They follow this with interest, and seem to gain as much information from what is being explicitly presented, as from tacit knowledge absorbed through the mindspace through the implicit consent.

"Thank you very much!"

As Vornmeth was describing the anatomical of the human voice, a background ~noise that had been steadily rising gets over a threshold of being noticable. Vornmeth can conceptualize it as noise, and simultaneously as a distorted blackened fuzz covering everything in the landscape beyond a certain radius from the apartment. It slowly creeps closer, and the noise slowly increases.

If he pays attention to it, it feels like the nonsense generated in the space between waking and sleeping, like a thousand dreams and a thousand despairing thoughts intermingling, like white noise meets static meets clipping, like the desire to give in and fall, like the space between remembering and forgetting.

The Restorer perks up at this, adopts a worried expression, and speaks somewhat hurriedly:

"The way we're, hm, linked at the moment is not stable. Your type of mind can only experience it a limited amount without a break. If we push it too far, you'll experience harm, best described as echoes of insanity.

We yet have a fair degree of margin, but we shouldn't waste time. Try not to tune in to the noise.

Are there more spheres of information, or spheres of a skill, you wish to share before we end this connection? Something it would help if I understood in detail, or a task I could perform competently, that would help for this crisis? I estimate you can safely share about two such transferences."

Vornmeth struggles not to focus on the noise, an unpracticed sort of mental exercise.

"I — now that you have language we can explain things, but ..."

And he builds another 'skill ball' about Emergency response — what systems are in place to help support people during emergencies, what the plans are if Restorer of Salt Water cannot help with the hurricane, where he expects things to break down first, and the sort of wordless intuition of 'how bad is it' that one builds up during a career in Emergency Services.

"I can give you another on the mechanics of hurricanes, if you need it? But I would prefer to disconnect with more margin before going insane."

As they absorb the emergency response skill ball, they adopt the concerned expression which is so often associated with such professions.

"Thank you. I do not have intuition for how... Air behaves at scale. It seems quite different than the streams of the Depths. It would be useful for using my gifts on it. And I do think we have safe margin still, but it's your call."

They gesture to a lever stuck to the ground, which Vornmeth automatically understands is an affordance for ejecting the visitor out of his mind.

a tree with an umbrella with a flower pattern that grows new petals that fall in fall as the leaves brown a platonic triangle snuggle the essence of every concert there is a concern about how we handle crises and you've always known your mother was always behind you with pancakes the train is late cold sweat overheating computer core an awkward interaction in a queue throwing cue balls at the wall making patterns and writing that haunts you if you forget and

Just fall

... yeah Vornmeth trusts their visitor a lot but he's out. Someone else can explain hurricanes with actual words. He yanks the lever.

He very suddenly finds himself alone in his own mind again, chair across from him vacated. 

The whispers and the noise don't disappear, but he can see the fuzz immediately stopped approaching. Instead it seems to have started to recede, getting farther away at a pace much slower than the previous approach. A certain kind of pressure disappeared.

loneliness on a hilltop with tea and biscuits falling into deep water and joyously fleeting like a trumpet with a toothache

As he examines the emptiness left by the Restorer, he notices he can see his real world senses overlaid. Perhaps he always could, but wasn't paying attention, like when you're focusing on feeling the shape of something in your pocket to the point where you don't pay attention to your visual stimulus. He has a sense that, with practice, he could act in both places simultaneously.

Without the Restorer's presence, though, the awareness of the apartment room starts to fade, to completely disappear after a few minutes. If he tries, he can hold on to it and have it fade slower, but he can't stop it.

In the tent the Restorer is still looking at him, but without the piercing red glow active. The body language has changed dramatically, they now meet eye contact and then look away periodically in a socially comfortable way, they stand at ease instead of completely still like a hunting animal, and there are readable facial expressions. While paying attention to how he comes out of the mind space, they're also palpating their own throat.

How has the people in the real word reacted to the two of them staring silently and unmovingly at each other for the last five minutes, lit by the red of the Restorer's eyes?

As much as he wants to cling to the visualization, the topic expert said that he should avoid paying attention to the fuzz. So. He is going to let it go.

While they were out, someone helpfully moved the table such that if Vornmeth had fallen over, he would have fallen safely on the sand instead of bonking his head on a metal table. Other than that, and some cautious staring, the attending Emergency Services personnel left them alone to complete the process.

"Sorry to eject, that ... thing on which I am not focusing was scary and uncomfortable," he speaks-and-signs, because he's not sure how much the Restorer has integrated their knowledge of the modes. "A hurricane is powered by the evaporation of warm water off of the surface of the ocean. This rising warm air meets descending cold air to create a vertical storm cell. When these cells form in the right pattern, they can create a low-pressure zone in the center of a spiral of cells. The existence of the low-pressure zone draws the storm cells inward, speeding their rotation and reinforcing the motions of the storm. To stop or weaken it, you need to either kill it's angular momentum, decrease its temperature relative to surrounding air, eliminate the low-pressure zone in the center, or ideally some combination of these. But we don't actually have to stop the hurricane, we just need to keep it from hitting the city. Diverting it south is safe; that area is not inhabited by humans at the moment, and the ecosystem is more used to hurricanes, since they rarely hit this far north. The hurricane has some momentum, but will change course to follow low-pressure zones."

"... if you want to try linking with someone else, I can get you a meteorologist, who will have an intuitive understanding of these processes."

The Restorer listens to this, with a look of focused attention. At the end, they sign "I see" at the same time as opening their mouth to emit a SCREEECH.

When they see someone startle at this, they sign "I apologize. Could you all look away for a moment?"

They put their fingertips back on their throat and massage it thoughtfully. They then walk up to the wall of the tent, and when everyone is looking away, there is a warble, just the same as in the recordings of the first contact.

When everyone looks back the Restorer has walked back to where they stood, now experimentally sounding out vowels. If someone peeks into their mouth, there is a black tongue and marbled teeth instead of the earlier baleen.

"Aaa.Ooo. O- A- Eee" 

They then move on to the consonants, in the same order as Vornmeth described them in mindspace.

"Pa. Ta. Ga. Na..."

They start experimenting their way through longer combinations of phonemes, and try some sentences out.

"Oadev is oed. Wader is wed. Water is wet. Water is wet."

"The trickest bart is brobably. propaply. Pro-ba-bly. The voice box."

"The trickiest part is probably the voice box."

"A hurricane is powered by the evaporaton. Evaporation of warm water off of the surfaf. Surface of the ocean."

They then address Vornmeth again, now mimicking him in speaking-and-signing. People around may notice that the Restorer has inherited any dialect or idiosyncracies that Vornmeth has when speaking.

"I have some doubts about whether I can affect the hurricane directly. Air is not my domain, the scale is grand, and my power here is limited - I am far from the depths and thus my connection is weak. Perhaps there is something I can do to encourage the water to redistribute in such a way that less warm water is close to the surface of the ocean, so it doesn't... Evaporate?

Communing with a meteorologist may well give me the understanding required to know more.

What other areas of the emergency response may I be helpful in?"

They look around the room. If there is a standard for which roles are filled during an emergency response meeting like this, they'll start identifying people in the room from clothing or context clues, with only slightly worse accuracy than Vornmeth would if he found himself in an unfamiliar team. ("And you must be the diplomat..?")

Who is there with them?

This is þereminia! Of course there's a standard!

In this case, it's specialized shoulder patches denoting roles. Present in this tent are: a linguist, because they were expecting communication problems; a coordinator, who is currently helping to organize the deployment of storm barriers; Vornmeth, for executive decision-making; a communications specialist, currently idle after getting the satellite link up; and a general gopher and a driver, who are both double-checking the high-wind-rated anchors on the tent and equipment.

This isn't actually the main dispatch area — that is, sensibly, in one of Emergency Service's hardened underground bunkers about two hours north. This team was just intended to try to contact Restorer of Salt Water and then retreat into the city proper.

(After seeing powerful and finely-controlled wide-scale hydrotelekinesis, they weren't inclined to underestimate how much water Restorer could stop).

"If you can bring cold, deep ocean water to the surface, and send the surface water to the depths, that will help," Vornmeth agrees. "Same thing with inverting the air layers, but if air is harder than water it's not worth focusing on that. While the winds are dangerous, most secondary damage is going to come from the storm surges. Are you capable of either quickly erecting or acting as a break-water to keep waves from hitting the city? Alternatively, can you get the water that is currently in the city drain system out into the ocean so that the drain system can handle the storm better? Part of the danger of the hurricane is that the early rains are already taking up capacity in our drainage system, which lowers the peak surges of rainwater they can absorb."

"If those are unviable we have a list of more ideas."

Just because they weren't inclined to underestimate Restorer of Salt Water doesn't mean they didn't make a priority-ordered list of possible interventions. That's just good planning.

The Restorer asks a few clarifying questions about the responsibilities of each person in the room, partially to verify they're using their bestowed emergency response skill correctly, and partially they ask questions that resolve ambiguities in a way that implies fairly high seniority.

If any of the humans communicate that this is a temporary shelter, they will suggest that they start moving.

"I could probably have a noticable effect in moving ocean water around at scale, but this water is not my water. It is not of the Depths. It does not heed the call as eagerly. It is likely worth a try though."

"Air, I'm profoundly inefficient at. At this scale, it's not viable at all. There are costs associated I'm not willing to pay."

"I could likely easily act as a break-water, and there are possibilities for erecting permanent structures, but they would involve bringing a piece of the Depths here, which has its own downsides. Your species are brittle to many of its effects. Not to say I would veto it, it just means there will be cleanup and follow-up problems. It would be quick though, and I wouldn't need to stay in place."

"Moving water through narrow pathways to move it is feasible, but I would need to commune with someone who has a deep understanding of where those pathways lay. As mentioned, this water is not my water. It would not tell me its location lightly."

The Restorer looks out at the hurricane again.

"Shall we start with one of these ideas while continuing to communicate and plan other actions? It seems we're under a bit of time pressure."

"I have the gift of Transversal. It is the gift of making large distances small. If at least one side is the Depths, my range is immense. If none of them are, it's modest but significant. I would need to be able to see where I'm going, or commune with someone who has a good understanding of the location I'm going to. I can bring people with me, but experiencing the, hm, atypical (they smile slightly) is something one of your kind only can do a limited amount before needing time away from it. Several trips should be fine, with only temporary symptoms. Many trips I will not agree to bring the same person on."

"Is there something we can do right now? Is anyone willing to come with to continue communication?"

The coordinator glances at Vornmeth, who nods an approval.

"That's my role," she volunteers. "Coming with you to maintain communications, that is. As for which thing to attempt first ..." 

"Can your Transversal of distances carry large quantities of water? Does it affect temperature gradients? Does it maintain momentum? If so, you could make an impact by connecting one side of the storm cell to the other. If not, it's best to get barriers deployed before the first storm surges hit, and then clear out the drain systems. Salharn is familiar with the places barriers should go, and can put you in touch with one of the engineers familiar with the drain system."

"What are the effects that your barrier of the Depths would have, to necessitate cleanup?"

He gestures for the others to pack the temporary shelter back in. It was a reasonable thing to prepare, but now that they're not having communication or transport difficulties that need to be managed from the front, they should pack it in and get somewhere less exposed.

"I can use Transversal to ask two equal shapes across distances to find themselves in each other's place. This is less costly to use often, but more costly to use for large shapes."

"I can also allow space itself to find a tear inside it, which continuously allows the collapse of distances. This is quite costly as a starting point, and requires me to continue to pay dues as time goes on. Space does not always look kindly upon being torn, bent and collapsed. This certainly allows moving large amounts of water, especially water that can be accelerated, since it's a continuously open rift. "

"The barrier would be made out of something that is by no means brittle or malleable, and which would have slight passive effects on members of your species, not unlike those which communing have. It would be possible for me to come back after recovering for some time, and encourage it to return or decay, but you would have to live alongside it for some time."

"Please look away for a moment."

Something warbles in their hand. When they turn back, they present a small clam, black as (an unpolluted) night sky, with an ornate pattern and some spots of light. It languidly opens and extends a short tentacle with a pearl on the end. When nothing happens for a few moments, it slowly retracts it and closes around it again.

"This is one of my friends from the Depths. They've agreed to convey a communing connection, should it prove useful. If there is someone whose knowledge you'd like me to inherit, have them touch its pearl and they will be invited to commune with me, even across distance. Unlike several members of the Depths, their body is safe to touch for your species."

They offer the clam to the room.