Margaret is on her way to work, walking instead of flying today so she can drink her coffee without spilling it, when she sees the cryptid. She's a truly far-out one, no limbs to speak of, just a long snaky body with a mirror for a face. Margaret smiles at her and goes to walk on by, but the cryptid slithers right at her all of a sudden and--hits?--Margaret with the giant mirror. Except she doesn't experience getting whacked with a sheet of glass.
"Thank you. What do I need to know beyond 'if an alarm goes off, follow everyone else?'"
They'll explain all the little details, including some stuff most people know like how to activate any interface - the shuttles are mostly self-guiding and otherwise designed to have intuitive user interfaces, but that's 'intuitive' for a local, and sometimes things go wrong. There's also protocols about when you should override the shuttle's internal logic on when to launch - this is mostly 'don't', since you can get into legal trouble for launching early if the system thinks someone still could've gotten on, and you could endanger everyone already on the shuttle if you launch late. The seat belt analogues also work differently than Margaret's used to...
Margaret's used to a couple different ways user interfaces can be, and she's a quick study. When the explanation concludes she's pretty sure she can use the shuttles adequately, and also use other interfaces pretty well even if she sometimes messes up and has to backtrack.
"Thanks for teaching me all of this! As places I could have gotten lost in go, this world seems like a really comprehensible one."
"Good! I've definitely read stories about places it'd be miserable to get dropped on - here we at least have an Earth, even if it's apparently different?"
"Yup! An Earth, and a way to communicate while I'm still learning the language, and food humans can eat and stuff." She's actually picked up a fair amount of the local language over the past several weeks of hearing it alongside translations; she's pretty understandable if you're good with accents.
"I'd hate being dropped somewhere they speak in scents and drink acid and eat food poisonous to humans!" they say with a laugh. "I've read science fiction like that - though so far most actual aliens have pretty human-compatible atmospheres, at least, even if communicating sometimes gets complex."
They summarize the ones they've heard about - the Medusans are pretty new, so a lot of people are excited about them, they've got a Bronze age culture and trilateral symmetry and they communicate with gestures so there's been Manticoran teams developing sign language holographs... (The Star Kingdom of Manticore being the closest human civilization to Medusa).
"That's really cool." Space aliens! She could totally hang around here speculating about alien culture and diplomacy for a while, but possibly she and/or her acquaintance should be doing something more productive.
Yeah; unfortunately, they need to get back to work soon enough.
They wish her good luck before heading back.
They get underway soon enough, both ships jumping into hyperspace without a problem. The journey's going to be decently long. People are still immensely relieved to be free, and it's changed the atmosphere of the ship dramatically.
Margaret helps out here and there, improves steadily at the language, and gets to know her fellow travelers, both the new ones and the ones she couldn't freely interact with before.
One afternoon she's chatting with one of the hydroponics techs when she cuts herself off mid-sentence with, "There is a poison; tank three is unclean."
The tech stops short, blinking. "Um?" he asks. "Wait, was that a prophecy - "
"Yeah, it was. And they're generally relevant to me or the person I'm talking to or both, so, uh, you should probably be on the lookout?"
"No problem!"
When he takes a look at the tank, he'll spit the easy-to-miss beginnings of a nasty mold infestation. Fortunately, at this stage it's also easier than it might have been to clean it up.
He gets this cleaned, and relays what happened (and his thanks) next time they meet. (The general opinion of - and belief in - her powers seems to have gone up, too, as the gossip spreads.)
She's long been used to her powers being public knowledge and generally regarded as useful, so it's nice to be moving back towards that state again. Also nice to feel like she can contribute to the ship; unemployment itches. She looks forward to getting an actual analyst job again, this time tracking baddies rather than pathogens.
She gets a couple more opportunities to contribute over the flight - space is big, travel takes a long time, and old ships like the one she's on are rife with problems that can easily edge into crises.
Still, nothing catastrophic happens, and soon enough they're being warned to prepare for a drop out of hyperspace (the protocols for this having already been covered. It's mostly 'seat belts').
Helping is good; absence of catastrophes is better. She can sit in her chair and put on her seatbelt, though her wings are squashed up in a weird posture and kind of stick out into the aisle.
Luckily, they thought to account for that - mostly by sticking her somewhere people are unlikely to need to rush by her, since they didn't have the time or capacity to custom make her a landing seat.
The drop's uneventful, and then they're being informed they can unbuckle their seats now - it'll be a while yet before they get clearance to dock at the space station, though.
A custom seat would have been silly, since she won't be on this ship long-term. Once she can unbelt herself she goes looking for a window she can look at the station through without getting in anyone's way.
This is findable! The stars continue to be really amazing from space - this is a view she hasn't gotten much of, given that hyperspace glows brightly enough they keep any windows darkened, and she hadn't had much leisure before getting rescued.
Stargazing is the good kind of really painful. The first few minutes remind her that she's light-years and also regular years and an even more incomprehensible sort of distance from home, but once she pushes through the loneliness it instead starts feeling like it doesn't matter. There's so much universe out there: surely she'll find a place in it eventually.