"Oh, your phone can do that. It uses the same mechanism that it uses to make notification sounds. The sound on most phones is a little high-pitched and less accurate than a dedicated machine, so some people do prefer dedicated playback machines. I have a one that goes over my ears that I like well enough."

He mimes putting on earmuffs.

"There are shops in the city that have them, but which one you want probably depends on things like what shape you want it in and how loud you want it to get."

He was imagining a tabletop unit, something he could leave on the roof for the crows when he wasn't using it; he'll ask his guide about it if any sort will do.

"I'm sure you can find one like that," he agrees.

When the lesson is done, and contact details exchanged, he will wave and head off to catch the train back into the city.

Whoof, that was kind of exhausting. He spends the rest of the day relaxing and converting things to crafting material, after letting Vesherti know that he's going to want to go shopping for an audio player and recordings, and the next day he takes the dog for a run, following the edge of the city for a few miles.

The city is roughly blob-shaped, as so many are. Unlike Earthly cities, however, there's a fairly sharp gradient between the built-up city proper and the countryside around it; the lack of cars in the city proper makes suburbs less appealing.

Running along the edge, Traveler will come across such things as: long-term supplemental storage facilities, a few detached houses, and (eventually) the river.

...does the river look any good to swim in?

It looks perhaps a bit chilly, but the water is relatively clear. The river is high on the banks, and running with snowmelt from the mountains. He's upstream of the city's industry and shipping, here — a few miles further upstream is the reservoir from which the city's drinking water comes.

It may be a little chilly but he can put a warming net up upstream of where he wants to swim and a cooling net downstream and that won't disrupt the fish too too much. Whee! Any interesting wildlife in there? 

That depends entirely what interests him, but there are small silver fish that hover and dart in the shallows, juvenile salamanders still in their aquatic phase, and small frogs still burrowed into the mud for winter.

Salamanders are always fun. He'll see if he can coax one into the palm of his hand - it's tricky, but he can be quite patient - and then either way he takes a break on the bank to sketch the animals and their environment and grow himself a snack.

The salamanders are a normal amount of skittish, but also a normal amount of dumb. If he holds still for a minute, he can definitely coax one into his hand.

This particular bit of river doesn't see much use this time of year — the port is downstream, of course, but also the river itself is too cold for most people who can't construct spontaneous warming nets, and the upstream hydropower dam means that there's no through traffic.

There is the occasional very dedicated swim athlete doing their training here rather than in a pool for one reason or another.

In fact, one of them is visible a ways down-river, making her way up toward Traveler's resting spot. She probably hasn't spotted him yet, though, because she's doing one of those efficient swimming strokes that leaves her face underwater half the time and sucking in air the other half.

He doesn't spot her either, until she gets close enough that the dog alerts him, and then he has to scramble to take down the downstream net before she runs into it - he won't be able to make it to the upstream one in time, but he can warn her about it as she passes.

She makes a handsign at him when she eventually spots him, but will keep swimming if he doesn't catch her attention.

He does, when she gets close enough, or at least she'll become aware that he's worried about her running into the net if she gets to it before he does (and it'll be pretty unpleasant, too, at its temperature); what she does with that knowledge is up to her.

What she does is a sort of full-body shiver at the sensation of suddenly knowing what that guy on the bank is thinking. It's nothing like being doused in cold water, although since she is currently in cold water she does sort of feel like that anyway.

Sagos has emotional-inference-blindness; she can't tell what other people are thinking or feeling just by looking at them. It's not a debilitating condition — she can just ask people — but it means that being on the receiving end of Traveler's telepathy is ...

... actually, it's rather like reading a book. In books, the narration often describes what people are thinking or feeling. For most people, that becomes a shorthand for describing the character's body language or tone; for her, it's a window into the world of mysterious social telepathy from which she is excluded.

She stops her breaststroke and treads water for a moment. It's interesting, feeling like she's in a book.

She says some words to Traveler.

He doesn't understand the language yet - he's the displaced otherworlder. It occurs to him that he's not actually sure how far the news of him has spread. Anyway he'll go take the net down for her, though if she wants to stop and chat he doesn't mind facilitating that - he'd appreciate at least establishing whether she expects to come back this way soon or not so he knows if he can put the net back.

Sagos very much does want to chat. She had heard that Traveler didn't speak the language, obviously, but he's been here for nearly a week and she had sort of assumed he would have picked up some basic stuff. Her Crafter glyphs are likewise fairly minimal, but she should be able to manage something friendly.

She swims over to the shore and hauls herself up on a rock. She's wearing a one-piece swimsuit, but clearly for reasons of swimming performance, not modesty.

He reshapes the net into a rocklike lump that he leaves by the bank. On his way back he realizes something and detours to his vehicle for some more material, which he crafts into a warm robe in fuzzy grey with trim that matches her swimsuit: without crafting he bets the suit isn't self-heating, so he expects she'll appreciate something to help with the chill.

The dog, meanwhile, has come over to beg for petting and is insistently putting her head in her lap.

The dog is, unfortunately, not telepathic. But domesticated animals have been in the news recently. She manages to think through what the dog wants after a bit of puzzling and rubs her hand along her head.

She does accept the robe with a gesture of thanks, and then carefully arranges her face in a curious shape and mimes writing.

Right, yep; he's wearing the extra crafting material as a neckpiece, and takes a portion off to make her a writing tablet. While she's writing he'll make himself something to sit on with the rest.

Her Crafter glyphs are, to be polite, not practiced. And she doesn't have a phone to use as a reference dictionary, but she manages to compose:

"Hello Traveler! Surprised-good swimming near you. You crafting at me feels surprising-good too — craft please a thing at me?"

Sure, he can do that. Does she have something in mind, indicate this way, or should he let her see what he's got for trinkets, indicate that way? There's also a background sense, if she's paying close enough attention, that he could craft her swimsuit to be self-warming but he's choosing not to suggest it because it'd be too forward of him.

Shoot, she's probably messed up a glyph. She doesn't frown, until she realizes that she probably should, and then she does.

"Not craft an item — but that is good too! Thank you! Craft ideas at me, please. You just did it. (It feels strange) goods me."

She does also start thinking about items to request; her vocabulary is a real problem there.

Oh! Sure, that's also fine. He's been looking at the salamanders here, he's not sure if they're a species that exists at home - probably, he hasn't run into any species that are definitely new yet besides Helpers, but he's been getting detailed description to send home so that someone else who knows more about salamanders can check, and also because salamanders are pretty cool, and because he likes to include descriptions of wildlife in the places he's in in his books.

He can go on for a while about what he's observed about what they eat and what they look like and how they interact with each other and the other little animals in their environment. The dog gets bored with being petted after a little while and comes to snuffle at him before wandering off to chase bugs.