Does she want to be good at guessing how to phrase things correctly?

For now at least!

A fourth spark blooms to life and pairs off with the third spark. These two feel like they could merge as well.

Having four sparks brings with it a sense of fullness. The gentle alien something that has been touching her mind fades away into dormancy. It feels like she could waken it if she wanted to, but having four abilities is ... stable, and it sleeps.

It suddenly seems intuitive that the first part of the boy's words, specifically, was the greeting, and that she could echo it.

Cynthia repeats the words. (This is probably gonna some obtuse super-relationshippy culture, she just knows it)

The boy says something in reply — it feels a bit like he's asking her to wait — and then runs inside.

A moment later, a woman wearing a skirt (and a shawl, pulled around her shoulders against the cold) comes out and leans in the doorway of the small house.

She says something in a different language, probably wanting to know if Cynthia speaks it.

Cynthia trusts in her ability to say a sentence that makes sense for this situation and begins speaking.

... huh.

The woman says something to the boy, who rushes off into the village.

The woman looks back up at Cynthia and says something vaguely invitational, accompanied by a gesture of eating.

She is almost certainly safe! Cynthia walks up to the woman. Presumably she gets to come inside and eat something?

The woman does indeed gesture for her to come in.

The inside of the house is not all that warm — the wooden planks that form the walls are not sealed terribly well — but it's warmer than outside, on account of the merrily burning fire. There is some water heating on the fire.

The furniture consists of some wooden chairs, a wooden table, and a low bed. A cured deer-skin hangs on the back of one of the chairs.

The woman grabs a loaf of bread from where it was warming near the fire and holds it out to Cynthia.

Cynthia is quite furious at the fact that she doesn't know much more than "uranium makes electricity via fission!" She's quite mad at the woman's primitive situation, but manages to keep it to herself as she very slowly reaches for the bread that's held out in her direction.

The woman, ignorant of exactly how far her people have to go, takes another roll of bread and sits in one of the chairs, gesturing for Cynthia to sit in the other.

She holds a hand to her chest. "Satenag", she says, and it's fairly obvious that she means it to be her name.

"Cynthia" she responds, before sitting down herself.

Satenag nods. "Sinþiah."

She asks a question, and from the accompanying shiver-gestures Cynthia might guess that Satenag is asking whether she's cold.

Well, she has a bit of training in that, and a tiny bit of lingering heat from the sauna... she makes the right gesture with her head to say "no"!

Huh. Alright, maybe her guest just runs hot.

Let's see ... food, shelter ...

Satenag pours them both mugs of nearly-boiling water, into which she places a pinch of ground pine resin, and sets one on the table near Cynthia. Then she sits back and tries to figure out what to ask next, while munching on her lunch.

The bread is dense, hearty, and secretly full of chopped vegetables and cheese. It's something like the midway point between a garden salad wrap and a calzone — and clearly made without the benefit of artificial sweeteners.

The bread is truly exceptional for something randomly give to feed a stranger, Cynthia presumes. But it doesn't take long before her thoughts go to asking what she could do to give herself and these people the life of comfort she had gotten so used to...

The boy returns at a run, thoroughly splattered with mud.

Satenag cautions him off before he tracks mud inside; Cynthia gets the impression that the boy's name is "Daskal".

Daskal jumps in the lake to clean off and then comes inside and quickly settles down by the fire with a blanket wrapped around him and a mug of hot pine-water.

Satenag sits back down, and asks Cynthia a question that seems very where-ish while pointing back the way that Cynthia came to their house.

Oh. Cynthia hopes that the words out of her mouth make sense; she would say "different dimension", but she's not even sure if that's true.

Satenag doesn't seem to get much from her answer, anyway. She lapses back into silence.

A moment later, there's a knock on the outside of the doorframe, and a person wearing a skirt and breastband says a greeting.

Cynthia waves back, smiling gently.