"Do you already know how to make yourself understood across a language barrier and just need more power?"

Headshake!

He glances at Derri.

"I can handle it," she says. "I like learning about foreign places and new people's starting knowledge and I've explained magic before. So, Peka Atan, I can take you back to the library and explain that to you, or I can leave you here and Lyr can explain it, or we can do something else. Do you want me to take you back to the library and explain how to make yourself understood?"

...probably "yes" is the right answer here? Nod?

"Okay! It's just back the way we came," she says. "We can walk there on our feet." She has already started doing this. Next it turns out that she can walk and explain magic at the same time.

She's seen Peka walking on her feet, right?

Yes, she has.

This place is weird. Peka walks. On her feet.

The library is as it was. Derri spends the rest of the walk there explaining how to magically make yourself understood (you sort of pick up that thing Peka keeps accumulating every time she communicates, wrap your words around it, and drive it like a spear into the other person’s head; there are a lot of details beyond that about what to aim for and how to use a reasonable amount of power; if you’re good at singing sometimes that’s a better way to think of it but Derri isn’t good at singing and can’t explain how it would help if she were), and then just keeps going, except for a brief interruption when she remembers to introduce herself. She explains that Peka should be able to talk without a net loss of power if she's vaguely reasonable about how she picks her words.

"I think I'm from another planet!" says Peka, wording it so it will scan in case that helps when she doesn't have a tune and trying to... stab... Derri... with this sentence.

"Ow, okay, you might want to work on your finesse next and I don’t know what you mean by 'planet'."

"Sorry! You said like a spear and I don't actually know what that means if it isn't supposed to be sharp! A planet is like a giant ball of rock and if this isn't one then maybe I'm from another dimension instead!"

"You don’t need to be sorry! It’s good that you’ve got it working! More practice will help you get it smoother and more efficient - if you’re not careful you might run out of power but I can just ask yes-or-no questions until you can talk again if that happens. The stabbing is a means to the end of me having your meaning in my head, not the goal. Anyway this is a library, which is an area where you put books, and it's part of a town, which is a collection of places. Some places have rocks, but I don’t need them in the library. I agree that you’re from another dimension and I want to hear about it."

"I'm from a dimension that has planets in it?? And doesn't have this magical thing?"

"Whoa! You should write a book about that when you know a local language because people would actually be interested and you’d get a lot of power from them reading it. Maybe we can figure something out so I can help with the language and you can still get the power. I’m really interested in foreign places but I bet even people who are usually less interested would want to know about a place that foreign."

"I guess?? You get magic from - people listening to you, is that it?"

"From telling people things. More if the things are news to them, more if they’re interested, more if it’d be hard for them to get the information another way."

"And then you use the magic to - translate languages - and make portals I guess -?"

"And to make space and things and to heal people and to change the environmental conditions and to change the shapes of things in general and to travel without making permanent portals."

"You can just MAKE more SPACE???"

"Yes. It's not as easy as communicating across a language barrier and not as hard as changing something like the environmental conditions of a place. If you add enough space to our library you can also add a book. Which people do because they want their books to be read because it gives them magic power. I'm guessing if you didn't know how to do that before then you were somewhere without very much space - maybe everyone just had the amount of space that people start with? That would be kind of cramped."

"What do you mean the amount that people start with? There's just the planet and we all had to share it - and a few people were on the moons, but they have to bring air, and everywhere else is too far -"

Derri takes a mini notebook and mini pen out of her pockets so she doesn't have to use magic to provide the entire explanation, so it'll be more efficient. "I started with my own demiplane, like everyone else." She sketches a little bubble with a stick figure in it and some pillows. The stick figure is - well, a stick figure, but standing up, and maybe proportioned like an adult depending on the local artistic conventions. "I didn't entirely understand what you meant but you can borrow my notebook if it helps."

"We don't have those!!! That's amazing!!! Does it come with the pillows? Does it just appear somewhere when you're born? How do you use it when you're a baby? We just have the planet -" She's got her hands behind her back and is Not taking the notebook. "Great big ball of rock thousands of miles across and people live on the surface and most of that is ocean."

What a polite guest! That's so many questions! "I don't know what a baby is! It just appeared in its own place, with me in it, looking like what I drew, and then I decided to come see Teal Curve and I did that the usual way, by disappearing from my bubble and appearing in the hub! You can do that to get out of your bubble the first time even without having ever told anyone anything before. It would really suck if you couldn't. I am really curious and confused about your world and I think it would help if you drew a picture of it but it looks like you might not want to do that for some reason."