He takes the ex-cup, slightly reluctantly, and the wax; he's guessed that they mean for him to communicate by drawing. He doesn't sit - in fact, what happens if he gestures for Werewolf to take the chair?

She smiles and sits, stretching her legs.

Better!

He makes a few test marks with the wax before sketching himself climbing the cliff, and then shows it to her, makes a confused and startled noise, and gestures into the air, mimicking a falling tumble with his hand before going 'oof' and miming dusting himself off.

He came here by accident? Huh. She smiles and nods and gestures at the food.

Maybe that's just what he wants them to think.

If he's a metahuman - the metahuman? - checking up on his progeny...

"How quickly can a human be obtained? One who can carry out a complicated, prolonged deception? ...A male one?"

    The butler asks a kitsune who asks a tengu who asks a spymaster on the border... "One cycle, sire. Cheap, low-risk."

"Do it."

Another canine and a smaller feline bring out harps and start up a gentle duet.

He never has much of an appetite when he's stressed, but accepting diplomatic gestures is important; he'll take a handful of the nuts and berries and consult the Force again before eating any of them.

He'll also hand the slate and wax back to Werewolf and make a questioning sound-and-gesture about the musicians.

He's still upset? What does he want, a massage? (This is a rhetorical question. She will not attempt to groom him uninvited.)

The Force thinks the nuts and berries are safe.

Is he doing magic before eating? Is he afraid they're going to poison him?

She eats a nut and a berry and a vegetable and a piece of meat.

He must be able to tell that the werewolf harpist is the same species as her, right? Is he asking their names? Their... status in the world? Their relationship to each other, or to her? Uh... point at werewolf, "Eilha", hand comes from far to near, one fist goes around the other three times, point at catfolk, "Asrek", far-to-near, fist goes around once... Two hands go away and back separately with a shrug. Indicate herself, one hand goes away and back with a shrug.

Yeah he has no idea what all those hand motions are. He's increasingly sure that her other body language is human-standard, though, which is on one hand somewhat weird but on the other hand pretty convenient if so.

He gestures at each of them in turn, giving their names - Werewolf, Eilha, Asrek, Rafiik - and then briefly mimics the far-to-near hand motion without directing it at any of them and makes a querying sound.

(The calming music is helping, though he is still nervous of the situation.)

Ah! Ah. "Mirana, Eilha, Asrek, Rafiik; Werewolf, werewolf, catfolk..." She points to the other people around: "werewolf, stetcap, boark." Off in the distance: "...harpy, tengu."

Hmm. "Saiel, would you go downstairs and come back?" Near-to-far... far-to-near!

Now we're getting somewhere! "Mirana, Eilha, Asrek, Rafiik; Werewolf, werewolf, catfolk, human." He repeats the far to near gesture and nods, with an approving hum; repeats it a second time with the circling gesture and a questioning sound.

"Human," she repeats, carefully pronouncing the foreign word.

...does he not know that Ansaf goes around the sun? Huh. She thought it was obvious, but maybe it's only obvious once you have catfolk and they try to predict the motion of the other planets and develop a theory that requires the entire heliocentric system to be rotating at the same rate as the stars, backward to the motion of the planets, and then it's obvious that actually Ansaf is looping around the sun forwards and the sun and stars don't move at all.

She points to the brightest star in the sky, The Plumber's Cursor, and slowly moves her arm down (away from the sunset)... and faster through the rest of the circle back to the Cursor's current position. Fist circles once. Pointing finger in a quick circle again once.

She's pointing at something in the sky but he has no idea what, or rather too many ideas of what - with this many species it's near-guaranteed that they're spacefaring (unless something weird is going on, and something weird is definitely going on, but he's leaving that aside for a moment) so it could be a ship or station just as easily as a star or planet if not more so, and that's assuming it is something in the sky and she's not just indicating the direction or something weirder. In short, he doesn't get it. He can maybe ask, though; he picks the slate and wax back up and uses part of the other side to sketch a diagram of a solar system to show her, indicating by gesture that the sun is the sun and the vaguely-appropriately-distanced planet he's drawn is the one they're on. Then he points in the same general direction as she did and gestures to the drawing with a querying noise: where is that on this?

She draws a straight line that starts at the planet they're on, and goes, roughly tangent to the orbit, all the way off the edge of the slate.

A star? ...that... could be a timekeeping thing? Primitive cultures often use the stars to keep track of seasons, there is a yearly cycle there. Eilha's been here three years and Asrek's been here one, maybe after originally starting out here and leaving for a while? He can't confirm it and doesn't know why they'd bother telling him that but cultures do vary, maybe it matters here. It's good news that they know what the solar system is, at least.

Let's see if we can expand on that, actually. He takes another section of the slate and sketches the rough shape of the galaxy and peppers it with dots, then mimes scooping the entire solar system diagram into one of this hands and points between the imaginary scooped solar system and several of the dots, making questioning noises at each.

Yes to all of them?

...okay yes any given star probably has a solar system. He tries again, pointing at the ground to indicate that he means this one.

Um... In the middle?

Oh good!

"Jedi?" he tries.

Huh?

That's probably his word for [the Ansaf species which has been translated as 'human' in the text so far but now needs to be disambiguated]. "Say yes," he tells the whisshopper, who projects the illusion of a voice murmuring that in Mirana's ear.

Nod!

Definitely good! Now he just needs to figure out where to go to meet up with them. He gestures at the horizon to the left and right. "Jedi? Jedi?"