She is in a ditch by the side of a highway. Up a slope and past a steel guardrail there is a painted asphalt street; a blue car is in the process of speeding away without noticing her.

Planet surface, normal gravity, breathable air that doesn't even feel like it has a particularly weird oxygen amount... Vehicle is weird, but some places still use animals for transport, so. They might not have the resources for hover technology. The Force feels kind of weird past a large bubble around her, but this might be one of those planets with very annoying Force-suppression stuff. Ugh. She hates those. 

But this is very freaky and she would like to know where she even is - it's too bright for her to see the stars, though, even if she had the ability to calculate starmaps at a glance, and her droid doesn't seem to have come with her. She gets to her feet, cautiously, mentally checks her lightsaber's location -

And reaches out to Master Anakin through their training bond.

"So that was not as inert a thing as we thought, and I'm now on some other planet. I'm not hurt."

"..."

She somehow projects both amusement and concern.

"I thought accidentally activating artifacts was my job, Lily."

And she appears by her apprentice's side, glowing softly. 

"We do seem farther than usual, that was... Hard." She looks around, frowning. "Like I didn't have a real reference..."

"Yeah, yeah. You're still three for one, though."

Glancing back to the road - "Think they might be pre- or low contact or just weird about technology, vehicle I saw wasn't a hovercraft and the engine sounded off." She climbs up to the side of the road, squinting up and down it. 

There is not another vehicle immediately in evidence.

On the other side of the highway, something very fast moves through the trees parallel to the road - stops before coming into view -

...She tries to poke at it with her Force sense. 

Anakin steps up beside her, ready to defend Lily if whatever that is takes exception to their presence, focusing more on 'incoming danger' than poking specific things. 

...The Force thinks they're in absolutely no danger and also that they're on a hazy bit of rock floating in the void of space. Okay then. She's going to watch for things trying to approach Lily (from any direction) instead. 

One inorganic nondroid being, one organic being.

And nothing else...

"Stay here," she says out loud, and drifts closer to the two beings - not as quickly as she can, but definitely at a brisk walking pace. 

"Hello?" she calls. 

The beings do not move. She'll have to vault the guardrail to cross the highway.

She immaterial. She goes through it. 

She doesn't approach all the way, keeping her posture open and hopefully nonthreatening. "Do you speak Basic?" she calls out, trying to angle for a better glimpse of the two. 

Lily goes to sit on the guardrail, watching, with only a small huff. (She knows Master Anakin's being reasonable but she's been beaten before and also Lily is increasingly less a baby. She's probably-fourteen by now. She can defend herself if needed.)

The organic being moves, when addressed, but neither one talks.

"Maybe there's some less shy locals we can ask for directions?" Lily calls out to her teacher. "Don't think they're gonna attack us. And if they don't even want you looking at them, it's not like we can try charades for 'nearest space port'..."

"Perhaps," she calls back, then starts backing off from the two, carefully making noise like she would if she was actually walking. To the two: "I apologize if I startled you."

The beings start whispering. Very very fast at high pitch.

Anakin doesn't actually have ears, and they're making noise at all in her sensory range, so - she tries to parse if it's a language she knows.

Nope!

She backs off until she's on the other side of the highway from Lily. 

The organic one tries talking again. A lot of tone comes across - she's curious, she wants to figure out how to communicate - but it's still not in a language Anakin knows.

She tries a wide variety of others. 

None of those work either. The inorganic being creeps slightly forward, carrying the organic one piggyback, and they can see the one -

- and the other.

She smiles and waves from her perch on the guardrail (she looks like a kinda short preteen or really short teenager, dressed very strangely for the area).

"Hi!" she says. 

Does - preteen? Honestly possibly not much younger than her, given Lily's weird mystery age... Anyways, does the girl look healthy? 

She looks in perfect health! She says something to her carrier.

Who says something back.

She stands up off the guardrail, going to stand by her teacher on the other side of the road, closer to the two, and then wonders if she has anything that'll make communicating easier. Charades aren't actually that universal...

Oh. Duh. She has her pack. She slings it off her back and goes digging through it for her datapad, the nice one that can do images and drawings, producing the pad rather quickly with an "Aha!" then showing the screen to the two women and turning it on. The lock screen is just a picture of Jakku from space - she's probably the only person in existence fond of the planet - with the time according to their area's standard along the top. "'Guess the picture' is so much easier than charades."

The inorganic adult blinks at the planet.

The kid slides down from her back to approach the screen; she comments on it. She clearly doesn't recognize it though.

She can unlock it without turning the screen away from the other girl, though this is slightly awkward on her wrist. Hm, poke poke... Picture of her identification with the local resistance! "Lily Vendar!" she says, pointing at herself, then at her name in the appropriate field. Then pulling up her teacher's identification (as Anakin Vendar, colored in like she's alive since that's how she presents herself), as "Anakin Vendar."

"Elspeth!" says, apparently, Elspeth, pointing at herself.

Bright grin!

Poke poke, image of, hm, Takodana, she likes that planet and it's really pretty. "Takodana," she says, then points to the ground and makes a curious noise. (She might have to do some repeats with other planets to get this across properly...)

"Earth!"

She doesn't recognize that word, but, progress!

...Hm, how to show 'We're here on accident'... 

Sketching program, pop the stylus out of the side, sketch simple humanoid figures on a planet, falling off to another planet and looking very surprised? (One of the stick figures is taller and also blue.) (To emphasize 'accident' the fallen stick figures 'land' fallen over.)

This does not get across particularly clearly. Elspeth looks at the inorganic and then back at Lily. She puts her hand out toward Lily's face, stopping short to see if this is OK.

She nods and doesn't flinch.

Elspeth puts her very warm little hand on Lily's face! And communicates: Nodding means yes and shaking your head means no! We can't understand you but we can learn your language pretty fast if you want to try to teach it with your computer thing.

Telepaths!

She sends, "They're telepathic! I think touch only?" to Master Anakin, then says and simultaneously sends back as clearly as she can, "I can do that! Can you hear my thoughts?"

I can't understand you! I can only do this in one direction and Mama can't do it at all. But we have perfect memories so we should be able to learn whatever you speak. Mama would like us to get farther away from the highway, will you follow us?

She double checks with her teacher and then nods. "I'll follow you," she says.

Rather than riding piggyback this time Elspeth follows her mother deeper into the trees.

They disturb a squirrel which flings itself out of its nest trying to run away from them and Elspeth leaps into the air and catches it in her teeth and starts eating it raw.

She blinks a bit, but doesn't otherwise actually much react, and just sorts 'this sort of Earth sapients' in with other predatory sapients she knows about. A bit less picky than some, maybe, but that might also be lack of opportunity - if Elspeth and her mother are hiding, which avoiding the highway suggests - or might be an age thing. Or maybe squirrels are actually delicious. (Also Elspeth being organic and her mother being inorganic makes the xenobiology nerd part of Lily's brain perk up. Could also be a life cycle thing, maybe? She needs more data...)

Well, at the very least, maybe after they make contact with the rest of the galaxy she can introduce them and the togruta she knows to each others' cuisines.

She and her teacher both keep up a running commentary, Lily sometimes talking about things she's seeing - pointing at them - or things they're doing, queuing up stuff on her pad for later as she walks. (She comments on the togruta being carnivorous after Elspeth catches her meal, too, and rambles about galactic diets and xenobiology a bit.)

When they stop again Elspeth plops her hand back on Lily's face and suggests she "say" things and have Lily translate them.

She nods and repeats that!

Then this will go much faster!

Her mama introduces herself as Isabella, once they have the vocabulary for that.

Anakin starts soliciting the same vocabulary in the local language, too, once Lily can relay that -

Her memory seems as good as the two locals', actually, and she's able to guess at new, related words even from a fairly restricted base.

"It's good to meet you both," she says.

"It's nice to meet you too!!! Are you a ghost?"

"Yes. I died over forty years ago."

"How do you be a ghost?"

"We're not sure. I didn't intend to be a ghost, and our galaxy doesn't have very many."

"You have a whole galaxy? Wow!"

She smiles fondly. "Not all of it's explored, but we've mapped thousands of planets by now."

"We just have this one!"

"We do sometimes meet planets who've never encountered aliens."

"You don't look like aliens, you look like humans! Except for how one of you is a ghost."

She laughs. "Humans and near-humans are very common! We're not entirely sure why, actually."

"Are there people more like Lily on Earth, then?"

"Yeah, almost everybody's a human! Mama's a vampire and I'm a half-vampire."

"Huh! How are vampires different?"

"Vampires're faster and stronger and colder and tougher and drink blood and don't have heartbeats and they're venomous and also they are ruled by the vampire shadow government!"

"Shadow government?"

"They're called the Volturi and they're bad and if you're a ghost they'd probably think you're their business too."

"Yeah lots of governments seem to think that about Master Anakin."

"How are they bad?"

"Well, they kill people."

...Ugh.

(She thinks, but doesn't say, 'So what you're saying is that they're a government.' Probably she is just in a very cynical mood and the galactic governments are just trash fires right now and normal governments in fact get up to less mass murder.) (Cynical moods can distort your thinking, so she should of course be on the look out for that, but also given her standard references for 'government' are currently 'the evil one' and 'the one with a functioning propaganda department,' it's possible that most people in the galaxy aren't cynical enough.)

"Why do they kill people?"

"Mostly to eat but also to keep vampires secret."

Okay yeah that's bad. 

"Do vampires need to eat people?"

"No, nice vampires eat animals instead."

She nods. "Why are vampires secret?"

"'Cause the Volturi say so. And because maybe humans would try to hurt vampires or something if they knew."

"Is everything that isn't standard for normal humans secret?"

"Yeah. There's also werewolves and witches. Mama and me are witches, which means we have extra powers on top of just not being humans, mine is the projective telepathy one."

Huh. They don't feel Force sensitive.

" - Does 'humans react poorly to powers' seem to be actually universally true here?"

"No but there aren't that many times when people've tried because of the Volturi."

"Me and Master Anakin have powers," she says, then gestures - unnecessarily, but people startle less when you're making Clearly Jedi Motions - and some rocks rise into the air and spin around each other. They feel less woven through with the Force than normal things, but, well, this planet's definitely doing weird things to Force sense in general.

"And Master Anakin can disguise herself, but if everyone on this planet is Force-null that'll be hard, and she kind of doesn't pass for a living human otherwise."

"What's Force-null mean?"

"Can't use the Force, even a little, and usually can't be influenced by a lot of Force powers, and also usually don't show up well to a lot of Force-based senses."

" - The Force is sort of an energy field except not really. I'm not sure how well it translates or if you guys have discovered it yet, since this planet seems to be suppressing our Force senses a lot, but it's the thing our powers use to work."

"We don't seem to have it as far as I know!"

"Yeah. I think something about your planet's probably mostly blocking it."

"Is that bad?"

"Restricts us some? But doesn't seem to be hurting anyone here..."

"Yeah, I think we're okay."

She nods. "What kinds of things are witch powers?"

"I have my telepathy thing, Mama's got a shield against mind-affecting powers, my dad could read minds, my aunt Alice could see the future, one of the Volturi can see relationships and another one also reads minds but it's touch range, we have a cousin who can zap people also at touch range..."

"...Huh. So all just - individual things?"

"Yeah! It's based on personality, we think, so I have mine because I'm a very oversharey person."

"Huh."

"Most Force-users can do a lot of the same stuff, though they might be better at some things than others - and there's two main ways of accessing the Force, and each way is better at different things. It's hard to use both ways together, usually you kinda get locked into one, but both me and Master Anakin try to maintain a balance between them."

"There are talents some people have that others don't, but most of those talents crop up in multiple people, and we don't really know what it's attached to, or if it's just 'this usually prohibitively hard thing is easier for some people.' One of my friends has a rare power Master Anakin could use when she was alive, and her personality and the imprint of her mind in the Force is really similar to Master Anakin's - but people nothing like either of them sometimes have it, too, and some powers can run in families some of the time."

"Being a witch at all can run in families! Not perfectly but often."

"Do sorts of powers run in families? Or just not anymore than personality sometimes does?"

"It's hard to tell because it's all secret, and vampires are more likely to be witches than humans, and vampires can't normally have children, but you can kind of interpret my power as being related to my parents'."

She nods, thoughtful. "Lots of the things you listed wouldn't be weird Force powers," she says after a moment. "Honestly requiring physical touch is weirdest."

"Lots of powers don't, just a few do."

She nods. "Can powers change over time?"

"A little, sometimes, especially if you turn into a vampire."

"Humans can turn into vampires? How?"

"Vampire venom does it."

"Huh... I should really avoid getting bitten, then."

"Mama won't bite you. Though she will be most comfortable if you don't have any open wounds around her. But mostly if a vampire is biting you they probably want to eat you, not turn you, except that since you have special powers they are a little more likely to want to see if you turn into an interesting vampire."

"Your mom doesn't register as the type of being the Force can really interact with, though if vampires haven't been in areas that the Force can reach before, it might just not really have a reference... But I'd be worried about stopping having the kind of biology we think you need to access the Force."

"...well, that could be her power shielding you out or her being a vampire. We don't talk to other vampires so we don't have other ones we can just introduce you to."

She nods.

"We shouldn't risk it, though."

"There are nice ones, but yeah."

Small smile. "I don't mind meeting other vampires. Meant getting turned - I'd rather not risk losing my powers. And unless vampires are immune to telekinesis - and to lightsabers, at the worst case - I should be able to stop anyone from touching me."

"What's a lightsaber?"

"This," she says, taking the cylinder out of her robes. "Super do not ever touch the blade, but..." She angles it well away from anyone and ignites it. Her lightsaber blade's a brilliant gold, with a pleasant hum. 

"Huh. I don't know if that would work but vampires move really fast."

"Jedi are really, really fast too, especially with just reflexes."

"Maybe you and Mama should have a contest. Just to see."

She grins. "It'd be fun. And maybe we can get some podracers when we make contact with the galaxy again."

"What's that?"

"They're small, fast repulsorcraft." She pulls up an image of one on her pad! And then pulls up the only holo she's ever found of Master Anakin (when she was still alive) racing, which always embarrasses her teacher but it's super cool.

"Most people have trouble controlling them much faster than five, six hundred miles an hour - " Zoom go the pods through an extremely tight and windy canyon with a dexterity no human could manage at that speed. "But some species and also Force-sensitive people can get way faster," this bit of clip has the volume muffled as the pods get on a straightaway and zip past the sound barrier; Master Anakin's keeps that speed up even as the straightaway ends. "'Course, space ships are way faster, but there's a lot less stuff to hit in space - fighters also get faster but most of them don't maneuver as well near the ground, and those're harder to get just 'cause you felt like doing a race." 

"Ooh, fun! Vampires can run a couple hundred miles an hour flat out."

"I'd need tech to do that, yeah, but I can respond to something coming at me way faster than that - there's lightsaber forms specifically for blocking blaster bolts."

She deactivates her lightsaber, returning it to its place in her robes.

"Is a blaster a kind of gun?"

"Yeah! They really vary in quality, of course, but some are really accurate and annoying to dodge. Unless you're Master Anakin and can just raise your eyebrow and act really entertained about people trying to shoot you."

Elspeth giggles. "We don't have those on this planet either."

"Slug throwers - guns with metal projectiles - can be annoying because blocking a slug with a lightsaber just melts it and sprays hot metal at you. So, if anyone on this planet points a gun at us, I'd rather be the one handling it."

"...Huh. I didn't know that."

"Almost never comes up. Slug throwers are very inconvenient unless you're specifically shooting someone with a lightsaber who can't dodge you or yank your weapon out of your hand, and that's a somewhat rare case."

"I'll try to avoid getting shot at, then."

"Thank you. I can practically feel my heart attack risk going down."

She giggles.

"Mama's bulletproof. We don't think I am but I've never actually been shot."

"I'm not bulletproof. Just fast."

"So what are you doing here? Are we going to get introduced to a whole galaxy?"

"Hopefully eventually. But ending up here was an accident. I touched an artifact I thought was inert and then it activated and dumped me over by the road. So we'll have to figure out how to let someone friendly know we're here. Or build our own spaceship, but FTL is actually really hard to assemble out of a box of pre-hyperspace scraps and it'll almost certainly be easier to send someone a star chart."

"How will you let them know where to find you?"

"Master Anakin followed me here, and she should be able to teleport to one person back home, or at least reach her mind. So she could relay star charts telepathically."

"Or if that doesn't work for some reason, building a thing to send messages with is easier than a hyperspace drive. But that's less likely to get someone friendly responding."

"What reasons wouldn't it work? The planet not having the Force?"

"Probably, yeah - or something could've happened to Anathema, who's the easiest person other than me for Master Anakin to reach - who could also get here in any reasonable amount of time, there's also Master Anakin's son but he doesn't have a big ship with a good range and he's not in contact really with anyone who does. Talking in the minds of people is easiest with people you know well, though."

"Can we help at all?"

"Helping us get star charts for the first thing to try - just what's visible to the naked eye isn't always very helpful..."

"I saw a star chart once! It looked like -" She touches Lily's cheek again. It looked like this!

"Oh, cool! We might want a lot, a couple different angles - and info if your astronomers have any on what part of the galaxy we're in and facts about the nearest stars, maybe..."

"Sounds like you want a library! We usually hang out a lot at libraries wherever we stop."

"Libraries are great! And also probably have the information we need, too."

"We're almost to Sheboygan, do you want to come?"

"Sure. There's a library there?"

"I've never been but probably, most towns do."

"Then we're definitely tagging along."

"How fast can you run?"

She hums. "Depends on if it's sustained? Faster than a normal human for that, but not by much - like, probably around forty miles per hour if I'm resting a lot at the end? Quick bursts I can go a lot faster, but that's super exhausting."

"If basically flying wouldn't draw attention, though, Master Anakin can pick me up with the Force and move me at pretty much any speed I could survive going at - and there the big problem's acceleration, anyways, unless you're getting so fast the atmosphere starts objecting. It's disorienting, so I don't like going crazy fast, but if you guys can run at a few hundred miles an hour, Master Anakin should be able to keep up without too many issues..."

"Okay. We're not that far away so we don't have to hurry that much. And we stay out of sight till we're closer and then we walk in." She hops up on Bella's back again. "Follow us!"

Bella takes off.

She folds some cloth out of Lily's bag, arranging and stiffening it in front of the girl as a windshield, and then obligingly lifts her apprentice into the air, taking off in the vampires' wake with her.

Also - she can't really directly affect minds here, it seems, but she can make Lily harder to notice while she's doing this in a couple other ways. (Anakin herself mostly fades from view.)

She keeps up rather adeptly.

(Maybe if she closes her eyes that'll make her less vaguely dizzy about this.)

They come to a halt outside of town and walk - Bella puts on shoes when she switches gaits, and puts Elspeth down (Elspeth was already wearing shoes).

She sets Lily down.

"I'm going to go invisible," she warns them, "At least until we know if I can make myself seem alive to random people from your world."

(Lily has shoes on - and is currently using the Force to get bugs out of her impromptu windshield and then stuffing it back in her bag - but is also not at all dressed like a local.)

"You're dressed oddly," says Bella. "You're not that far off from my size. I can loan you an outfit."

"...How oddly? Like, would people think I was foreign or just a weird kid? Though I can change into any outfit I can move easily in, I guess."

"Weird kid, but very weird. It'll attract questions, and then you're new to the language on top of that."

"Okay. I'll change."

Isabella gives her some jeans like hers and a T-shirt. "The shoes can stay, they're not as far off. If someone asks where you got them, they were a gift. - Elspeth can't lie convincingly, unless the person she's lying to has never heard her tell the truth even once, so we'll have to navigate around that if anyone's very curious."

"I'm a very good liar."

"Don't know the language that well, but Master Anakin's picking it up faster, and she can relay words to me telepathically."

"Can you hear super- or sub-sonic sounds?"

"Yes," comes her voice from the thin waver of air she's currently letting show her position. "Though I often filter it out mentally."

"Okay. I can speak supersonically and feed you cues if necessary. It shouldn't come up, but it's advisable to have a contingency plan."

She nods. "Of course. Translations would also help, if there's anything being said to Lily that we don't recognize, as well as things like - normal behaviors we can't really get from watching, flow of traffic, laws... Anything like that."

"I'll do my best."

And they can walk into Sheboygan and find the library.

Lily avoids coming off as too bizarre, probably, at least once she's changed. 

Library!!! She doesn't know this script so she'll need help interpreting any words, though, but she can look at pictures and use that to narrow down what she wants to start with. 

Elspeth is happy to teach her to read! Very quietly because it's a library and you have to be soooo quiet in libraries, and also because it would be sorta weird to be learning to read at Lily's age.

Well she's a second language speaker, so that's probably a bit less weird! She can read and take notes in her native language, anyways. (Though she's fascinated by everything being paper.)

There are a few computers - Bella has a laptop and is doing things on that - but indeed it is mostly paper. They can get little pencils and scratch paper from a librarian if she wants to practice handwriting.

Sure! It'll help her remember the letter shapes, if nothing else. (A lot of them are really similar.)

Once Lily is mostly reading on her own Elspeth finds her the astronomy section.

She picks out an assortment of things, and also learns how to navigate the computer so she can look up more things online, and studies them very intently, flipping the page when Master Anakin tells her to.

Elspeth settles in with some YA fantasy novels.

And Anakin reaches out -

(It's farther than it ever has felt before. She can't reach... Nearly anyone, actually. But one of her quasi-students has the same Force signature as her, with basically the same mental structure, and is always very, very easy to reach - Anakin gets through to Anathema and sends her as much as the girl will remember.)

(She gets some concern and exasperation back. Apparently Lily's droid isn't being very helpful. Anakin pokes Anathema with a reminder that Anakin's Force signature is programmed to access Tyrant, too, though Anathema will have to use the dark side to unlock anything. The response is sheepish, then agreeing, then - an unfolding sense in her head of the different probabilities for how the cavalry could get to Earth. Most of them don't feel likely at all, at least not to Anathema.)

(Anakin pushes fondness and a soft sense that she and Lily are fine, right now, across. She withdraws, then, after a promise from Anathema to try anyways, and returns her attention fully to the library.)

She mentally pokes her teacher, gets a watered-down reflection of the conversation, then nods.

They've gotten everything they really need, and Lily's head is getting kind of full with astronomy, so she goes to poke at what the library's other sections are.

The library has cookbooks and romance novels and picture books and science fiction and encyclopedias.

Encyclopedias are worth browsing through, at least to get a quick overview of this planet's technology level, but Lily's head is still mostly full enough that she just sets some out of view of any humans or possible cameras for Master Anakin to flip through if she wants, then goes to poke the science fiction.

The selection isn't great and it's missing the first books in a bunch of series but she can find some standard fare such as Ender's Game, Frankenstein, and Dune.

She's a pretty fast reader so can get through at least enough to figure out which ones are most interesting to her, then find a collection of classic short stories and read those.

She does eventually get hungry, though.

The natives don't seem hungry at all and might take a while to think of humans needing to eat frequently.

She'll ask Elspeth about food after not very long.

"Oh, yeah, that makes sense. We can go find a restaurant. Mama can I have some money?"

Isabella hands her a couple twenties. "Do you want me to come?"

"I can buy us food myself!"

"Okay. Enjoy." She gives Elspeth a kiss on the head and returns to her work.

"Cool," Lily says. "What kinds of restaurants are there around here?"

"I don't know! We can find out! There's usually at least a diner but sometimes there's something cool." Out she traipses.

She follows!

"What kinds of food do diners have?"

"Oh, breakfast things like scrambled eggs and french toast and sausage and pancakes, or sandwiches, or fries, or macaroni and cheese, or pies and cakes and stuff."

"Sounds interesting, and also not too weird."

"Okay, we can look for a diner." Traipse traipse. Diner diner diner? Diner! She waves Lily in and they can seat themselves at a little window booth and get menus.

Does Elspeth have any recommendations? 

"I like omelettes but if I get tired of omelettes my next pick is usually a tuna melt."

"An omelette works for me."

"You can get them to put in whatever you want - I'm going to get bacon and mushrooms and green onions -"