He doesn't; he doesn't come outside again until the afternoon, when he deploys his floating patio again and comes out to supervise while his dog runs around. He checks briefly when he comes out to see if they're still there but seems willing to ignore them aside from that.

It's only a little while after he's set out the patio again when a team of five, the same familiar group that appear to have ended up as his liaisons, fly in. They don't have a big vine-box this time, but once they're closer down it's clear they're holding a vine-hat and a big, paper bag with a picture of a pile of pebbles formed from some red-brown flour.

They touch down on the water a ways away from him, and give him a wave while displaying what they've come to deliver.

The dog barks at them as they approach, but quiets down when he tells her to, and he comes over and adds a chute to the bubble for them to send the things down.

Is there anything else, while they're here?

They should have broad a signboard. As they float the hat and bag of dog food into the chute, the representative of the five searches their pockets for moment before finding a pencil and notepad, manages to write out a short message across several pages, torn out and held together as a single canvas with their flow. "There hasn't been much news for us. Our leaders are still talking about what to do, and it's all secret. If you have anything you want to talk about though, or have thought of more questions, we can take them back with us."

"Mm."

He turns part of the bubble into a signboard and extrudes a pen cup on the outside with a hot/cold pen inside, then ansibles the signboard and mounts it in the proper orientation to be able to read it.

He's not sure if this is going to make it harder or easier for their people to make their decisions, but he's decreasingly confident that he can handle being here in the long run; if they're making some big complicated plan they shouldn't assume that even the best case involves him still being here in five years and probably not even in three.

They'll fold up the torn sheets and pack them away into a pocket, before writing their reply on the signboard. "That's reasonable. It seems like things here are a lot worse for you than they were wherever you came from. We'll let our leaders know. We hope that you're able to find somewhere safer and more comfortable."

They'll wait for a while longer in case something else occurs to him, but otherwise they'll take back off and fly back to the city.

Yeah. He'll manage it the best he can, anyway.

When they don't seem to have anything else to say he goes to play with his dog, and he goes in after a while and doesn't come out again until dinnertime, when he makes himself a little shaded table by the door to eat at.

As the Sun is starting to set, if he happens to look out over the eastern ocean to observe the darkening sky, it may be notable that only a few stars are visible, and even then only just barely.

That's weird and kinda bad, but there's presumably even less he can do about it than all the other weird and bad things he's dealt with today. He eats and heads back in.

He's back out after a couple hours, to puff part of the deck's surface up into a mattress and lay down to watch the sky with his dog cuddled up next to him; he's having trouble sleeping, and this probably isn't going to help, but nothing else is helping either.

The stars are definitely more visible now. This also makes it more obvious that they appear to be moving.

Not in the sense of the heavens moving as one, but rather, individual stars or groups of stars are moving independently. Not especially quickly, but enough that it's obvious after even just a few minutes of watching. Some seem to be caught in a sort of celestial flow, moving at varying speeds along a curvaceous course across the night sky. Others move much more in unison, like a school of fish, while yet more seem to bounce and wobble but are drawn back to some fixed point, as if they were the lights on the tips of the branches of a great tree being blown by some kind of cosmic wind.

That's bizarre but also kind of pretty. Maybe when he can't take being here anymore he'll see if it's any easier to go look at them up close here than it is at home.

He falls asleep, after a while, watching them.

Unless he sleep until well into the afternoon, he won't be woken up by the doorbell. The waves will also get a bit bigger as the tide rises in the morning, not to the point of being massive, but enough to meaningfully roll his ship a bit.

The tide won't wake him, but the sun does, and he hoists himself up and heads back inside; after an hour and a bit he's back out to expand the deck and convert the new section into a chicken pen.

If he's still working on that around noon, he might notice another five groups of five flow mages fly in from the north, carrying three more vine-boxes. They just fly past him, off towards the city.

Well, he doesn't know that that's not normal, presumably there are other things besides him happening here.

When he finishes getting the pen set up he makes a big glyph asking the watchers to come down so that he can ask them if he can get some dirt from the shore to grow plants in.

None of the teams circling at this specific moment actually know how to read crafter-glyphs, but they can tell he's made a glyph for a reason, which warrants one team coming down to investigate, eventually landing within communication distance.

He wants to get some dirt and plant cuttings from shore; he's going to need some dirt eventually for the food plants but he also wants to have the chickens' pen planted and ready for them before they get here. Is that all right for him to do?

The team looks between each somewhat anxious, before answering with a single word in unison and nodding all their heads. From their posture, despite the evident worry, the answer is probably positive? They seem hesitant to fly off but aren't saying or doing anything else.

He can't really tell the difference between them, all dressed the same as they are, but if these are different guys who don't know his writing system they can gesture in this direction for 'yes' or that direction for 'no' or upward for 'more complicated' or downward for 'something else'.

All five point in the 'yes' direction with one hand and upwards with their other hand.

The people here might have a collective problem with yes-or-no questions.

You don't say.

If he makes himself a boat and goes to that bit of coastline right there, and shovels up twice as much dirt as he needs for his chicken pen from wherever it looks easiest to dig and takes cuttings from four or five bushes that he likes the look of and comes back with them, and brings his dog with him but makes sure she stays on the beach the whole time and doesn't bother any wildlife, do they expect that to cause any problems, including any people being upset about it.

They all point to no, though there's still some hesitance in their posture.

He'll do that, then.

A crow swoops down to land on him as soon as he steps out of the boat: He wants to know where the Crafter brought the flock and what the Crafters here are all so afraid of and what they have to do to go home.

Ah, geez. Well, he's not sure where they are, and the humanoids aren't Crafters and are mostly afraid of each other and of new things which probably includes communicative crows, and he doesn't think the crows or himself are going to be able to go home. He also doesn't think it's going to be unusually unsafe for the crows right here, though other places are pretty dangerous and he's not sure which ones. If they stay within sight of the ocean and don't go west of here that's probably fine. If they want to come to him for help that's also fine, for now.