are weird. Magic is weird."

She doesn't seem to have much more to say, but she's comfortable surveying the countryside until the sun goes down.

Before that happens, though, after a few minutes, there's a small noise in the distance. It sounds like the noise someone might make were they to run along, quite quietly, quite quickly, and then fall over and hit the ground, then scramble to get up again.

It comes from somewhere– near the orchard. It also causes Ev to look that way, slightly worriedly.

Airta's gaze follows Ev's. She seems surprised.

She checks whether she could safely get down the exterior of the wall.

Her power won't return any safe paths, no, though she could possibly get down the exterior of the wall if she happens to have a really good landing.

She could go back down the stairs in the wall and through the gate, if she can convince them to open it for her, but other than that it'd appear they just need to leave the person to get here on their own.

And once the person is up, suddenly the area they were previously in goes up in flames, illuminating them in a glow.

He keeps running, the area around him seeming slightly hazy.

Can she see what he's running from?

The haze is stronger behind him than in front of him, though that could just be the fire.

Yes, it's to some degree plausible that the fleeing man set the air behind himself on fire for no reason instead of because it's a magical monster known to be vulnerable to fire.

Airta looks at Ev. "Is here safe?" she asks.

She nods. "They can't climb well," (she mimes it) "– walls are good."

The man seems to be doing okay getting away from hazes, though they don't seem to retain a humanoid form and keep trying to wrap themselves around him, which causes him to glow slightly blue where they're in contact.

It's good that he's having success in his fleeing.

She watches from the battlement. There's not much else to be done, really.

There's really not. And it doesn't take him particularly long, and it's overall not that bad. He does, however, when he's about halfway there, trip again, but he gets back up quite quickly.

Then he's at the gate, and they open it for him quite swiftly, and he's inside, and they won't be able to see what happens next from where they are.

Well, presumably they close the gate again.

Is there anything else to be gained from staying atop the wall?

Well, if she wants to see an actual shadow, she'll probably be able to see one shortly, but if she's more curious about that man who just fled the creatures, she might want to go down and talk to him.

It's finally getting to be the night side of sunset, though, so some shadows might already be visible.

She'll look for shadows, then. That was the reason they came up here, after all.

… After a bit, she'll be able to see one creeping out of the forest, moving in a weirdly fluid way with no obvious limbs but instead just extensions of the amorphous blob itself. It's extremely dark in appearance, nearly black, and not actually all that large, being about half a human's height and vaguely spherical.

Then it moves slowly, staying in the darker areas of the landscape, and comes into contact with one of the blurs, resulting in a brief period of contact where bits of the shadow wisp towards it, and then the blur seems to dissipate.

All in all, it's ominous and creepy.

This world's weird, frightening monsters are very unimpressive.

"What did the shadow do?"

She shrugs apologetically. "It looked like magic?"

These people know wholly unsatisfactory amounts about their weird, frightening monsters. Oh well.

She definitely wants to go back down now.

It's probably because the monsters are weird and frightening. They probably don't try dissecting them on a daily basis or studying their interactions with other weird and frightening monsters, likely for this reason.

So they can go down. At the bottom of the steps, it seems mostly as it was before with just a couple of guards near the gate, so apparently the man got through fine and quite quickly.

Ev seems to be on the lookout for something.

Airta will tilt her head, but surprisingly won't make an inquisitive noise. Perhaps she's used up her day's supply of them.

Perhaps she has! After a few moments, Ev will stop and then– "There can be a thing that's hard to see. … It is not dangerous."

"A thing that is a monster?" She seems to have picked up 'monster' as a term for the sort of creature the shadows and hazes are. She hasn't heard it used often enough to realize it's more general.

She waves her hand a bit, suggesting uncertainty. "Monsters are usually dangerous. This thing is annoying, not dangerous. … Creatures are monsters and other things? It is a creature?"

"It is a magic creature?"

Nod.

"It is in the town?"

"They can when the gate is open," she indicates the gate, which is now closed. "Like before. I was looking for one."

That makes sense.

Airta expresses that she is impressed with the lamps. In the city she's from it would have been impossible to see by now.

Oh, huh! Well, this town was quite fortunate to have them back when they got them, but now they're quite common across the country.

If Airta's curious about the creatures, Ev could introduce her to someone who could explain more about them? It's her magic teacher, and he got back earlier – she probably noticed, what with the sparks and the gate and everything, yeah, that was him.

... Alright. Is Ev proposing that they do that now?

They can if Airta's up for it, but it might be polite to leave him a little to settle down from his entry – or perhaps they should go do it anyway, he's the sort of person who might like to talk about his 'battle' right away.

Or they can wait until tomorrow.

Airta would normally go to sleep in about two hours, so she's not particularly tired, but it might be worth getting used to going to sleep in time with this world's night, so she's not sure. Ev presumably knows better what the mage would prefer than Airta does.

They can meet him tomorrow then, in case he has anything planned for tonight.

Back to Ev's place they go.

Airta is much more comfortable in the now relatively-empty streets than she was earlier. She seems to be done learning the language for now, though.

That's fine, Ev can notice that and let up on the language.

Then they're back to her place, and it's been a while since they last ate, so she offers Airta some food.

Airta will gratefully accept. Once they're done eating, she'll also sleep where directed to, if somewhat fitfully.

And in the morning, when Airta gets up, Ev's dad will probably be up!

Ev might be, too, depending on how early it is.

It is not early. The morning light does a lot to counteract the twoish-hour offset, but she still ends up waking up about an hour and a forty-five minutes after dawn.

"Hello, sir," she says to Ev's father. (She was fairly thorough when grilling Ev for honorifics, yesterday.)

Ev must be out at the moment, then, because she's not present.

"Hello," says Ev's dad. "How's your Thuria?"

(Thuria is the name of the language they're speaking. Ev probably covered this yesterday.)

Airta takes a few moments to think about her answer. She settles on saying, "It is uncomfortable. I have not talked to people who are not Ev. I do not know if it is good or bad."

"It sounds good!" he responds. "I don't know how much you know of it, though, nor if it's similar to your own language…?"

"Ev taught me many words, but I do not know particular words for many things. It is not similar to my own language."

"You're doing very well at it anyway," he says. "Oh– do I need to simplify my language, or does this work?"

That takes her a moment to parse. "Is simplify make simple?"

"Yes."

"I mostly understand you. This is good practice."

"That's good, then," he says. "How long did you spend doing it with her yesterday? Must've been quite a long time."

"I did not – didn't," she corrects herself, "Understand that."

"How long did you learn Thuria for?"

"What is for in learn Thuria for?"

"– Oh, to do something for a time. I speak for a few seconds. You learnt Thuria for two hours…? Three?"

"I learned Thuria for about six hours yesterday."

"That's– quite a long time!" he says. "What else did you do?"

"We ate two times, and I asked her about shadows, and I asked her about gestures, and we talked about magic, and I asked her about the town, and we went to the wall."

"Why did you go to the wall?" he asks, mildly curious.

"We went to the wall to see magic creatures."

"Did you see any? I'm guessing you went around sunset?"

"We saw a sunset and a haze and a shadow and a running man."

"A running man? Oh, is Akien back – not that you'd know who that is. … Was he using magic?"

She nods.

"Might be Akien, then. He's Ev's magic teacher."

Airta inquires tactfully about whether there's any food she can have and also what's his name.

"Buran," he says. "Buran Kersa."

As to whether there's food, yes! Bread seems to be a staple of what they eat here.

Airta expresses gratitude for the food. She asks what it is that Buran does for a living. (The conversation has slowed noticeably, possibly because she's trying to be polite in an unfamiliar language.)

He works as part of the town council, going around and arbitrating various things, communicating with the individual people and making sure that there's are good channels to get information around, that sort of thing.

After about twenty minutes of this, Ev is back with some things she's collected from people and traded for and such. Markets are useful, aren't they?

She leaves the small wagon by the door and says good morning to Airta!

... Yes, markets are lovely. Airta says good morning back.

She waits to see if Ev has any plans for her before she starts looking for things to do with herself.

Well, you know that guy who ran through the gates yesterday, well, he's Ev's magic teacher and she knows him quite well and would you perhaps like to go talk to him now he's done being dirtied by soil and faceplanting and– spark-stroked by hazes or whatever the heck that was?

He's called Akien, by the way, and he's very nice.

Ev's dad nods at this.

He likes being right about his guesses.

This sounds like a good idea to Airta! She probably has a lot of questions she would like to ask a person who knows a lot about magic. She hasn't asked that many magic questions yet, but she has a lot of questions about everything else, so it's a pretty safe bet.