She considers the question.

"It's silver because that's just the color the metal is; could you make it rainbow-shiney, like it's been ..."

She flips through the dictionary looking for a suitable word, but "anodized" doesn't seem to have been included in the vocabulary Traveler shared.

She puts in a picture of an anodized steel plate instead.

"Like this?"

Ooh, that's pretty. Yeah, he can do that.

"It's a pattern that metals naturally make when you do something involving tiny-lightning to them. I'm not a specialist, so I don't know the details. But it's really pretty, yeah! I have some spoons at home that have been decorated like that."

When he finishes the fidget, she takes it back and thanks him once again, and then starts packing up her recording equipment.

And he heads back over to Vesherti.

Meanwhile, a local tailor is trying to figure out how to convince a crow to teach him telepathy.

He holds out a bit of (rounded so it's not sharp) broken glass tied up in thread so it dangles in the sun as a bribe.

The crow perched on the railing across from him peers at the glass. It's neat, he thinks, but he won't know what the guy wants for it if he doesn't tell him. (He ruffles his feathers in frustration at how nobody in this weird place will talk to him.)

The tailor does his best to imitate the feather-ruffling gesture with his robe, because he's frustrated too.

He grabs a marker and whiteboard and draws a figure in a walker, a crow, and a figure in robes. The figure in the walker and the crow both get little wavy lines coming away from them, but the figure in robes doesn't.

The crow who knew how the 'go this way' mark worked explained that to the rest of them, but these marks are different and he doesn't get it. That middle one might be a bird?

The tailor slumps and puts his head in his hands. He just wanted to learn the cool new magic.

After a moment he erases the whiteboard and just hands the shiney to the crow. It deserves something for trying to talk with him, even if he has no idea how to get through to it.

The crow considers the offer for a moment but takes the glass. He'll remember where he got it and come back, maybe this guy will want to talk to him some other time.

His mate has been scouting for nesting spots; he flies up (and up, and up, what is this place) to the rooftops to see if he can spot her.

There are a lot of nesting spots in the city. Options include: window boxes, usually planted with flowers or herbs; ledges on the side of buildings, for people to rest when going up or down the climbing routes; various spots and niches on the buildings' external machinery; or, for the traditional crow, trees in the various parks.

The whole place is a good deal denser than the crows are used to, so the ideal spot probably depends on how they're willing to trade off noise and proximity to the streets versus other considerations.

She's not very willing to trade off proximity; she's really pretty spooked, with all of the weird stuff, and she's given up for the moment and is sitting on the railing of the least-occupied roof she can find.

She did spot the guy whose airship they were on a few days ago in one of the parks; when her mate catches up with her she suggests they go see if he'll explain what's wrong with this place.

Back in the park, Vesherti sets down his book.

"Hello, Traveler. That sounded like it went well."

He thinks so too. He's curious about what people are going to think about it; do they have some way for him to find that out?

"Yes — Þurvo's periodic-group-letter thing has a place where people can put their responses for everyone to read. I can show you how to get there on your phone, or I can ask someone to keep track of it and send you a summary."

Presumably they're going to be writing in in the local style, so he'll need a translation; a summary is probably easier than translating everything and that's fine with him.

And then there are crows; they don't divebomb Vesherti or anything but he's unlikely to be used to wild animals getting that close. They alight on the walker and one of them croaks in annoyance: Hey! Where did he bring them! What's the deal with this place! Why won't any of the other people talk to them! Even the crows won't! It's really creepy!

He chuckles. Yeah, it is kind of creepy; they don't have crafting here so nobody can communicate the way they're used to. Are they okay aside from that, he wasn't sure they would be.

They're basically fine, there's plenty of bugs and stuff. There's so many creepy people that they haven't been able to find a place to sleep yet.

They can hang out at his place if they don't bother the chickens, but he thinks the local humanoids are fine to sleep close to, they've been nice to him so far.

This local humanoid has been helping him with stuff about being here; maybe they'll have something to say about the crows' situation - they can communicate with writing.

"We don't have existing accommodations for crows, because the local ones can't talk to us, so we didn't know that we should," Vesherti replies. "But if you can tell me what sorts of things you need, we'd be happy to help. Everybody here has been told not to bother you, but if they do anyway you should go complain to someone who looks like this—"

He includes a picture of an Emergency Services uniform.

"— and they'll get it sorted out."

He translates that, clarifying that by 'bother' he expects they mean things like threatening them or making it hard for them to do things and not just being confusing or weird, and reiterating that the emergency services people will still not be able to talk to them, though they will be able to understand them and talk to the other local humanoids (but not the local crows or other animals).

The crows are going to want to sleep in a flock, so they just need a good sized tree that nobody will bother them in. And, like, quiet, it's weird how these humanoids make noise all the time.

"If you all pick a tree you like, we'll put a fence around it to mark it as yours and keep people back," Vesherti offers. "I don't think any areas of the city are going to be very quiet, unfortunately. There are enough people that even if each person is pretty quiet, it all adds up to noise. The nearby forest might be quieter."

He indicates the direction away from the port and the rail lines, which should be the quietest area nearby.

They can try the forest but they don't know what other animals are there, what if there are big hawks or something.

Well, the offer to stay at his place is open, he can put up a shelter for them. He's going to be moving on at some point, too - probably not soon but eventually - so if they want to be near someone who can communicate with both them and the locals they'll want to keep in touch with him.