"At the time I had said that, I had not realized that persistent-elemental-fire alone could cause such destruction to your world. The threats I was thinking of are a lot worse than that. My world contains very intelligent, very powerful beings who would probably want to kill all of you and all of your people, unless they have a plan which is like that but even worse."

"We are not talking about this, or any other interesting abilities you have until I have things far more secure than they are now. Understand?"

"Understood. You should also secure your scans of both of my books, then."

"…I'm distracted and a lot of things might be tangentially related. Why don't you pick a topic."

"Captain, in the interest of reciprocation, wouldn't it be reasonable to–"

"–Fine! Go ahead. I have security to arrange, it isn't like we could keep anything that mercurials know a secret anyway."

Arithnu turns back to Griffie with a smile "While our Captain is doing that, you have told us a lot about yourself and permitted us to learn a lot about how you work, would you like to ask us any questions or run any safe tests?"

"Uh. Yes. But right now I am really worried about you so I am not the best focused."

Griffie pauses and looks a bit calmer.

"I think I recognize your captain's species. Some of my friends are of the species your captain and Cornelia appear to be. I don't recognize yours, though. Could you show me anatomy diagrams for your captain's species? I suppose I'm not in a healer's role, right now, but I am a healer. Also, when you were asking me about the word 'plant', you showed me pictures of varieties of holly and mistletoe. We have holly and mistletoe in my world. This is very strange. Show me pictures of more plants, and maybe some animals?"

Arithnu laughs. "We felt the same way when we met the humans! Though it's even stranger in your case."

Arithnu pokes at his tablet, and images start appearing on the screen below the video feed of the bridge, with a picture of a human as one header and a picture of a mercurial as another.

Human anatomy diagrams match Griffie's expectations but are much more detailed with more color.

Mercurial anatomy looks different from human anatomy – the heart is on the other side – but not outside the range of humanoid anatomy Griffie has studied.

Agricultural, ornamental, and wild plants from Earth are shown. A lot of the wild plants are familiar to Griffie. Many of the agricultural ones are as well, though they seem to have been more optimized for food production than Griffie's world has managed. Fewer of the ornamental plants look familiar, but some do.

Agricultural, ornamental, and wild plants from the Mercurials' home planet are shown. Many bear a strange similarity to the Earth plants, despite many of them having darker pigmentation. The agricultural plants again look more optimized than those Griffie is familiar with, and of the ornamentals, fewer than even Earth's ornamentals look familiar. However, even some of the wild and agricultural plants that do not have Earth counterparts look familiar to Griffie.

Images of animals are also included. The Earth animals are extremely similar to those Griffie has seen. The mercurials' animals are less similar (their cats come in strange colors), but the mercurials have what look like flagfish, while the humans have a very different fish called a 'flagfish' apparently named for scales having a pattern sort of almost like a famous historical flag.

"Wow. A lot of these match my world. Should I say which now, or later once you figure out more security?"

"I think the Captain would prefer you wait. These aren't the only weird things either, we all seem to share sort of the same expressions, despite not sharing them with other creatures on our own planets, have similar values… there is even overlap in a famous nonsense poem between our two civilizations and we… have pretty much no understanding of why."

"The humans on your ship seem like the nicer humans from my world. And I want to ask for summaries of your values, but that's a really complicated question and I couldn't answer it entirely myself. Show me the nonsense poems?"

"Sure. They, uh, sound better in their original languages, I don't think the translator will be able to make anything but the nonsense words rhyme."

Griffie's eyes go very wide in a moment of sudden, horrible realization.

"Freaky, isn't it? Was there some cross-cultural contact long ago that only left this? Some plot by the jellies? Some strange law of the universe? Keeps people up at night wondering."

"Wow. That. Uh. Sure is, uh, freaky." Griffie forces a laugh, but doesn't sound amused at all. They probably ought to not discuss dangers. So Griffie probably should appear more amused and less concerned.

Jabberwocks have the little-known powers to manipulate vorpal swords and their wielders, and to have every society inevitably conclude that vorpal swords are important to defeating them. If you fight a Jabberwock, scrupulously avoiding those accursed blades, and kill one, then almost everyone you talk to concludes you must have found a vorpal blade by "luck" and used that one. If you point out the insane-looking statistics about Jabberwock attack victims, almost nobody cares. If you ask a person to repeat the sentence "The Jubjub Bird recommends not acquiring a vorpal sword," they will usually say "The Jubjub Bird recommends acquiring a vorpal sword.".

Griffie is so far from home that the elemental fields do not exist, but the civilizations each have a poem about Jabberwocks, which promotes vorpal swords. "People underestimate the power of the Jabberwocks," huh? Even Griffie still did, apparently. Probably still does, this isn't likely to be the deepest layer of the onion.

And they think the poems are nonsense poems. Many of the words appear nonsensical. Do they think "Jabberwock", or "Jubjub", or "Bandersnatch", or "Thrasfyr", or "Sard" are nonsense words? Does Griffie need to worry about the rest of the nonsense-seeming words?

Arithnu looks at Griffie with concern.

Why is Griffie handling information-hiding. Griffie is a terrible liar. "I maybe shouldn't talk about this right now. Ask me about it later once security gets worked out, I guess."

Arithnu looks concerned, and more than a bit torn, but eventually settles on "All right."

"Can I get a time estimate for security being resolved? I am starting to wonder if almost any conversation we have is going to end up touching on some topic that should maybe be considered sensitive information."

"I will ask. And yes, if I can't even share cultural trivia without it apparently being a huge security issue, I am left uncertain about what topic could possibly be safe."

"You could play me some music without lyrics, and I could cover myself so that you can't see if I react strangely to it? You could get me another tablet that isn't connected to your systems, with more color drawing options, and I could draw things for talking about once we figure out security? You could have me fill out translation tables between this language and the other languages I have used, but you'd want to avoid picking words in ways that reveal lots of information I could react to? But all of this is less important than figuring out security and I am willing to stare at a wall for hours if that lets you figure it out faster."

"Music, blankets, tablet features, even furniture are all options that shouldn’t make a difference."

"I want to do useful things. If you can figure out how I can make translation tables without causing potential problems for you I would like that."

"That I'm not sure about. The people who would know about that are busy."

"Alright. …How about I hide under a blanket and you talk about things and then if I make faces that reveal interesting information you won't see them? I was in the void recently and there weren't any people."