'Somewhere else' is a grassy hillside in the foothills of a mountain range, overlooking a small village nestled at the base of the mountains. 

It's a beautiful morning: blue skies, sunshine, birds singing in the trees, a swirling tendril of smoke rising from one of the peaks...

Oh, man, he got teleported into another world. Portal fantasy! Screw you, people who said that there was no doorway to Narnia. 

Hopefully no one has any freefloating destinies or prophecies right now because if they do they will be super disappointed. Also, he hopes time will stop at home so his parents won't worry.

He walks towards the tendril of smoke.

It'll take him a fair bit of climbing to make it all the way up that mountain, and there's no guarantee that there'll be anyone up there with food. Smaller and less objectively interesting threads of smoke rise from the chimneys in the village below, carrying a much more reliable promise of civilization. 

There is a rumbling from the direction of the smoky mountain. A small tremor runs through the ground beneath his feet, making a few tiny stones hop and dance. 

...Yeah, he is not exactly athletic, probably the village is a better idea.

Earthquakes! Barry briefly lived in California when he was a kid so he is not startled by this.

Yep, that sure is a thing that's happening. In the time it takes him to walk down the hillside to the village, there's another tremor of around the same size, barely strong enough to notice. 

The village, when he comes to it, is a collection of around twenty thatched stone buildings, none of them more than two stories with a single three-story exception. The roads between them are packed earth, marked out by nothing more complex than an absence of grass and the traces of wheel-ruts. The people in the streets look like they walked out of the pages of a book on medieval peasants, and the only vehicles in sight are wooden carts and wheelbarrows. 

This is what you expect when you are transported into a magic world!

He finds a peasant who doesn't look that busy and says "hello! Uh, I'm Barry. Do you speak English? --I don't know why you would speak English. You're from a weird fantasy world. I guess to you I'm from a weird fantasy world, huh? Like. Cars. You probably think cars are super magic. Someone said that sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." He realizes he is babbling again and suddenly and awkwardly falls silent.

The random peasant blinks at Barry in polite incomprehension, frowns, and says something that from the accompanying hand gestures probably means 'come with me'. 

Quite a few people seem to have stopped to stare at the stranger, with varying levels of subtlety. 

"Right! Okay. You... don't speak English. That's okay. I probably should have expected that given the whole... other world thing. Is this the past? Am I in the past? Uh. Salve. Non dico linguam Latinam."

Unintelligible reply which does not sound particularly like Latin! 

Assuming Barry is willing to follow them, this person is going to lead him to one particular house and knock on the door.

Barry follows along with the person who is in a fantasy world, or possibly the past and not ancient Rome, or possibly the past and ancient Rome and also his accent is terrible.

The door is answered by an older woman, grey-haired and with laugh lines on her sun-browned face. She nods along to what is presumably a summary of the situation, then stands still with her eyes closed and her head cocked for a minute or two. 

Then she opens her eyes and says, haltingly but in a perfect American accent, "Hello. I...don't speak English." As an afterthought, she adds, "Non dico linguam Latinam," with a shit-eating grin. 

Okay, so fantasy. Or maybe it's the far future, so they know English, and everyone is pretending to be peasants for some reason. Like some kind of far-future Ren Faire. He decides to go check teeth quality. But what if their teeth are also bad as part of the simulation?

Oh wait she's expecting him to say something.

"Hi, I'm Barry! I blinked and I woke up here and I have absolutely no idea what is going on. I am from-- uh, Earth probably doesn't disambiguate, does it-- I can draw a map probably--"

"I have absolutely no idea what is going on," she repeats, amused, still without any trace of a foreign accent. "I'm Tesni." 

She makes a 'continue' motion with her hand. 

...Is this a situation where him babbling pointlessly about things is actually helpful?

Maybe he'll be useful to fulfill the prophecy or whatever after all.

"Yeah, okay, I guess you don't get a lot of people from other worlds. Our tech level is a lot higher than yours. We have, like, vaccines? I'm not sure if you have vaccines. I think smallpox is really easy to vaccinate against as long as you have cowpox, you need to check whether milkmaids ever get smallpox. If you have both smallpox and cows, I mean. I guess I shouldn't assume what you need. For all I know this is like some really elaborate future Renaissance Faire. I used to wish that I could go to those when I was a kid but our family never had enough money. My mom and dad set up a fake one in our backyard once with a bunch of cardboard and some toys from the thrift store and a firm commitment to talking in Ye Olde English. --But anyway vaccination is really important."

Tesni smiles and pats his hand in a grandmotherly way. "We have cows. I'm not sure if we have smallpox. I need to check." Each sentence is perfectly formed, but with a longer pause between each than a native English speaker would normally need.

Perhaps Barry would like to come inside and sit down while they continue this conversation. 

He does!

"Oh, good, because smallpox is definitely a thing you would know about, it kind of killed a lot of people.--When I was a kid I read a lot of books about people who went to fantasy worlds and they always had, like, a prophecy or something that the kids were supposed to fulfill? And I just want to be really upfront that I am a totally useless person and I will definitely not be able to help with any, like, Dark Lord and White Witch problems you have going on. And the books always have the kids refuse the call but it turns out they're great at it and that is not going to happen. I just suck at things."

The inside of Tesni's house is just as charmingly medieval as everything else. It's all one room, with a sleeping area in one corner. She sits Barry down in a chair and shuffles around making tea in a pot over the hearth. 

"We don't have any, like, Dark Lord or White Witch problems," she informs him with a chuckle. It may be starting to become obvious that she's mimicking his phrasing. 

"Is there something I should be babbling about specifically to give you better words? Like, I don't know. --I was going to give a suggestion but actually I have no idea. Uh. I guess I am going to have to give suggestions for you to be able to use my words. Food, clothing, shelter, economics, politics, technology, magic--"

"Food, clothing..." Tesni points at things around the room and names a couple of them, illustratively. 'Table' is something like habla, 'chair' is hahdier.

Okay. He can point to items in the room and give words for them and NOT get distracted by talking about Dark Lords.

Tesni gives him the local translation of each word as he says it, without looking up from pouring the tea. 

When it's done, she sets a mug on the table in front of Barry and sits down opposite him, cradling her own. 

He takes a sip and then says, "Uh. This is not, like, poison or anything, right? Or mind-altering? I guess we don't know how it's going to work with my biochemistry. Are you guys even human? I mean you look human but I don't know that that means much."

"We're human." Tesni pats his hand again, reassuringly. "It's definitely not poison or mind-altering."

She drinks from her own cup and sighs in pleasure. "It's good."  

"...I wonder how smart the translation is. Like, if you think humans have six toes, is it going to flag the fact that I have five toes and translate with a different word. How similar do two people have to be to both be human? I guess in principle it could judge based on whether they are interfertile. But humans and Neanderthals were interfertile and they're different species. In fact, I probably have some Neanderthal DNA. I read an article about it. Are articles a thing you have or are you too medieval for it?"

He drinks from his cup of whatever it is.

Tesni laughs. 

"Humans have five toes," she says when she calms down, "and I don't think we have articles here. The translation is, hmm...words that are words?" 

"Huh! It's when you write down a bunch of words to explain something to people or teach them something. Usually they're pretty short, like a thousand words, if it's longer it's a book. Please tell me you have books. Medieval monks copied books and I realize you're a different world but still."

"Do you have the printing press? Do I get to explain the printing press?"

"...we have books but not the printing press. You get to explain the printing press, but not to me." Handpat, smile. 

"Oh cool. Who do I get to explain it to, then?"

"I don't have words...hmm."

Tesni grabs an armful of random small objects and starts arranging them on the table. A row of taller objects snakes down the middle, with candles and candle-stubs placed carefully in various locations across the whole surface.

"Map," she says, gesturing to the table as a whole. Pointing out a tiny candle-stub tucked in next to the row of tall things, she names it "Tregarth" and, with a wave of her hand to their surroundings, indicates that this is the village they're in now. 

"...Okay, cool, so we are in Tregarth and it is very very small and you guys have bigger cities somewhere else. That sounds good."

Tesni nods. "Bigger cities." 

She points out one particularly tall candle set in approximately the centre of the table, on the other side of the tall-objects line which can be assumed to represent the mountains. "Canolfan. Biggest city." 

"Canolfan. Cool. Do you have teleportation or something to get there or are we just going to have to run very fast?"

Tesni chuckles. "We don't have teleportation, but we don't have to run. We have...more words?" 

"Spells? Magic? Multiple languages? Cars? Carriages? Horses? Unicorns? Dragons? Trains? Steam engines? --Uh, I don't know what medieval people rode on."

"Horses," Tesni tells him, still laughing. "Keffila."

She considers the rest of the list. "Magic yes, spells no, multiple languages yes but..." She gestures beyond the edges of the table. "Somewhere else. No cars, no carriages, no unicorns, no dragons, no trains, no steam engines." 

"Steam engines are really cool! I should explain steam engines to someone! They're going to leave everyone a lot better off! --Well, eventually, I think first they put a bunch of people out of jobs and make them work terrible jobs in factories and things but eventually they leave everyone a lot better off. Wait, how do you have magic and not spells?"

"You should explain steam engines to someone in Canolfan!" Tesni agrees. "Magic...hmm. Magic is not spells, magic is..."

She laughs. "Magic is like this. I have magic. You speak, I—" she holds a cupped hand to her ear. "I don't speak English, magic speaks words. No spells." 

"...I think you are probably going to need significantly more English vocabulary than this to explain what is going on. I hope I'm not going to have to read through the entire dictionary to everyone. Once the magic knows English does it continue to know English?"

"You speak words and the magic tells me the words, so I know them. Someone else doesn't know them." Tesni frowns, clearly unsatisfied with the amount of explanation she's managed so far. 

"The magic teaches you words but it doesn't teach all magic users the words? So you can understand me as I speak to you but other people can't understand me? That's going to be a pain but fortunately I talk a lot. I can definitely just maintain a conversation single-handedly."

Tesni nods. "It's going to be a pain." Her lined face screws up in concentration. "Other people can't understand you, magic doesn't tell them words. Magic does other things for other people." 

"Oh! Everyone has special powers like the X-Men. Do you have lots of powers or is this your only power? Are there lots of other people who understand languages or just you? If it's the second thing I was really lucky to show up in this specific village. You should be in a city helping to translate for merchants probably."

"I don't know what the X-Men are, but some people have special powers," Tesni clarifies. "This is my only power. People with magic have magic that does one thing. I don't know if there are other people who understand languages, but you were lucky to show up in this specific village." 

"Oh, so you are like the X-Men. ...Is there a reason you are in this specific village and not somewhere else? I really don't feel like you'd get much use out of translation as a skill in a random farming village."

Tesni shrugs. "This is my village. And I didn't know my magic did translation until you showed up. It tells me—all things, not just words. Everything in the village and the farms, if I want."

"You hear everything everyone is saying in the villages and the farms? That's awesome!"

"It is!" She beams. "Useful and awesome." 

"Ooh. How is it useful? Can you hear when people want something to eat and bring them food? Or. Actually I don't know anything about farming."

Tesni chuckles and pats his hand. "Yes, and I hear...horses, other things like horses..." 

"Cows? Dogs? Boars? Pigs? Chickens? Cats? Turkeys?"

Nodnod. "Most of those, but we don't have turkeys, I don't know the word. Mostly here we farm...like cows but smaller, and they give—" She tugs at the woollen shawl she's wearing. 

"Sheep! On earth they have a reputation as being stupid and easily led but I am pretty sure that reputation is unearned. On the other hand I don't know that I have ever seen a sheep outside of, like, those books they give to little children to help them learn animal sounds. Honestly, they spent a lot of time teaching me animal sounds as a two-year-old given how much this would come up in my life. But maybe it will come up more now!"

"Maybe it will," Tesni says with a smile. "But we'll be going to Canolfan soon. You know cities better than farms, I think?" she teases. 

"I bet your cities are really different! Not so much with the skyscrapers. --What do you understand when I say 'skyscraper,' does that concept translate at all--"

Tesni's jaw works as though she's chewing on the word.

"Something that—scrapes the sky? Tall buildings, I would guess. But we don't have the word itself, no, and I don't know what you'll think of Canolfan's buildings."