"They pull vehicles. They're not the best choice for Rekk, really, the climate doesn't agree with them. We do have plumbing, though I don't know if it's different from yours."

"I was not a professional plumber but may be able to reconstruct some things about how our plumbing works if it's better. Which I am starting to suspect it may be."

"Plumbing innovation is the sort of thing that's worth going out of my way to keep you alive. I can get you a meeting with someone who'd know more than I do about how plumbing works but I need to have some idea what to tell them that doesn't look like a paper-thin lie."

"- I think your teeth look weird. Do my teeth look weird to you." He displays them. He has six teeth between each pair of canines, not four, and they're small.

"Very, yeah. The thing is, I hear about unique birth defects sometimes and I've never heard of an alien before."

"My hair grows in like this. If you pull one out it will be red at the root too. - I have my pocket everything with me." He pulls it out; it notices it is being handled and displays the time and his number of accumulated notifications (zero).

"What is that?"

"My pocket everything," he repeats. "I don't have a way to charge it here. It will stop lighting up in a few days, faster if I use it for more than keeping time. But maybe enough people could see it in the meantime?"

"Yes, that seems like it should work. Do you want me to throw a party where we show it to people?"

"...that sounds better than being murdered?"

"I am entirely competent to throw a party on short notice. What does your pocket everything do, though?"

"- on another planet not very much. It can play music. And show pictures of things that I saw and wanted a picture of at the time. - the music will not be in this language, which, I don't know how I speak it, it seems arguably stranger than being here at all."

"...That is also weird. Maybe I should invite some linguists to the party, too. And people who've studied the history of music. Will tomorrow be soon enough?"

"Yes, it will still have charge then."

"Okay. And if it's not magic then is there a simpler thing, or a prerequisite field of study, or something, that I should invite people who know about?"

"Do you have electricity at all, or people who study - lightning, or the way things can zap you when the weather is very dry -"

"I will see if I can get anyone who plays around with electricity to come."

"There's probably no real chance of getting this charged but if there's... magic... then that could surprise me." He is uncurling very slightly at this point.

"Mermaids make life, I don't know if your thing is alive enough for that to help. I'm not very sure what dragons and phoenixes do, we don't see much of them."

"It's not alive at all."

"Even though it does things? Hm. Well, was being unverifiably polluted your only objection to coming in and letting my cook fix you something? I suppose actually we should give you a small amount of one thing now and a small amount of something else later and see if you feel sick, only we don't really have that much time before I have to throw a party and you should probably be seen eating something at it..."

"Yes, that was all - uh, why is it important I be seen eating something -"

" - You know, you're right. It'd stand out for you not to but ideally no one's going to doubt that it's because you're an alien and worry it's really about poison."

"I should definitely test things to see if I feel all right soon, though, so if I don't I have time to try other things before I starve."

"Yes. Are we definitely not worrying about whether you'll track invisible dirt through my house?"