Abruptly, it contains a bewildered teenager falling out of thin air!

Sploosh.

The water glows gold.

"Aaagh!" cries the splashed water-collector.

"Gaaaaahh??" splutters the bewildered teenager, rolling haphazardly to a stop on the floor next to the fountain.

The woman puts her jug down and runs away.

Pretty reasonable of her, all things considered.

Ruava takes a minute to lie on the floor catching her breath and waiting out the aftershocks of a bad nerve pain episode. When she's pretty sure there's not another flicker coming, she sits up and looks around.

Some people wearing grey uniforms with gold adornments are watching her. Murmuring to each other a bit. In a language she doesn't speak.

"Hi," she says, in a language they probably don't speak either. "I'm a little lost. Sorry I landed in your, uh, discount Lake of Gold over there."

They super do not speak that language. One of them goes over to the abandoned jug and pours a little water on Ruava's knee. It glows. They resume talking to each other about this.

Probably that's very significant if you are from around here. Probably if she had more context she'd be just as intrigued.

Do any of them seem interested in talking to her? She glances around hopefully.

They are sure looking at her but seem to expect that if she cannot speak the language talking to her is a futile exercise. One tries to gesture for her to get up and follow them.

She can do that.

This is apparently some sort of village all up and down the slope of a hill - mostly down, the spring is near the top. They are watching her REAL closely while they escort her. People are gawking out of windows. Nobody here looks like her ethnicity, or indeed looks like they've ever seen someone of her ethnicity. The escorts shoo away a little kid in a uniform like theirs except with red instead of gold accessories who gets too close for them, which is to say several yards away. They let a little kid in a green-supplemented robe get much much nearer than that though.

Being watched this closely is a little disconcerting but all things considered she can't really blame them. She takes note of the colours, and hypothesizes that there are people who when they touch the water make it turn red or green instead of gold. As for what other effects the water might have, she is concerningly short on theories.

There are also white-sashed and blue-sashed persons about.

They take her to an office with a green-person sitting behind a desk. The green-person listens to an explanation and produces a map of a world and asks Ruava a question.

She looks at the map and shakes her head.

They are confused and puzzled. Eventually after they confer further with each other the green one waves some of the gold-people away, leaving two by the door watching Ruava very seriously.

The green one starts pointing at things and naming them.

Yeah, learning the language seems like a very good place to start. She pays close attention; she'll name things back in Eivarne if they seem interested, but otherwise she can focus on picking up whatever they speak here, which seems totally unrelated to any of the languages she's heard of.

They're not all that interested in Eivarne. The person starts adding colors once a few nouns are down, and then says that Ruava is a gold [something] and those people in gold sashes are also gold [somethings] and she's a green [that thing]...

This does appear to be so. As for what that means, well...

"[something]?" she repeats back questioningly, hoping they will find some way to elaborate. She can get creative if they seem lost.

"[Something]," repeats the greensomething, nodding, and she reaches into her glass of water on her desk and dips a finger in; it turns green. Then she drinks the glass of water; it doesn't glow going down her throat but it does in her mouth.

"Green water, green [something]; gold water, gold [something]...?"

The greensomething nods. Produces the map again. Points at an island, gestures around them. Points out five dots on the island. "Green gold white red blue," she says, at each one. And then at some other dots on other continents. "No gold, no gold, no gold, no gold -" Apparently there is only gold at these five island dots.

She points to herself. "Ruava."

A gesture encompassing the entire map: "[something]. No Ruava."

A gesture at a point in the air that is off the map entirely, not even on the page: "Ruava. No [something]."

She picks up an invisible object from this location, puts it down on the island: "Ruava, gold[something]."

And then she shrugs expansively, attempting to indicate that she has now communicated just about everything she knows about this chain of events.

The greensomething does not really know what to make of that. Eventually she tells one of the goldsomethings by the door something and one runs off and comes back with a couple of blue-sashed kids. The greensomething identifies those as bluesomething children; everyone else is adults. You can only go from not being a something to being a something if you are a child.

For a moment she's as confused as they are, and then she remembers.

She attempts to get across the concept of ages, pointing at the children and counting off on her fingers how many years she attributes at a guess to each of them, then doing the same with the adults in the room. (Her guesses are imperfect but by and large very close.)

You can go from not being a something to being a something if you are... she starts counting on her fingers again. One two three four...?