Gosh, these little gadgets are just amazing. He hopes he can get his hands on one. If he ever gets back, he bets he could make a fortune from selling just one to the right company, or maybe even to the government.

Whether he is ever going home, now that he's quite certain he's on another world entirely, is a different question. At least he parted on good terms with everyone at the last holiday, and with the entire island gone, no one will have to wonder whether he just ran off.

Also, goodness. If that's where the island is now, he's quite a bit further from shore than before. At least it looks like he's a good bit further from the equator than before as well, and there's no Stormwall to worry about, so hopefully the island won't just get washed away by a hurricane.

Given the opportunity, he'll gesture at their map and ask, using as simple a vocabulary he can for now, "Kepsa njepsa psenseskjewm? Tsjew njepsa psenseskjewm?"

"Psenseskjewm kepsa —" he points to a spot on the northern coast of the bit of sea that extends east into the interior of the continent. "Psenseskjewm tsjew —" he points to a spot on the southern coast of the largest island of the archipelago.

He nods along. So, if the way they set up their cities is anything like back home, they're probably headed for a smaller one, from a larger. Maybe bringing out equipment and other finished goods out to a city based on resource extraction? Or possibly just based on servicing ships. Their technology looks advanced but he doesn't have any idea how much maintenance it needs, or how they're storing or generating their power.

He shakes his head, and refocuses on how this impacts his situation. The island's more isolated than before, further from the land, and it looks like further north than before. Plus, who knows whether this new world's air is exactly the same, or what sort of differences the sea creature might have. It's a precarious spot, and he has a hard time imagining the island won't be going through ecological changes as a consequence. Even if he's not in a place to get paid to do it, he is still the warden of this place, and pretty knowledgeable about its wildlife and geology. He thinks he should stay, to keep watch and try and manage whatever consequences the island's about to suffer.

After a long quiet pause as he thought all of that, he speaks again. "Psjejpkswan bjest kra bzwast kwarp bjest kra mrejn bra tsamjesa kepsa brabzeb. Psjejpkswan bjest kra bzwast prejk pswarp kepsa bjest sjejpa tsjew tar sjejpa, psja tswajn sjertse. Bzer psjejpkswan bjest kra bzwast tswajn kswazmmwern bjest ksewtnrazbkswaspsjaj kra nantaksa zjejzkwaspsjaj, pswa mresp tsajpnjajktse bjest."

Then he remembers that might be a bit much to hear all at once, and so he'll take the piece of paper he tore a bit off from and write it down, and help them translate.

That takes a bit of puzzling, but it's not too bad since they can just reference the dictionary.

"Psjejpkswan bjest kra bzwast tswajn kswazmmwern psjet kra nantaksa zjejzkwaspsjaj bzebza sjasteter set. Tswajn mrejnpsaz bjest kra pektse ksewtnrazbkswaspsjaj bra tar tsja bzer tse tar psjet," he reassures him.

Tsarer relaxes, fractionally. He still needed to process being cut off from everyone he'd ever known and being thrust into some kind of other world, like the morning fog was the mists of time itself, but at least he wasn't going to need to worry about finding food after his stores ran out, or rebuilding civilization from scratch.

"Bzajtzaj. Mradwezzaz kra bjest bra prakpa psjejpkswan," he says, standing in his office for a moment, seemingly lost in thought, before coming to some kind of realization. "Mas tswajn bzewz bjest kra najpsjaj traksa tar? Kswan kra pwaj membaz psja memsjez."

Vernish references the encyclopedia, and eventually puts together a statement explaining that they're slightly worried the food might be poisonous to them, even if it's not to him, and since they have plenty of food on their ship they're not interested in risking it for politeness's sake.

It takes him a minute to figure out why they'd be worried about that sort of thing off the bat, but he does figure out that, given they've had a whole other world to live in, there's some worry that they've got some kind of allergy or other sensitivity that the Kings removed from themselves and their subjects. Fair enough.

Still, is there anything else he can do for them? Or anything else they need to do for the moment?

The sailors take a few moments to confer.

Mostly what they want right now is notes about language, but it would also be helpful if he could make a list of emergencies or dangers he's familiar with that are common knowledge in his world, with a particular focus on things that could still effect him or could have conceivably traveled with his island. That sounds like the kind of thing that it's better to try and keep on top of even if they're most likely just the same things they're dealing with here. Are any of the flora or fauna here particularly poisonous or invasive?

Hm. Well, the island's not volcanic or anything, and it's rooted well-enough that the last landslide was nearly half a century ago, and only happened when a particularly dry year prompted the worst forest fire they have on record and was followed by an equally wet year.

The flowering vines that are common on the island are terribly hard to get rid of, though they're fortunately also not all that prone to spreading. They're actually native to the island, and pretty hard to cultivate elsewhere. They only ended up on the mainland because the local King wanted to study them for some reason or another. Really, he'd be more worried about other species invading the island than vice versa, though naturally he doesn't really know anything in particular about this new world's situation.

Otherwise, nothing particularly comes to mind. At the same time, this island used to only be a couple miles off the shore, so combined with the Royal interference its ecology was already well-communicated to the mainland, so any disasters would've happened ages and ages ago.

The sailors spend some time speculating about whether any fish are likely to have come along with the island, but Emergency Services is clearly going to have to check that anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

Vernish radios the ship with an update, and they continue pumping their new friend for vocabulary and grammar.

A little while later, the ship radios back saying that they've got a low-bandwidth channel to Island Without Trees Maritime Support Services, who want to know if their guest needs immediate evacuation or not.

"We talk to the ship, the ship talk to the land," Vernish informs Tsarer. "They want know if you want someone come get you to land immediately, or if you feel okay wait here for a while."

"I feel okay stay here," he answers (attempting to match Vernish's currently vocabulary and grammar level for understanding's sake). "I know island. I have food and drink. I have home. No immediate danger here."

Vernish nods.

The sailors do language lessons and take notes for a while longer, before eventually concluding that they should write up what they've learned so far and send it to the mainland.

"A ship comes tomorrow with more talking people on it. We greet you again tomorrow?"

Tsarer nods with a smile. "I greet you again tomorrow. I get up around dawn. I go to the dock then, or I go later if you say what time."

"Dawn is fine," he assures him.

They file out and head back down to their boat, waving as they go.

Island Without Trees Emergency Services does not think it's particularly likely that an entire island from another world has suddenly dropped into their eastern ocean. They're not sure what is happening, but weird navigation failures and elaborate pranks are just overwhelmingly more likely than that.

But you'd have to be completely joyless and far too certain of yourself not to check.

A bit after the sailors return to their ship, an Emergency Services search-and-rescue seaplane homes in on them and does a long circle around the island.

Well.

In the morning, the party that comes to greet Tsarer is somewhat different. The original sailors (who have the advantage of already having established friendly relations) are there, but so is a tall woman in a long purple dress, flown in overnight in a great hurry. Also accompanying them is an Archivist in plain green robes held closed with a pin bearing the sigil of the library. They carry a rugged, human-portable document scanner and a power brick.

Vernish waves as they guide the boat into the dock.

Just as promised, Tsarer is waving back from the dock, happy to guide the new and familiar back to his cabin. He'll greet them all as they disembark, curiosity obvious on his face as he looks over the tall woman and archivist.

"Hello, Tsarer! Is good to meet you," she replies. Her vocabulary and grammar roughly match where the sailors left off yesterday, but her accent is a bit thick. "I am Tatenika, a talking-to-people person. This is book-saver Galhasa."

Gosh, those sure are some sounds that he's not used to distinguishing linguistically! At least he can guess what the roles they're gesturing at.

"Well-met, communicator Tateneka and archivist Kaddasa! I apologize for my incorrect speaking. Dzwejwej does not have some of those sounds," he offers as he leads the way.

Names are just convenient labels for people. She mentally adjusts hers.

"Your apologizing is unneeded; everybody is troubled by new languages," she reassures him. "There are some things I want to ask you. Most important is: do you mind if the archivist copies your books? We don't know the rules for book-copying of your home, but here we all like to make sure books can't be lost."

Tsarer mentally reviews the contents of his office library, before nodding. "I don't think any of my books are secret information, so it's okay to make copies."

"If you remember after and any things are, tell the archivist," Tateneka advises him. "Our archivists have a promising not to share secrets, so that people feel okay letting them save their books."