"Space having edges is very strange! Where do you keep your sun?"

"Most alucines' lights do not look like this one. This one is - not on the edge of the alucine, you think?"

"No, it isn't. It's another sphere. Some people think it goes in circles around the planet and some people think the planet goes in circles around it, it's hard to be sure since we can't go there. I forget what the reasons on each side are."

"If the Earth goes around the Sun the math is neater, but you would expect to see the stars move over the course of the year in ways that they don't."

"This is the biggest alucine. Unless there are more without flowers that are bigger."

"We've never heard of the connections between places thing, "portals" you called them? We thought this space with the Sun and the Earth and the Moon and things in it was the only space, and for all we know it could go on for ever and ever."

"Maybe it does! All the alucines with flowers have edges. But this one does have at least one portal. I came through it."

"Are portals usually on the edges, or in the middle somewhere? What are the edges made of, what happens if you touch one?"

"Some are on edges but not all. They aren't made of stuff, you just stop at them."

"What do they look like? Walls? Darkness?"

"Like what is near them."

"You mean a reflection?" He illustrates this concept with the shiny back side of the compass.

"Kind of. Not just like but close."

"What kind of different?"

"The sky does not show the ground. If the sky were a reflection it would."

Yeah he's going to have to see this in person before he can visualize it at all. Back to anthropology! Have they sang representative songs from each other's cultures yet?

Not yet but she will sing a little for him!

He'll sing a bit for her too! He sings a drinking song about how it's time to have one drink at every bar in town and then start again from the top.

Derron joins in too. Then he sings the Pinehedge national anthem, which is much less shouty and shows off his baritone nicely.

"I don't know all of the words in the songs."

Is that an invitation to do more vocabulary exchange? Because it sure sounds like it! The three locals are taking notes like they expect to get charged with writing a bilingual dictionary.

It is an invitation to do that! She wants to learn this language and doesn't object to giving them some of hers.

Then they can trade vocabulary and clarify grammar until it's time to land the boat! They anchor in a natural harbor at the mouth of the river in the ruined city Cayra first explored.

"I came in somewhere up there," she says, waving vagely at the sky. "But I have not found the portal again yet."

"If you or we think of a way we can help you find your way home again, we will. If we can't, we'll help you find your footing in our world."