The person is wearing a flight helmet with a visor and breathing tube, but it does have a microphone inside and a speaker attached to the suit! He will turn up the gain on the speaker and try recreating the same sounds Rinka does in her direction.

The next thing she yells is a question.

Ah. The pilot realizes that this is most likely an actual First Contact situation and they should like. Do the procedures for that. He did not anticipate doing linguistics fieldwork today.

There's a delay of several minutes while the pilot receives guidance from Command. Eventually, he goes back into the cockpit and gets the waterproof black and white e-reader. It's about the size of an A4 piece of paper.

He holds it up and tries to make something like a welcoming or approaching gesture, spreading out his arms to the side, then swinging them to front, and then pulling them back in.

The Imperium is now scrambling to get linguists and diplomats that are near the area to immediately be sent there. It will take longer than it took the interceptors to arrive, probably a few hours.

After a brief discussion between the three figures on the islet, Rinka spreads her wings and takes off, gliding in for a landing a polite wingspan-and-a-half away from the stranger and then approaching from there on foot with a friendly greeting at a less distance-carrying volume.

The pilot does not have the requisite impassivity training not to be floored by the wings and the flight, but the flight helmet conceals his reaction. He says the same 'hello' as the first shout.

He currently has the e-reader set to a clock app. The clock displayed is a 24 hour clock — all time is expressed in 24 hour notation in Zmavlimu'e. The time now is 15:32:23. It's updating in real time.

He holds out the e-reader so Rinka can see it. Does she react to it?

(Up close, Rinka is a bit less than one meter tall, with a chunky hourglass build. Her hair, kept in a thick braid that reaches past her knees, is a dark purplish red-gold that matches her feathers.)

She's fascinated by the device, and asks aloud and also by attempted communicative mime whether she can grab it for a closer look.

The pilot is average height for a xepri, so that's two meters tall exactly. The pilot will hold the e-reader closer, but will not let her hold it. Not yet.

Once she's seen it, he will point to the sun. Point to the sun, then to the current hour marker. Then, point to the east, then point to 0400h. Then, point to the west, then point to 0800h. Then, he'll point back to 0400h, then slide his finger around the circumference to land on the 0800h marker, then point to the east, and then move his arm, tracing out the path that the sun would take around the sky in a day.

She nods along, though she seems cautious in her understanding, and tries to confirm her impression of the meaning by sketching a crude sundial on the ground with her foot and standing over it to make a shadow, then gesturing at the shadow's future passage around its arc.

Nodding in Zmavlimu'e means acknowledgement, though the pilot won't assume that. It does seem that she understands what he's trying to convey. 

Next thing: He points to the current time, then draws two humanoid figures. He draws a circle, a box, four lines emanating from the box, then two wings in the snow using his hand. He points to it, then points to her. Then, he draws a similar figure, though this one has ten lines emanating, six short, four long. He points to it, then points to himself.

There's a pause of a minute while he confirms with Command that they're planning on sending two more people. He draws two more ten-lined figures besides the original two, spaced away from the original, then points to 1700h on the clock. Points again to 1700h, then points to the sky, then swinging his arms from that point to a space besides the interceptor.

Rinka nods along to that too, though she's puzzled by a few of the details. Despite the language barrier, she keeps narrating aloud as she does her own gestural rendition of the concept of two tall figures descending from the sky to stand next to this fellow at roughly a-bit-past-noon on her crude sundial.

That's mostly correct, though he'll point again to the clock and point to the sundial as to the approximate location of where he thinks the shadow would fall at 1700h. He's assuming she understands that in the extreme latitudes, the sun varies a lot in rising and setting time. It's not always at 0600 and 1800h. But yes, the part about people descending from the sky after some time is correct.

She draws two different scenes on the ground and explains them by gesture, still speaking aloud as she goes: one scene where the small winged figure returns to the islet to wait for the two taller figures to arrive, and one scene where the small winged figure remains with the one taller figure and continues speaking. Which would he prefer?

Waiting for Command as to what he should pick...he points to the one where the winged figure waits on the islet.

She nods and waves and says goodbye and flaps back to her islet.

Then he will return to his interceptor.

An hour and a half later, a helicopter arrives. There's three entities inside, though only two leave. The two who leave are wearing brightly colored loose rubber suits of a spiraling red and yellow pattern. It looks like diagonal stripes, on the suits. There's a clear polymer faceplate that shows their face. At the top of the faceplate is a camera, microphone, and speaker. One of them is empty handed whereas the other is carrying large packs of stuff.

They approach near where the drawings are and wait.

Rinka re-emerges from the hut very shortly after the helicopter's approach becomes audible, and waits for the strangers to land and disembark before she flies down to greet them. When she does, she's carrying in her hand two replicas of the clay pendant necklace she's wearing: a chunky geometric flower, its petals alternating vibrant blue and shining white, glazed to a glossy sheen.

Rinka will be able to see that the two entities that are facing her aren't wearing a flight helmet with a shaded faceplate, so their faces will be visible. They don't have hair, not even eyebrows and eyelashes, and otherwise look like humans — though their bone structure seems 'pointier', with their brow ridges, jaws, chins and cheekbones more prominent. Their foreheads also seem like they are covered by shell.

The diplomat thinks Rinka's necklaces are absolutely stunning, and he has to make an effort to draw his eyes away from it and back to her. Their faces and body language do not observably change upon her presenting them, and they make no effort to take them. The one who is holding the packs does open them — the packs seem to contain books.

The packs seem to contain two copies of each book, and the diplomat takes out two titled Pixra Vlaste co Manri Balgugbau. The two hardcover books are oxblood red with the title in gold, and the middle of it has a spiral of gold set in a square, so as to achieve a red and yellow spiral effect.

When they don't react to her offering them the pendants, she tries holding up a pendant and miming putting it on the one who had trouble looking away from them, to somewhat comical effect since she would need a stepladder to reach his head from ground level. She does also show an interest in the books, but the necklace question seems to be a higher priority for her at the moment.

Ah. The alien wants them to put on the alien artifact necklace thing. Well. Regardless of the hazmat suits, they're still going to go into quarantine after meeting them, so. And it's less problematic if they don't need to open the suits to put the thing on.

Rather than fully obeying what she seems to be asking them to do, the diplomat will take the pendant and put it on his accompanying drone, rather than himself. They put it on top of the suit, though the necklace is around where the entity's neck would be. Does anything happen?

The alien turns to address the drone and says, "Right, can you understand me now, then?" in the same alien language she's been speaking all this time, which the drone, having just put on a translation artifact, can now comprehend fully and even have a sense of how to respond in the same language if he tries.

The drone understands but does not speak or react in any way since it wasn't and hasn't been authorized to do so!

The diplomat does see that the drone hasn't exploded or anything and will ask it to report, and the drone will say that it has now acquired the ability to understand their language.

This totally does not accord with their understandings of physics and linguistics and psychology, but flying islets weren't in accordance with their understanding of physics anyway. So, the diplomat will proceed to put on the necklace also.

"Hello. Does this artifact grant fluency in your language?" He idly considers if the artifact could read their minds, and if this is how it's able to do translation. Oh well. He was selected for this in part because he has a low security clearance, so it's not possible for him to leak anything nonpublic through his thoughts.