He hopes the representatives are able to help her!

Off she goes then!

(The dragon the Elf has been waiting for swoops down to talk to the little one, and they have a private conversation that leaves the local annoyed. The local dragon does finally start talking to the Elf, later, at least.)

The little dragon has gotten pretty fast and shows up in a more human-dense area the next afternoon.

The Elf directed her to a place where they have a bus stop and store! She won't fit in the store, but a representative (a humanoid, but this one has an elephant trunk and frilled ears and is pink-and-orange striped) comes out to greet her.

It's kind of unnerving to be this close to people and strange devices, but, weird-but-harmless.

Headfeathers go all perked up and she tilts her head quizzically. This one doesn't seem like a human or a Quendi. (But what do they smell like?)

He smells kind of like a lizard and kind of like coffee.

"Good afternoon!" he says.

They don't stink like humans do! This is a point very much in their favor. "Hello!"

I want to know things about how things work (curiosity!!) but I barely even know how to talk to humanshape people. I only know the lessons taught to dragons by dragons. Our Tradition, not yours.

"Well, I'm happy to talk to you! I'm not a human but I'm passing familiar with them."

This dragon has a vague notion that all humanshape people kind of consider each other family-of-a-sort? And this is why they don't usually hurt each other? Or don't hurt each other much, she saw humans fighting sometimes but they always seem to calm down after. Is that true at all?

"No, I don't think that's true at all. Or, I suppose it might be depending on what you think of as considering someone family-of-a-sort, how do dragons interact with their families?"

One parent teaches the egg, and protects them and gives them food until they're grown enough to go on their own. Families don't challenge or attack each other at all, you can be sure they're not going to hurt you just because you have something they want and they can get away with taking it.

"I don't think that's the same. Humanoids do sometimes attack each other. But within a society they can mostly expect everyone will follow rules, and don't want to be the first to break them."

There are so many people though. How do you tell if one of them is a rulebreaker? It'd be scary not to know you're near someone like that. Can humanoids ask the wind and animals if other humanoids are rulebreakers, she doesn't think so, she thinks (you-all) mostly talk with sound.

"We mostly talk with sound when we're together, but we have writing, too, and also people who break rules usually get caught, and then sometimes if they broke a very serious rule they spend some time in a place called a jail where they don't have much else to do but calm down and learn better ways to handle whatever they were breaking rules about."

Huh.

This dragon is really very curious but does not want to ask more questions without paying for them somehow, that's rude, are there any things that she wants?

...this specific alien would actually really like a dragon ride if that's not rude or anything.

That sounds like it would involve letting someone TOUCH HER? In her BLINDSPOT? Aaaaaaaaah no.

Okay never mind. She could find ways to make money offplanet, easy peasy, but it's harder locally. The usual way to pay for objects from the Vanda Nossëo shops is with songs and stories, but a) those are normally recorded and they're not sure if Andalite thoughtspeak recording devices will work for dragons (though this would be a fine time to test it) and b) normally asking questions is just free.

I can tell stories. I can't say many things with sound. Maybe you can say them in sound. What's an Andalite? What kind of person are you and [image of the angel who chased her] and [image of the quendi who talked to her]? What kind of objects do you trade for stories?

"Andalites are a species from a world called Cube and they don't have mouths, but they do have telepathy, and they have good technology based around that; they can record telepathic messages. We can try it with you and see if it works. I'm a Shurreek, we're from Warp, and that's an angel, and that's an Elf. And the store's got fabric and food and -" Here's a mental image of the place, actually. It has some jewelry too.

Shiny things! She wants some of those if she tells stories, that would be great.

They can try the thoughtspeak recorder. (It doesn't work.)

Inconvenient that it does not work. They can get an interpreter with thoughtspeak to relay her story into a recorder as she tells it, though. Here is a fellow who has chosen to be a raccoon and consequently has thoughtspeak.

This nameless dragon does not apparently consider a raccoonperson worthy of remark or surprise.

Her stories include: Various spiritual-leaning lessons spoken to her by her mother, trying to talk to squirrels and deciding squirrels are really dumb, learning to swim, being heckled by a pack of cats living in Goldvalley, spying on humans doing weird stuff (from a dragon's perspective, they're mostly pretty normal from a human perspective), building a pile of rocks in an attempt to figure out how stone walls work, talking to fireflies and hearing a faint song back, meeting various other dragons and cleverly deducing the answers to their riddles, practicing her fire breath on a pile of silver coins until they formed one shiny lumpy mass, and laying clever false trails all over the place that slowed down the humans who were trying to kill her a lot.

She can get a hefty pile of stuff for that many stories!

She also has lots of questions about Vanda Nossëo and quickly decides that maybe living there would make her less SCARED OF THINGS all the time. Could she maybe get a territory somewhere if she swears to follow the Vanda Nossëo-laws to the best of her ability?

She can join as an individual and there are plenty of places where terraformed but unoccupied land is cheap enough that she could buy a chunk with her first basic, and then buy up adjacent parcels as she collects more money.