There is another partially fallen-apart stone structure a few hundred meters north, but if she avoids that, her next best bet is a small fjord: steep walls prevent anyone from seeing in from any direction except the open ocean, but the whole thing is accessible from the beach.

She's tempted by a more obviously abandoned-seeming structure, but ultimately she does decide to press on and eventually find the fjord.

After making the hike down, she'll double check that the sheep is unconscious, then exhale a thin ring of medical smoke, just enough to give her a sense of where she'll need to place the nerve-blocking needle. Once she's found the right stop in the neck, she'll reshape smoke, plunge it in, then get to work clearing away the wool, cutting open the skin, and eating through the still-living flesh.

Witch-butchery isn't the same as normal butchery. Flesh provides the most spiritual energy when it's still vital. Her teacher taught her the signs to look for in an animal, to find what can be taken first to preserve its life for as long as possible, as well as an efficient construct for catching the blood as it spills and funneling it into her without needing to swallow.

Still, eventually the creature's lost enough of blood that it's life will start to falter regardless. At that point, she begins to move more quickly, starting the most spiritually rich organ first: the brain. Then she'll render the rest of the edible components into a slurry and drink them as quickly as possible.

The entire process is over surprisingly quickly, maybe only as long as it takes someone to finish an ordinary meal at an unhurried pace, and in the end the only things left are scraps of loose wool, teeth, shards of bone, and the metal tag.

The swell of her meal disappears quickly as she spares a small portion of the spiritual energy she's gained to integrate the physical substance more quickly. Afterwards, she doesn't look all that different despite having absorbed several tens of kilograms of biomass. Maybe just a bit less gaunt.

If there was anyone around to see her, boy would they have questions.

But there isn't.

In the distance, a ship's horn plays an oddly choppy sound. Closer to, a bus rumbles over a hill, although not within sight from the fjord.

With her spirit grown a bit, she's a lot less worried. She's not exactly comfortable yet, but she at least has enough to get out of a couple tough spots without emptying herself completely.

How much daylight does it look like she has left? If the sun isn't too close to setting, now might be a good time to see if she can start acquiring the language, but if it's going to be dark soon then she should focus on finding (or making) shelter.

It is only a few weeks after the spring equinox, so the sun is going to set at a vaguely reasonable time. But that time is in ... probably about six hours, would be her guess.

Yeah, that seems like plenty of time.

She'll climb back up from the beach below and see if she can spot the road that bus was presumably driving down, then pick a direction and start walking, keeping watch for any signs with obvious iconography that might help get her started learning these unfamiliar letters.

The road is just over the hill — although it's easy to miss. It's clearly not a high-traffic route. There are little black and white signs with what seem to be sequential numbers every 500 meters or so.

If she keeps following the road away from the city, it will eventually lead her to a bus stop at the center of a large cluster of buildings. The buildings are painted a cheerful red and blue, and built with steeply pitched roofs. A number of people are visible inside the buildings, and a flock of children are running around in a field on the far side under the tolerant eye of an adult in a plain green robe.

A large wooden sign faces the road by the bus station, although it will be a little difficult to read if she doesn't get closer.

Seeing other people, besides that park warden, gives her pause as she considers her own appearance.

She's tall, even compared to the rest of her family, who were taller on average than the others in the village. Her hair is long and dark, and a tangled mess, though now that it's on her mind she begins to run her fingers through it to try and sort it out at least a bit.

Her clothes are durable, dull greens and browns and oranges with dappled darkness to help camouflage her through woods and underbrush. They're also all quite dirty, since she hasn't had the time or energy spare to wash them in a while. Or to wash herself, for that matter.

Overall, she supposes she must look rather ragged. She's not sure how these people will react to someone looking like her, especially someone who can't understand what they say or speak back to them. Still, she does have the resources to escape if things turn violent, so she'll take the risk and head up to the big wooden sign to try and puzzle out its iconography.

The sign has a three-word phrase in a wide, looping sort of script. Below it is a six-word phrase with much shorter words, written in a more angular and blocky script. If the two phrases are the same language, it's one with a lot of stylization — they don't really look related. A stylized picture of a limbless lizard with blue neck frills curls protectively around the writing.

Below that is a hexagon filled with lots of small black and white triangles in some complex pattern.

And then, at the very bottom of the sign, someone has stapled two laminated papers full of dense presumably-writing that appears to use several different alphabets, iconographies, hieroglyphs, and what is plausibly a series of projected nets of four-dimensional solids.

Interesting. This whole place must be part of a pretty big trading network if this many different writing systems are involved.

Sadly, none of them are in the languages she reads, and the weird frilled snake-lizard looks more like a fanciful border for the text than something being described.

She'll make a little show of her modest dejection, then continue walking into town as she considers how to communicate that she needs help and doesn't speak the language. Honestly, just asking for help in a language these people presumably don't know is probably her best bet.

Most people are inside one of the buildings, because even a few weeks past the equinox it's a bit brisk. But there is a very obvious flagstone path from the bus stop to a central building with a partially enclosed porch and a large set of double-doors.

Or she could go through the buildings and bother the field full of running, whistling children.

These people seem less suspicious than the Federation's folks, but she'd be surprised if starting with their children as the first point of contact is the right move. She'll head up the flagstones to the central building. It looks like it might house some kind of administrative service, which seems like a better place begin with.

It may or may not house an administrative service, but it definitely does house an old woman with fierce eyebrows and an in-progress knitted sweater nearly larger than herself.

"Ala urrinn ďoṁ do čudačaď?" she says, when Dzarmpsoz opens the door.

Well, here goes nothing. "Bwezbdwa bjest. Zes dzwejkswan bjest kra tar dzwej.  Swejn bwes tar kra zust psjejppsaz bjest kra psjet?"

She turns to yell deeper into the building.

"Torḃas, 'se tìr-mòr a ṫ' ann!" she calls, and then turns back to her knitting.

"Senna, čan eil aul dun ag a ḃel LCTL na ṫìr-mòr," a young man in a sky-blue knee-length skirt and an apron replies, drying his hands on a towel as he walks.

"Đoz duzi ha-bo?" he adds, looking questioning.

She shakes her head with a little frown. "Zes psjejpzjejz bjest."

... huh. He doesn't recognize that one.

He fishes a phone out from a pocket of the apron and pokes at it for a moment and then does his best to repeat Dzarmpsoz's utterance to it.

When that fails to turn up anything, he puts the phone away and holds a hand to his chest.

"Torvesh"

Huh. That was an odd little gizmo. She saw on the ship that these people have tech she doesn't recognize, though that might just be because she's lived most of her life out in the backwoods. She wonders what it does?

She nods, then puts a hand on her chest in mimicry. "Dzarmpsoz," she replies, hoping that he also introduced himself.

He nods, and then points to the old woman and says "Bròs".

Then he points at her, motions eating, and looks inquisitive. "Zaveh Dzarmpsoz xaŋ siðozit?"

Well, if he's offering. She nods and replies, "Swejn baz bjest."

And she'll follow if he leads her somewhere (though, naturally, she'll keep her eyes open for exit routes), and if she's offered something to eat she'll partake.

If she gets the chance, she'll also give this Torwesj fellow a sniff. Does he smell healthy, or unwell? Does he smell compassionate, or self-interested?

He leads her into a large kitchen — easily enough to make meals for fifty people — and seats her on a stool by the counter. Torvesh smells of a life spent doing hard work in the sea air while getting plenty of nutritious food. He smells of love, but also more than a bit of self-interest, with a whiff of dreams.

A minute rustling in cupboards produces a small loaf of dark brown bread which he places on a plate and hands to her. He follows that up a moment later with a tall ceramic mug into which he pours near-boiling water and a scoop of white crystalline powder from a glass jar, stirring it with a metal rod that he leaves in the mug. The drink smells lemony.

Not a bad combination of smells. She'll need to keep in mind that she's probably not going to be getting indefinite charity case treatment here, though. No easy opportunity to trade hostel for healing, though maybe that older woman could use it instead.

She's a little sad, not surprised, that there's no meat on offer. She's initially confused by him offering what she thought might be sugar water, but after smelling it she realizes that the powder must've been citric acid instead, or a mixture of things that includes it. Regardless, she'll eat the bread and the drink the enhanced water, resisting the urge to down both as quickly possible.

The bread actually turns out to be a thin shell of dough over a mixture of cured meat, cabbage, cheese, and olives! It may not be as much meat as she would like, but it's strongly flavored and definitely filling.

The powder is, by taste, probably a mixture of citric acid, sugar, and powdered tea — good for not developing scurvy, and for making fussy children drink water.

Torvesh leaves her to eat for a minute, but when she seems like she might be close to done, he'll join her at the counter with a paper map of the world and a questioning expression.

Huh. That is a very pleasant surprise. The meat is completely lacking spiritual energy, less than even the vegetables, but it tastes good, which is its own reward. It does make it a bit harder to not scarf down the meal as quickly as she can, but she'll manage.

She'll look at the map, but it only takes her a moment to recognize that it's completely unfamiliar. "Zes psjejpkswan bjest kra njepsa zust pswert dzjez bjest sata tsamjesa sata prakpa mjesabejbar. Tsja pjejt tar kra njepsa zust brabzeb dzjez bjetar kje swejn dzawkpsaz bjest kra bjest brapswarp tat?" she says with a shrug, gesturing vaguely over the map in turn.