Ugh. Torvesh is not great with languages — although he's still doing better than his grandmother — and that is more or less completely indecipherable.

He thinks for a minute, tapping his chin, and then pulls out his phone again and pokes at it for a moment. He sets it on the counter between them and a voice issues forth. He has a brief discussion with the voice, and then a different voice speaks.

He gestures at her and tries his best to repeat some fragments of what she said.

Uh..."Zes pekpswo psjejpkswan bjest kra zust tswesk tar kra njeppa. Swejn dzazbbzaz bjest krapjest? 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 looks clearly uncertain as to whether repeating herself was what she was actually requested to do.

The voice says something in a mildly concerned tone of voice. Then there's a sequence of beeps, followed by another voice.

"H-alo?" the voice says hesitantly. "You are speak Dzwejwej?"

Her surprise is visible. "Yes, I'm speaking Dzwejwej."

Are there people in this new place that speak it too? Did they learn it from the warden? "How do you know the language?"

"A stranger is show up on an island. He is speak it and share his books. Sorry — I am learn it still," the voice replies. "I am a help-coordinate-emergencies person. I am worry that if two Dzwejwej people show up there are maybe more and they are maybe lost or not able to get help. Can you say how you are get here, please?"

So, they are getting it from warden. That's faster than she would have thought.

Should she say that she was on the island? How would she explain how she ended up here then?

Well, an island appearing out of nowhere is hopefully as strange for these people as it is for her, and that will let her get by with a slight alteration of her story. "I woke up on a beach a few hours ago, not anywhere I recognize. Some kind strangers have let me come in and given me some food and drink, but you're the first person who speaks my language, and I'm terribly lost and confused. What happened? Where am I?"

She tries to drum up some genuine distress for the last part, which isn't that hard since she is, in fact, pretty distressed and has mostly just been dissociating from it with an emergency survival mindset, which is now starting to fade.

"We are not know," the Emergency Linguist tells her, because Emergency Services personnel don't lie. They do, on the other hand, have a triage checklist which the LCTL-speaking dispatcher sitting beside the linguist is pointing at.

"Let us be at the beginning: are you hurt right now?"

She shakes her head, before considering that she's talking to a person who isn't physically present and actually answering verbally, "No."

After a split second to remember, she adds, "At least, I don't think I am."

"Okay. The radio-device is say that you are at Sea-Dragon Group Living Location. I am not know them myself, but have no reason to be think the people there are bad. Let me be ask the person there of if you can stay."

The voice exchanges some much less hesitant words with Torvesh.

"Okay. This man is say he is Torvesh. And that you are welcome. He is say you can stay at SDGLL—"

He pronounces the acronym by taking the first syllable of each word and smashing them together.

"— and have food and water and shelter for at least six days. You do not have to. You can leave and come find another place to be if this one is seem unsafe. But if this one is seem safe, you are welcome to be there. Torvesh is say you don't look injured to him either, so probably we aren't should send a flying machine to get you. You are understand? Or you are ask me questions now, please?"

She's honestly having a little bit of a hard time following along, when the speaker sprinkles in unfamiliar syllables. After untangling everything for a moment she's able to reply, "I think I'll stay here for now. Sending medical rescue doesn't seem necessary."

At least, hopefully a week is enough time for her to start picking up the local language, gather whatever papers she's going to need to pass herself off as an ordinary traveler, and start figuring out the signs and symbols of the local underground.

"Good. Are there other things I can be help you? Maybe teach LCTL? Being in another world sounds like stress," the voice says.

Again without really thinking about it, she nods vigorously as she replies, "Yes, it really has been stressful, and learning the local language sounds like it'd help a lot. Thank you."

"I am happy to help!"

And the linguist will walk her through basic vocabulary and simple grammar at whatever speed and for however long she wants to talk. Their Dzwejwej noticeably improves over the course of the conversation from listening to her speak.

Larger Continent Trade Language is, on the one hand, full of unfamiliar grammatical categories and concepts. For example, there are several dozen cases. On the other hand, it's also militantly regular: there are no irregular verbs or nouns, almost no conjugation, only one class of verbs, etc. The few more complex rules are mostly short-hands that let you leave out case markings, nouns, or relationships between subordinate clauses when they can be inferred from context.

These case markers are pretty similar to how prespositions work in her own language, which is fortunate.

She'll focus on just memorizing a bunch of basic vocabulary and the basics of word order and hope that, for now, her interlocutors can puzzle out the rest of what she means. It's far from enough to have any sort of in-depth conversation, but it's hopefully enough to express her basic needs and, maybe with a bit more learning, enough to communicate what she can offer people. It's also easy for her to just memorize new words rather than worrying about anything more complicated, and getting her language functional quickly is the priority.

She also finds herself a little jealous of the person they're learning from's own real-time improvement in Dzwejwej. She knows that the Kings ostensibly smoothed Dzwejwej down into something easy to learn, and that the Federation Scholastic dialect it seems like the island's warden is teaching them pretty closely matches the Royal dialect, but there's still an irrational element of feeling at a disadvantage. She does her best to let that be crushed under the weight of her very real appreciation for the help she's receiving.

And, as she's absorbing this vocab, it become progressively more clear that...these people don't seem like they have magic at all. Which lands a bit like a punch to the gut initially, and she's got too much else on her mind to process it fully right now, but does present her with the tantalizing possibility of not having to live like a fugitive for the rest of her life. Something to ponder.

If she expressed her feelings, the emergency linguist would tell her not to worry about it; paying attention to details of languages is literally their job. But since she doesn't say anything, they don't pick up on it.

When they eventually reach a stopping point, the linguist addresses Torvesh for a moment, and this time she can catch some of what is said:

"Torvesh, thanks for caring [...] our guest [...] remember from the government [...] and call again if any of you need help."

"Call, [...]. Wellbeing."

"Dzarmpsoz, you learned a lot; it was pleasant to teach you. If you need to radio me for more translation or teaching, that is fine. If you're willing, someone else from Emergency Services will come out tomorrow for you to show them the beach where you arrived, so we can try to figure out what happened."

"Yes," she replies in LCTL for the sake of practice, not really thinking beyond the fact that she suspects it'd be weird if she didn't agree. "I show Emergency Services person the beach at tomorrow, and radio you."

Having said that, she comes to immediately regret it a bit, but it's too late to think twice now. She'll need to figure out where she's going to show them...probably the fjord she found since it was what she initially had in mind as she spun her story, and will map to the direction anyone in town would have seen her come from along the road.

The phone makes a little goodbye ding, and Torvesh puts it back in his apron. While language lessons have been occurring, he's been puttering around the kitchen putting together two large trays of food that are now in the oven.

"It's almost dinner time," he mentions. "Do you want to eat in the dining room and meet more people, or be alone?"

She kind of wants to just go to sleep, honestly, but she figures that being a bit more public about her existence, now that there's a chance of her existence not being illegal, will be something her future self thanks her for. "Yes, eat in the dining room and met more people," she answers.

Torvesh nods.

"Okay. When the food is done, help me carry it out. I'll introduce you to everyone."

"Everyone" is a crowd of about 40 people, who all eat dinner in a large communal dining room at the rear of the central building. The old woman who greeted Dzarmpsoz takes on something of a herding role, and gets the flock of excited children settled down as they come streaming in from the field.

Lots of people look curiously at Dzarmpsoz, but they don't rush to crowd her. Torvesh quietly indicates that she can sit wherever she would like, but that if she wants to sit with him she would be welcome. Conversation seems about evenly split between LCTL and the language that the old woman spoke.

Dinner tonight is a casserole, one large pan made with chicken and one without. Also available is crusty bread, more of that hot citrus drink that she was served, tea, and thin, spicy cookies for desert.

She remembers eating meals like this, in a big group, from before she left her village behind, and she knows intellectually that most people prefer it this way. She's never been normal on that front either, and having spent so many years needing to feed in secret hasn't helped.

She'll put on a strong face to try and not bother people, and will try and at least occasionally talk to people, mostly if she's asked a question, to continue practicing her LCTL, but it'll be pretty clear that she's quite shy, socially.

She is not shy about the food, though, and will gladly partake of as much of everything on offer as it seems would be socially acceptable.

The Central Limit Theorem means that the amount of food the members of the Sea Dragon Farm need to make for each meal tends to be pretty predictable. But, when there are ordinarily 40 mouths to feed, feeding an extra person — even a very hungry person — is not a particular strain. She's welcome to have thirds or fourths of everything; some of the more energetic children are as well. If the food looks to be getting too low, Torvesh will pop back to the kitchen and return a few minutes later with a big serving bowl of toast cubes and nuts, spiced with salt and garlic.

For the conversation, on the other hand ...

Well, þereminia is full of shy people. But. It's full of shy people who learn, growing up, how to explicitly opt into and out of social interactions. So when she schools her expression and keeps talking to people, people keep talking to her. Everyone is curious about where she came from, and how she came to the farm, and whether she would like to stay, and what her favorite hobbies are, and how her language works, and many other things. On the other hand, if she volleys a question back (especially to the children), that tends to side-track the whole discussion and give her a few minutes reprieve. Once she sees how hungry Dzarmpsoz is, the old woman also starts keeping people off of her so she has a chance to eat.