Arete nods, then uses her tablet "I think we got some of that. Could I show you some words, and you say them one at a time slowly?"

Griffie smiles and, optimistically, says "I want".

Arete uses the tablet again "They say they aren't sure which part that was. Was that 'I want'? If it was, quickly tap one of the buttons."

Griffie quickly taps one of the buttons, then returns to the holding position.

Arete begins showing words, including "Griffith" and "Erlonn", "Yes" and "No", and asks if 'Erlonn' is a place.

Griffie reads the words in order with long pauses in between them, and answers "Yes" when asked if Erlonn is a place.

After about half an hour of this Arete puts on the tablet "All right. It looks like at least with your bubble you aren't having any bad reactions. Do you want gravity now?"

"Yes, I want that."

There very gradually starts being gravity in the box.

Griffie moves to the bottom of the box and sits down.

Arete uses the tablet to ask "That is normal gravity for us. Is that a good amount for you?"

After the gravity stops changing, Griffie stands up, walks around the floor, does a tiny experimental jump, and then says "yes" out loud.

Arete smiles and uses the tablet to say "Excellent. You can put the cylinders down now. Would you like to talk together more?"

Griffie sets the cylinders down and says "yes" out loud.

Arete can use speakers to play sounds inside Griffie's box, and would be interested in knowing how to write her name in Sylvan!

Griffie writes multiple transliterations of "Arete Aldana" and explains the subtle differences.

After getting her name down, Arete uses the tablet to ask "Now, I am a crew member of a ship that travels between the stars. Some of the other crew would like to talk to you, including the captain. Are you up to talking to them now?"

"Yes. I think I am up to talking to other people who are crew of the ship that travels between the stars, including the captain. Your people are good at making tools for talking. Thank you."

A large screen is brought in by drones and set inside the quarantine box. It turns on to display the bridge of the MS Lithobraking and the crew currently on it. They are looking at Griffie.

"Hello Griffith," Leonarda says, in what sounds from Griffie's side of the screen like Sylvan. "We have set things up so we can speak to each other, though we did not understand all the words in your language. I am the Captain of the Planet 'Mars' Ship Stopping By Crashing Into Stone."

She glances to the side.

"That last segment apparently translated awkwardly. There is a planet that this ship was made on called 'Mars', and Stopping By Crashing Into Stone is a more amusing single word in our language."

Griffie waves at the display.

"Hello Captain. Thank you for setting things up so we can speak to each other. If I use a word you do not understand, I want you or someone else to say 'We do not understand you'. Then I will try saying what I wanted to say with different words."

"There were quite a few cases where we found words that looked like they referred to two different things, but we did not understand the difference, and some cases where we were not confident in our guesses. Do the following all mean approximately the same thing?"

Cornelia taps a tablet, and at the bottom of the screen appear phrases in boxes: "Deity", "High Ruler", "Ruler of Rulers".

"No. 'High Ruler' and 'Ruler of Rulers' mean approximately the same thing. A text might compare a deity to a ruler of rulers, but this would be a metaphor. An arrogant ruler of rulers might compare themselves to a deity. You might not have contact with deities here, you seemed not to recognize it when I did this."

Griffie casts Create Water again.

"A deity can give some people the ability to do cast the spell named 'Create Water'. And other spells, but this one is visibly obvious and I can do it as many times as I want to. I don't get that spell from a deity but most people who have it do."

"Yes, you have done that a few times. What… are you doing there? You use a word to describe it that we do not know."

She taps the tablet again, and the word 'spell' appears at the bottom.

Do these people not have magic at all, even arcane magic? They figured out how to build advanced constructs, and ships for traveling between stars, and never figured out even the most basic portions of wizardry? Griffie wishes their party's wizard were here. He would be better at guessing how hard it would be to invent wizardry from scratch.

"I am casting a spell. Using a shard of the power of Nature that I contain, I can prepare the power of Nature in specific shapes, by taking an hour every day after I sleep. Once the power is in specific shapes, I can use it by making certain sounds with my mouth, and gestures with at least one hand, and displaying my Divine Focus, a sprig of holly and a sprig of mistletoe. A friend made my headband grow these, so I use my headband, but I also have a magically preserved sprig of each of these that is separate from my headband. Some spells I can use over and over again, like 'create water', and others only a few times each day, like the spell for creating my bubble, which is named 'Life Bubble'."

"It is also possible to cast spells with your own power, but I do not know how. Do none of you know how, or know of anyone who knows how?"