Maybe it's one of those. And how they expect him to learn what those ones mean without examples he's not sure.

He keeps watching. 

Next episode he can learn about local history. There were wars and the Hari Empire won them and now there are no wars because there is no one else left to fight. And by the way did he know how lucky he is to live in the one and only independent polity still in existence? The Empire is great! And maybe he can pick up words like "law enforcement" and "cooperation" and other useful vocabulary.

So what he's getting from this is that running away is even more pointless here because there's nowhere to run to. Delightful. 

Yep! Absolutely nowhere! Isn't it great!

Next episode describes lots of common materials, like coal and wood. Several of these are described as elements, and frequently the elements are assigned numbers. And did he know that he shouldn't eat or drink from something made of lead or that he shouldn't make elements that have very high numbers because they might be radioactive? Because he shouldn't do those things. There seem to be lots of different kinds of metal, some of which he won't have seen before.

It's not quite fully dark outside by the time his host gets back.

This is a very uncomfortable position. Zaira keeps dozing off and then being jolted awake when he loses his balance. 

He carefully doesn't look over at his host and keeps blinking in the general direction of the talking cats. He stopped being able to take in any new vocabulary a while ago. 

His host looks at him tiredly, sighs, then the sky is bright again and it's only a couple hours before noon and he is wearing bracelets and his host is telling him not to try to convince anyone to help him take them off.

He blinks tiredly and tries to piece together the sentence, gets some of it but not all. 

Also, it seems like he missed something pretty important this time. That doesn't normally happen; at the very least he should have woken up when the bracelets came out. Maybe this is more magic stuff and not just his mind trying badly to protect itself. 

More orders. It doesn't matter if he understands them all. The magic will work either way.

Then his host unsticks his hands and feet and tries to talk to him. "If I show you to the bathroom are you going to make me regret it?"

He shifts to a more comfortable position, moving slowly—both on purpose and because he's stiff—and tries to look as nonthreatening as possible. 

His host attempts to pull him to his feet. He's more gentle about it than he could be if he were specifically trying to hurt him.

That's a good sign. He goes where he's pulled. 

There's a bathroom down the hall. It wasn't designed for humans. His host is not going to watch but will lurk nearby ready to murder him if necessary.

Surprisingly considerate given how he's been treated so far. Although he has no idea what happened in the missing time, so maybe it's all a clever ploy to get him to trust this person while they do terrible things when he's not there to notice. Or erase his memory, or...he doesn't have enough information to figure out what's going on here. 

He figures out how to use the bathroom facilities. Doesn't try to run away. 

Then he can go back to the room he was in before and be told not to leave or try to communicate with anyone outside or damage any property left in here. Not counting himself, he can damage himself if he wants as long as he doesn't bleed on anything that might be at all inconvenient to clean.

He understands very little of this but what he does understand is enough to alarm him. He doesn't say anything in response, because he's not sure he can remember the word for 'yes' and saying anything at all might get his teeth stuck together again.

His host locks the door and sits and watches him. The metal rectangle keeps doing its thing.

Time to learn some more words. 

Now he's not stuck in such an uncomfortable position, though, it's only a matter of time before he dozes off. He's had a long day. 

That's allowed.

His host sits and watches him sleep and writes things. Nothing happens for a few hours.

He'll sleep for about five hours before the instincts screaming that he's in danger outweigh the exhaustion. 

When he eventually wakes, he doesn't move immediately, lying still and feigning sleep while his fuzzy brain tries to piece together the events of yesterday.

Ah, right. That's where he is. 

When he shows any signs of having woken up he'll be offered a bag of nuts.

It's not night. It's not even evening. It's morning, earlier than he went to sleep.

He's not even bothering to keep track of how much time he's lost, at this point. That way lies paranoia. 

Food! Food is good. He eats the nuts and smiles tentatively at his host. 

He offers him the rectangle again. Not that it was hard to find but he figures the gesture matters.

...he finishes the nuts first. Then he goes back to watching the talking cats on the magic rectangle. 

Then he can learn lots of things. If he's learned enough vocabulary to understand, he can learn that the bracelets mark slaves here.

Yeah, he kinda figured. Only he would have the bad luck to get magically dropped in a different country where they've never heard of Sesat and still wind up a slave. 

He doesn't have the energy to be angry about it right now. The anger is still there, buried under his skin, but it's not clawing to get out because there's nowhere to go once it does.