"The wings are shaped like..." Urtho frowns intently, hands darting in the air. "You will have to draw it for me, I think! And what drives them to go so fast in the first place?" 

"I don't know if I could draw one well enough to show something that would actually work; the exact shape matters a lot. But they get their propulsion by burning a kind of fuel that burns very hot and makes the air expand and then forcing that air out the back of the engine, which pushes the engine forward."

"- Huh." Urtho leans forward, eyes sparkling and intent. "Fascinating! Can you draw me a diagram of that?" 

"I think so. A simple one, at least; modern ones have all sorts of tricks to make them go farther on less fuel."

"Oh, how clever! Here you go." He takes a notebook from his pocket and opens it on the table for her, then glances around helplessly. 

One of the little hertasi is waiting nearby and, without even asking for clarification, produces an inkwell and quill pen for him. 

"There you go!" 

She sketches a simplified cutaway view of a jet engine, and a wing, and also a propeller. "Older planes used their fuel to spin one of these; the blades are angled so they pull air from front to back."

"Wow! Do the blades need to be an exact shape too, or are they just flat pieces at an angle? If it's only the angle, I think we could arrange to test that and figure out the right angle even if you're not sure of it." 

"No, those need to be the right shape, too, they're kind of like tiny wings." She wonders if she could make a magic wind tunnel and try to figure it all out.

"Goodness! That sounds so complicated on so many axes - how did your civilization on Earth ever manage to figure it out?" 

"Experimentation! And there are lots of us, and at least in some countries the economy is good enough that some of them can spend their time on stuff that might take a long time to pay off."

"How wonderful!" Urtho spends a few moments staring at her engine diagram in awe. "- What else? There must be so many other things that were revolutionized, I cannot even think where to begin... Can your world build very tall towers? Here we can really only do it only with magic." 

"We can!" She talks about concrete and rebar and steel, hundred-story skyscrapers with more window than wall because all their strength is in their core.

Urtho listens in awe.

A couple of minutes in, he holds up a hand, apologetically, and then gets out a bigger sheet of foolscap and frantically scrawls diagrams on it, completely ignoring Margaret. 

That's extremely relatable. Margaret will follow the golden rule and not bother him until he's finished, though she also does her best to interpret his diagrams upside down.

It seems to be a rough sketch of a possible building design. The structural parts of it are easy enough to interpret, even upside down; however, he seems to be using quite a lot of stylized-shorthand markings, perhaps to indicate specific kinds of magic, and these aren't legible to her at all. 

Combining magic with modern construction techniques (and potentially also rune-based space-folding) could make some absolutely fantastic architecture. Skyscrapers where every room is a house and you never have to climb stairs, earthquake-resistant and cheap to heat and as tall as the bedrock in the area can support or even taller . . . It's definitely worth sketching about.

Eventually, Urtho emerges from his half-trance. He blinks at the paper for a moment, sets it down, and then looks up at Margaret. "....Goodness, my dear, I am so sorry for getting distracted and ignoring you – I am such a rude host." 

"It's no problem. Are there other things you're especially interested in? . . . I feel like I should be trying to do diplomacy but I'm not actually a diplomat, just a professional interesting foreign person."

Urtho takes a deep breath. "I am no diplomat either, I confess – at least, I never wanted to be." He frowns. "It does seem important that... Hmm. Do you have an explanation for how or why you came from your world to ours, during this especially critical juncture? The timing is... Well, I suppose we shall see if it is fortunate or not, but it does seem significant." 

"It's possible that the artifact that sent me here would have sent anyone here and now. And it taught me your language, which is two sufficiently different but related things to make me think it could have been on purpose. But I don't think whoever created it could have known I in particular would end up with it." 

She doesn't add that given its unknown but potentially long-ago origin, it might have been intended to transport a dragon in particular.

"Hmm." 

Urtho gives her a piercing look. In this one moment, at least, it seems as though he may be able to tell that she's holding something back. 

"The other possibility I've thought of is that whoever made it was going to try to come here themself--or even that they might have been from here in the first place--and they lost the artifact before they could do it. Is there magic in this world that could potentially contact other ones?"

"I had no idea until very recently that there existed other worlds! So I am afraid that I do not know."