It's a forest.

The air has a chill to it, and there's a gentle mist drifting into the damp ground. The trees are enormous, many easily several times her height in diameter and the tallest rivaling skyscrapers. The canopy is alive with distant flashes of bright feathers, and the forest floor seems dominated by mosses and ferns, a few strange bushes or small trees mixed in.

It smells of good, healthy dirt, and in the distance is the sound of running water - and, closer, the sound of voices, one raised in laughter. There's clear paths through the understory, and clear signs of - tending, really, though perhaps not agriculture. There's a lot of fruit right near the trails.

The trails themselves are dirt, more intentionally encouraged game paths than anything, with varied stacks of flat stones marking them at irregular intervals. There's a fork in the trail downhill of her - and three statues in a line, one on either side of the fork and one cradled in the Y. None of them have really distinct forms - they're impressionistic flows of interestingly veined stones with tarnished copper flitting down them in rivulets. They look like they're decently well anchored, too.

There's flares of paint on many of the trees above the level of the tallest undergrowth - sets of white blazes, centrally, and then more artistic spills of design down from them - also marking the trails, though there's a pattern to the blazes themselves that Xeyr doesn't recognize. It's not really a runic language, but... It might be developed from one.

The water and laughter are both towards the fork - probably off the right bend.

There's cracks of breaking twigs and such elsewhere, sounds of something walking along the forest floor. (Possibly something very clumsy off to her far left, that just ran into a bush.)

She finishes coughing and - she seems to be alone for now - takes a few moments to steady herself. Being around all the trees makes it better (not that she would not have been fine). 

The forest is lovely; the trees are lovely. She takes them in, lets the feeling of them seep through her. The fruits look tended so she doesn't touch them. 

If it's not a runic language, that she could then read, then she won't know what the pattern means. 

She hears the sounds to her far left and listens closer - for sounds of pain, for something moving toward her.

Whatever it is turns and crashes through the forest away from her. It might be an animal? Sounds like a medium-largeish animal, kind of.

She won't try to make her way there or make herself ready for possible attack, then.

She'll just sit here in the forest a little. It shouldn't matter for anything, and she's missed trees, and - she likes this forest. Will try to nudge some thin stems or branches to move toward her, pick up a recently fallen leaf and nudge it a little - she doesn't need anything, right now, but it's always good to know early if the plants somewhere new have anything strange.  

These don't seem to! Their biology is maybe a bit different, but they're still fundamentally well adapted for the 'immobile thing that lives off sunshine' niche.

She's seen a lot of biology. She pets the branch of an immobile thing that lives off sunshine when it comes to her. She leans back against an enormous tree. She watches the trees and the ferns and the canopy. 

She'll stay here an hour, maybe, unless the sound of voices starts moving away and then she'll head toward it quickly before it can be gone. People clearly come here but she doesn't know how often. She shouldn't die again so soon, and she'd prefer to not end up with a choice between that and taking some of these plants that probably belong to someone, if it happens that this place gets people only rarely and is in some way hard to leave.

The voices rise and fall over time - she seems to mostly just be hearing the louder parts, which aren't constant. They do start sounding a little bit farther away by the hour mark, but they aren't receding quickly or anything.

She'll get up, and run a hand against a tree, and pet a leaf gently, and then go towards the voices.

Seems to be a group of six humanoids, currently walking downhill - in the same direction she's going. They're... Probably not human? Their skeletal structure and gait look ever so slightly off. The one who looks most weathered - maybe the oldest - looks fairly female-ish, while the others are all far more androgynous. They vary around human-normal height, with sturdy builds. All but one of them have long hair, in a mix of complicated braids and messy crown rolls. They all have tattoos or bright swirls of paint on their bodies - their clothes are mostly loose and flowing, leaving significant chunks of skin bare. (Three of them have bare chests except for jewelry.) They all carry packs, too - the fabrics all look like they hail from a civilization with pretty decent industrialization, with vibrant colors and loud patterns.

The maybe-woman (one of the ones with a bare chest, their hair in tiny braids with numerous beads woven through them) apparently hears her coming down the path and half turns, then calls out, "Good morning!" Their voice is a smooth, deep baritone.

She can't know yet if she is misdressed in some way rather than just likely enough strange, but there isn't much to do about it, either.

And now she knows that it is morning, and that here has mornings.

"Good morning," she calls back. (Her clothing is more covering and less flowing, though parts of it drape like shawls or scarves do. Her hair is dark green, in two long knots on either side of the top of her head. She has a simple beaded bracelet on one wrist, a few simple fringes. No pack.)

They're not acting like she's particularly strange.

"You local?" the woman asks, idly, "Or challenge hiking?"

There are different ways she can pick a story. "Not local. I'm - lost, some, I think."

"Aw, man. Well, this isn't too bad a place to get lost - we're near one of the bead towns - did you get split up from your pod, though?"

(What does her sense for the language suggest a bead town and a pod is?)

'Bead town' seems to be a shape association - the mental image is of roughly circular settlements that form along rivers and railways and the like, creating pictures on a map like beads on a string.

'Pod' is a collective noun, one that implies a small group of unrelated creatures currently traveling together, with a rather loose, amorphous structure. Applies by default to the groups formed by a couple different species, and when used for people implies the group's mostly teens or young adults.

She won't get a mental image of something she has never seen, but she knows what words mean, if they mean something she knows about at all.

"That's good to know, thank you. Yes, we got split up. My two friends can follow me, and will be here, but I can't know how soon."

"Okay. 's good they're coming."

"There's some nice lay downs near the train station - I like this place, we get lots of throughs - if you think it won't be long, though a lay down's got nothing on somewhere with a kitchen," the woman continues. "Our place doesn't have spare beds, but there's a real nice nest a block over whose throughs moved on pretty recently, and our neighborhood's the best in town."

One of the others shoulder bumps her with a laugh. "Of course you think that."

She sticks her tongue out at that one. "I've done more wandering than you, kid. I know how to tell a good neighborhood from a shiny one."

The other rolls their eyes. "Not everyone's gonna wanna stay in a nest, gramps."

The woman shrugs. "Eh, when I was your age I wanted to stay in nests, often as I could. But, sure." To Xeyr: "There's some other vacancies in our neighborhood, but nests are just nice, you know? Invested in and all that."

(Linguistically - a lay down is something like a hostel or hotel. Short stay, not very thorough amenities, but it's a roof over your head. Some very basic ones are free shelters, some do work trade, some only accept barter or payment. A through is a transient resident of a city or home. 'A shiny one' implies a place that looks very nice and alluring, but may or may not actually be very good. A nest in this context specifically implies a home containing some longer term residents, including most centrally a pregnant person or parents with young children. It can also, of course, mean a structure built by an animal to shelter its young.)

They're welcome words, quite a few of them, warm associations. She can only hope the world matches to the better words it has, to whatever extent it can.

"Thank you," she says again. "Do you know what the people here may prefer to accept in trade?

May I walk with you? I don't know the way, and I would hate to disturb anyone, or trespass." 

"Lots will be fine with just normal help if you don't have any commodities on hand - this isn't a super fancy city or anything. But for commodities - we're far enough from the ocean that pearl and shell beads are a bit outsized on worth; I wouldn't bother trading spice or tea blocks here unless you've got something really exotic in your pack. Better to save those, y'know, for somewhere with a worse climate for growing it," one of the younger members of the party says.

The older woman, then: "We're at a good size for starting up on a trade, though, if you're looking to do art for people or the like and want to settle. And, yes, you can travel with us." She pauses, evaluates Xeyr, then, a bit slowly: "Trespassing isn't a very big concern. Hard to do accidentally, and people are understanding about mistakes if you just didn't know how stuff works, and they're very understanding about need, on the whole. Just don't try to get into any locked doors unless the place looks abandoned or it's urgent, and most places do keep to upper floors being private, first floor public - or know they're weird, and so inform visitors about that."

"Thank you. Could I ask what help is normal here? I wouldn't want to assume it's what I'm used to, if it might not be." (She looks momentarily at her bracelet, at the mention of shell beads.)

(Does starting up on a trade have any special connotations?)

"Thank you very much. I'll keep all that in mind, thank you, very much, and let my friends know." She tries to walk with them, close enough to talk and to not end up off the path, but not close enough to run into anyone or as close as they are to each other. (And, well. That's definitely more words it's much much better to hear than not. For the world's own people, as well as for herself. And to hope the world matches to them.)

('Starting up on a trade' more or less implies beginning to establish a name for yourself as a trades-person. Generally implies you're already skilled in that trade, and just need to build a customer base and a reputation.)

"Sensible," the older woman says. "Around here - if you're staying in a house, people'll probably want help tidying, cooking, or with miscellaneous skills. If you're a neat hand at carpentry or sewing, you can get pretty far there. Lots of people have gardens and won't say no to help there, though if you really like working with plants you'll want to stick to the outskirts - the orchards and such are all along the metro spokes. The orchards will also have more call for most labor-intensive jobs. Cooking, cleaning, and mending's going to go farther in a nest, especially if you can take out kids' clothes - new moms especially always think their tykes are gonna act calmer and grow slower than they actually will." She sounds very entertained about this. "For a lay-down - most of them that do work-trade are attached to somewhere you can pitch it without too much in the way of specialized skills, or they've got only one or two beds for people doing cooking and cleaning and the like. Most take performers, too, if you've got anything that'd be good to show off in a common room, and if you're good with paint, no one sensible's going to be offended if you look around for lay-downs with faded wall art and offer to touch it up - not all of them will take you up on that, but I've found plenty of beds doing that before."

"Oh - and you're quite welcome. Plenty've people helped me in my own wandering days. It's good to get a chance to pay that forward."

That's all very good to know. (And good again, to hear. To hope, some). She says so, thanks them again. Smiles a little at the mention of new moms, nods at the mention of help in wandering days. (She wonders some about the pitching in work-trade - that could be good; could be - less good. (In general, not for her.) But that might be better to see than to ask.)

(What are metro spokes?)

She'll stop asking questions, at least for a bit, now. See if they talk about anything themselves, or ask her anything. Keeps looking around as they walk. 

(Metro spokes - local train lines going out from a city's limit and into surrounding areas, which don't connect to other cities. Sometimes it also means train lines branching off from a small town on a major line between cities, too, but the general concept of 'rural-to-urban local trains' stands.)

The group mostly falls back into silence, though there's bursts of conversations on plans once they're back in the city (two of the younger ones want to go to a museum, one wants to start getting things together to hike back out to that promontory they saw which would be excellent for painting scenery from, someone just plans to curl up with a book...). The area seems to be accumulating more signs of habitation - they pass clusters of small houses tucked back into the trees (though some of those clusters appear to have rambled into each other at some point), and the path gets broader and better maintained until it's really more of a dirt road.

They pass people more and more frequently - and a clear trend of younger boyish people and older feminine people starts emerging. More of the people who seem to be traveling are boyish, whereas a lot of the people hanging out outside the houses appear to be women (except some boyish maybe-teens doing physical labor here or there; most of the agricultural workers look like women, though). Several of the rural house-clusters, much smaller clusters with less intense agriculture around them, have boundary signs noting they're a birthing home.

Everyone seems to be friendly, and there's frequent places to stop walking and rest off the side of the road. Those seem to accumulate multiple groups sometimes, usually with a buzz of gossip about road conditions and nearby features of interest and the local region. There don't seem to be a lot of motorized vehicles - though they do have to step to the side for a tractor to pass once - but there's bikes and a tall stocky animal much like a small elephant and something resembling goats the size of large ponies that a few people pass with. The bikes and goat-ish animals often have carts attached, though there's plenty of people just riding, and the elephant-ish creature isn't hauling anything but wears a harness that looks like it could be hooked up to something.

There's also food and water - the water's free, from hand pumps at some of the rest places (with large signs to be extra careful about waste here), and the food consists of vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and assorted processed foods being sold at roadside stands mostly manned by kids (the processed foods introduce "small fish", as well as dense cakes, assorted dried plants, honey tablets, tea mixes, roasted nuts/ seeds, cheeses, and an entire genre of "small gourd with fillings" (often very flavorful)). (Many of the stands also sell things like juice, of course.) The norm here seems to be haggling, and their group pays with small strings of assorted beads, though one of the younger members of their group convinces a kid to trade them a gourd full of a soft cheese, hot peppers, and honey for a painted wooden hound-cat (which looks somewhat leopard-ish; probably the blue and green and metallic golden paint is artistic license - they've passed more than a few animals like it, often sprawled out on porches or fences or tree limbs or roofs, and those have been medium-sized animals, with coats in shades of browns and yellows).

They have trains too, then. And trains that go out to rural areas. 

She'll listen to conversation, as much as she can without looking like she's evesdropping, and keep looking around. The people she's walking with act like people who have a lot of free time, and can spend it on what they enjoy. But she doesn't know if that's something special, about them. How everything fits together here, yet.

She notices the pattern in people. Huh. Are there any people who look like younger girls or older men? Do they dress or act differently? Has she seen any children? How do people act around the birthing home - are the signs boundary signs in that people don't cross them?

She listens in on gossip as much as she can. Steps aside when everyone else does, and also in general if anyone needs to get through or by her.

She'll get some free water if she can. Do people pump it into their hand and drink like that, or are the pumps set up to drink from directly, or does everyone bring containers? 

She looks at the food (she is hungry - there wasn't food, on the little boat - but it's not critical at all). Watches the bartering. Can she tell what food is cheaper or more expensive? Do some people get better prices than others? Are there prices posted at all?

...She doesn't need food critically, but it might be good to try getting it while she's around people who have been helpful. She'll watch the process a few times first.

From the sheer amount of art everywhere, and from most people's behavior, free time seems to be the norm, though it's a bit hard to tell - many people seem to be constantly engaged in doing something, but many people also seem engaged in just resting or reading or telling stories, and this seems widely tolerated rather than being treated as 'laziness.' (Though, also, there's often no real argument if an elder comes up to a teenager laying in the sun and orders them to go do some task.)

There... Don't seem to be any younger girls actually, though children might just be hard to gender - and there are children, though the ages are clustered a bit oddly. Those small enough to carry are largely on the backs of travelers, and most children who seem associated with the houses look to be between 'toddler' and 'seven or so,' by a human scale. Not a lot of preteens or early teens, though there are any. Children also seem to have a single close in age sibling a lot, or to be otherwise paired off with another child their own age - but it's very hard to tell what the sibling structure is otherwise, since many households seem to contain multiple unrelated pairs (but they might just be guests, so).

There's... A few travelers who might be older men? It's hard to tell, though, and there isn't any kind of clearly dimorphic clothing or behavior pattern.

People do seem to avoid the birthing homes, though not absolutely - and the strongest avoidance seems to be an age thing, with late teens and twenty-somethings apparently either attached to the household or avoiding it. Kids seem to be completely ignoring the signs. (There's an interesting thing there, too - the twenty-somethings possibly attached to the birthing homes are the youngest female-looking people Xeyr's seen.) The main difference seems to be just in where rest points are - that is, away from the birthing homes, which also aren't near each other.

People seem to drink from the pumps in a variety of ways - but mostly from their hands or by refilling bottles, or by refilling glass containers from the stands, or refilling drinking gourds. (The pumps aren't really set up to drink directly from, but some very flexible teens who apparently don't mind getting wet do so anyways.)

Simple, unprocessed food, especially that's a bit older in a way that gives it a squishier texture, is definitely cheaper. Some foods do seem cheaper than others beyond that - there's a large juicy-looking fruit that must be at its peak season right now, from how much is available. People who are good at bartering get better prices, but there doesn't seem to be much variation for initial prices for strangers from the same stand (though people known to the person running the stand do seem to get lower prices; using this to argue for yourself to get lower prices seems extremely rude). There's prices posted, but only a bit irregularly, and more of the signs seem to advertise a specific food rather than a specific price.

Her companions ask her if she's hungry pretty early on, with a clear offer to buy her food.