Chris returns to looking astonished.

"What are you?"

"- I'm a cleric. I serve the goddess Iomedae. I didn't have this spell prepared yesterday, because I was expecting to be in my own country, and unfortunately I didn't recognize the monster that sent me here any more than it seemed you did."

Chris does not seem to feel like this explains much. "I've met clerics. They don't do magic. And where is your country?"

"...it sounds like you have met lay priests and not empowered clerics, empowered clerics do magic. My country is Cheliax on the continent of Avistan? ...on the planet Golarion?"

"If empowered clerics could create water we'd have a chaplain here and I'd get to shower every day. …anyway. You're on the continent of Antarctica, on the planet Earth, in the, uh, Milky Way Galaxy. This base is run by the United States of America, which isn't located on this continent."

"I don't actually know a name for the galaxy Golarion is in, it could be the same one. What is the base for? - also the food is safe to eat and it will disappear after it has existed for twenty-four hours so it's a bit of a waste not to have anyone but me at it, it should feed fifteen in that time."

"It looks delicious and the offer is much appreciated but we don't actually know if magic food that vanishes after a day is safe for us to eat, and nobody's going to starve without it. The base is for science, there's a lot of stuff you can't do anywhere else."

"I'm not allowed to lie but I suppose you would not know that independently either... I had you in mind when I made it so even if you are different from Golarion humans in some important way it ought to be fine."

"The scientists are looking at it, maybe they'll agree and we'll get to eat fresh food."

"I should warn you it comes out undersalted."

"We have salt. …So, you're not supposed to be here, but there won't be any flights for a while."

"The giant bird is wanted elsewhere?"

"The giant – it's flying machines, not birds. It's dangerous for the flying machines to fly here in the winter so the pilots don't fly them here in the winter, normally. If you are going to die if you stay here we could ask for a favor."

"I don't see any reason to think I would die if I stay here, especially since even if you only have enough food put by for the number of people manning the station I can make my own. I might also be able to make it on foot if there are parts of the continent that are warm enough to settle but it would be a gamble, Endure Elements is not rated for this level of cold and I'd be betting on being able to make a sufficiently insulating quinzee to sleep in."

"We've got years of food, it doesn't go bad out here. Please do not try to cross hundreds of miles of ice alone on foot. I know it's been said that with God all things are possible, but…"

"...I'm not sure that is said on my planet. I would definitely also be relying on the coat."

"You need a better coat. Oh, also. A few things. One, we're going to be monitoring you while you're here. Your whole thing doesn't really make sense for any of our rivals, they shouldn't be able to do this, but we can't completely rule out some kind of threat. That's why I keep following you around. Eventually I'm going to sleep and by then someone else will be picked to do that."

"That makes sense. Is there anything you need from me to cooperate with this, besides not actively sneaking off?"

"There's a bunch of things we don't want you to touch and rooms we don't want you to go in. If you try we will tell you to stop."

He holds out his hand, palm towards Blai, fingers up.

"This gesture means stop. We might also shake our heads to mean 'no'."

He shakes his head from side to side.

"If you want or need something, and you can't communicate it with words, you should use pictures – we have lots of writing utensils and paper – and not try to search for it yourself."

"I should be able to do this spell and also one that lets me understand and read but not speak, every day. Share Language lasts 24 hours, Comprehend Languages a bit less than an hour but I can do it more times if I'm not using those spell slots for anything else."

"Anyway, I'll talk to you more soon, and I can answer questions, but I should go reassure everyone else that I haven't gone mad, and they might have questions for me to relay to you."

And then he's back to using the book-thing, for a bit.

Blai supposes he will sit on his question about how that works.

"All right. …before we do more complex questions, I should ask if you feel dizzy, tired, confused beyond how this situation is confusing, nauseated, or like it's hard to breathe."

"No. Is it high here? If there were a treeline, would we be above or below it?"

"It's high. It's about … so this is one foot, I'm a bit under six feet tall, the air thickness here is the same air thickness you get in a normal place that's a little over 11 thousand feet above sea level, right now. We're not actually that high but the air is thinner down here so it's like we are. I don't know about tree lines."

Book-thing poke.

"Apparently tree lines can be at different heights in different places, actually."