[Yeah, of course I'll tell you as soon as I reach her, just, that might take years even if it's straightforwardly doable.]

On her way out of the shower later on Thellim can catch out of the corner of her eye a glimpse of Brian laughing and swatting Jackson on the rear while Jackson is scrubbing the kitchen counter and giggling.

Thellim will smile because she is putting her generic happiness for sapient entities being happy in FRONT, and is putting in BACK any sense of the bottom falling out of the universe because this is not just one couple in twenty but an entire civilization in which evolutionary logic has apparently jumped out the window.

[The mage is going to see me now and then I'm going to crash for the night. I'm leaving your channel open so you can try to wake me up if you have a horrible emergency but try not to have any horrible emergencies, okay? I'll wake you when it's time to get up and go for your flight.]

[I shall diligently attempt to have no emergencies.]

Thellim attempts to head bedward.  It's surprisingly boxish rather than person-shaped and she would've expected a proper house to contain something more like an advanced sleeping unit, but it looks serviceable enough.  Thellim will nonetheless check the bed carefully before getting in, just to make sure this civilization doesn't equip its beds with built-in Thellim-eaters.

The bed does not eat her. There are car noises outside, though.

Thellim is not accustomed to houses without adequate sound insulation, at all, never mind those located next to some kind of unshielded machinery that operates at night!

Thellim briefly considers whether this is worth braintalk, decides against it being urgent enough to bug someone undergoing a medical procedure who said "emergencies only".  Thellim is exhausted enough to sleep anyways, right?  And if she can't fall asleep, that will just make her even more exhausted, in a process that seems positively bound to lead into sleep at some point!

The car noises slow down as it gets later.

In the morning Isabella says, [Rise and shine!]

Not her best night's sleep ever, but nothing fatal.  Thellim has some new perspective on how nice it is when things aren't fatal.

[Hello.  I'm still alive.  Don't ask me to solve any complicated math problems for the next few minutes though.]

[Wasn't going to. Jackson says Brian can drive you to the airport, and the English installation should've kicked in overnight, you wanna take that for a spin?]

"Whoa," Thellim says out loud, experimentally, also trying to transmit the thoughts.  "I know English."

She'd - honestly she'd rather have been awake while something this large happened to her brain-state but Thellim will not complain at the moment.

"What happens if I try to say something with a longer symbol message length in English because it contains multiple concepts that have shorter codes in my native language?  It comes out as a longer but grammatical sentence.  That feels very odd.  Does it help me think things that are shorter codes in English?  It would help if I had an example of a problem whose answer was a short code in English but a long code in Baseline."  Thellim stops trying to speak in English, it's weirdly awkward and she can already feel her thoughts containing less discourse about probability-theoretic concepts that don't have single-syllable names in English.

[You will probably have an accent because the installer is herself Swedish and English isn't her native language, but it'll at least let you read airport signage and conduct conversations.]

There's a knock on her door.

"Permission given freely and cheerfully!" Thellim calls out, in what was supposed to be a three-syllable standard polite phrase meaning he could come in.  Eh, she'll get used to this.

In comes Jackson. "Uh, I made breakfast," he says. "Isabella says you speak English now?"

She totally understood that!  "I do!  Thank you so much for being cooperative with me!  Brian too!"

"Yeah, 'course. Uh, I made French toast and bacon."

French toast proves to be bread soaked in something and fried and served with strawberries and powdered sugar on top.

Thellim takes a tentative nibble.  Not what she's used to, but no stranger than any of a hundred weird foods you can get delivered in dath ilan on days when you want to try somebody's bizarre invention instead of eating more accustomed food, and like those strange foods it's put together with care for her taste-buds.  She'll devour it with gusto.

Jackson eats more than her and Brian put together even though he's very skinny, and then Brian ushers her into his car, which is a slightly dented black Chrysler.

Is that a car?  It's probably a car, it's on a paved flat surface suitable for driving.  Interesting!  Maybe with higher technology they've gotten the noise down to zero and the self-driving can handle the full complexity of surface conditions.  That would save money on underground tunneling, though at cost of valuable surface area, but maybe their urban areas just aren't that dense.

When they are both in and have their seat belts on Brian demonstrates that the car is not self-driving or quiet at all.

"D'you mind if I turn on the radio?" he asks.

"Yes.  No.  What?  How does this language - it's okay for you to turn on the radio.  Is there - I assume there are - magical safeguards - against a human error causing this car to drive directly into a solid object?"

"...uh, I don't think my insurance covers precognition warnings but somebody'd stop me if I was about to cause a big pileup probably." He flicks on the radio. Music she has not heard before thumps into the car.

Okay, so there is a magical reason they're not going to die in an enormous fireball spawned from the fuel tank of what sounds like an internal combustion engine which, like, why but never mind.  Thellim will attempt to enjoy the unfamiliar music, and the sight of wooshing right through a city at speeds faster than even a powered-trampoline-avenue.

They drive through some city, and past some random cornfields, and then there is an airport! He pulls up to the curb to drop her off, makes sure she has her bag of her civilizational artifact clothes, and waves to her.

Thellim imitates the wave back, and adds a dath ilani salute meaning that much has been received and much is owed-in-a-friendly-way.  There's some sweat inside her new clothes now and it's not drying quite as fast as in carefully optimized dath ilani clothing, but it will no doubt dry soon.  She doesn't know why she was so nervous; this world has precognitives and if experience has taught her anything, it's taught her that dying in a giant fireball just means you end up somewhere else.