The situation with her parents sounds horrifying, and it shouldn't be hard at all to avoid having something like that happen here - she'll probably need to live with somebody, since she can't craft, but people know better than to try to get people to do things they don't want to, that mostly just doesn't even work on crafters. Plus she can always leave if the person she picks to live with turns out bad that way.

Anyway - trying to manage peoples' emotions is kind of rude, here, past a point, so it'd be better to break the habit if she can. Now that they've talked about it honeysuckle should be fine going forward, though, and she can explain the situation to the others.

Sounds good! She doesn't mind living with someone especially if there are cultural ideas about not making them do things -- she's mentioned before that generally people in her world live with other people, either in the same building or in nearby buildings because basically nobody has all the skills needed to feed and clothe and everything themself totally alone. Mabel makes nonpeople robots and things and other people give her food and clothes about it -- she's not saying thank you about being given things, she's saying thank you about not giving them things in return, if that makes sense?

But she'll stop! She may be rude in other ways in the future; honeysuckle can always tell her if she is, she'd like to know. People in her world often don't tell people when they're being rude which is confusing even when you're from a culture that expects that! She's getting the sense that's not the case here but she thought she should say it.

People here don't always explain it either, but if they choose not to mention that there's a problem then it's their problem if it continues. Most people will be willing to explain if she asks, too, if she notices that something seems wrong, as long as they aren't actively mad at her or trying to get away or something - if someone tells her not to interact with them she should of course respect that, but aside from that it should be fine, basically. And honeysuckle will try to err on the side of pointing out if she's being rude - the thanking thing has been the only thing so far.

- it might help Mabel to keep in mind that crafters mostly don't trade with each other? Crafting makes it easy to have everything you need, and to have enough free time that people who like making or gathering things will end up with way too much of whatever they're making or gathering for their own use; if a crafter likes to hunt, and has three deer's worth of meat in the freezer and expects to take another one next week, their neighbor is almost doing them a favor by asking for some of that meat, it means they can go that much longer before they have to figure out where to build another freezer. The neighbor might offer something to have the meat delivered, if the hunter didn't particularly want to do that, or the hunter might want something in exchange for meat they were planning on eating themselves during a bad run of luck, or if there weren't enough hunters and were too many people who liked deer meat the hunter might see if anyone had anything interesting to offer and give them first pick instead of going with whoever they liked best, but usually there's no need to trade, the hunter will be happy to just give their extra away.

That makes sense! She's... well, she's not really good at doing what people ask her to all the time but she is good at respecting "please don't."

She'll remember the thing about trading too -- that's a big thing in her world. Or, a concept-like-trading -- there's an intermediary step but Mabel absolutely does not have the vocabulary to explain the intermediary step, but it's a significant part of life and people can and do die if they can't trade, so that's where she's coming from.

Goodness. Well, they might have some issues if they get ten more like her all of a sudden, but she should have no problem getting enough help just on the basis of it being the right thing to do, and she's definitely not going to die of a lack of trade. If she's in that much trouble she can walk into anyone's territory and ask for help; they won't be happy but they'll understand.

Good to know! (She almost wrote "thank you" here and stopped herself.) Mabel doesn't know how she got here so she doesn't know the likelihood of more people like her showing up, unfortunately. Obviously she's the first and only they know about but she doesn't know if other people have ended up other places in the world.

She's gotten distracted from the fruit by this conversation -- she's tentatively going to pick that up again but keep her writing surface handy?

In that case honeysuckle will go see about the soup and whether the others will be joining them.

Which they do!

Mabel will pass out the fruit! Also she will say hello with her writing board; she's probably noticably a little more awkward and not sure what to say now that it's not just her and honeysuckle.

Hi!

So, (she says, when everyone's settled in with their soup,) she hears that Mabel is from another world, that's pretty interesting.

Yeah! Mabel... didn't know there were other worlds than hers, so she thinks it's interesting to be here! Also, a little confusing. But she does like it here so far!

Did they know about other worlds before or is this new to them too? She's gotten the sense that it is but never actually asked.

It is new! People are going to be very excited about it. And the teleporting - that's new too, and if it's possible at all there should be some way to do it with crafting.

That would be cool! Mabel unfortunately has no idea how she did this -- she has a vague idea something attacked her, or... ate her, or something similar, it wasn't as far as she knows something she did. But also she was in a lot of pain and couldn't see, so she's not sure if this is accurate.

It still sounds like a clue, at least - probably people will appreciate it if she writes down what she remembers soon while it's fresh in her mind, even if there's not much of it.

Anyway - she's curious what's confusing her, if that seems like it'd make good dinner conversation.

There's not really one specific thing, everything's just very different! Hm, what did honeysuckle find most unusual...

People in Mabel's world communicate mostly with noise is the big one. Also, generally people in her world live in the same place with many other people -- fifty to a hundred at the smallest, thousands at the largest, which seems unthinkable here? They also have a thing which is like crafting but meaningfully different, and everyone spends a lot of time doing a thing that is like trading but is meaningfully different.

That's very different, definitely; she has no idea how you'd have a place with that many people.

They are mostly... Like the collection of buildings here, but over a much larger area? People's... territories in Mabel's world are much smaller, basically only their building? Sometimes multiple people or families live in the same building because they can't thing-like-trading enough to get their own but this is generally considered undesirable.

That's imaginable, she guesses, except for the part where they'd have no room to grow food and no place to get materials... Mabel doesn't need to explain it right now, though, she's just wondering.

She hears Mabel is interested in robotics?

Robotics! Yes. Mabel makes a lot of things-like-robots at home but she suspects it's really meaningfully different here and she'd love to learn how things work here. She's especially interested because the main material she uses doesn't seem to be something people here have.

She can explain the basics! Most of it is fairly similar to mundane engineering, though the ability to make pieces that change shape when nudged instead of just moving certainly opens up some new possibilities, and being able to make parts as durable and frictionless or friction-full as they want is very convenient.

Oh, you do have mundane engineering here! Neat. Those definitely sound convenient -- if she doesn't mind Mabel will take notes on all this in her own writing system, on the free space in her dictionaries.

(She wants to say thank you at the end of the explanation, too, but stops herself.)

It'd be a bit silly to make Mabel mark up her dictionaries with unrelated notes when she can just make her more paper, so she does that.

Unfortunately she really does only know the basics, but there's a roboticist not too far away who'll know more, did her daughter mention?

Yeah! Honeysuckle has been really helpful with helping Mabel learn things and find places to learn things -- Mabel hopes to write the roboticist later when she's not actively being taught most of the words she wants to use. She'd love to try and make some robots here -- her crafting-but-different does seem to still work, which is good!

That is good! Probably Mabel's not comfortable enough with the writing system to try to explain her crafting-type thing yet, but she's curious about it when she's ready. In the meantime does Mabel have any questions about crafting for them? Or about anything, really.

Hmmm... honestly, it seems like most of her basic questions have been answered? She seems to have reached the edge of things she doesn't know she doesn't know.

Maybe... how long do crafters usually live? When are they considered adults? This varies pretty significantly in Mabel's world, because there are so many different types of people. She's not sure which crafters are most like.

She knows the ability to craft isn't really taught, but at what age do people usually begin?