And a very good imitation of the terrifying eldritch fox tumbles into the clearing.

"Hi mom! Hi weird fox! Did mom summon you, you're pretty!" says the imitation eldritch fox. "Let's be friends!"

"..."

"Your child has good taste. I will not take your trade, but the small one may have a boon. What do you wish, child?"

"Talking to everyone even weird people with purple hair! I wanna know people!"

"Very well. The gift of language is yours."

And he vanishes.

Anna sighs, scoops up her little eldritch fox abomination, and says, "That was very silly, Bright. Let's go back to the convenience store and see if we can talk to them now..."

Human shaped again: "Okay! I will say all the things."

And they head back.

The night cashier is very charmed by little Nausicaa. "Hello there!" she chirps. "How can I help you? You're out so late!"

"We got super lost and our car broke! So we're gonna go to the city to go to our hotel and try to get back to the car in the morning or something, but mom doesn't know the language. I don't know if we have local money though, and I don't know how to get a ticket. Somebody helped mom with that last time?"

(This language has weird traits. It's cool. She starts poking at the pronouns in her head, though of course she's instinctively using them right - that doesn't mean she has the relevant cultural stuff.)

"Your what broke?"

Oh huh she must've gotten the language wrong for that... Poke poke poke is it a word here and not in English... She's gonna have to look out for mixing up languages...

"The wheel thing that you ride?" she tries. The changing people had bicycles, maybe that's what they use instead of cars... "Don't know all the words."

"Okay, do you need me to call you a bicycle repair person?"

"Maybe? We were kinda hoping to get to the city so we could go to sleep... Is that somewhere we can bike to?"

"Which city is your hotel in?"

"Uhhhh..." She turns to consult her mom. It's actually fake, but. (Help??? Magic fox, does she have a list of cities in her head by language - yes she does and location is kind of defined!) "Suva!"

"Okay, this train does go to Suva if you catch the northbound. Where's your mom's pocket everything?"

"We forgot it in the hotel, mom was complaining about that." Dramatic whisper: "Mom isn't good at being prepared."

She is completely making stuff up but lying's pretty fun and she's good at it. Also she now knows that the glowing rectangle things are pocket everythings.

"Oh dear. Okay, are you guys signed up with Scatterbrain or something like it that has reciprocity with them, like, uh, what's the Tapai one called, All Points, or anything -"

"No. Is that bad?"

"It means I can't just give you a Scatterbrain burner everything. You don't have any cash either?"

"Nuh-uh. We thought we were just gonna see some wide open skies stuff 'cause I don't like being cooped up too much. Sorry."

"Is your bike near here?"

"Not really. We walked super far. My feet got tired."

"Okay, so I can't even take it as collateral... ummm...."

"I don't wanna upset daddy but we could call him and hang out here until tomorrow and he could try something?" And then they'd secretly start walking north. (If it's still dark mom can be a proper shoggoth and go really quickly.)

"I'm sure your daddy would rather know you need help and he could pay for a hard copy train ticket over the phone for you!"