"Want safe," he says again, softly this time.

She stands up and hugs him. He seems like maybe he needs a hug. Maybe she needs one, too.

He hugs back, wrapping his cloak around her like cuddly bat wings. The surface is covered in restless curls of smoke.

Awww. She feels safer here than she's felt in a long time. Pity how that isn't everything.

"If Imrainai stay," she says, eventually, "more safe if Meraiyu clean. Meraiyu not dirty, Imrainai maybe not sick, after small Liar." She doesn't know what to do about, like, blood loss, but at least a cleaner environment would improve her chances. She really doesn't know what to do about the fact that giving birth without painkillers hurts, but at least the pain shouldn't actually kill her.

Nod nod nod.

"Saikirei make clean," he promises.

"OK," she says, quietly. "Not know how safe when - uh - make small Liar, lose red water? Lose much red water, not know how..."

She's not sure how to finish that thought, even. She doesn't know how the making thing works, whether he can just make arbitrary objects or whether he has to understand what he's making, on some level, whether he'd have to know her blood type and know what that information meant.

He nods again.

"Saikirei try help."

"OK," she says again. She's still scared, but she's going to try not to be. "Thank you."

Nod. Hug. This is a situation that calls for Many Hug.

Saikirei is entirely correct about the number of hugs that the situation calls for.

Eventually, when she's feeling a little more stable, Imrainai returns to her bottle-options and considers. 

"Imrainai maybe try go? Come back if not fast, too long no food, not safe?"

He nods. "Try go," he affirms. "Try go safe."

"Saikirei make thing? Go fast thing? Saikirei show direction?"

"Not know how make thing," he admits. "Not know can make thing." But—he shrugs, and: "Try."

She nods seriously. "Thank you, Saikirei."

And then she gets to work on her own contraption. She doesn't have the knack for engineering that her niece and nephew have shown, but she knows which part of her comm system sends and which part receives, and with a little bit of effort and some help from the various tools that are still strapped to her belt, she's able to separate the two halves. It's not like they've been doing her much good since she got here; maybe this will be a better use for them.

After a couple hours of work - could have been done sooner, but she wanted to be sure she didn't break anything - she goes to find Saikirei again.

He's sitting in the gardens under the dim light of the sea-veiled sun, leaning back against a tree and frowning thoughtfully at thin air.

Cool, cool. It's a hard problem. 

"Made Saikirei thing. Receiver," she calls it, in her language, handing him the piece that receives. She pushes a button on her half and speaks into it, making sound come out of his. "So Saikirei hear Imrainai when Imrainai go. Know if Imrainai safe."

—he takes it, very carefully, and holds it.

"Good," he says emphatically. "Good know Imrainai safe."

"Good Saikirei know," she agrees. "Saikirei think OK? Imrainai help think?"

"Don't know how think," he sighs.

She wishes she could communicate just how much she empathizes with this.

"Saikirei - uh - " she picks up a nearby stick and holds it like a pen, making scratching marks on the ground. "Know thing, make thing?"

After a moment's consideration, he curls up a fold of his cloak in his hand and produces a thing vaguely resembling a pen, which he hands to her. Then, observing the lack of any remotely reasonable writing surface in the vicinity, he curls up a slightly bigger fold of his cloak and produces a notebook with blank white pages.

"Thank you!"

OK. She has absolutely no idea how to make a proper jet propulsion system, though she understands that that's what you should use if you want to go fast underwater. She'd never even seen an ocean before coming to Meraiyu. She does, however, know that you can use propellers to move air, and presumably water, and that this should be a workable method of generating thrust if you can make a proper propeller blade and then figure out how to keep the blade moving.

She draws various contraptions that involve propellers, periodically getting stuck and tearing a page out of her notebook to begin again. She refines her design. She does math, in mathematical notation that consists entirely of tightly organized dots, defining the shape of the sort of blade she'll need. She doesn't know all of the relevant variables, and there's definitely guesswork involved, but she does make progress toward some kind of coherent solution over the course of the next several hours.

Saikirei watches this progress unfold, and thinks really hard about how to make the things she's describing.

Eventually she has a drawing of a propeller-powered vehicle with foot pedals, a sort of cross between a rudimentary submarine and a bicycle. She's also drawn the individual metal parts it should consist of, and she thinks she could weld them together with a blowtorch, if that would be easier for Saikirei.

"Thing maybe work. Faster Imrainai alone. Saikirei make thing, make thing parts?"

He nods slowly.

"Make thing here? Make thing near water?"