Above the town square, a thunderous crack is heard, as space itself splits apart. An uneven circle, five meters across, opens above the height of the buildings. Water with the pressure of a water cutter shoots up straight into the air, and continues an unfathomable distance into the air. The sound of the water flow in deafening.

If one is paying attention, far up in the sky, one could see a ghostly eel-shaped creature depart from the water beam and fly off toward a distant mountain.

The water keeps flowing at alarming rates.

20 seconds later, a figure calmly swims out of the column, somehow not launched into the sky by the flow. It drops, and lands on the ground hard.

<Ah, they chose to escape to a dry environment. Smart. Harder for me to follow.>

The figure seems to inflate to an amorphous blob while falling, and after landing slowly seems to deflate into a sleek humanoid. The legs bend too many times, and the eyes are red and piercing. There are plentiful fins especially around the legs, and the dark scales shimmer under the sunlight as water drips off

The figure stands up and makes a relaxed gripping gesture at the water column.

The tear in space quickly closes and the water column tapers off until it stops.

Some of the first water starts to make its way down again, and a heavy rain starts, salty to the taste. Sometimes, a piece of kelp, some coral, or an aberrant looking fish falls from the sky.

The figure turns their attention to their surroundings.

What their surroundings primarily are, at this point in time, is damp. Possibly less damp than their previous surroundings, though.

It's hard to say what other features of the area will be salient to them, though. Perhaps it is the neatly built wooden buildings, stuccoed against the elements, clearly built with tools beyond what can be mundanely constructed underwater. Perhaps it is the metal and glass four-wheeled vehicle rapidly reversing direction back up the paved and painted road, electric motor faintly whining.

Or perhaps it is the land-dwelling figure of a man with a perfectly normal number of knees and a snow shovel, rendered redundant by the salty water, over his shoulder. He stands at the foot of a short set of steps leading up to a central building, larger than the others, and stares at the visitor for a long moment. 

"Well," he finally remarks. "Isn't that something."

Then he half turns to call over his shoulder into the building. 

"Ludhi! I think I'm hallucinating. You might want to get on that."

They see the motion of the vehicle.

<This arrival seems to have scared some of the larger local life forms.>

Then they look over to the being roughly shaped like themselves.

<But not some of the smaller ones. I wonder if they communicate.>

They take a few steps toward the being that made noise.

If the being spooks, they'll stop, but while their approach is unhurried, they have nearly nothing in the way of human body language, meaning they're oddly stiff and alien in their motions. They do not blink.

Þereminians tend to pride themselves on being open-minded and welcoming. But that acculturation tends to come out the worse compared to millions of years of evolution. So Ðonzih does spook, a bit, when the creature comes toward him.

He makes a warding gesture toward the almost-certainly-a-hallucination and calls out in LCTL, slowly backing up the steps.

"I'm not sure who or what you are, but I am distinctly unsettled, possibly seeing things, and would prefer that you don't approach, all things considered."

These sounds don't immediately register as communication, but backing away from a threat is considerably universal.

They stop and back up a few steps. They wait to see if that helps.

That does help, yeah. It shows that it is ... maybe capable of understanding?

A woman with fantastically spiky hair pokes her head out of the door of the building.

"... nope. I see that too, Ðonzih. Well."

She whistles a tune that makes her phone chirp.

"Audio command recognized: calling Emergency Services ..."

"Emergency Services — what is the emergency?"

"There is some kind of grey, unsettling, humanoid creature who appeared in the square here —" her phone will have relayed her location on its own "— and at least two of us can see it. Me and Ðonzih."

"Okay — can you put Ðonzih on the phone so I can confirm what they see, please?"

And the conversation will continue along those lines for several moments, unless the unexpected visitor interrupts.

<There are two of them. They are near each other and don't spook each other. Guarding each other perhaps? Packs. Perhaps means communication.

They're making a lot of noise and it seems the noises are repeated. Communication?

Let's see if that works.>

They pick out some parts of the noises and tries to repeat them. Sadly their mouth is currently configured with baleen. The result does not sound particularly similar.

They open their mouth and emit a SCREEECH.

There is this to say about þereminians: if an animal makes noises at them, they have a certain tendency to make noises right back.

Ðonzih makes his own "Screeeeech" — although it lacks some of the terrifying harmonics of the figure's. Then he points to Ludhi and himself, stating their names, on general principle. If the figure has a concept of language, it can't hurt, and if they don't then he's not going to look foolish to anyone except himself, which is fine.

Imitation! These locals totally use sound for communication!

Okay, limb movements right after. Causal? Limb movements could also be communication!

The figure moves their arm for the first time after approaching, and imitates the pointing gesture exactly, to an eerie degree, including small mannerisms. They repeat the off-to-the-side gesture first, then to the their own body. They screech in time with the gestures, this time more quietly, to match the general cadence of the names Ðonzih pronounced.

SCREE-eech SCREE-eech!

... okay. On the one hand, that sure looks like the being doesn't understand concepts like "gestures" or possibly "names". Which is ... a challenging starting point. He's an accountant, not a linguist.

On the other hand, it's neither approaching any closer nor eating him, and he isn't hallucinating. And Emergency Services will be on their way real fast. And he doesn't need to finish shoveling the steps of the town hall. So, things are better overall than they could be.

"Should we be ... doing a pronoun skit?" he mutters lowly to Ludhi

"It mimicked your pointing a lot better than it mimicked the sound," she points out. "Maybe we should start with the signed mode?"

And so, after a moment of communication, the two straighten up and enact a little skit:

"I am Ludhi. You are Ðonzih," Ludhi says, speaking and signing simultaneously.

    "I am Ðonzih. You are Ludhi," Ðonzih replies.

Then Ludhi turns to the visitor. "I am Ludhi. You are ..."

She doesn't include the question word, because the being might think that she was naming it "what", which would lead to all kinds of confusion.

Excitement, this is definitely communication. There are patterns. They are regular! What do they indicate? Let's start with imitation as encouragement.

They imitate the full gestures, screeching along, now even more quietly as they get more control. They keep unblinking eye contact with Ludhi throughout the entire imitation.

"I am Ludhi. You are Ðonzih."

The gestures change slightly to match Ðonzih's idiolect.

"I am Ðonzih. You are Ludhi"

And back again.

"I am Ludhi. You are ..."

They pause for a moment. The proximity gesture keep the same flickering finger pattern as the being it is close to. Let's see if that's right.

Eye contact with Ðonzih. "I am Ludhi. You are Ðonzih." 

Eye contact with Ludhi. "I am Ðonzih. You are Ludhi." 

They wait, realizing they don't particularly have a way to know if that was right or not

Ðonzih and Ludhi exchange glances. This is ... not how it usually goes, in the fiction that Ludhi has read about this kind of exchange. But. That makes sense, that an alien would be much more strange than they were expecting, even given that.

It's definitely trying, and Ludhi has too much dignity to be the first one to give up on trying to communicate, even if she's really not sure what to do next.

She goes up the steps, and drags a table and chair from the anteroom down.

"I am Ludhi. They are Ðonzih. That is a table. That is a chair. That is the lake. That is the sun. That is the town hall."

Larger Continent Trade Language has a very regular structure, so these sentences all follow the same sentence structure: "Designated <pronoun in nominative case> <word or fingerspelled name>".

She gets Ðonzih to repeat the same series of sentences. Then, because this alien keeps undershooting the amount of context they're assuming, they both repeat the sentences in different orders, and while standing in different locations, so that the relative nature of the pronoun gestures becomes apparent.

As they take a break to get things from inside, the rain starts to let up. It seems the last of the water has made its way down, and at this point the area is looking fairly flooded, at least if the drainage of the area is not overengineered to a fairly high degree.

As they come to the end of their repetitions of these designations, which the figure is watching with rapt attention, they suddenly snap their head up into the sky. 

They do a hasty aggressive sweep of one arm with a grabby motion toward their left, and for a moment something warbles in their hand in a way that threatens comprehension.

A large blob of something hits the ground to the right of Ðonzih, dangerously close. Upon inspection, it could have been a seal before it fatally decompressed, if it wasn't for the tentacles...? and the extra eyes.

The impact creates a rather big splash of salt water. Ðonzih, the table, and the chair, are all probably soaked.

<So much collateral damage, so much death.> They scan the sky for a second, disappointed in something, but not finding it.

They look back at Ðonzih, seemingly inspecting him, taking slow steps to his right to see more angles.