"Not." She shakes her head.

Okay, he won't run away screaming about her making...

Wait a second.

"Dosk can make artifacts! Make! Can I?"

"Make," and she makes the wobbly gesture from before. She's still smiling, though.

"Dosk can make artifacts! Person can make artifacts!" Wow. Suddenly he's a lot more sure what he'll tell people when they get back.

If she can make artifacts maybe she speaks the same language as the people who made the ones in the city of the gods. He offers her a plastic-wrapped book in the language of the gods, in case she understands it and wants to read it.

She declines the offer, instead patting her scooter and pointing ahead to the town. But then she pauses, and gestures for him to get on.

He thanks her in his language that she definitely can't understand and maybe can't hear. He hopes she's good enough at reading people to understand anyway. He gets on.

And off they go, at a pace quite a bit faster than walking speed.

It's not long before they see some people. There aren't many out right now, not in the middle of a summer day, but there are a few out sowing for what'll probably be the last harvest of the year, wearing shady hats and carrying canteens. All of them find Dosk's scooter noteworthy.

She slows back to walking pace to watch them.

Some of them approach and say things that Dosk won't understand at all. Vaayo gives them an excited summary of things, including Dosk's name. The signed version, not the spoken one.

One of them offers Vaayo a mostly-empty canteen that he offers to Dosk immediately without drinking from.

"Thank you." She drinks, apparently unworried about the safety - or amount - of the water, and hands the canteen back.

The canteen-offerer smiles and tries to mime that Dosk should keep going in the same direction she and Vaayo have been going since she got here. By now part of a village is visible that way, but the rest is hidden by the crops growing between here and there.

Yup. She continues on.

There's some more corn and beans. There's squash and tomatoes and something that's just sprouting.

There are chickens closer to the little village.

And then there's the village itself, built around a spring. The spring flows pretty weakly right now, but it's the height of summer and it's still flowing at all. At the moment most people are indoors with all their south-facing windows shuttered.

Dosk waits until she's in the village proper to stop the scooter and look questioningly at Vaayo.

Vaayo gets off. He motions for her to follow him and walks over to the largest building.

She follows, and when they get there she gets off the scooter herself, adjusting the bundle to be a pack she wears on her back and then having the scooter fold itself up into something she can carry, though it's a little unwieldy.

Wow. Wow.

Inside the building are beds for maybe ten people. There's a baby taking a nap and two toddlers listening to a woman telling a story. A man in the middle of making a necklace from mismatched beads sets the necklace aside and gets up to greet them. Vaayo gives the same explanation as before.

The man gestures for both of them to have a seat somewhere. Vaayo gives Dosk a smile that is meant to be reassuring.

She doesn't seem nervous. She picks a seat with a good view of the room and tucks her things underneath; if it seems like it'll be more than a few minutes before they need her for anything, she'll bring Nawi down to her hand to pet while she waits.

The man brings both of them water and what seem to be homemade potato chips. He motions for them to wait and goes looking for something else.

The children watch them but stay where they are for the moment. The woman nods to them but doesn't interrupt her story.

Vaayo is a little too distracted by the water to try to say anything to Dosk. He might not have had much to drink today, by the look of it.

She sends the mice into her pack for a small, shallow wooden bowl, and pours a little water into it for them and the bird before drinking any herself. Similarly, the mice get half a potato chip each before she eats.

Eventually the man comes back with a worn, old copy of an even older world map. It's as careful a copy as they could make by hand. He shows it to Dosk. He looks at her expectantly.

She's unsettled by it even at first glance, but looks it over carefully, hovering her finger carefully over the paper as she traces the coastlines, making sure she doesn't overlook anything that might be familiar.

She shakes her head, when she's done.

He nods. He's not shocked by that.

He points to Dosk, then to his ear, raising his eyebrows.

That gets the wobbly gesture.