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It's an ordinary day on Timber Hearth. People are walking around the village. There's a spaceship on the launch platform and of course the geysers are going off like clockwork as they always do.
Kalunu Altpoof explores the outer wilds.
Suddenly, there is a magenta-colored shimmer in the air, somewhere in view but non-occupied, and a person appears.
The person seems mildly surprised at this occurrence, but with a glance at their nails, which shimmer green, they quickly recover. After making several somewhat exaggerated confusion faces, they land on "mildly curious".
They give a friendly wave to anyone nearby.
(Internally: This will be interesting. Whenever we don't get warned it's something where the experience benefits from no warning, so, interesting. Ring, can you check on your end?)
(I'm getting the all-clear here as well. The ring on the person's finger shimmers green. And, hey, geysers!)
(They fiddle with the water just slightly in the background. What else is having magic for, if not to do random pointless things sometimes. A large droplet, magically shaped, throws a faint rainbow onto their hair.)
There's a short blue skinned person wearing goggles who's mouth is wide open. It takes them a few seconds before they manage to speak and then, "Wow an actual real life alien and you just appeared like warping but it looked different it was pink."
They snort slightly and grin. "Hello," they she says. "Actual real life alien speaking. That was my teleportation magic!"
She teleports a step left, then a step right, with the same magenta glow at both departure point and destination.
"Anyway... Is there anything - interesting - going on here, other than me?"
(She continues fiddling with the geyser slightly, those droplets go there.)
"You're the coolest thing in a long time. All the cool stuff is out in space. I guess that new Nomai statue Gabro brought back is interesting. I'd rather go to Giants Deep and see the floating island they found it on myself though."
"Why thank you, that's not a compliment I tend to receive often!"
Man, these poor dudes, if they all think there's nothing more interesting than space there's probably a terrible lack of stuff other than that and that just seems sad. Potentially to-fix. (The Ring records this.) But maybe it's just this fella. Don't overgeneralize.
"I'll give you a ride there, if you want," she says. "When I'm up for teleporting long distances again. Would you like that?"
(That phrasing implies it's tiring to teleport long distances - it's not, at all, but she has a feeling this person might insist on going now and she's not oriented enough yet to the situation.)
"Yes... I mean I don't have a space suit but maybe you have magic for that too. If you want to see the statue it's in the museum under the Observatory. I can take you there if you'd like. Or you could play with my model spaceship while you're waiting for your magic to recharge."
"Yeah, I'll double check the best way to do it but it shouldn't be an issue. Worst case scenario, I can just conjure what passes for a space suit here."
She They consider doing weird body stuff, discorporating or becoming a cloud of nanites or something, but probably people would be uncomfortable if they did that, so they settle for disassembling and reassembling their feet inside their shoes.
"About how far is the museum?"
"Pretty close. It's that big building with the telescope just across the crater." They point to the building about 70 meters away.
"Alright, lead the way! I'd teleport but I'm not sure I see any good landing spots from here."
They consider flight as well but quietly discard it, as it seems to not fit that well with the aesthetic of the situation.
Presuming their conversational partner leads, they follow.
(They also turn off some magical protections that seem not that applicable at that exact moment, to make room, and turn on the illusion power to make an illusion of their body, with animation lightly supervised by the Ring, and discorporate their actual body.)
A taller person calls out as their guide enters the village center. "Hello Mica... Do you have an alien with you?"
"Well all right... make sure you tell Hornfels when you get there. I'm sure they'd like to meet whoever this is."
(This taller fellow didn't ask whether Ellume would like to meet whoever this "Hornfels" is! - Just kidding, that's the Narrative and they're going to do what the narrative says. To a point. Thank you, Narrative Delivery Person.)
"Thank you! I'd love to say hi to Hornfels or anyone else who wants to meet me."
(Come to think, how is translation being handled? Are these blue people speaking English, do they have translation, is there one of those occasional random translation effects that happen out of nowhere when you change universes, or is Experience Support on Ellume's end handling it? The way to test this is obviously puns. Ellume is now on the lookout for Pun Opportunities.)
"I'm sure an awful lot of people would like to meet you. Just about everyone is interested in the Outer Wilds space program and they've only found dead aliens. Hornfels is just the person most likely to be able to answer any questions you have and the person who runs the museum you're heading to."
(Ellume spreads out their body-particles into a medium-sized cloud in midair, above their, Mica's, and the tall person's heads. Then they pull their body into normal human shape and take off the illusion for now.)
"Aah, I see. I remember a time when my home civilisation didn't have contact with any others, and there weren't even dead ones around, just - emptiness. It makes sense that that's what the buzz is about."
(Their inner soundtrack goes "~dooooo weeeee dooooo~".)
(The Ring sends an impression of an amused eyeroll and feeds the Doctor Who opening theme into their ears, quietly, and adjusts their thinking speed settings to make sure this doesn't cause distraction.)
There are two small people sitting on a porch. The one on the left with the hat calls out. "Hi Mica. Gosh are you an alien?"