"Sometimes! Sometimes we use ladders or stairs but ramps are easier."

"Makes sense. Humans go for stairs more than ramps but lots of places have ramps too." He looks off at the horizon; he's no sailor but the weather over thataway looks kind of shit.

"Are humans better at using stairs than Zoombinis?"

"Well, I've never seen a Zoombini use stairs, but I would guess that we are? We have long legs so we can have bigger individual steps, and that might let us build them steeper."

"Ohhh," says Kwispafa in a tone of dawning realization. "Do you all have legs?"

"The vast majority of us do, yeah. A few people have legs that don't work very well, so they sit in chairs with wheels and get around with ramps and elevators. Do you have elevators or should I explain them?"

"We have elevators! Having to put your wheels on a chair sounds hard," says Kwispafa. "But maybe it works better that way because you're so tall. If you tried to use my wheels you'd probably fall over!"

"Oh, I would definitely fall over. And there's not really a good place to attach wheels to a human who can't use their legs that's easier than putting them on a chair. And if you can use your legs sometimes but not all the time it's convenient to have a chair you can get into and out of whenever."

"That makes sense. I think," Kwispafa says uncertainly. "Wow, that's so different from how Zoombinis work."

"Different kinds of people existing and being different is the coolest. Are there people in this, uh, reality, other than you and the Bloats? Back home it's just humans."

"There's different people on the other Isles but I don't know much about them. I think we used to talk to them before the Bloats came and now we don't. And I guess there's whoever lives in the fabled lands of logic but I don't know anything about them."

"I guess we'll find out!" More kinds of aliens! This is the best ridiculous ongoing hallucination and he should probably be trying to wake up but he doesn't want to, he wants to keep experiencing this as long as it's available.

"Yeah!"

That weather Bruce saw earlier is getting closer; another of the adults, the one called Cafly if he's been keeping track, comes by to herd Kwispafa belowdecks.

Bruce looks around for something to hide from potential rain under. Ideally something near the centerline of the deck; he doesn't know enough about how delicately ships are balanced to be sure he won't make it harder to steer if he hangs out on one edge.

Amid their other preparations for the approaching storm, Speeba and Cafly throw a tarp over him.

He has a vague mental image of being on a checklist of equipment somewhere and chuckles, then tucks the tarp over and around himself in such a way as to minimize the odds of sitting in a puddle.

It's up to him whether he wants to try peeking out the front of his bundle to watch the storm. The adults and a couple of the very biggest kids are darting around the boat making adjustments and tying things to other things in a very practiced-looking way.

Then there is a lot of rain, which makes loud noises on his tarp. Some of the rain is going sideways. He was successful at avoiding sitting in a puddle, though!

He has seen storms before; he prefers watching them through glass windows in sturdy waterproof buildings. Today he will hunker under his tarp and not try anything that night let the rain in. And also sleep; it was late at night in his former time zone and now that the exciting novelty is on pause and there's a lot of white noise his body is remembering that it's actually quite tired.

Then he will probably sleep right through the storm, and by the time he wakes up, they'll be in sight of land.

He unfolds himself from the tarp and stretches. This definitely wasn't the most comfortable place he's slept, in fact it's solidly in the bottom ten, but hey, apparently he's still here and not on the floor of the Stata Center! Also, land! He goes to the railing and takes a look at the unfamiliar continent.

The shoreline looks pretty normal from here, but then, it's barely more than a smudge on the horizon.

As they approach, it... still looks pretty normal. There's a broad sandy beach between rocky cliffs; the boat lands there. The hatch opens, and all the kids climb out, bouncing eagerly as they wait for Nawu and Cafly to finish deploying the ramp.

Bruce will help deploy the ramp if it's something he can help with; either way he'll wait until everyone else has used it before putting his own weight on it. Not that he expects any problems; like everything else he's seen of Zoombini manufacture, it looks pretty well-made.

He's getting pretty hungry, but he isn't going to mention food until someone else does or he thinks he's about to fall over. He really hopes Zoombinis don't go a week between meals or something.

Fortunately for him, the very next thing they do is unpack a lot of food - they solicit his help for this, since he has several times the carrying capacity of an adult Zoombini - and throw a big party on the beach.

Zoombini cuisine is mostly pretty recognizable; even items he can't specifically place still belong to fairly obvious categories, like 'bread'.

That's bizzare, but he's not going to look a gift weirdness in the mouth. He is however going to put some of it in his mouth. Specifically, the stuff that looks like bread and fruit and vegetables; he has no idea whether Zoombinis do factory farming but even if they don't the idea of eating meat is still weird.

The bread and fruit and vegetables are all delicious.

"Sorry we didn't feed you earlier," Speeba comments. "That storm had terrible timing. Still, though, things are looking good so far. Want to help scout, or stay behind with the kids?"