Jisa feels bad about it but eventually digs up some stolen carrots and munches on them as she walks, Othersenses still extended to warn her of approaching minds. She finds herself trying to avoid thinking about the fact that she's trapped, which is stupid, not thinking about it won't make it stop being true, and the way to fix is it to research Gates some more. But she's tired and upset and doesn't think she can focus on Gates anyway. 

She scries a mile ahead again, from high up in the air, checking for any sign of a city. 

There's a city she will reach when she's gone another four miles, through some more villages.

She walks and walks and walks and walks and walks. She waves to people when her route takes her through villages but doesn't try to talk to them, and makes apologetic faces and tells them she doesn't understand if they try talking to her. She wants to save her Mindspeech for people in the city, who are more likely to know things. 

Elementals are not very common in the villages, but she sees two accompanying a woman with a cartful of magic objects coming the opposite way along the road, one with sparking, lightning-crackly wings and the other with no visible wings at all except that her shadow has them, big feathered ones. The Shadow seems not to be experiencing the same lighting conditions as everything else and it's impossible to make out her features.

Jisa doesn't know what to do! She isn't sure if she can free them without causing giant explosions of lightning or whatever shadows are made of! She kind of freezes up, and doesn't do anything, just keeps walking. 

The woman with the elementals doesn't seem to want to talk to her either.

Here is the city. There are lots of elementals here. Ones with crystalline wings. Ones with carved wood feathers. Ones with leaf-feathers. Ones with wings of water or fire. One with wings made of shifting sand, one with wings of molten lava, and all the kinds she's seen before too. Some have invisible wings, but they can be distinguished with mage-sight, or by their silent obedient following of someone with one or more necklaces.

It's very overwhelming and Jisa isn't sure what to do. Also she's ravenously hungry. Raw carrots are not a balanced breakfast.

She wants to figure out what to do about the slaves, but also she can't think very well through the hunger, so instead she looks for a marketplace, and peers at what kind of coin the locals are using. 

Looks like copper coins, rough around the edges but stamped with a face.

Jisa has some Valdemaran coins in her pocket. They're also copper, albeit not with the same markings. 

She goes up to a stall selling bread and tries her greeting phrases in various languages again. 

The guy doesn't understand her but at least doesn't call over a slave to try to threaten into translating.

She shows him one of her copper coins and gives him a hopeful look? 

He weighs it in his hand. Yeah, she can have two loaves of bread for that.

Jisa beams at him and bobs her head and accepts her two loaves of bread. She looks around for a place to sit and eat them. 

There aren't public benches, but there are low walls around some buildings and she wouldn't be the only person sitting on one.

Jisa sits down and looks around curiously while she devours her first loaf of bread, after which she's less hungry but can now notice that she's very very thirsty. Is there a public water pump or fountain in sight? 

There's a well over there.

Jisa heads over to the well and hauls up some water for herself and drinks it, and is finally less distracted by bodily signals of distress. She sits down on the wall again and looks around, this time more attentively, and with her Othersenses as well - what kinds of magic are being done around here, if any? 

The magic she can see is being done exclusively by people who are plausibly under twenty. People are using it to do things she can't see the results of at all, maybe their own scrying; and starting fires; and mending metal objects; and, now that it's getting dim, some are lighting their ways home, usually by making their hands glow but there are variations.

Huh. A lot of it is sort of like what mage-gift can do, but Jisa is increasingly suspecting that something here is a lot more different than she's been guessing. 

And that, maybe, she's somehow much further from home than she realized. 

...All right, she should actually try to talk to some people. Glass had never heard of Mindspeakers; she doesn't know if it'll alarm the human locals. 

It seems worth trying once, though. Maybe with one of the children, who are less likely to know what's normal or not? 

She approaches a little boy playing, smiles brightly at him, and attempts Mindspeech at him. :Hello! Can you understand me?: 

He says something back at her, furrowing his brow.

She tries again and this time reads his surface thoughts. 

He doesn't know what she's doing and can't even guess what element it is! He should probably go home because he doesn't know the rules for this situation.

All right she's definitely not trying that on any adults! Jisa makes an apologetic face at the boy, ducks her head, and heads off in the opposite direction until she's out of sight. 

She starts looking for enslaved elementals again. It seems like at least she can talk to them without getting mostly confusion and suspicion. 

There's a Stone over there. The human is providing light while the Stone works on paving a street.

Jisa stays sitting where she is, to minimize the human looking at her suspiciously. 

:Hello: she says to the Stone. :I'm not from here and I'm trying to figure out where I am. Also I would like to free you if I can, but the last time I tried to break an amulet it exploded, I don't know if the Stone ones do that: