"Hello?" he tries, in case he has better luck with this alien creature.

It swivels its top prism, and produces a stream of low buzzes and chirps. It probably does not speak English.

It hops onto one of the seats, and rotates so the pale thing inside of it is still visible. It flexes its body toward the seat next to it, then the one across from it.

"I'm going to assume you don't speak English and just talk to myself here," he says. "It'd be extremely convenient if Relay were here but unfortunately he is not."

He mutters something in Cantonese. Might be talking about the stupid freaking subway from who the heck knows where, might be reciting a nursery rhyme. Who knows.

The stack-thing buzzes and adjusts itself, but not obviously in response to this.

The doors chime and start to close.

He grabs in some water before they shut – never know when he might next get a chance.

The windows go dark again.

The stack thing bounces a little, and twists most of its top segments to lean toward him and the water.

… He will move a bit of water towards the stack, separately from the rest of the liquid.

The stack twists and leans toward the water from different directions, not quite touching it. Then it hops from its seat, between him and the water, and leans at it from the other side. It scrunches up its lower segments and moves under the water, then hops to the top of the seat and leans all the way over it.

The stack thing hops back down to the seat and chirps at him.

He lowers it so it's not quite touching the floor in case the issue is that the stack thing doesn't like it floating?

The stack thing tilts at it some more from this new angle, then hops down onto the water.

The water is in fact floating. The stack thing will drop to the bottom of the small quantity and hit the floor, so he extends the water slightly so there's not empty bit at the bottom.

The stack thing hops up and down in the bit of water. Some of the water will splash if it's not prevented.

It is in fact prevented.

Also he solidifies – when the stack thing isn't there – the bottom of the water and also a small lip up the edge, so it seems less weird. It still looks like water, maybe slightly altered, but if the stack thing moves to the edge of the water it'll notice there's a solid thing to stand on about halfway up, which might make it slightly less confusing.

When it notices the bottom and edge, it hops out, and nudges into the edge from all around, then hops into and out of the water a few more times. It gets out, then tilts its top prism at him and the rest of his water.

(He can feel some crystals or something starting to grow in his larger collection of water.)

Well that is frustrating because he wanted a useful source of water all for himself and this feels like he might be killing some children or something if he tries to get rid of them.

He tries to get them to stop growing by separating the water into smaller groups. Also, if that doesn't help, he makes the whole water stick in place, unmoving with quite high precision.

They continue growing when the water is separated, but stop once the water is unable to move at all.

He thinks he will keep the water around the crystals solid, then extract the rest of the water from around them, removing the impurities as he does so.

Ew.

The separated impurities form a glowing blue goop, with some tiny specks that feel a little bit like the beginnings of more crystals, although they don't seem to be growing.

The stack-thing tilts toward the little crystals, and the separated water, and chirps again.

Tyler doesn't understand, he's afraid. And if the stack thing wants them recombined, he'd rather not, thank you.

The stack thing hops back and forth and tilts at the crystals and goop and clear water, then buzzes and hops back onto its seat.

Tyler moves the crystals and goop and a small amount of the clear water towards the other pool for the stack thing.

It hops back down. A thin sliver of one of its middle prisms curls out and pokes at the clear water, then at the goop.

The stack-thing trills and jumps onto the goop.

Yay for the stack thing.

Tide's just gonna wait here quietly and, like, leave stuff for the stack-thing to play with.

It jumps around in the goop and water, then pokes some more at all of the substances. After about ten minutes, it stops, chirps at him, and hops back onto its seat.

He'll leave the stuff there in case it wants it later.

Does it do anything interesting back in its seat?