"I need to eat. I have a few days of food on me."

She nods. "What kind of things would you want to be doing, like, to entertain yourself or while you work on getting back - probably we should also use some of this hour to explain how we expect things to work around here but if you can understand us for longer than an hour it might be good for the information dump from us to be mostly after the hour - "

"I can't go back till I've leveled up a few more times. Uh, that usually happens from fighting monsters and stuff like that, I don't know if you have monsters handy for me to shoot at. So I'll be here a while, I guess unless one of my friends finds a way to yank me back. I can understand you after this spell wears off for an hour per lesser spell and have more uses of that one."

"I'm not sure we have monsters just - roaming around, most of the things that attack us are humans or, like, chimeras that were trained as guard animals. Why would you get better from shooting at things and not from studying?"

"I don't know, this is one of many questionable design decisions of the universe. You start out by studying but after a few levels you need real high-pressure stakes or nothing you're working on will stick well enough to use."

" - That's really weird, ours is mostly doing math and chemistry at the universe and then getting better at this and better at fine control and at developing new transmutation arrays, and alchemists fighting at all is really controversial I think? Though that's probably because of how the government uses State Alchemists when there's a war on."

"Well, maybe you work differently, like I think you don't need to go on combat-heavy adventures to be the best at making coil pots or whatever, or maybe all your alchemists are level five and under, I don't know. Though the ones who are war veterans should have leveled up if you work like us."

"War alchemists mostly just specialize in one combat-usable array, so they get really good at the problems unique to that but often are less good at other alchemy because of time trade-offs."

"Huh. I guess it might be possible not to notice levels under those conditions? But I don't know anything about alchemists, I'm a wizard."

"Yeah! Which is exciting, it'd be really hard to do a translation effect with alchemy, for one."

"If being a wizard works on predictable facts about the universe then alchemy should be able to exploit it, we just haven't figured out how yet."

"Translation spells really frustrate linguists but I guess I don't know if they'd also really frustrate alchemists."

"If it's hard that just means it's a good puzzle to work on."

"It's interesting, at least. Is this a good use of this time?"

Shrug. "Best use would probably be explaining the basics of Amestris if there's obvious places where you'd want to ask clarifying questions."

"You know what, we could do a phrasebook thing, kind of a hack but it'll work, if there are things I might need to say later - like 'yes' and 'no' and 'elaborate on that' I can write down how they're pronounced in your language now and still have them later."

She nods. "That'd probably work well... Also request stuff like for food or water or us to leave something alone, and phrases you might need interacting with people, especially the military."

"Yeah, good plan." She starts writing up the left column of a chart.

Bellona can suggest a few things, including her own name (Bellona Elric), her sister's name and title (Major Emma Elric, the Lion Alchemist), how to say "Where is..." and some locations, and how to say "I'm a guest of..." which should hopefully have most people at least turning questions about Belmarniss to Emma or Bellona.

Then after a bit they'll have a three column chart (Taldane meaning for Belmarniss's reference, local alphabet for Bellona and Emma to look at when they re-pronounce everything for her later, and a blank spot in each row for Belmarniss to write down a transliteration).

"Good - and, uh, obvious things to know about our country... I've never actually left it's the problem... If you've traveled, are there - obvious things you tend to need to know that vary?"

"How racist are people going to be about me being purple, what churches are active and what are they active about doing, where do the adventurers hang out, what climate am I packing for, will they take my coins or do I need to change them..."

"People will probably be very surprised because we just have humans with brownish skin tones. You don't look like you're wearing body paint but you might be able to claim alchemical experiment gone wrong or right, or people will assume that - most people probably won't believe 'from a different world where people are purple.'"

"Churches exist anywhere? They're more a thing in Aerugo, and maybe used to be in Ishval... The only Amestrian church I've seen or heard of was in the town of Liore and the leader of it was mostly trying to swindle people."

"I don't think there's anywhere specific people who like adventures hang out... People who like to go into the desert looking for ruins might have specific networks? But that's more 'archeologists.'"

"Amestris is temperate. Most places get snow in the winter and get warm in the summer, and humidity's usually reasonable. North's colder, south's hotter, there's a giant desert to the east and it gets drier as you approach it."

"People probably won't take your coins; currency is centrally issued and using alternate or counterfeit currencies is variably illegal, though that's not actually strongly enforced since it's nearly impossible to stop alchemists from counterfeiting on small scales."

"And I'll pay you in currency or equivalent exchange for any questions you answer about your world and magic."

"Sounds fun."