That is such a neat way to indicate gender in writing! You could get really detailed with exploring how a character's relationship to their gender changes over time. Đorestat is tempted to draw an alien gender-marker for themself, or maybe to show off þereminia's standard-trinary-model tetrahedron, but they're not really sure how to map gender onto a bi-polar model.

Plus, it occurs to them after a moment that Crafter gender norms are probably different, as well. Maybe they don't have a third gender because they're less social, so there's less need for people who (yes, it's a stereotype, and they've never been very good with numbers, but as a vague gender norm) specialize in accounting?

Romafiŋ finishes signing out the last of the entries, and then sort of collapses for a moment to catch up with the long stream of alien words that she really hopes all the linguists got, because she totally did not memorize all of them in one go.

... plus, with more examples of the grammar, she totally overused grouping markings in her earlier attempts. They can actually be omitted in a bunch of places without the syntax being ambiguous.

Luckily, they're all saved from being asked to relay messages from the remote team by the arrival of the truck with the things their guest requested. They didn't send too many people out, to avoid spooking Traveler, so Romafiŋ and Đorestat are both roped into helping to unload the contents.

Inside are large crates, hastily spray-painted grey. Some of them contain junk, some of them contain books or art objects that they think he might like, some contain food and seeds, and one contains a chicken. On top of the chicken crate is a grey phone with a solar charger.

The woman with the display scrawls a much more grammatical message on it, under coaching from the linguists.

"Here are the things you wanted. Thank you for teaching us your words. Do you want to ask questions about the things we got you, talk more, or have your privacy now?"

He appreciates the things and especially the crates being greyed; he'd been thinking about how to bootstrap something for that from his house but this way is much more convenient. He should get the animals settled (his dog will be pretty desperate for a walk by now) and then he really needs some time making crafting material - it's soothing - and a nap before he tries to do anything else.

The various þereminians nod, and pile back into the truck, which slowly makes its way back to the airport.

Meanwhile, and just over 130 miles away, a group of speculative xenopsychologists — a field which, prior to today, only avoided underfunding because þereminians get passionate about these things — have gotten into a fistfight, again because þereminians get passionate about these things.

"They've got to have some kind of larger organization! They've got communicative telepathy! You don't develop communicative telepathy unless there's a reason to talk to your neighbors!"

     "The helpful alien has not just censored all of the words pertaining to community organization in his dictionary. That's absurd! Clearly, socialization is not as necessary for the development of intelligence as we previously thought."

Luckily, their colleagues have mostly gotten them restrained at this point, so they're more shouting than anything.

"It's less absurd than suggesting that all of our evolutionary biology knowledge is wrong! Maybe they've got a cultural taboo about representing non-constituent groups strong enough to make the vocabulary taboo."

    "Oh, you think everything is a taboo! It's not like evolutionary psychology makes any sense, anyway — we know that there must be complex tradeoffs in the evolution of intelligence that aren't obvious from historical evidence based on modern demographic sampling."

"Doesn't make sense! Doesn't make sense! Are you a scientist or aren't you?"

"Gentlemen! I asked you whether you had any suggestions for the diplomatic team in putting together and presenting our trade proposals," the director of Larger Continent Emergency Services, a stern older woman, barks.

They exchange sheepish glances.

"Yes, well. I think that things are ... probably too preliminary to say. We really need more data."

    "That's the first thing you've said that I've agreed with."

The director does not sigh, although only because she has spent years doing the managerial equivalent of herding cats.

"I'm not asking you for a firm commitment, just any predictions that we[in] should keep in mind."

Ultimately, it's probably a good thing that it takes the Traveler a while to get his things settled, because she doesn't manage to drag a useful amendment to their existing first-contact plan out of that room for nearly another hour.

He lets the dog out - she'll run off, but she won't go out of sight of the house without good reason and she'll come back at nightfall if not sooner, it should be fine - and cannibalizes another section of railing to make a temporary enclosure for the chicken and moves her to it to let her get used to him while he works. (He was hoping for an established flock, but he can handle introducing chickens to each other, it's fine.) He turns one of the boxes of junk into crafting material, takes a break to have a look at the seeds and grow a couple he's curious about in pots at the base of his house, converts another box of junk, and finally feels settled enough to head to bed, bringing the chicken up onto the deck/roof of the ship/house while he retires inside.

He doesn't have a way to let the locals know he's up, a few hours later when he wakes, and they might not want to come back out this close to sundown anyway. He gets back to work on converting his house into a walking vehicle, and if they haven't shown back up in the fifteen minutes that takes he'll start building a second walker out of the new material to hold his new garden.

It is, on the one hand, probably rude to watch the alien with binoculars. On the other hand, he can vanish inside his house any time he wants to, and also he has unknown capabilities and is set up near the third-largest airport on the continent, which they can't afford to shut down. And also he probably can't figure out the phone from first principles and message them.

(The fact that Largest City does not have the largest airport is one of those little ironies of logistics that people make five minute audio essays about; to cruelly summarize, the trains are good enough and Inheritor of the Old City is more centrally located for connecting flights.)

So when he comes back out of his house, the guard who has been assigned to watch him with binoculars takes note, and a few minutes later the diplomatic team is assembled and ready to go talk to him again. 

Diplomat Tatenika is currently in Edge of the Forest City in southern Smaller Continent — but she's not the only professional diplomat available. Vesherti is, in many ways, her Larger Continent counterpart. And, luckily, he was overseeing trade talks in Largest City, and so was immediately available.

When it pulls up, he hops out of the truck and waves to Traveler, before setting up another portable screen to write with.

"Hello! Were (the things we gave you) the right things?"

They were! He's going to need more chickens and he's not familiar with all of the food plants but they've got the right idea. Also he'd like to take five minutes to finish getting his house in walking shape, and they should be aware that his dog is out and will probably come back soon to see what they're about - she's friendly to strangers, there's no danger, he just doesn't want them startled.

Vesherti has never met a dog, but he's vaguely aware that they're still used for animal herding in some areas. Presumably it's easier to handle living with an animal when you're telepathic.

"We won't be startled," he promises. The screen is linked to his tablet, so it's easy to scribble down almost as quickly as speaking. The þereminians wait patiently as he finishes up, although Vesherti does go through talking points in his head.

He gets back to work on the house, finishing up the connections that let its long spidery legs move, then backs it off a few paces and switches to the new smaller walking vehicle on the roof to come down and talk. He's added a blue band around the top of the base of this one, bordered in gold, to indicate that it's okay to talk to him, and the whole sitting area is enclosed in a bubble just large enough for him to stand in if he chooses to, with the transparent front half shading into opaque sparkly indigo at the back and the five communication dots replicated at the bottom of the transparent area.

"You communicated you would ask people about (you got here) — we are very interested in going there and here. Are there things that you think would help with (know how to go)?" he asks once it looks like Traveler has gotten settled. "There are other things to talk about, but sometimes it is helpful (when working to learn) to observe things quickly."

He has no idea what the phenomenon might be that brought him here; his best guess on how to proceed at this point is to ask one of his traveler friends to go to the area he disappeared from and look for records of crafting experiments that might be related or talk to the elders and record-keepers in the area to see if they know of anyone doing that sort of experimentation in the past, and if that doesn't work they'll have to ask around to see if they can find anyone else doing anything that might be similar. He doesn't know of anything that can be done from this side, unless they have some idea of how something on this side might have been the cause.

He shakes his head.

"No, we don't know of such a thing. But it's good to check, in case. We have sent (mechanical birds) through the sky where (you were), and they did not find a way to go," he explains. The programmers haven't gotten Crafter glyphs hooked up to the text-processing standard yet, so he has to draw glyphs by hand, but his handwriting isn't too bad.

"What do you (plan or want) to do next? We want to figure out (how to trade with Crafters)."

Next, he's not sure; the main constraint he sees on his plans in the next month or so is that he's presumably going to be integrating chickens into a new flock and that can fail if he's moving them around too much at the same time. In the longer run he's going to want to travel, he doesn't do well if he tries to stay in one place for too long. He doesn't think he'd do well in their cities at all but if they'd like him to move closer to one to be easier to trade with that shouldn't be a problem, at least if they can hold off on the rest of the chickens until he gets there and keep him supplied with eggs or meat directly in the meantime.

Vesherti thinks about how to explain the existence of a global transportation network, or at the very least of helicopters.

"We have many people who (they like to travel)," he settles on. "So we have many good machines for traveling fast. It is mostly easy to trade with you wherever you go. If you want to live in a boat in the ocean, it would be harder."

"We can supply eggs and meat until (you find a spot to settle the chickens), though. If (you don't want to see the cities), what do you want to see? Or do you want the movement of traveling, not the seeing of traveling?"

He does want to see the cities, just, like, as a day trip, not to try to live there. He likes seeing new things - or seeing things again to see how they've changed - but the part where he's always going to new places is the important part, he's very nomadic by nature. A few months hanging around outside a city and visiting it every few days should be perfectly comfortable, though.

Oh! Alright, that makes sense.

"Lots of people will be excited to (you see our interesting projects)," Vesherti agrees. "The closest city is 'Largest City'."

He points over the hills to the south.

"How fast is your walking house? By our (traveling machines that go on a traveling machine path), it is an hour away, but I think your house is not as fast as a traveling machine is."

He doesn't usually go that fast, no - the limitation is more to do with how fast he feels comfortable going than the machinery, though. At any rate he could make the trip tomorrow, if he's estimating their speed right it shouldn't take him more than a day to go as far as they can go in an hour.

Vesherti nods again. That sounds about right.

"If true, we would be happy to have you visit. We will make sure to tell people in the City to (be very careful not to touch you). There is lots of unclaimed territory in the city, but it is not colored grey. We can't recolor it all in a day, and that would be a lot of work. Will you be okay if (people can point out what is unclaimed), even if it is not colored grey? Or if we tell you how to guess well?"

The easiest way for him would be if he had a guide; he might be able to infer which places are public from how people are acting in general, but it'd be effortful and there's a risk of him freezing up in the middle of everything if something goes wrong. Instructions would help with the inferential method but won't be enough on their own.