Ronja studies the soap carefully: it's clearly not made using a modern industrial process. Animal fats, presumably.  She washes the dishes obligingly.

Everyone falls asleep exhausted -- except Ian. He keeps going over the buildings in his mind. He's coming to realize that they aren't only very lost: they're no longer on Earth. It takes a long time for him to get to sleep.

Megi sleeps in the same room, on one of the cots.

The food and coins by the fox altar are gone the next morning, and the water in the bowl is noticeably lower.

They can have a quick breakfast of leftover rice, and put everything away again, and Megi finishes tidying things up, and then she points out a dirt trail on the far end of the shrine and starts walking down it.

...The animals here are deeply weird. They see a bird with shimmery green plumage and four wings foraging the forest floor, just as a start.

On their way out, Chloe leaves what loose change she has at the altar as well. She's not sure what the rules here are, or who is taking the offerings, but she's read enough fairy tales to know it's a bad idea to be stingy with mysterious spirits. She then catches up with the others heading towards Wo Liua.

A fox laughs in the woods as she catches up.

The trip to Wo Liua takes about an hour. It's a village, cleared fields surrounding it, with a palisade wall. All the houses are inside the wall, and there's a militia with iron spears and fiber armor. Some people are currently working outside the wall, though. One of them is especially tall and beefy- A veritable giant by human standards. Is he human? He could be. Seven feet and a bit and a wall of muscle and fat, likely five hundred pounds or more. He's pushing a plow along without any visible difficulty. The locals seem to think highly of Megi- Waving and shouting hellos.

Niels looks carefully at the wall. Probably made with muscle power plus simple machines, maybe with a crane of some sort.

His eyes cross the man-mountain plowing the field. Or maybe a crane would be unnecessary.

The group followed Megi with some bit of nervousness. This village was clearly a safe place, but they also had no clue what would happen next.

Megi leads them to a slightly fancier than most house, and the door is answered by a tired-looking man. They have a brief conversation, then she tries to explain-

"Ceejay will do a thing and you will learn the language Atsosi."

"Ceejay. Hello." Ian spoke halting Atsosi, using the dozen or so words at his disposal. "We learn, yes."

Ceejay says something complicated to Megi, and they go back and forth a bit, then he welcomes everyone in. The place is cozily decorated with a lot of fabrics and cushions, and the first room is a large dining room with seats for up to twelve. He hands out bowls of stew from a massive cauldron at the back, then says a prayer at the head of the table- They can recognize 'thank you' and 'eat' and one of the gods's name (one of the three whose symbol was unclear).

And then something - shifts - and he sits and says, "Please be seated. So long as we are enjoying a meal together, you will understand every word that is spoken. If you rise, or disrupt the peace, or we stop eating or run out of food, it stops. This ritual helps immensely with learning. Don't worry about paying me back for it- Megi claims you're foreign, which is interesting enough to be worth it!"

Ian thought he had already come to terms with no longer being on Earth, but this -- real magic, used in their presence -- is the final nail in the coffin. "Thank you very much for the hospitality" he manages to get out. "We are foreign indeed: I have no idea where we are."

"Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating." Chloe smiles, intrigued. "If you don't mind me asking, Ceejay, how does this work? How are we able to understand each other?"

"We are no great scholars here, but I will try to explain. Some people, after meditating and attempting rituals many times through long practice, eventually find a ritual that calls to the spirits and convinces them to lend their aid. This is what I have done. It makes me a Spirit Touched, the lesser kind, who only ever touches one sort of spirit. There are more skilled people called Spirit Callers who learn to bring forward many different ones."

Chloe nods, confusion and a bit of fear evident on her face. "Thank you. It's a lot to take in. We don't have any spirits where we come from." After a moment, she amended herself. "Or at least, none which did anything to make themselves known."

Niels turns to Megi. "Thank you very much for helping us last night", he says warmly. "I suspect if you, or that fox, hadn't helped us, we would have done very poorly indeed." He, too, seems quite shaken at everything he thought he knew about the universe being wrong, or at least in doubt.

Ronja seems less perturbed, and eats some stew. "Ceejay -- or Megi -- could you please tell us where we are?"

"You are in the village of Wo Liua, in the province of Ginger Valleys, in the nation of Still Forests, which is one of the Stars of Atsol, the federation of the north. If these terms are unfamiliar to you... Visitors from other worlds are not wholly unknown, here."

"Entirely unfamiliar. I suppose that makes us visitors, then."

"Is there some sort of information packet for people who have accidentally stumbled into a different world?" asks Niels with dry humour.

"No, it may not be unknown, but it's still a rare thing. I will do my best to answer your questions."

"Most rifts list minutes to hours, very rarely days at a time. Then they close again, for a long time. The same rift can and sometimes does open in the same place later, however."

"So there's little chance of us getting home, then" Ian says quietly. "Well, if we are to stay in Wo Liua, or some other part of Ginger Valleys, we'll need both a place to live and a way to make ourselves useful." He paused for a moment. "Do you use money here?"

"Yes. There are coins made of metal used as money. Gold is the largest, then silver, then common copper or brass. The metal is valuable for its rarity and, to a few, uses in magic. You're all a bit old to be on your journeys, but there is, I suppose I would phrase it, a cultural infrastructure for wandering strangers? Most places will have odd jobs you can do while trying to find your spot."

"That would be very useful for us." Chloe was clearly relieved.

"Do you use precious metal in your world? What sorts of things does one do as a job where you're from? We're mostly farmers and foresters, as you can see."

"We used to use precious metals in coins, but over time we switched to paper notes, signed by the authority of a wealthy merchant or a king or queen." Ian considers that the best summary of a switch from the gold standard to fiat currency he can manage, especially until he learns what cultural referents this place has -- and lacks. "Now we only use them in jewellery, and I believe for certain very specific applications in toolmaking."