In Petras, they meet an extremely confused mage-student at the local academy, whose side job is being a library assistant. 

He spends a moment frozen at the front desk inside, staring at the shiny, sparkling, impressive, terrifying space shuttle that's just landed on the library's front lawn, and then runs out. 

...And continues to stare blankly at the - people? - emerging from it??

One of them holds up a large glowing rectangle which reads in rather broken Rethwellani We are here to sorry for thief! All book in many box there. Regret! It was important. Please take apology shiny stones in other box. The boxes are transparent, as though made of glass, so the books and shiny stones are clearly visible.

The student stares at them. So blankly. 

He's thinking that a few days ago - thank all the gods it wasn't on his shift - someone, or presumably many someones, managed to get in and out of the library, without triggering ANY of the precautions, and it wasn't until the next time a janitor made their routine cleaning rounds that they noticed that all the books were gone - 

He is very tempted to shout something rude at this random stranger. But thinks better of it. Clearly they are ABSURDLY POWERFUL and this would not help at all. 

"I, er, nevermind - just leave them there, I, um, just - leave it, that's fine -?" 

They have printouts of their apology and place them on top of the huge pile of boxes and then bow politely to the student and go back into their spaceship.

In Sunhame, the team landing gets about twenty-five seconds into their script, and then a Sunpriest in gold-embroidered robes runs out from the crowd, and then suddenly the entire delegation is on fire. 

AAAAAAAH

The entire delegation scrambles back into their ship, where the sprinklers promptly go off. They fly away.

When the delegation lands in Haven, in a spot in the conveniently wide-open space of the Companions' Field and nearish the river, for a moment nothing happens at all. 

The first thing to happen is that a large white stallion is suddenly galloping towards them. 

- and addressing all of the vaguely-humanoid minds in the bizarre shiny metal thing. :Who are you. What are you doing here: 

Whoa! Telepathy! That was not in the mission spec. They have no idea how to reply. They confer among themselves about whether they should still go out and eventually a smaller number of them do.

By the time they've settled on this, a few of the other locals have made it out to the field by the river. 

Savil is standing beside her Companion and looking very tired and very irritated and glaring at the spaceship like it's her personal enemy. 

(She's mostly just trying to get anything at all off mage-sight, but apparently the shiny flying thing isn't magical in the least???) 

They hold up a screen! This one says in clumsy Valdemaran, We are welcome? ?? We are from far! Hello! It is good meeting you friends.

Savil stares at them. 

Confers with Kellan. 

Who considers this for a moment, and then confers with Taver. 

The white stallion takes a step forward. 

:You say you are from far away? And that you want to be our friends?: 

They perform actions with their devices and write Yes yes! How are you talk in this way?

:- I am using Mindspeech. Most Mindspeakers cannot speak to others who lack the Gift, but I can: 

Taver's oddly front-facing blue eyes bore into them. 

:Why are you here?: 

They do not have nearly enough context on local animals to find it odd that his eyes face front. Maybe that's totally normal. Though they are sort of surprised that there are more intelligent species on this planet than the ones that look like them, that's really neat. We are here for friends! For explore! For learn and teach!

Taver relays this to the other Companions in Haven, who immediately relay it to their Heralds. 

:Where do you come from?: 

"Amenta!" one of them says aloud, since they don't have enough phoneme-letter correspondence to be sure of how to transliterate it. She points at the sky in the approximate right direction; they picked this region in part because it's the right season for pointing at their constellation.

"Ah-Men-Tah?" Savil offers, since this seems like the most helpful contribution she can make right now. 

Yes! We do not know certainly how it letters.

Tantras catches up, jogging over; unlike Savil, he missed getting a ride with his Companion. 

"What's going on?" he asks her. 

"- Well, that." She points at the space shuttle that's landed on their lawn. "They're claiming to be from very far away." She points at the sky as well, not quite in the right direction. "They - want to be friends?" 

It's embarrassing how incredibly little of an idea Tran has for how to respond to this! He's been the King's Own for, gods, three years now, and it's gotten to the point that he only rarely feels like a child playing dress-up when he has to speak in Council meetings, or have insightful opinions for Randi on where they should put their Mindspeakers. This...is something else. 

"...Um." 

:They do not appear hostile: Taver offers. :So far: 

There's unease in his mindvoice, though.