Merrin is a highly trained endurance paramedic! She is capable of being a professional and maintaining dignity even in extremely weird circumstances! 

(....For some reason, none of her training scenarios ever included absurdly stupidly attractive shirtless men with abs. Possibly that was an oversight??? She should tell someone. If she ever gets to go home.) 

"- My name is Merrin," she says, and...imitates the weird motion he just did, as well as she can. "I'm - not from here - my current impression is that I am from another world that doesn't have magic," and instead has SANITY AS A CONCEPT the entire line of thought generating that is uncharitable and probably mostly downstream of Merrin feeling upset about her life right now and she will ignore it. "- I was a doctor there. Roughly. Wen Ning found me and asked me to treat..." 

She cuts off because medical confidentiality, and glances over to try to catch Wen Ning's eye. "- Um, he can explain, I guess?" 

"Zhuren is ill," Wen Ning says.

"We sincerely appreciate your efforts, Mistress Merrin," Sect Leader Lan says. "I confess I'm not sure what it means to be from another world. Are you from the ghost realm, or the Heavens? Or the Americas?"

He's so distracting. His FACE is distracting. This is not something that Merrin has ever been prepared for. 

"I - um - I don't...think I'm from any of those? To be clear I do not at all have a model of how or why I ended up here and in fact it violates basically everything I understand about the world and physical reality. Sorry. I - should I just tell you the things that I observed and experienced and then you can do the interpretation?"

(He's an authority figure which is almost sort of like being a Keeper?? Merrin....is aware that she is reaching very hard, here, but she very badly needs someone who can take in all of her information as inputs and be smarter than her and output something that makes SENSE. And the person described as a 'Clan Leader' is as good a candidate as any? Right? This is definitely not about how good his abs are.) 

"Master Wen, I am sure Master Wei needs you," he says in the tone of someone who expects to be obeyed. "Mistress Merrin-- is that your clan name?-- excuse me for a moment while I dress and order some tea prepared. Would you like a change of clothing and something to eat? I can order a bath drawn up but, I apologize, it will take longer. We are under military conditions."

"- That's fine, I understand." 

(Merrin says this via automatic and apparently automatically-translated social script, as a stalling method to buy herself time to actually think.) 

"....Um, yes, I would like that - sorry, no, I don't need a bath. It's fine. I understand that you're resource-constrained. ....The main thing I need is to better understand the local geopolitical situation? Can you tell me why the Lan clan is fighting the, um, sorry, I forgot what the other clan is called - why you're fighting them instead of agreeing on terms and then not doing that?" 

He bows. "Thank you, Sect Leader Lan, Mistress Dath." And then he flees because Sect Leader Lan is terrifying.

"This way, Mistress Dath. --The overall situation is complicated, but fundamentally the Wen clan burned the Lan clan's home and tried to burn our books and killed many of our disciples, and we need to make them pay, so that other people do not think it is a good idea to try to burn our home."

- Merrin is going to start up a hypothetical and keep track of what she's hearing in a hypothetical logical scenario. For now. Until she– she's not sure what the exit condition is here, actually, and whether it's 'until she explodes' or 'until she doesn't explode and understands what's happening.' 

"Yes. I - hear you." Which is true. It would be false to say 'I understand.' "Can you explain some background - why did the Wen clan do all of that? What were their objectives?" 

"The Wen clan is led by Wen Ruohan, who is concerned that the other clans would become powerful and challenge his rule, and wanted no one to be powerful in the rivers and lakes but himself."

"...I - um - I'm sorry but that does not actually make me feel less confused. Why does Wen Ruohan," Merrin pronounces this very carefully, "- care so much about other clans and their influence? I - my understanding is that 'rivers' and 'lakes' are a generic term for geographical features - which specific rivers and lakes did he want to personally have power over and why?" 

"'The rivers and lakes' is metonymy for the world of cultivators. --I suppose translating things literally when possible is a good trait in a translation talisman. Clears up misunderstandings quickly." He shakes his head. "I hesitate to speak too much of a man I do not know well, but I think Wen Ruohan wants to be powerful so he can be safe. If he is the strongest, he thinks, no one can kill him. The Wen clan is not a kind place to grow up."

Merrin is, again, trying to listen and hold onto everything being said and finding that she doesn't quite have enough space in working memory for it. 

"....I understand, in general, I think?" She is not at all sure that she understands the 'world of cultivators' which rivers and lakes are a shorthand for, but. That can wait. "I understand that - being stronger gives a person more options - and that would, would - be important - if he were under threat -" 

Pause. Merrin is trying to take a deep breath and this is, for some reason, hard. 

"- Can you tell me about the Wen clan. And - why - it isn't kind....?" 

"Where you're from, are there-- clans? Sects? Schools?-- which have different ways of teaching and being?"

Merrin stares intently at him, clearly listening very hard to the (incredibly baffling!!!) concepts that he's trying to convey.

"- Yes? There are different specialties and areas of expertise, and - people choose one to learn based on their native traits and skills and comparative advantage....?" 

"Wei Wuxian was raised in the Jiang clan, which tends to be-- brash, bold, disrespectful of hierarchy. Their words are 'attempt the impossible' and so they do. The Lan, my clan, conversely, are bound by our rules. We speak softly, we are polite, we don't run, we eat food without spices, we go to bed and rise at the same time each day. You see how these produce different people?"

It's a beautifully eloquent speech and it really isn't helping Merrin feel less like this is a strangely compelling hallucination. 

"....I - guess? - No, actually, I don't, sorry. I - isn't the entire point of Law that it - makes people stronger, so that Civilization as a whole can achieve what seemed impossible before–"

Focus.

"....I think food with spices is fine and, um, not correlated with personal virtue, in general?" Merrin is pretty sure that excessively spicy congee contributed to Wei Wuxian throwing up on her but that's really not a moral claim, what would that even mean.

"That is a fascinating topic of discussion I would like to have when you're more settled." They arrive at a tent and Sect Leader Lan instructs a servant to bring tea and a robe for Merrin. (The servant is not phenomenally good-looking. The servant is, in fact, unusually ugly for dath ilan.)

"--I assume you have different food in your different world, I'll have the servant bring small bowls of several dishes so you can learn what you like?"

...He's right, and Merrin is very relieved about it. It's an important topic to discuss but they can discuss philosophy LATER. Merrin is aware that she's not very good at this and should really schedule it for a time when she has more cognitive capacity available. 

He's so pretty though this is not the point. 

"- I'm really not fussy about food -" she shouldn't assume that the range of foods here falls within what she's used to, maybe some of it is awful, "- but yes I would appreciate that, thank you."

"I will see you in a few minutes, Mistress Dath," he says. 

She is brought a set of clothes: trousers, an underrobe (white), an overrobe (light blue with clouds embroidered on it), a sash, and a blue hair ribbon. The robes are incredibly soft and, although they don't quite fit, are just large enough that this doesn't present much trouble. 

Merrin nods and smiles and accepts the clothes. 

(...Where is she supposed to change...? She doesn't have a tent of her own yet?) 

Well, the servant has left her alone in this tent, so...

Great. Merrin is definitely capable of figuring out these clothes! 

Trousers: easy. Those are clearly for legs. They're pretty comfortable, too.

The robes are more confusing but Merrin eventually figures it out. Probably? 

...She has no idea what to do with the sash. She steps out of the tent smiling and still holding it. 

Lan Xichen returns! He is dressed in his own light-blue robes with a cloud design (significantly more elaborate embroidery) and his hair ribbon has been joined by a spiky silver hair thing. 

"Do you need help with the sash? It goes around your waist."

Merrin looks at him. Looks down at the sash. Looks up at him again. 

"....I could use some help, sure." 

Why is he so pretty. This continues to be ridiculously and absurdly distracting. Merrin used to think that the entire institution of faceblanding was probably unnecessary but she thinks she understands it better now.